I started this 2020 review project to try to capture the highlights and significant events of 2020 as I experienced them. As I sit down to write about December, I’m not sure if this should be a recap of the month or a summary of my hopes for the new year. December was like April… and May… and June… The only exception being that we celebrated Christmas instead of Easter… or Memorial Day… or my birthday.

I saw another post on micro.blog that referred to today as March 306, 2020. In many ways it feels like not much has changed since March. There was a period in the summer where life felt a little bit different. Better even. Perhaps it was a dream. Tomorrow, we’ll wake up and the program will indicate that it is “January 1, 2021” but will it not feel like March 307, 2020?

If you’ve made it to the end of this year, I hope you have a great new year. I wish you nothing but happiness, good health, love, and prosperity in 2021.

The marquee at Byham Theater, Pittsburgh, PA. March 305, 2020.

November is for thanks. I love Thanksgiving dinner, but I also don’t mind taking some time to appreciate what I have. 2020 has brought so many throughout the world the pain of loss, sickness, uncertainty, and fear. I have a lot for which I am grateful.

First, my wife. We have had to kind of reacquaint ourselves with working together and that has some quirks. Like many couples, we haven’t had the ability to get away from each other as much and that’s led to some frustration. But we’ve also spent a lot of time doing things that we haven’t done before. We spent some time biking this year. We’ve watched about 30 movies out of a list of 100. We’ve also been splitting cooking and clean up more than ever.

Next, the rest of our family. While we don’t get to see my family as much, we have managed to keep in touch with more frequent phone calls and video chat. We did get to spend some time with my parents and youngest brother and those were mostly good times. It would have been nice to have been able to travel to see my other brother’s family, especially my nephew but there will be more opportunities. My wife’s parents live much closer and that has allowed us to lean on them, and them on us, when needed. My wife’s family also dealt with the loss of her maternal grandmother this year. She was, and will be missed, especially around the holidays. Amongst all of the social distancing that has gone on this year, we were able to bond with our three animal friends. It seems Barley and Bear were just starting to get comfortable with each other when Waffles joined our pack. While there were some epic battles between them, Bear and Waffles seem to have accepted each other – most of the time. Barley, being older, wiser, and more dog-like, is as easy going and friendly as can be with the younger cats.

Finally, we’ve managed to get through the year generally healthy and employed. We’ve put on a few pounds but have not had to deal with much illness. Our families in general have been able to steer clear of COVID for the most part. We’ve had a few cases and a few close calls where people were in contact with those infected, but have generally been ok. My wife and I are very fortunate to have stable jobs that allow us to live a pretty good life. It’s not always easy, or fun, but we make things work. I’m not great at expressing my gratitude, but I often recognize that I have a lot for which I am very grateful.

As November wound down, the number of COVID cases in our area ramped up.

October is when the weather starts to get cooler in my area. So if I have any hiking I really want to do before the end of the year, October is usually my last chance. I took advantage of an unseasonably warm weather forecast for the weekend of October 10th. I headed out to central Pennsylvania and knocked out a little more than 16 miles on the Appalachian Trail between the town of Boiling Springs, PA and state route 850.

I hit the trail at route 850 around 7:30 am and started walking south. After an initial short climb, the trail meandered down to a mostly flat stretch along Conodoguinet Creek. After a little over 8 miles, I hit US route 11 where I detoured to the local diner for lunch. At this time, many restaurants were offering dine-in service at a reduced capacity. So I took advantage of a nice sit-down meal and had an hour long break from hiking. After lunch, I made my way back to the trail and completed the remaining 8ish miles to Boiling Springs in about 3 hours. I have now section hiked all of the Appalachian Trail from Harpers Ferry, WV to PA route 225 – about 200 miles. Combined with the other hikes I’ve done on the AT, I’m about 10% done.

