04/01/2003 - 6:26 p.m.

I want to see mountains again Gandalf, mountains.

My parents have left the house for some belated Christmas party or something, I'm FREE! I sound like a twelve year old.

Flipping through the television channels I came across a train tour over the Goldrush trails. First of all, I have never been on a train other than the Boone and Senic Valley, but it doesn't go anyplace. So I have a distinctly romanticised opinion of rail travel that is absolutely not aided by watching Michael Palin travel 'round Europe in trains. Anyway, one of the things that the train in the show did was picked up backpackers, the last stop is the trailhead of a long hike that goes from Montana into Canada.

That's what I want to do someday. I want to travel. The only travelling I've done is on guided tour groups and they take you here there and everywhere on a whirlwind trip that gives you glimpses of one thing after the next. You don't get time to be anyplace, you don't get to see anything. I've always been jealous of all these people who go off backpacking in Europe, that would be fantastic- you can still cover a lot of countries and see a lot of things and go camping too.

It's been a long time since I did any proper camping. Being at GS camp is more like a cross between a day care and a hotel sometimes. Platform tents, pop machines, electric lights everywhere and now the air conditioning. (Last summer, in honour of the new director's hot flashes, no fewer than four air conditioners were placed where air conditioners had no reason to be- changes made for the campers indeed.) So it's about time for me to get out and do some proper camping.

It's about time for me to see mountains and trees and stars again. I need these things in my life, and I can't find them here in DM. Earlier this year, I would take my bike all over the bike trails. As a matter of course I would get lost, and, though I never ended up where I wanted to be in any sort of timely manner, I always ended up someplace I was glad I'd been. I rode along the Cedar River one day without passing another person for about an hour, but it was the most beautiful ride I've ever taken.

I did stay up and watch Conan last night. Sean Astin's taller than I expected him to be.

For all avid watchers of LOTR, has anyone else found Peter Jackson's cameo in TTT? Jackson always puts in an appearance in his movies- in FOTR he's the guy in Bree eating the carrot, and in Dead Alive (it has various titles, but I think that's the right one) he's the lab assistant. Anyway, I've been trying to think where he shows up in TTT, and the only place I can think is that he's one of the Wild Men that Sauron convinces of the evil of the Rohirram. Because putting his kids in the movie doesn't count. Even though I find it too amazingly cool that his daughter has the same name as me.