Friday, November 14, 2008 - Oneonta NY
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Onions - Arrey NM, Apr 26, 2008
The weather is closing in and it's time to get a move on
About 1:30 today I finally got things arranged on the home front to the point where I could take off. I didn't get far today.
First on the agenda was a stop at All Season's RV Center in Pittsfield MA to get my propane tank topped up and from there I headed west through Albany NY and then down I-88 as far as Oneonta NY where I holed up in the Walmart parking lot for the night.
Night camp
Wal-Mart Parking Lot in Oneonta NY
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Oneonta NY
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #2262, 5054 State Hwy 23, Oneonta, NY 13820 - (607) 431-9557
- Good level parking
- Verizon cell phone service- Very good signal
- Verizon EVDO Broadband service - Very good signal
- Locate this Walmart on my Night Camps map
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
It was the Crickets
Now then: it isn't so much that one way of dying beats another, though that certainly is the case, but rather that when you KNOW the jig could be up any second or any decade -- it's the awareness that's important -- that just might make a difference. I'm like everybody else, I have these moments and then forget, lapsing back into "immortality." But there was a thing that happened in my back yard maybe 18 months before we split from Maryland that hit me as hard as seeing their president drop dead on stage must have hit those graduating seniors.
It was the crickets. I'd gone outside one warm fall evening to shut the garage door and suddenly realized I couldn't hear the crickets! No wait, I could, but only if I turned my head a certain way. Oh God, oh no: I had almost no high-frequency hearing in my right ear, or was it my left? That doesn't matter. The point is, a part of me had shut down permanently. No, it hadn't happened suddenly, but I had finally noticed, and that was hard to take. I'd never again hear crickets like I once had. Never! I walked back to the house in tears. All right, I'm sensitive. But I understood at once what all this meant.