Towards the end of the month, my wife and I joined my parents for a getaway weekend at Lake Chautauqua in western NY. We enjoyed getting away together for the first time since our trip to California in January, but it wasn’t the same. The hotel was nice and had reasonable precautions in place for the pandemic but it was different. I’m not sure if it was the chilly, overcast weather or our lack of interest in wineries (which seem to be the popular attraction in the area), but it was kind of a boring getaway. On our way home we drove out of the way a little to visit Kinzua Bridge State Park. The park is home to the – now collapsed – Kinzua Bridge. It’s a clever name. Even with heavy fog, it was amazing to see this massive structure in a mangled mess at the bottom of the valley.

Soon enough, October came to an end. Halloween night brought a few local kids out for trick or treating, but it certainly wasn’t the same as the last 10 years we’ve lived in this neighborhood.

Kinzua Bridge State Park. Mt. Jewett, PA. October 26, 2020.

At this point in the year pandemic fatigue and cabin fever collided in a way that could only be resolved in one way: hiking. Over the Labor Day holiday weekend I drove to Harpers Ferry, WV and arranged for a shuttle to take me north to Pen-Mar Park at the PA/MD border. Then I started walking south.

The first day I hiked about 5 miles. I think I saw less than 5 other people before I arrived at the Raven Rock shelter. On the second day I I encountered many more people, especially when I passed a few very busy scenic overlooks. I also began to recognize a few of the other overnight backpackers as we leapfrogged each other taking breaks along the side of the trail. That day I hiked a little over 12 miles to the Pine Knob shelter dog tired. I was already sore from the previous day and even noted in my journal entry, “Today started off on the struggle bus and ended on the struggle bus.” Fortunately, I felt a bit better as I greeted the morning on day three.

I woke up the same as I had fallen asleep – listening to the not too distant rumble of highway traffic on I-70. I was looking forward to getting to the Washington Monument before too many other people arrived. Mission accomplished. For about 10 minutes I was able to enjoy the original monument to our nation’s first president all alone. I went about making a cup of coffee, a ritual I had skipped to get to the monument early, and eating peanut M&M’s for breakfast. Slowly a few other hikers appeared, all people I recognized from the day before. Two of them were younger guys from Virginia. The next hikers to show up were a family of three from Syracuse, NY. After my coffee and some pleasant conversation I was back on the trail.

I stopped for lunch at the Dahlgren camp site. Here I encountered a fellow hiker from Pennsylvania. While we were talking, the family from Syracuse showed up for lunch as well. I’m not normally the kind of person that goes out of my way to talk with strangers but it was nice to just sit around shooting the shit with people even if it was at a distance that required near shouting. As my new friend from PA headed off to the south, the father from the family came over to let me know that they were going to have to abandon their trip. He had been struggling with knee pain for much of the day and had made the difficult decision to call for an Uber ride back to their vehicle. I was pretty sad as I began south again.

Later on that day I caught up to the gentleman from PA and we actually spent the rest of the day hiking together, at a reasonable distance. It was one of the few times in my life that I truly enjoyed being in the company of a stranger. I didn’t even learn the guy’s name, but I’ll remember the day I spent hiking with him for years to come.

I wrapped up my hike the next day, alone, with a stop at Weaverton Cliffs where I bumped in to the Virginia guys once more. From there, it was all downhill to the B&O Towpath and then just 2 miles to cross the Potomac in to West Virginia. I made it back to my car and started heading home before noon. I was exhausted but feeling refreshed in a way that I hadn’t all year.

Washington Monument, Boonsboro, MD. September 6, 2020.

In August I began this experiment: microblogging. I kicked off this personal blog with a few selections from the journaling prompts I found on The Art of Manliness. The intent was to run through all 30 days to kick start a blogging habit. Well, I think I got through 10 of the prompts and the writing kind of gave way to posting some photos and other random stories from my life. I would like to get through a few more of the prompts at some point (in particular the one on memento mori) but they’ve been sent to the backburner for the time being.

