Deflection

Today, I got over eight miles of walking/hiking in, and boy am I tired. WOW. My thighs are taking the biggest muscular beating, and my stomach is also hurting, but my waist is not shrinking. Tomorrow, I tour guide is going to pick me up at 9:00. We had discussed a half day or a full day tour. After getting the funds for him from the ATM machine, I a going to asking for the half day tour. The tour is just the area of Ballater, so I should be able to see enough of the area in a half a day. I was going to take more tours, but they have been cost prohibitive.

I took the bus to Breamar today. A location where major Scottish Games are played. These games are often attended by Royalty. I found over a three mile trial mostly along the River Dee, so most of the trail was flat, until I got back to about a half of a mile from Breamar. This is where three of the eight miles of came from in my walking/hiking came from. Just to walk from the resort to the down town area, it is a mile.

As with my time at Iowa State University, I find that bus transportation to be a big time waster, as it was today. When I completed the trail today, I miss judged the time, since the bus came an hour later than I thought that it would. As in graduate school, I would be working on a big engineering problem and have to quit to make time to get to the bus stop, and, then, I would have to wait until the bus came. The busses do not take a straight route from the college to my house, either, since there was a bus transfer in the down town of the city of Ames. I found that it worked better for me to park my vehicle about three quarters of a mile from the Civil Engineering building and walk the distance, since I wasted a whole lot less time. The point of my rambling is that next time I come I will be driving a rental car.

I am finding that I am in a major learning curve here for these few days that I am here. I do not have an handle on the people that live here, like their quality of live, standard of living, etc. Although some of these stone houses are large, and I do not know what the inside looks like, I do not know what the economic live is like around here. By looking at the rather simple lunches around here, the people working there cannot be making much money, even the owners. I guess that I will get a better feel of what is going on when I am with the guide tomorrow.

I just completed my first load of laundry here at the resort. We get free use of washer and dryer with soap, so it is not so bad. Since I got my hiking pants soiled hiking in the mud, I needed to get them washed to night. It is time to evaluate the clothes that I brought on this trip. I could have brought another pair of hiking pants, a shirt, and a t-shirt, but, having a laundry facility available, it seems like I am doing fine.

Since I am warn out, I am going to call it a night, with more to learn tomorrow.

Roger