Kitty is the star of the show

Spirit of the Road: The Life of an American Trucker...and his cat.
Rick L. Huffman

 I was very impressed with his efforts on this. I didn't get the feeling he was an "always wanted to be a writer" sort of guy, but he was certainly smart enough and introspective enough to come up with an excellent memoir. You got to appreciate truckers, just a little bit, after reading this. The stereotype (fat, vulgar, loose of morals and rude) is not always true--a whole lot of them are decent guys who just want to make a living. And the obstacles against them are many--trucking companies, dispatchers, delivery docks, rain, snow, ice, narrow roads, unmarked routes, and even an occasional low bridge can really ruin a trucker's day.

I think the real reason he wrote this memoir was to have a chance to publish an ode to his cat, Kitty. Kitty traveled the many miles with him and even when she grew too old and went into retirement at home, she still wanted to keep on going.

As to recommending this, well, I enjoyed it. But I have to admit that it seemed a little shallow on detail at times, especially when something spectacularly idiotic or frightening happened. I guess it was hard to take detailed notes while you were jackknifed in a loading dock with half your trailer sticking out into traffic.

And also I admit that after about halfway through the book, I got bored with his insistence on adding little "one liner descriptions" of all the places he traveled to. So-and-so is famous for a something that closed down in sometime because of problems with the such-and-such. It got really old, but then, nothing that you can't blip over while reading.

Wanted to like is not the same thing as loving

 Hiking Naked
by Iris Graville

Wow, what a confusion of opinion I encounter, trying to write about this. It's a memoir, by a woman suffering burnout from the medical profession, who decides with her family to move to a remote and very small island for a year. To unplug from the grid in a very spectacular way. There are no nursing jobs there, not that she wanted one, but she instead gets a job as a baker-trainee. Her husband changes jobs, too, and her two children move from their large school to a one-room schoolhouse.

And the memoir goes from that auspicious beginning to a rather lengthy and repetitive account of her endless search for the lost meaning in her life. Yes, there is a whole lot of other stuff mixed in with her constant introspection, but that aspect of her life seems to overshadow everything else.

For example, she takes a hike with her cat up to a remote scenic view. She writes poetically of the beauty, and of the calm that descends on her spirit, and how happy she feels....

And then comes back down and resumes the worry, worry, worry--do I want to go back to nursing? Will I ever want to resume the battle with administration? Is this the right place for our kids? Do I want to care for people, or just sit around in solitude and write in my journals forever?

So, you see my conflict. I absolutely adored the people and their adventures and even their inner struggles. But the author came close to boring me to tears.

Lovely fiction that reads like a memoir

 The Guncle by Steven Rowley

Listened to on audiobook and it took me a long time to finish. Not that I wasn't enjoying every minute, but a trip interrupted and then my headphone jack broke. I resurrected a pair of wireless earbuds that I received for a gift several years ago and, after a couple of issues getting them charged, managed to finish the book. At last!

Written entirely in the voice of the Guncle--Gay Uncle Pat--who takes on his niece and nephew after their mother dies and their father checks himself into rehab. I'd expected it to be slapstick hilarious, but it wasn't. Not at all. His endless self-berating and self-questioning even made it sad at times. And of course sadness came from the kids losing a mother and him losing her too--she was his best friend--on top of his unresolved grief at a lover who'd died some years before.

But he persisted and they persisted and eventually came to get along, as you would expect from reading the cover. And overall, it was surprisingly good. Very good.

Recommended. For anyone except, or maybe including, those narrow-minded nutcases who think gay people shouldn't be allowed.

Mammoth Seeks the Sun, Day 5 and 6

Fri Feb 10

Travel to McKinney Falls State Park in Austin

We drove off into strong headwinds--again--only this time out of the north. It was getting more and more chilly during the drive, and when I went out to wash the windshield, I shivered. It was probably near 60 degrees but with the wind, yuck!

The park is within the city limits of Austin, on the southern side, but once you're inside the gate you lose track of that fact. You can hear traffic noise, of course, but it's no louder than that in my own backyard. It has lots of nice walks and would be a great place for a day trip during Golden-Cheeked Warbler nesting season.

Molly and I walked to the lower falls and the rock overhang site. Very nice. A little crowded--we met at least twenty or thirty people out walking around too, even in the chilly weather.

The falls:

Sat Feb 11 and return

Not as windy as the day before, but colder. A lot of traffic, of course. All the way.