Looking back through my posts from August, I guess it would be appropriate to update my post on “A New Positive Habit”. So far I this has not been as successful as I had hoped. Many volunteer organizations have had to postpone or drastically alter their operations due to the COVID pandemic. I did raise a little bit of money for Disabled American Veterans by participating in their annual 5k. I also became a member of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. While I think both of these causes are worth supporting, and I will continue to do so in the future, donating/raising funds is a bit of a copout on doing the work. My intent is to get involved with some trail maintenance either on the North Country Trail or the Baker Trail or the GAP trail, all of which are within a short drive of my home. I’ll be keeping an eye out for these opportunities as the weather starts to get nicer next spring.

Other than getting started with micro.blog I see nothing but empty squares on my calendar from August. That, combined with my inability to recall anything that happened in August, must mean that I didn’t do too much. I do recall that during this time my wife and I were meeting up with a friend regularly on Sunday morning to go out for bike rides along the Great Allegheny Passage.

I’ve mentioned the GAP trail previously, in July, as the trail by which my Dad and I were supposed to bike to Cumberland, MD. The Sunday rides with my wife and our friend were different. They were a brief escape from daily life and a chance to enjoy some fresh air – or as fresh as it comes in Western Pennsylvania. Each weekend we would meet up at a trailhead and head off for an out-and-back bike ride. On one weekend my dad, who was feeling much better, joined us and got to see a little bit of the trail beyond the paved portion. He did not wreck this time and we hope to attempt the full trail again sometime in the future.

The Youghiogheny River near Boston, PA. August 2020

On July 1st I was anticipating a month full of weekend activities. These plans would have to defy a phenomenon that had been very prominent since March: postponement. Most of these activities were planned for the outdoors and, because of virus concerns, the groups would be smaller. But still, our weekends were booked through the month.

Before we even got to the first weekend of July, I had literally found a new friend. The cat that would become Waffles, was found at work one morning. He was crying from underneath a section of guiderail. Not entirely sure what do to, we found out that the local animal shelters were all closed until the afternoon. So he came home with me and he’s been there ever since.

Once we actually did hit the first weekend of July things got even more interesting. Fourth of July weekend was supposed to be my second time riding a bike between Pittsburgh and Cumberland, MD. It is 150 miles along the Great Allegheny Passage rail trail. I had completed the trek last October with some friends and this year I was going the opposite direction with my father. We started out at Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh and our ride would end with a rescue from an ambulance less than 10 miles into the trip. Somehow my dad caught his bike wheel on the lip of a sidewalk throwing him to the side. It was coincidentally the same spot that an 8” diameter pipe bollard had been installed to deter drivers from driving up on to the sidewalk. When the dust settled, the damage was a broken nose, broken maxilla, broken teeth, a dislocated hand bone – which was protruding from his hand – and some scrapes. So he spent a couple nights in the hospital to ensure no lingering effects from the head injury.

After the bike weekend “fell” apart, one by one each planned event for the month was cancelled. The year had claimed several long anticipated events. In my life at least three or four weddings were cancelled and a trip to Brazil was cancelled. No doubt, millions of people cancelled an untold number of events, trips, and celebrations. Sorry, I misspoke. These activities have all been rescheduled or postponed. Honestly, events getting cancelled or postponed doesn’t really bother me too much, it happens and this year it happened globally on a massive scale. Almost the entire performing arts industry has been shuttered since March. A few artists have been able to put on live performances at drive-in movie theaters but many have explored ways of connecting with fans via the internet. Hopefully, someday everyone who had to reschedule an event that was set for this year will actually see that event take place.

THIS. IS. WAFFLES!

What follows represents some pretty hardcore navel gazing.

