Sunday, November 16, 2008 - Clarksburg WV

Vacant diner under stormy skies, across from Wal-Mart, Hazleton PA, Nov 16, 2008

Stormy weather ahead, Nov 16, 2008, Hazleton PA

This has been a mild fall in upstate New York

The mild fall in Columbia County lulled me into thinking I would escape the east snow free this year. But that wasn't to be. Not quite anyway. Some darned fool had to press his luck and head over the Allegheny mountains today. Ah well, it's not far over those beautiful mountains and my time up there where the rain turned white was short lived and only slicked up the road for a few miles.

Still heading for Kentucky

Tomorrow I'm going to continue on down I-79 to Charleston WV and catch I-64 west across Kentucky. That hopefully will put me west of the cold snap this area is experiencing.

When did Wal-Mart become Walmart?

I guess it didn't. I was going to make the switch but in looking around http://www.walmart.com I find the simplified spelling seems to apply only to Wal-Mart's online presence and on their register receipts. As an old hunt & peck typist (typer?) I was all set to drop the extra hyphen and cap. Darn.

Night camp

Wal-Mart Supercenter in Clarksburg WV

Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #1544, 550 Emily Dr, Clarksburg, WV 26301 - (304) 622-1954

Good level parking
Verizon cell phone service- good signal
Verizon EVDO Broadband service - none but 1x dialup speed is reasonable
Locate this Walmart on my Night Camps map
Find other Wal-Marts in the area
Check the weather here

Five Trillion Spiders

Spiders begin their hunting with a few handicaps. They're often smaller and weaker than their prey, and they have no wings to give chase in the air. Some species extend their legs by hydraulic pressure, using the same liquid that carries oxygen from their lungs, so they have a hard time running and breathing at the same time. Even their poison may be no match for their victim's: a crab spider's bite is to a honeybee's sting as "an air-gun compared with an elephant rifle," John Crompton wrote. Yet spiders kill at an astonishing pace. One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were their victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen.

From Spider Woman by Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker magazine, March 5, 2007, page 69

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