Notes
1. Avoid Wahlburg Travel Center. It's on our fuel discount program and it's very convenient if you're going northbound on the 130 toll road to I-35 Northbound. But at least one pump didn't shut off automatically, they had no water washers or paper towels, and it seems a little rundown overall.
2. McKinney Falls State Park had lots of pull-through sites, and when we left on Saturday some had stayed vacant all night. But in general, it's not a great place to camp. 30-amp only and crowded. However, the birding might be excellent in season.

Mammoth Seeks the Sun, Day 4

Thu Feb 9

Just some random shots of the RV park and surrounding terrain.

It seemed a little warmer this day. Still windy, of course.  I decided to do the Laguna Atatcosa wildlife refuge first, in hopes of seeing an Ocelot in the morning before it went to bed for the day. We didn't see one, of course, but it was an absolutely lovely place to look for them. We drove out to the visitor center and walked around a while.

That trip took long enough that I decided the skip the drive out to the South Padre Island Birding and nature Center--we'd been there just the year before--and go on to the Resaca De La Palma State Park in Brownsville.  It was a smallish place but there were plenty of walks one could have taken. Ed was tired by then, so after seeing a few Green Jays and a CORAL SNAKE!!! FIRST TIME FOR BOTH OF US!!!

How cool is that?

 

We also went to an overlook where a gentlemen pointed out that the only birds were Ruddy Duck, Redhead, Lesser Scaup and Coot. I think I can pick them all out from the pictures I took.

 

 

 

Then we went to a couple of local markets to pick up some grapefruit and oranges. I have not tried them yet, but just to note that when I asked the price of the grapefruit (after muttering to Ed that if they were $2 apiece we weren't getting them), the young lady said, "Three for a dollar."  Damn. I should have gotten a few dozen at that price!

But I just got a few. I'll cut them up and eat some later.

Then for dinner, we'd planned to eat at Mariscos De La Rosa, a local place with excellent reviews. When we drove by there at about four o'clock, the parking lot was jammed. Good choice....

Alas, not to know. When we headed back at a little after five, Google navigator informed us that it was going to close in an hour. Apparently they close at six on Thursdays but are open normal hours on Friday/Saturday. So we chose not to walk in a half-hour before closing, and went with our second choice, Mi Tierra Seafood.

It was good, or at least, I thought it was excellent. A little bowl of fish soup just hit the spot, and then my fillet with ranchera sauce was yummy and cooked just perfectly. The guacamole I ordered on the side was very good, just the way I liked it.  Ed, however, was not enthusiastic. He disdained the soup for reasons unknown; he ate his shrimp and oysters but declined to comment. So whatever--we won't go back, but then, we were unlikely to anyway. But I still liked the place.

Mammoth Seeks the Sun, Day 3

Wed Feb 8

With rains coming in, I chose to go west. I figured the cold front would hit there first and move on through. And that's what it did, although there was never more than a mist of two of rain. When we got to the first birding area, it was mostly clear and strong winds had shifted to the northwest.

I decided to skip Edinburg Scenic Wetlands  because they didn't allow dogs at all, and skipped Santa Ana NWR because the highlight of it was a tram tour. No dogs.. No matter--instead we did Estero Llano Grande and Bentsen Rio Grand Valley State Parks. There we had some nice little walks and saw Mourning Doves, 

Green Jays,

  an Oriole that I failed to identify (Altimira vs. Hooded),

  Chachalaca, 

Turkeys, 

Roseate Spoonbill,

 Ducks, 

Coots, 

an unidentifiable sandpiper, 

Black-Bellied Whistling Duck,

Northern Shoveler, 

Snowy Egret 

and White Ibis.

So my goal of this trip--to see more birds--was fulfilled. They weren't new birds, but they were definitely more birds.

Mammoth Seeks the Sun, Day 2

Tue Feb 7

Left Canyon Lake and headed to Brownsville, where I had reservations for three nights at Tropical Trails RV Resort. An RV park out in the middle of an empty area, so not much was expected. It actually exceeded my expectations--there was a big fenced dog run just a few steps away from our site, and there was a little pond next to it. They had areas set up for horseshoes, volleyball, and stuff, plus they had a pool and hot tub. And a laundry building. I would definitely stay there again if passing through the area or visiting South Padre Island, about 25 minutes away

We arrived after 2 13-minute gas stops and an accidental detour when I misunderstood google map instructions. It probably wasted 10 minutes of drive time.  We were fighting strong headwinds out of the south all day, and it was really warm when we arrive. Lovely. Except for the wind.

We did nothing else that day. I walked Molly a few times. But it was nice just to sit still and enjoy spring-like weather.