On June 14th I completed my 40th trip around the sun. This may be the engineer in me but I have this weird sense of discomfort as I head off on trip number 41 and it doesn’t have anything to do with a pandemic or anything else going on in the world. I was born in 1980 and am now 40. So this birthday marks a perfect symmetry to the timeline of my life. The year 2000 was the mid-point to me having lived equally in two centuries. Even in my, thus far, short life there has been such a massive change in how we live. I was born before cable TV, computers, the internet, and cellphones. I am one of those people who went out to play (alone with just a group of other kids) until the street lights came on. My brothers and I had to beg for an NES for three years before FINALLY getting one for Christmas. I am also one of those people who trolled the chatrooms of America Online. I burned through countless “trial” memberships of the service.

As I reflect on my life, the year 2000 doesn’t just represent a new century (we all know 2001 represented the actual new century) but I look at it as a demarcation line - the year where human communication underwent a paradigm shift. I know it would be a few more years until cellphones really took off, but 2000 changed a lot. I know 9/11 was in 2001, but that’s pretty close to 2000. I spent January 1, 2000 with 100,000 friends, and strangers, in the middle of the Everglades at a concert. I spent my 40th birthday in a world defined by fear and isolation. Soldiers are still fighting terror, I guess. Police are still fighting drugs, or are they? People have been isolating themselves for months because of a virus. The second 20 years has been wholly different from the first 20 years. But maybe that’s just because I’ve grown up. I’m not a child living in the bubble of security that I relied on my parents to provide for me.

It would be ignorant for me to not mention that during June of 2020 hundreds of thousands of American’s, and people around the world, went out to protest the killing of a black man at the hands of a police officer. An act captured on camera and shared for the world to see on the internet. An action that can barely be described adequately as senseless, disgusting, excessive and a miscarriage of the duty of the police to “protect and serve.” Some people have indicated that George Floyd was suffering an overdose. I don’t know if he did or didn’t, but would that make what we saw in the video ok?

I didn’t do much for my birthday this year. But I did spend some time thinking about where I - and we as humans – have been and where we are going.

I’m not even sure what to write for May. As I recall, May was almost exactly like April.

I, like many people, was still learning how to work in a world full of precautions prescribed to prevent perpetuating the COVID pandemic (what a hell of a sentence). But those who were not learning how to Zoom or sanitize everything and anything, were probably out of work and more worried about just making a living.

In my personal world bubble, the weather was starting to get a little bit more pleasant. I saw more of my neighbors out walking. I went hiking for the first time this year in May. It was a 10 mile section of the North Country Trail in PA. The NCT is a little boring in western PA and this 10 mile stretch did not disappoint. I will admit, the stretch through McConnell’s Mill State Park is very nice and I would get out there later in the year.

I got a new drone, the DJI Mavic Mini. About a year ago I volunteered to become a licensed drone operator so that we could have an FAA registered drone pilot explore the potential of drones for bridge inspections. It may, or may not, surprise you to learn that the FAA doesn’t care if you can actually operate a drone. They just want you to know how to read maps and understand the weather. I kid, there are some other aspects of flight operations that you need to understand, but the skill of actually flying a drone is in no way a part of becoming a commercial drone pilot. So I got a Mini to practice.

Picking up the “how-to” part of flying is relatively easy, especially for someone with a reasonably sound base of experience playing video games. Getting good at flying drones, like anything in life, takes a lot more time. I started off with a few flights around a local soccer field complex. These were all vacant because youth sports leagues had been shut down, for the most part. In addition to my own personal flight time, I began logging hours with the drone that work acquired, the DJI Mavic 2 Zoom. It’s actually quite remarkable how different the two drones handle. But it’s also remarkable that these little devices even exist.

I know at one point in my youth, I became very interested in RC airplanes. Of course, I was also interested in the space program. Almost every kid that grew up in the 80’s and 90’s had some desire to go to “space camp.” I never actually got an RC airplane or went to space camp. But being able to fly a drone as part of my job is something that an 8 year old me would have thought was pretty awesome.

