Highpointers

It occurred to me that in all of the nine summers I spent in Washington State, I never once visited their tallest mountain. That would be Mt. Rainier, which towers up to 14,411 feet. Imagine my surprise to discover that here in Florida I'm living in the veritable shadow of the tallest point of the state! Britton Hill is in Lakewood Park, which is just 54 nautical miles to my east as the crow flies. Now, it may not have the snow-capped grandeur and majesty of a Mt. Rainier, but hey, I'll take it.

I figured that riding the motorcycle out to and climbing Britton Hill would be the adventurous thing to do, because I am an adventurer at heart, and...well, adventure! Since I'm not really in peak mountain-climbing shape anymore (the dreaded "COVID-15#" - you know what I'm talkin' about), climbing from the base was, as the kids say, OOTQ*. I was hoping that there'd be a road I could ride on leading up to a point where I could park and maybe hike the rest of the way. Or maybe one of them cable-car thingees...that would be cool.

So I packed me a bottle of Gatorade and some honey-roasted peanuts and headed off on a beautiful, chilly Monday morning, eastbound and dowwwwwn (obligatory "Smokey and the Bandit" reference) on Interstate 10, opposite the flow of the hordes (well, dozens) of rush-half-hour commuters heading into Pensacola. Sadly, that has always been my lot in life: I'm going thisaway while everyone else is going thataway... I am never in sync with the crowd. I took my "big" Harley, the Super Glide (aka "Stupid Glide," officially the FXDBi Street Bob)....the one I desperately want to sell. There is a woman who sells Harley parts in the town of Florala, Alabama which is coincidentally right near Britton Hill. I wanted to see if she maybe had a better seat for my bike. I don't really want to spend another dime on this P.O.S., but I hate the "stock" seat on it so much that I'd rather not inflict it on a future purchaser. I'm not that depraved.

I did get to Britton Hill and managed the arduous climb to the top. Well... as luck would have it, I was able to drive all the way up. And even "up" is an exaggeration; the stone marker is right by the side of the road. Spoiler Alert: It's not very impressive - 345 feet. Turns out that Florida has the lowest high-point of all 50 states. Delaware is next, with a high-point of only 448 feet. Even flat and swampy Louisiana has a higher high-point than us: 535 feet. I know you're wondering... Alaska has the highest high-point. It's Mt. McKinley at 20,320 feet.

Here's the view you get from the parking lot at Florida's highest point. Pretty much the same view at you get anywhere else in Florida.

They call them, "highpointers": People whose goal is to visit the highest point in every state. Their website has a list of all of the highest-points in all 50 states. You can look at it HERE. And now I've joined the club! I'm in, baby! I got my first one out of the way! Only 49 to go.

Okay, so it might not have been as much of an adventure! as climbing Mt. Rainier would have been, or Mt. Kilimanjaro as one of my friends wants to do for his 40th birthday. Sometimes you have to make do with what you've got. This is Florida, after all. Everything is flatter here: our beer and our women. And most certainly our mountains.

*I don't think kids really say this.

Dear Diary

I used to blog a lot.  But now I do most of my writing on Facebook.  There, I make semi-regular posts.  I jokingly started referring to them as my "Morning Coffee Rambling" because I'd post them as I drank my...you get the idea.  I actually stole said idea from my friend, Russell Madden, who usually posts long daily missives filled with common-sense and wisdom.  To differentiate myself, I formalized, titled and dated my posts.  And as goofy as the name is, it stuck.  I do post other crap on Facebook during the day, but my serious ruminations are generally reserved for my "column."

I try to keep my Facebook posts short, but at four paragraphs in length (or longer), they can be challenging for the typically impatient short-attention-span social-media reader.  Even close friends admit that they do not read my posts.  They sigh, roll their eyes and go, "Too long."  I understand.  Facebook is usually not a long-form medium.

I don't spend a lot of time on "analytics."  In fact, I never really researched the actual numbers until starting to write this post.  It turns out that I have 155 Facebook "Friends," and another 150 or so "followers."  I don't automatically approve every Friend Request, although my profile information is public.  So my posts are searchable and "shareable."  And sometimes (rarely) they are.  Theoretically, 300 people or so could see my posts...*if* they show up in their Newsfeeds.  But I doubt that 300 people view my crap, given the small number of "Likes" each post gets.  Facebook's algorithm is weird in the way it selects what you see each day.  And Facebook doesn't let us see how many "hits" our individual posts get.

But there are tracking programs for blogs that allow you to see who has visited your site and where they are.  By comparison, each post on this here blog gets very, very few views.  The sad reality is that I don't reach a large number of people through this blog, but I reach way more people on Facebook.

So is the blog format dead?  Oh no!  At least, I hope not.  I do like the blog.  Facebook posts are very temporary; they evaporate quickly in the daily clutter of everyone's Newsfeed.  On the other hand, blogposts stay up as a permanent record.  For me, they become a running commentary on what's going on in my life at any given time...a diary as it were.  

I started this blog way back in 2006 when I went to work for a guy who was trying to restart the production line of an old helicopter from the 1970s.  (Unfortunately, we were ultimately unsuccessful.)  Back then, I used to lead an interesting life, or so I thought.  Now, fifteen years later, things have kind of calmed down.  I don't fly much anymore...and I may not ever fly for a living again, in fact.  The pandemic cancelled the motorcycle trips I had planned for 2020, and I'm not even riding as much as I'd like here in 2021.  So my life - like yours, probably - is kind of on hold.  There has been little personal crap to write about.  Maybe that will change!  

Maybe the coronavirus pandemic will fade and our lives will return to some sense of normalcy.  And now that I'm retired and don't spend so much time up in Washington State, I can start doing some fun stuff here in Florida.  If I do, I'll certainly blog about here...whether anybody reads it or not.