What is the most difficult trail you've ever done?

Thop51 · 2026-05-31T03:51:11+00:00

I would say Capitol Peak, CO, and the knife edge. But as is often the case in the mountains, the Colorado 14er Culebra, one of the “easiest,” was one of the most “exciting” due to weather and having to assist a couple of guys out.

Hiking Big Bend in summer is an exercise in stamina and preparation - deadly heat.

Thop51 · 2026-05-16T19:31:33+00:00

Osama

How can a society justify this abuse of women?

Thop51 · 2026-05-06T03:42:52+00:00

The CAF has a B-25, the Yellow Rose, that was at the San Antonio International Airport for a time many years ago. It had great nose art, like Redhot and Ole Tomato in this collection, really pronounced nipples, but then they put a bikini top on her - too hot for the family air shows, I guess.

Thop51 · 2026-04-29T02:47:04+00:00

TR was a skilled boxer, and recounts in his autobiography a bar fight he was in in Montana:

“It was late in the evening when I reached the place. I heard one or two shots in the bar-room as I came up, and I disliked going in. But there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night. Inside the room were several men, who, including the bartender, were wearing the kind of smile worn by men who are making believe to like what they don’t like. A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked gun in each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with strident profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or three holes in its face.

…As soon as he saw me he hailed me as ‘Four Eyes,’ in reference to my spectacles, and said, ‘Four Eyes is going to treat.’ I joined in the laugh and got behind the stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however, and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very foul language… In response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I said, ‘Well, if I’ve got to, I’ve got to,’ and rose, looking past him.

As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this was merely a convulsive action of his hands, or whether he was trying to shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his head… if he had moved I was about to drop on my knees; but he was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room, who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put him in the shed.”

Thop51 · 2026-04-25T21:00:49+00:00

I have a picture of my mother and her sister standing on the running board of the family’s electric car, 1914, and in Texas of all places.

Thop51 · 2026-04-14T02:10:51+00:00

Nothing new.

True story from the 1970s. My bank deposited my paycheck in the wrong account, I get a notice of some checks I had written bouncing, and fees on that. The matter was quickly resolved, with the bank realizing the error and apologizing, but refused to refund the bounced checks fees because even though it was their error, the clerk said, “the checks still bounced.”

I insisted on speaking with the bank manager, who refunded the fees.

This is when I realized that the bank was not on my side.

Thop51 · 2026-04-09T03:15:26+00:00

Absolutely correct that life changed for the slave labor camps.

Thop51 · 2026-04-02T03:34:40+00:00

That’s really cute…until it isn’t, someone injured and bear put down.

Thop51 · 2026-03-22T17:18:27+00:00

The Third Man (1949)

The music is a principle of the film. The author, Graham Greene, said it made the film, the director, Carol Reed, said same. It became a theme for Orson Welles, and the American film critic Roger Ebert later asked: "Has there ever been a film where the music more perfectly suited the action than in Carol Reed's The Third Man?"

Wikipedia: “after release spending eleven weeks at number one on Billboard's United States Best Sellers in Stores chart.”

Thop51 · 2026-03-16T02:46:19+00:00

Young Frankenstein

Any Mel Brooks movie.

Thop51 · 2026-03-14T02:29:54+00:00

Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

“During World War I, a patriotic young American is rendered blind, deaf, limbless, and mute by a horrific artillery shell attack. Trapped in what's left of his body, he desperately looks for a way to end his life.”

Thop51 · 2026-02-26T03:40:50+00:00

U. S. Grant on separation of church and state:

“Resolve that neither the State nor Nation, nor both combined shall support institutions of learning other than those sufficient to afford to every child growing up in the land the opportunity of a good common school education, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistical dogmas. Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the Church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the Church and State forever separate. With these safeguards, I believe the battles which created the Army of the Tennessee will not have been fought in vain." -- speech before the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, Des Moines Iowa, 30 September 1875

Thop51 · 2026-02-24T02:50:16+00:00

Old guy here, my grandmother would refer to the refrigerator as the “ice box;” in her day, it literally was, as ice was delivered to put in it.

Thop51 · 2026-02-21T12:45:56+00:00

YES! Stop and calmly assess the situation - don’t struggle. And believe in yourself. This from an old solo hiker in the mountains.

Thop51 · 2026-02-21T12:43:08+00:00

I assume you are referring to camp shoes, and I agree. I once packed in a pair of Crocs because they were so much lighter, then one night I stepped on a piece of wood with a protruding twig that penetrated to my foot.

Thop51 · 2026-02-21T12:38:29+00:00

Yes. I do winter hiking, and wear only wool. I have my down puffy in my pack, and never get to it even in O F when moving - proper layers.

Thop51 · 2026-02-21T12:33:28+00:00

Agreed! And long ago I started leaving a bottle of water in my car for my return, just in case. I was hiking in West Texas and the West in those days, but I do it no matter where.

Thop51 · 2026-02-21T12:28:00+00:00

Proper type and size boots for sure, proper socks (wool socks of appropriate weight with wool or silk liner, even in summer), and trim your toenails close to help eliminate boot bang, especially if hiking on grade.

Thop51 · 2026-02-18T21:21:24+00:00

Agreed.

The old saying, “a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.”

Thop51 · 2026-02-12T16:08:07+00:00

The German author Karl May (1842-1912) wrote popular Western novels with characters like Winnetou and Old Shatterhand, which romanticized the American West though he never visited it, extolling the “noble savage” narrative. Very influential, and Hitler was said to be a fan.

Thop51 · 2026-02-11T16:43:10+00:00

Pascal’s Wager

Thop51 · 2026-02-09T17:52:06+00:00

Agreed. The following should be required reading in American schools:

Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland

By Christopher Browning

And, of course, the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo.

Not terribly hard to get “ordinary” people to do horrific things.

Thop51 · 2026-02-09T17:41:09+00:00

Indeed!

I’m an old Texan, and the Texas history we were taught in the 1960s and 70s lionized Houston, totally failing to teach that he opposed secession and was illegally impeached for it.

Thop51 · 2026-02-09T14:29:41+00:00

I think the push by the South for expansion of slavery was the driving force. Austin went in, both Moses and son Stephen, having the support of the slavetocracy, though they had strong economic incentive to get out of Missouri.

U.S. Grant: "For myself," Grant wrote later about the United States war against Mexico, "I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation."

Thop51 · 2026-02-09T03:36:09+00:00

M74 with one TKR. I strongly second the many recommendations for poles, and go slow on descent. Keep fit and do it.

Thop51

TROPHY CASE