PPG Building at sunrise on May 16, 2020.

The beginning of April brought a whole new list of concerns (and rules) for working during a pandemic. I began to head back out to bridge sites to conduct field inspections as a lone inspector. This was only temporary as formal guidelines were developed. Once guidelines were in place inspectors were to go out in teams of two, as we generally do, but drive separate vans. We were still conducting inspections solo, the second person was there just to be on safety watch. Additional guidelines consisted of wearing a mask, thoroughly cleaning/sanitizing the van each day (beginning and end) and only spending time out in the field to collect the information and photographs. Once notes and photos were collected we could return home to work on processing the photos and updating the inspection reports. Working on reports at home has enabled me to spend much less money on lunch than I have in the past few years. While I missed going out to different restaurants, at the time, they were only offering take-out and those that were not, were closed. These guidelines would continue to evolve over the course of the year.

While I got back to checking on bridges, the office workers of the world switched (for the most part) to a “work-from-home” model. My wife, who had been working from home 3 days a week prior to the pandemic was now working from home full time. During the month of April, we encountered such low volumes of traffic on major highways that we were able to nonchalantly walk back and forth across 4 lanes of interstate highway. That would gradually change over the months of May and June.

I don’t have all that much else to say about April because, well, nothing else really happened. Besides work, most of my free time was spent browsing the internet or sitting through various TV shows and movies on Netflix, hulu, or Amazon. We would also occasionally take walks through the neighborhood or go biking along the local river trails. I spent a fair amount of money doing my best to support local breweries. Looking back, I probably tried to shoulder a little too much of that burden myself.

Barley lounging in the yard on a nice April evening

In late February and early March a new topic began to creep in to daily conversation, some virus spreading quickly in China and Italy. Never the less, it did not appear to be affecting those of us in the U.S. There had been a few isolated cases but they were limited to people who had traveled abroad.

On March 7th I went out to the Rex Theater enjoy the quirky jams of Dopapod. I had been listening to them a bit and was interested to see what kind of live show they put on. It wasn’t a bad show, I enjoyed it but I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to see them again. No knock to them as musicians; they are great musicians. Something in their music just didn’t really click with me. The real surprise from this show was the opening act: Paris Monster. What an utterly bizarre and amazing sound. I had never seen, or even imagined, that one person could play drums with one hand, play a synthesizer with the other hand, and sing. And be able to do it all very well. The other half of the duo was playing bass and constantly fiddling with another weird synthesizer machine. I don’t have any way of adequately describing their music, you just have to listen to them. Or better yet, see them live - someday.

March 16th is the day that pandemic pandemonium hit my city and state and, I think, most of the country. The entire state of Pennsylvania, with the exception of grocery/essential stores, nearly every business was ordered to close for 2 weeks to “bend the curve.” This time period also coincided with me being sick, which hasn’t happened for quite some time. I never really experienced any coughing or congestion and my temperature never exceeded 100.4⁰ F. I was experiencing some fatigue, aches and chills that would come and go. I would wake up in the morning feeling ok and then I would crash by lunch time. I experienced some shortness of breath but never to the point that I wasn’t able to breathe and I never had any trouble sleeping because I could not breathe. I never got tested for COVID and don’t know if what I had was purely anxiety driven or some sort of combination of a cold and anxiety, or even part seasonal allergies. I do know that my wife, who has asthma and allergies and exhibits the majority of COVID symptoms on a daily basis, never got sick. In fact, she hasn’t been sick all year, which is as atypical as me getting sick.

So as March came crawling to an end, my wife and I, like so many humans on this planet, sat in our house and watched videos of bodies being stored in refrigerated trailers, people falling over dead in the street in China, overflowing hospital wards in Italy, and reading countless news reports about this novel virus taking the planet by storm.

On September 22, after 11 years, Rex Theater announced that it would be closing its doors permanently.