Mammoth Seeks the Sun

 Mon Feb 6
(I forgot my computer, so notes for this trip will be sketchy at best)

Left for Potter's Creek COE Park at 9:15. After a 13-minute gas stop at Love's in Italy and a 16-minute gas stop at Wahlberg's Travel Center, we arrived at 2:45. Unfortunately, "check-in" time was 3pm, so they weren't letting anyone in. There were four parties ahead of us, so we had to wait.

But not long. Some Corp of Engineers parks have stupid rules like that, but it's been a while since we were hit by one. At least it gave us time to unhitch the Jeep.

It's a nice park, more-or-less identical to the one on the other side of Canyon Lake, only a little more crowded. Especially for a Monday. The lake level was very low and there was a lot of wind blowing, and although there were lots of ducks out there in the sheltered coves, it was very hard to identify any of them. I did get a lovely pair of Hooded Merganser.

I heard a Bewick's Wren, saw what was almost certainly a Black-Crested Titmouse (common as mud but not back home), and took these pictures of a Greater Yellowlegs by the water.

Other than a long visit and a delicious supper with Bob and Theresa, nothing much else was done that day. Great visit!

Great dog mystery

 Death Scent
by D.L. Keur

Awfully good. No...really really good. No...great...?  No. Maybe not great but awfully good. The dogs are impossibly smart; the lead character human, smart, and even has a little surprising moment of weakness that endears her to us all. The implied romance teased but never took center stage, which was fine with me. And even though the author had to switch POV from time to time, it was necessary in order to tell a story from both the police detective (or was he captain? Yes, I think) and the dog trainer's locations when they weren't in the same scene.

The other characters all had interesting and unique parts to play, although I will point out that there was only the one female--the lead--and none of the supporting actors were female. Or did I miss someone?  I don't think so. But I liked them all. Especially the dogs.

The only slight quibble, and the thing which may have kept it to "good not great" ranking in my memory, is that the discovery of the killer was supremely anticlimactic and left me saying, Huh? Who was that, and how was I supposed to know he had a part to play?

So my advice: read it and hope the author keeps writing more and more of these. And learns to stick the ending.

Good but not so good

 The Exiles

by Christina Baker Kline

This is the second book I've read by the author. The first, Orphan Train, was really good and the people exceptionally well-created and interesting. And of course their stories were phenomenal.

And I'll say the same thing about this book. But I'll not read another by the author. There's a certain lack of something...some degree of missing depth? It's hard to pinpoint. Despite the horrific and devastating events the people endured, I just didn't connect with any of them. There was only one character that I really, really liked, and was becoming very interested in hearing the end of her story--and she died.

But there's a lot of good history, well related, about Australia and England, aborigines and just plain folk. And so I'll recommend it to anyone who likes a good, sad yarn and an adventure of women who prevail despite impossible odds.

Many stars to this lovely, lovely book

 Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey
by James Rebanks

So very very good. Sad--depressing--cheerful--optimistic--
But tempered with reality. How can you not see, living in a world we inhabit and keeping your eyes open to the world around?  But still, if we only can have more farmers like him, we'll be okay.

He wrote (and my apologies for stealing his summary, there's so very much stuff just as good that led up to this),

What will our descendants say of us, years from now? How will we be judged? Will they stand in the dust of a scorched and hostile world, surrounded by the ruins of all that exists today, and think that we, who could have saved the earth, were thoughtless vandals, too selfish or too stupid to turn back? Will the future know us as the generation that pushed everything too far, on whose watch the world began to fall apart, who had so little courage and wisdom that we turned away from our responsibilities? Or will our descendants lie in the cool green light of the oak trees we planted and be proud of us, the generation that pulled things back from the abyss, big enough to overlook our differences and work together, and wise enough to see that life was about more than shop-bought things, a generation that rose above itself to build a better and more just world?

This is our choice.

We are at a fork in the road.

A prudent gambler would not bet his house on our virtue, because the odds say we will fail. There are a million reasons to believe that we are not big enough, brave enough, or wise enough to do anything so grand and idealistic as stop the damage we are doing, We are choking to death on our own freedoms. The merest mention that we might buy less, or give anything up, and we squeal like pigs pushed away from the trough. The world of human beings is often ugly, selfish, and mean, and we are easily misled and divided. And yet, despite everything, I believe we, you and I, each in our own ways, can do the things that are necessary.

Yeah. Me too. I hope.

So promising; so disappointed

 A Billion Years: 

My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology
Mike Rinder

I rushed through this, just to get through it. It was interesting, of course, but not the kind of interesting I expected. There were so many people, places, and things; people, so many people...my eyes were reading the words but my brain was hearing...
    I met so-and-so. I was send to this place to do this job. Then moved to another jog. Then blah-di-blah.
I basically got bored.

