I just noticed it's now colder in PA than it is in Fargo. Won't last long. Should be above freezing with some actual real sunshine on Thursday. Bummer, I'm hiking in the Catskill Mountains that day and I'd rather temps no higher than 20 so I don't sweat so much on the uphill death march. I guess I'll just dress lite.
Mark Griffin
Fixded!!!
Well, I got in a great hike today in the Catskills. I chose Giant Ledge and Panther Mountain. I was only up there once before in the summer. It's a nice 6.6 mile round-trip, not too hard, but I still feel it at the end of the day. It was a spectacular, clear, dead calm day. I barebooted the first 0.75 miles and then had to go with snowshoes the rest of the day. I finished in 5:29 with a total ascent of 1952'. 1:49 ascending, 1:17 descending, and 2:23 on flat terrain or stopped. I took 115 photos (30 MB).
As usual on the weekdays, I didn't see another hiker.
Click an image for a larger photo.
Topo map and altitude chart-
From Giant Ledge-
My next stop, Panther Mtn.-
The trail up on Panther-
From the Panther Mtn. summit-
I messed around with my cam delay
to get a few shots of myself-
My hiking page- www.kaatskills.com
Mark Griffin
Last edited by deermagnet : 01/15/2010 at 02:57 PM
So what kind of job do you have that let's you do this during the week? Do you have an application handy? Or are you retired?
Very cool!
No, I'm not retired, I work full-time, kinda. I work three days a week, twelve hours a day, Sat, Sun, and Mon. That gives me four days off every week to have fun outdoors when most others are working. I love it!
That's how I racked up 210K miles on my VX. ~6k to work and ~15K to play each year.
I work 46 weeks and 138 days a year. I have six paid weekends off a year. Many folks work ~245 days a year. I'm very well paid and have fantastic benefits. If I had to go somewhere else and do the same job, I'd start out at about 60% of my current pay.
I'm livin' the dream. So who is this fantastic employer that I work for? The greatest employer in the world, the largest private employer in the world with over 2,000,000 associates, the largest retailer in the world.
Yeah, Walmart Stores Inc. No, I'm not a greeter that you see at the stores, although that seems like a pretty sweet job.
I work at one of the huge distribution warehouses that feed the stores. It's an amazing 1.2 million square foot marvel of engineering. You wouldn't believe what goes on in these warehouses. The volume of goods, the speed at which it moves, and the overall efficiency is mind boggling. Millions of cartons come in and go out every week. We serve over 90 stores. Imagine how much stuff that many stores sell every day. It is truly a jaw-dropping operation.
I drive a high-lift fork truck that goes up ~30 feet and weighs over 10,000 pounds. I have to concentrate and have excellent vision and hand-eye skills to put 3,000 pound pallets up and take them down from those heights without dropping and damaging thousands of dollars of merchandise, or getting someone killed.
This is the actual building I work in. About 800 people work there.
Mark
Last edited by deermagnet : 01/15/2010 at 03:18 PM
My brother works at a Lowes distribution center in North Carolina doing very similar work (plus I think he was doing the weekend work thing for awhile too). Apparently they have some ridiculous QC process in place that's constantly getting somebody fired, so he's not too thrilled with them right now. But they do pay pretty well and offer a profit-sharing program, so it's a good deal.