February started off with a visit to the Rex Theater to experience TAUK. I have been listening to TAUK for a couple of years and was really blown away by the live performances I had seen on YouTube. On February 7, I was able to experience them live for the first time. The videos did not lie. This band is smokin live. Since they pretty much only play instrumentals, I wasn’t always sure what song was being played but it really did not matter. The whole night was a mind tingling, ear tickling spectacle of music. An extremely unique blend of funk, jazz, rock, and hiphop. I will not miss another show when they are in town.

Later in the month, my wife and I joined some friends at another concert – Twiddle. This show was at the newly renovated Roxian Theater in Mckees Rocks. This was my first time at this venue and my second time seeing Twiddle. We had fun hanging out with our friends and the venue was beautiful. One weird aspect was the sound. We staked out a spot close to the stage but by the wall at stage left. Right off the bat the vocals sounded muffled. I walked around to a few other spots on the main floor and the problem seemed to go away. I guess I’ll have to keep that in mind for future trips. I’d like to check out a show from their balcony some time.

With these two concerts in the bag 2020 was shaping up to be a bit of a return to my concert going days of the early 2000’s. I was eyeing up a few other bands to check out: Papadosio, Eric Gales and cbdb. All of these shows were at small venues, something that I have begun to really enjoy. I had also been excited to score tickets to see Phish during their two night run at the Giant Center in Hershey, PA. All of these concerts were planned for the first half of the year, who knows what shows would have been scheduled for the second half of the year.

Other than music, February rolled on in typical winter fashion. My bowling team had fallen in to a bit of a second half slump after a stellar performance during the first half of the season found us sitting in first place. I had also begun to dive in to learning the ins and outs of my new Sony a6000, which arrived in late January. Work consisted of inspecting bridges and walls and staying warm.

TAUK @ Rex Theater February 7, 2020

The year 2020 actually started off on a pretty good foot. My wife and I took a weeklong vacation to visit my brother and his wife in San Diego, CA. This was the first time that I had ever visited California and, even though it was January, I was looking forward to getting away from the gloomy winter weather in Pittsburgh and enjoying some nice Southern California weather. My brother, who was working for Marriot at the time, was able to arrange a hotel room for us at Moxy San Diego. It was a pretty nice boutique hotel near the center of downtown, which put everything within walking distance.

We arrived in San Diego on a Wednesday and my wife and my sister-in-law had made plans to visit Disneyland on Thursday. So, I had most of the day to myself. In the afternoon, I met up with my brother at Balboa Park where we wandered around the Museum of Man – which is now the Museum of Us. After the museum, we headed back downtown for an evening of bar hopping until the wives returned.

Friday afternoon the four of us – and their pup Hazel - set out to do some exploring at JTNP. Something I hadn’t realized is that JTNP is massive! It seemed like we spent most of the day just driving around in the park. However, during our hike at Arch Rock, we did get some excitement. My wife went completely MIA for about 45 minutes. Long story short, we thought she could head one way around a rock and meet back up on the trail leading to the car. It turns out the boulders of Joshua Tree are a bit of a maze. Fortunately, she was able to find her way to the main road and get back to the parking lot, but we were both quite rattled. After the ordeal, we headed in to Twenty-Nine Palms to grab some food and plot out what to do with the rest of the day. We spent the evening driving around the park again and eventually made our way to Barker Dam just a bit before sun set. After the busy day we headed back to our Airbnb and enjoyed a steak dinner.

As our vacation wound down, we returned to San Diego to spend another day and half before returning to Southwest PA. I should point out that our weather at Joshua Tree was beautiful, but the weather in San Diego was mostly overcast and it even rained one day. Before leaving we were able to check out the USS Midway and, just because they exist, we stopped by a recreational marijuana shop. That store was pretty crazy. Overall, our trip was enjoyable but I’m not sure I’m going to be running back to California any time soon.

Sunset at Barker Dam, Joshua Tree National Park - January 2020