Porc Fest 2004

I'll start this with an apology:  I don't remember all the names of everyone in these pictures.  I've supplied most of the ones I know and guessed at a couple of others.  Please correct me and so I can correct these pages. 

These pics are of two specific events at the Porc Fest: the Mt. Liberty hike on Friday and the Christian service on Sunday.  I'll cover the Mt. Liberty hike on this page and the service on the next.  I'll also include some things not photographed just as an overview of my weekend experience.  These pages will probably have a little more typing.  The pics are at the bottom of the page.  Enjoy as much of the writing as you want...

Thursday the 24th

Before I get to the activities on Thursday, I need to tell a story.  I've not written this out before, so I can't just link to it.  I guess as part of journaling my life in these pages, I ought to tell the story, so here goes.

When I was just three years old, I used to sit on the floor beside the piano as my dad played it.  In front of me, I would arrange coffee cans courtesy of the office staff at the mobile home park we lived in (thanks for the cans and extra lids Donna!).  Then I'd put some tinker toys together to make drum sticks and play along with my dad.  Ever since then, I've been playing the drums.  I started taking formal lessons at about age 9 and by the time I was in junior high school, I was playing for pay.  In high school I played a lot of jazz, and as a result of playing in jazz festivals (most notably the Monterey Jazz Festival) I had accumulated a substantial amount of scholarship money to attend the Berklee School of Music. 

For most of my life, I just figured I'd be a professional musician.  In fact, I'm confident even today I'd enjoy that line of work.  I never tire of playing music.  But my senior year in high school I had to decide on what to do next.  Several factors came into play.  First of all, I had started dating this girl, Edi, (now my wife) and we were getting a bit serious.  As a result, I began to think just a bit more long term.  Second, I attended Pioneer Christian Academy (the subject of another to-be-written story).  One of the teachers there, Ralph, was a pilot (he was working on his instrument rating when he quit flying).  We had computers there with Flight Simulator on them.  We could do loops and crash and stuff, but Ralph actually taught us some instrument flying skills. 

Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out if I was going to go to college or do something else.  I thought very seriously about going to Berklee School of Music in Boston.  I knew several people that went there, and was very familiar with the school.  I knew if I went there, I'd probably go on to enjoy a relatively successful career as a drummer and percussionist.  But there was one thing that kept coming back into my mind:  I had this image of myself dragging my drums through the snow in the middle of the night in Boston, up 5 flights of stairs to a cramped apartment in a building that would be condemned in any other city (save New York).  In other words, I just thought I'd wind up hating it.  And as a result of that image (and really nothing else), I decided not to go to Berklee School of Music.  I didn't even go take a tour. 

I began looking into other schools, but nothing really thrilled me.  In the mean time, my interest in aviation was growing and one day I came home and made an off-hand comment to my dad.  "Ya know, it'd be fun to learn to fly."  I don't know if he realized the potential impact of his answer at the time, but it's clear now.  "Ya know, some people fly for a living, and I think some of them get quite a bit of time off".  The wheels started turning and the rest is history...

So what's that have to do with Porc Fest???  Read on.

I left Fresno on Wednesday evening to fly to Boston.  I actually got there at the earliest time I hoped to - about 6:00 a.m.  My roommate, Mike, wasn't arriving until 2:30, so I had some time to kill.  I picked up the car and drove into town. 

Yes, you guessed it...  I went to Berklee School of Music.  I've flown into Boston a fair bit before, but never went to Berklee to take a tour.  I seized this opportunity and, 12 years later, finally got my tour of Berklee School of Music.  My thought was, since I'm moving to Keene this year, maybe I could go to school there after all (possibly after finishing my degree at Embry Riddle).  Whether that works out or not remains to be seen.  But I thoroughly enjoyed the tour.  While the weather in Boston hasn't changed, my attitude towards it certainly has.  I wonder now if I had gone a dozen years ago to take a tour how different my life might be today.  Who knows!

After my tour, I grabbed a bite to eat, caught a quick cat nap in the car, and then went to pick up Mike (the same Mike in the pictures below).  Somehow, Delta (Song, actually) managed to lose Mike's bag on a non-stop flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Boston.  Hey, Mike, don't fret.  As I type this, I'm into day 4 without my bag (thanks to Air France).  It's following me all over the world ;)  Anyway, we got up to Rogers Campground in the evening and started meeting people.  It was dark and I met a lot of people.  As a result, the next day I wound up introducing myself to a lot of the same people again for the first time... Oh well ;)

Friday the 25th

Friday morning we got up early (6:15, I think) to get ready for a 7:00 a.m. breakfast (that's where the pics below start).  Our goal:  Climb Mt. Liberty!  In addition to being a fun activity (I like climbing mountains), it was symbolic.  Here were a bunch of libertarians going to climb Mt. Liberty.  It became even more symbolic when we awoke to rain. 

During breakfast there were murmurs of cancellation.  A few would-be hikers decided to stay behind because of the weather.  But I knew if we canceled the whole hike, we'd see a newspaper headline somewhere:  "rain deters libertarians from achieving Mt. Liberty"  We just couldn't have that...  So rain be damned, we went!  No minor meteorological challenge would stop us from achieving our goal.  Nobody said achieving liberty would ever be east ;)

An amazing thing happened.  On the drive down, the rain quit!  It wasn't so bad after all - we just needed a little faith that it would all work out.  As we began to hike, the weather got better and better.  The hike itself was very pleasant.  The trail head was about 1,600 ft. and the summit is about 4,600 ft. so we climbed about 3,000 ft. and it was almost all uphill on the way to the summit.  A few sections were fairly steep but I found the hike to be just perfect.  It was a good workout but not too much for a day hike.  We did, however, have some time constraints so we couldn't just hang out at the summit all day.  We had to be back in time to clean up and leave Rogers 5:00 p.m. and it takes about 45 minutes to get from the trail head to Rogers. 

Anyway, as  you might expect from a group of libertarians, we all hiked at our own pace.  By the time we got near the summit, there were two 'groups' reasonably close together and one group (of two) well behind.  Wayne was the first one to the top (ahhh the benefits of youth) but I wasn't too far behind him.  Michael and Janice were close behind me  - a good reminder that staying in shape is more important than being young (the two stragglers were both younger than me).  In fact, we thought the last two had gone back to the car after not seeing them for quite a while. 

We took some pictures and enjoyed our time at the top of Mt. Liberty and then began our way back down the mountain.  Phil and I stayed a few extra minutes.  Just as we left the summit, here came Mike and Troy!  I was so happy they had made it.  I decided to go back to the summit with them so we'd have pictures of all of us on the summit together.  We spent a few minutes there and then headed back down.  They rode with me so I decided to stay with them all the way down.  They relayed the story of how they encouraged each other on the way up in order to make it.  Once again, perseverance overcame adversity and liberty was achieved! ;)

Here's a poem Phil wrote about the whole experience:

Mounting Liberty

No sun at dawn, the forecast bleak,
With rain, and wind, and cold,
But Liberty doesn't pay the meek,
And history not the bold.

At first it's easy, gentle slope,
With trees, and stream, and space,
These happy porcs filled up with hope,
Advance with cheerful pace.

But now the trail rears high its head,
With boulders, rocks and gravel,
Onward, routing sweat and dread,
And muscles full of fire.

The peak is reached, never a doubt,
With guts, and drive, and spunk,
For freedom we will always scout,
And Liberty quite well drunk.


Thanks Phil for the great contribution!!!

Once we got back to Rogers, I jumped in the shower, quickly donned my good duds and headed down to Plymouth for the NHLA dinner.  More about the dinner and the rest of the Porc Fest on Page 2.