h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Shenandoah National Park, Virginia – 31 August, 2006

The igneous granite and metamorphic rocks in this area date back a billion years. I wrestle with this number while walking down the trail and work out in my head out that if a billion years was compared to one year, each second in a year is equal to more than 30,000 years.

The mountains here are old and worn down by erosion from streams and glaciers. The dinosaurs walked here about September 30th. The glaciers from the last ice age receded and the great sloth and wooly mammoth became extinct less than a second before year end...Man came on the scene 11,000 years ago, about 1/3 of a second before midnight, December 31….We started seriously using fossil fuels 1/1000 of a second before midnight. Mayflies suddenly have a new relative longevity…

The trail goes downhill three miles to a waterfall. There is an elevation drop of 915 feet. We meet a German on the trail. He has a black curly moustache and looks Italian. He tells us excitedly about a black bear at least “two meters” tall. We end our short conversation with a long guttural laugh, a shared universal language

We meet an older couple on the trail. They have also seen the great bear. They’ve been married over 50 years. They look good physically and have had their furniture in storage for the last five years while they cruise North America.

We have lunch at a reflecting pool below the falls and wait quietly for an hour to see the bear. It fails to appear. This park has 516 miles of hiking trails and a road that runs 100 miles along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and completed in 1939 under the direction of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt…

Tropical storm Ernesto is due her tomorrow with 40 MPH winds and 12 inches of rain…We play scrabble in the afternoon…I quit game two in disgust after Mrs. Phred places an “X” on a triple letter space and makes 25 points on an “ex” in one direction and another 25 on an “ox” in the other….Our campground is in the clouds and rain. More rain is expected for the next four days…A ranger tells us we may need to evacuate…I make halibut for dinner.

Mrs. Phred and I have decided we may spend the winter in New Orleans as volunteers to help build housing for low income residents….then move north to Alaska.

Do you mean move to Alaska to live or move on to Alaska for a bit of sightseeing?

That sounds like a wonderful way to spend the winter. Good for you and Mrs. P. Did you see where New Orleans now has finished work on the dome? Spent $140 million on it. I'm glad to see they have their priorities in order.

So, how many houses could they have built for $140 million? Rebuild schools, anyone? How about hospitals and clinics? Can't find the money for those.

Very noble undertaking--New Orleans and helping build homes. The dome had to be restored. It's the hub of the world, doan cha know.

The Gub'ment is always inefficient...for every Viet Cong killed, we could have built them a $200,000 ranch split level with a pool...you got a lot of house for $200K in '65..I suspect the math is the same (adjusted for inflaton in Iraq...

I'm going to be itching to see the photos from the Big Easy. I'm wondering if it will ever recover from Katrina. The National Geographic dedicated a major article to hurricane prevention in Louisiana in 2004, and predicted quite accurately what actually did happen. The subscription must have run out that month in DC.

Yes,

I remember eating back-yard hamburgers as the storm approached with neighbors. They asked me (being new to Florida) if there was such a thing as a class VI hurricane and I told them no. I did tell them, however, that this would be a $50 billion event...I was way low and apparently the FEMA workers and other high government officials were to busy conducting what we used to refer to as circle-jerks to watch TV....next time I'll load the van with water, forge a press pass and head for the disaster myself...

1st September 2006
Dear Mr and Mrs. Phred,

What a beautiful place you are sxploring. And you describe it so well that we are all helter skelter behind you!. Sorry about the rain - which appears to have been correctly forecast.

The mind-numbing billion years dazed me and left me feeling distincly ill.!!

The idea of going to New Orleans for Christmas sounds splendid.

I have been listening to the various reports on the "clearing-up" operations on CNN. It appears that contracts were given to certain "high-up" people to remove the silt and debris. They in turn gave it to someone else, who in turn gave it to someone else, who in turn.......until eventually the very good price which was offered to the first person was watered down to the eventual person who remove the debris.My BP went sky-hi and then.....

Hearing your story of wanting to go down and help restored my Faith, my friends. Thank goodness for people like you.

With a great deal of respect and affection

Christiane