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(a long time ago)

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Ron the Walker


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Originally uploaded by tomreid
We met this amazing guy on Sunday. I had been persuaded into doing a "slightly challenging" walk on Sunday. This was at Marin Headlands which is just over the Golden Gate from San Francisco. The area slightly to the north of 'Frisco is very different from the urban nature of 'Frisco and is full of open spaces.

We met Ron whilst we were having lunch. He walked up to us shouting that this was his first sight of the Golden Gate Bridge, we gave him some plumbs.

Ron is walking from Portland Oregon to Morgan Hill California, 865 miles! Ron seemed an amazing guy and his son is documenting his travels at http://www.solowalker.thruhere.net/

Happily I survived walking four miles (as opposed to Ron's 865!) with some knee trouble for a bit, which has cleared up now.

Marin Headlands was home for a while around World War 2 for some coastal defenses. These contained huge guns, which happily were never fired in anger. The buildings containing the guns have been disused for years, but are now open every so often, staffed by volunteers.

There is loads of strange grafitti in these old buildings, it makes the space seem quite surreal.

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I took this pic using a flashgun, this was a huge tube behind a reinforced door. They used to use this tube to test bombs. The graffiti only becomes visible when you use the flash.

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Poor Stitch was a bit knackered towards the end of the walk, he only has little legs.

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We finished the day with a huge fondue meal. I particularly liked dipping the sweet things in the chocolate sauce.

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2 comments:

magnusmog said...

Poor old Stitch - maybe you could get him a backpack to sit on, or maybe a skateboard?

Michael Laing said...

The photos of the military installations reminded me of a programme I saw on TV a while ago about the USA being targetted by Japan with unguided balloon-bombs in the Second World War. I'd never heard about this previously and thought it was a hoax at first, but perhaps the story is better known about in the USA. In fact, the 11lb devices they carried would have been little more than fireworks compared to the 500lb high-explosive bombs typically dropped by the Luftwaffe and the RAF in the war (never mind the fact that they were completely unguided), so it's no surprise they didn't do much damage. I found the Wikipedia page about it, just to make sure I hadn't made the story up!

Tom's blog about life in America as a Scottish person, appreciating and making music, politics, travel, my own philosophy and other stuff not easy to categorise.


About Me

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Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom
I'm a 40 something Scottish person who lives in the USA. I'm also an aspiring part time musician and songwriter.