If he'd written more deeply, more introspectively, and included a lot of what he was learning and reading and thinking, it could have been a great memoir. As it was, it was a good memoir, I guess. But so very shallow. Detailed...and shallow. How can that be?

Sorry to not enjoy it more. If it had been one-third as long, and skipped a lot of episodes, I would recommend it completed. But I had to skim a lot just to get to the end.

Page turner, edge-of-seat, scary, etc...

 Blood On the Tracks
by Barbara Nickless

I don't usually read thrillers, but I made an exception for this one because it was about a K-9 cop, actually a railroad K-9 cop who was also an ex-Marine haunted by the ghosts of her past. Probably not literal ghosts, although you have to wonder, sometimes.

It was very highly rated, and when I get done adding my own rating, it will be even higher. I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through. Smashing characters, a whole lot of action and backstory and front-story and absorbing plot throughout. I
can't say enough good things about this.

And only one negative, maybe--it was a little too gory. But no more than it needed to be. Not a book to read late at night in a creaking house on a windy night.  Or anywhere that scary nutcase killers might lurk.  

Interesting...I've been known to ding an author for the gratuitous use of unnecessary violence, but I won't ding her. All of the gratuitous violence was necessary.

Wish I'd quit sooner on this one

 The Wise Women

It started out really good, but then became boring and tedious and repetitive. I thought I liked the characters--they certainly seemed likeable. It was the story that was dull to the max, which seemed impossible when you're writing about a woman with a difficult child and a husband who pretended to make the mortgage payments on their house but really just ploughed the money into a hopeless startup company. And a sister who has a girlfriend much younger than her who might be cheating. And a mother who butts in without good sense.

It just dragged, and when I tried to skim to the end, I found I didn't care how it ended.

Learned just enough to be alarmed, oops!

 The Warner Boys:
Our Family's Story of Autism and Hope

by Curt Warner

Sometimes a parent (or grandparent) just wants to hear someone else's story in order to believe that it will all work out in the end.  I'd like to say this is a good book for that--it was certainly why I chose it. (Plus, it was available at the library)

And it was a good book for telling one man's story of how he and his wife survived their twin boys growing up on a pretty severe range of the spectrum. But for me it was scary as heck. Their boys weren't mean or cruel, but they were very physical and pretty much lacked the self control you'd hope a kid would develop by age five or so. So they acted out against themselves and their surroundings so severely that the man and his wife pretty much walled themselves off in isolation for a lot of years.

You couldn't blame them, either--there wasn't a lot of help for kids like their in those days. But parts of the book were very scary.

I didn't come away with any tips or any information about what they did which helped or didn't help. Other than the diet thingy. The wife became convinced that some of their self-harm was an attempt to deal with stomach issues from a crappy diet, and she may have been right. But again, the book was very shy on specific details about stuff like that.  Or maybe I skimmed them, sorry.  Overall, it's probably not a waste of time to read it, but I wouldn't recommend it all that highly.

Real good to start the year. Lots of gore too.

 Blitz
The Cheque Files #3

Pretty much as greatly enjoyable as the previous two--and a long wait for it!  My only (and very slight quarrel) was that the author would go off into endless digressions a little too often and stay there a whole lot too long.  It's amusing stuff and always very imaginative, so I didn't skip any of it, but at times I wondered if and when any of this endless detail would fit its way back into the story...and mostly, it didn't.

But the battle scenes and other exciting parts more than made up for it. I'll happily read a fourth edition in the series--if it ever comes.

Mammoth Meanders to Toledo Bend, Day 6

Saturday 21 Jan 2023

And return

The park filled up with families and screaming children and dogs off leash overnight. Which is difficult to understand, because how can a camping loop that only had eleven spaces "fill up"?  I think there might have been one or two still empty, plus the campground host site which is clearly occupied but I have not seen a single person outside the trailer since we came.

So it wasn't a pleasant place to be yesterday, and I didn't really feel like being outside anyway. Molly had diarrhea again during the night. I took her out for a dump, but also in the morning she had a pile in her cage. I hope she's over this soon!

Oddly enough, today was the first one in several where i actually felt energy in my legs. I could walk! and not just trudge along, stopping to rest every five or six paces. Is the misery finally over?

Not a great morning and not a great drive. I failed to give adequate instructions about going into the Love's, and Ed had to make a dangerous U-turn. And then he got in such an all-fired hurry, going 85-plus in a 70 mph speed limit and whizzing past long lines of big trucks, that he missed his exit in Greenville entirely. I wasn't paying attention--I would have thought he could take a simple route he's taken hundreds of times before.

So blah. Anyway, we're back at this place where our house is.