Andrew Baird August 29, 1998
Somewhere on the AT
Pearisburg , Va
24134

Dear Dirt:

Well, you must really be dirt by now. Is there any flesh left?

I decided to go to a new restarunt on Main St. in Providence. Olive's it is called. I am here now writing this letter so I can send you some stuff by mail tomarrow. There should be plenty of time to get to Pearisburg if your schedule is accurate. I am sitting in this place and the waiter, whose name is Darren, said I was the first person to bring in a portable computer. I told him I was writing you on the AT and he said "what is that?" I told him and he asked "why are you doing this?" I told Darren, he wanted me to mention his name in this letter, that I asked the same question. "Because it is there" I quoted you, or words to that effect. He said he would rather be riding around Providence in his car! I guess that is like lots of young people around here. Contrasted to Darren, was Tom whom I met this morning at Starbucks having my morning coffee. I was working on this powerbook, which I must say is fantastic, with some chem exam questions when this Tom struck up a conversation. So I told him about you and your trip. He thought it was great and could relate to it. He asked the same question and when I said "because it is there, and you are enjoying getting simple" he said he could relate to that too. He liked getting "back to nature." If I could believe Tom he has had a lot of such experiences. He has a masters degree in clinical psychology and worked in the field-with all kinds of disabled kids. Now he has some kind of TV program on soccer since he is a soccer coach and he has done your kind of thing, but not with so much hiking. He has been in jungle situations, etc. It all may have been the truth, I could not tell. He has the gift of gab in anycase. He had a guitar which I found him playing outside Starbucks later in the morning. Tom is a fellow the opposite of Darren! Two different species in one day. Kind of like birding.

Not a lot going on. School is about to start as I may have said in a previous letter. The new building is almost finished and we plan to use it in a couple of weeks. It is going to be close. My food just came in this restaurant. This Olive's is a kind of upscale hamburger joint and actually it looks reasonably good. I have had much worse. Back to the new building. My environmental chemistry course is in a lab adjacent to one of the Environmental Studies people. Actually, the guy who gave Rebecca Doyle a bad time. I will get to see him operate at close range and being a senior professor I may give him some advice! The building is very nice, but when I get to thinking about it, it is just a lab. Looks like a lab. At least the plaster will not fall on students as it did in Metcalf. There are computer hook up all over the place and that will be convenient-I can be on the network in any room. There is a 300 seat auditorium and behind each seat is an AC plug (for your laptop I suppose) and a network plug. Any student with a portible computer can hook up and either take notes, get on the internet and goof off, or do some kind of class thing if the prof as the energy and inclination to use this. On the other hand, I was in Staples this afternoon and saw a thing made by the Cross Pen Co. of Lincoln, RI in conjunction with IBM. There is a pen and a tablet. The pen emits a radio frequency, and ink of course, and as you take notes the tablet underneath the paper records. Later you upload this into your PC and the PC program converts your chicken scratches into text. You have to teach the program to recognize your handwritting of course. This thing works on a few AA batteries and does not require anything else. Might be better than the data terminal idea. Kind of expensive however, $400.

How are your feet holding up. How about running shoes. Can I send either your lighter boots, or get some running shoes? I think I said that I evolved into tennis shoes climbing in the Sierras. Something more substantial, like light boots, is good to have available. In my day boots were very heavy. I was always of the opinion that boots should be light. I must have told you the story of my first hike over Mt. Tam in Marin with the Boy Scouts. I had these steel toed boots and coming down the mountain my toes rammed into the steel over and over giving me blisters on the end of each toe. This made the weight problem unimportant.

Amtrak sells Eurail pass like tickets, but not in this country! I was thinking that some kind of open ended ticket might be useful to you. Not sure they exist. Getting info from Amtrak is often difficult. Let me know if this might appeal to you.

Guess I will cut this. I gave Darren a look at your pictures from Maine that I have on this powerbook computer. The panoramics impressed him. The beauty of it kind of got him. Doubt he will take such a trip though.

Love,

Dad

Keep hiking, but have some fun.

PS. Olive's says hamburger and martini with a twist so I decided to do their thing, but without the twist of lemon peal. Afterward I thought a cup of iced coffee would be a good thing and so took a walk up Thayer St. There in front of Andreas was Tom with his guitar and his harmonica playing a tune. His eyes were diverted downward and he had that street musicians demeanor. As I passed it seemed he was playing classical guitar and it sounded pretty good. I did not put any money in his opened guitar case. There were a few bills already. I take him at face value. He told me that his father was in WWII and a sargent who was in the invasion of Okanowa and one of the 5% of sargents who survived. His father is now 82 and had some health problems a couple of years ago. Tom found him with blood coming from his mouth and he was in bad shape. Turned out that his tractor fell on him in a common tractor accident. You know, driving on the side of a dam and the thing rolls over on you. Actually, there was nothing very wrong. He sleeps with a pistol under his pillow and Tom said that his father was ready to pull the trigger if things got bad. Tom told his father that he wanted to hold him if it came to that where apon Tom's father told him to get out, to go away that he did not need him that he only cared about himself. Pretty insensitive of that tough old sargent and it must have hurt this Tom somewhat if true. His stories are harmless to me and I enjoyed our talk earllier. And so, what is Tom all about? Perhaps it does not matter.