Friday, April 13, 2007

Today

This is a public service announcement. Today is Friday the 13th.

I hope you got out of your bed today left foot first. Now go walk under a ladder while wearing your shirt inside out and throw a mirror at the black cat that crosses your path. If you cut yourself, spill salt on the wound. Don't be distracted by the moon shining over your left shoulder or the insomniac rooster who insists on crowing at night.

Thank you.

Also, just so I can finally get this out of the way, two saturdays ago, I went to Jim Thorpe with Mrs Gawker, Zambezi and Mrs Zambezi where we had wings and beer in an Irish bar. The wings were too hot for a South Indian and zambezi started sweating like a pig on a spit in summer with the air conditioning turned off. The concerned waitress asked him if he was having problems, if the wings were too spicy and he said yes, also assuring her that the considerable spice content of the wings would soon necessitate a sprint into the high hills for defecatory purposes. The waitress accepted his scatological confidences politely, in the proper spirit, with an ambivalent "ah".

And that was that.

Speaking of Jim Thorpe, here's a picture of the Switchback trail we "trekked" on, if you can call walking on a flat surface trekking. It's called the Five Mile Tree.

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The interesting thing about this particular picture is that it used to be a place where railroad cars going in opposite directions used to pass each other. It looked like this.


Spitting on the car underneath was out of bounds for everyone except the very highest of high society. Also notice how there is virtually no forestation in the old picture as compared to the new one. Immigration of trees to the US began in earnest only after the rain forests of the world began to face persecution in the early 20th century for their wood, their land and their bark, oh that sweet sweet bark.

I guess that's all for now. I had something else to say but I don't remember what it was.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought Mrs. Gawker didn't like walking! Glad you had fun. We also drove to a nearby place for the last long weekend.
-MK

Anonymous said...

kewl it's so interesting to be able to see what a place looked like earlier.. vis a vis what it looks like now esp when the contrast is so stark.

gawker said...

MK : Yes she doesn't so we walked upto the peak of the base and then let the zambezis walk a few minutes further.

twilight : I am happy to see someone share my exact same sentiments regarding old things.

Twilight Fairy said...

you can rely on me for that :). I am all nostalgia, memories and a time travel person :p.

In fact I think it must have been a big effort to actually find a picture of what that trail must have looked like earlier!