Florida 2016. Road trip, visit with Vicki and Doug in Durham NC.  Then a week with Sheila and Mitko at Ocala.  Then home via Asheville and Hot Springs NC, and Shenandoah National Park.

Yeah, so I lied. I said I’d keep this thing up to date. Yeah, I did that for a while but then it occurred to me that nobody comes here anyway, so why bother. Then it got worse. After a number of updates of WordPress and the NextGen/Photocratic stuff, galleries started breaking. Ugh. The place needed some mop up and clean up.

I fixed whatever I could find that was broken. And added a lot of new galleries: most of my hikes in 2015, our trip to Florida and our road trip to the Berkshires earlier this year, and more. Spent most of the day on the blog, in fact. So there.

Oh, and I turned off commenting throughout the site because of the spammers. If you want to reach me I’m at rafe dot bustin at gmail dot com.

A note to my viewers — please be patient when navigating.  The site is loaded with over 1500 high resolution images, and it takes a bit of time to serve them up!

The Blog (so far) has mostly been to announce updates in the Galleries or other tweaks I’m contemplating or experimenting with for the overall site content and presentation.

Thanks for visiting!

– Rafe Bustin

A fine hike in very cold weather.  Neither of us quite fetched the summit.  My body and my gear both need some tuning.  This was really serious winter hiking.  Temperature in the low single digits and a stiff wind blowing up near the top.  Microspikes got me to within 1/2 mile of the top but beyond that something more aggressive was required.  Gorgeous view of Lonesome Lake on the way down, and Franconia Ridge across the way, through the trees.

Merry is adding to and re-arranging the Kassoy Art corner of the blog.  She’s in charge over there.

Several new galleries in the Hiking > Local pages, including Tuesday’s walk from Foss Farm.  Sunday morning hikes out of Lincoln, MA — an ongoing series, we hope. Also RC planes and moldy oldies from when Merry and I were newly married and living in the weird town of Greece, NY.

As a challenge and nudge to the Kassoy daughters, and for other reasons besides, I’ve added a tree of pages dedicated to Honey and Bernie’s Art — all of which should eventually be a site of its own.  Of course it’s just a mere sketch, a proposal.

Finally got out of doors yesterday and took a walk along an icy trail in Carlisle.  If I go out walking in the woods today, I’ll be taking the microspikes along.

Marty G. took me out for beer and pizza last night.  Enjoyed the company, the brew and grub, tho I think I overindulged a bit.  Stomach growled in protest.  Thanks, Marty.  Marty wants to be sure I know what I’m doing with this retirement idea.  No Dad, it’s not half-baked, it’s completely baked.

Is this really the first day of my retirement?  I’m not at work, in any case, and that’s what matters.  I need to do something useful, like pay bills, take a walk, or make a pot of chili.  But I am addicted to this blog for now.

Here’s the status from NextGen as of right now and screen caps from two of the new albums.

Friends and family may or may not know about my old website, terrapinphoto.com.  It’s been around for a long time but hasn’t been updated in years.  It’s not a blog, it’s just a pretty basic home-brew photo gallery with smallish images of my saleable photographs.

So here after many years of neglect is the new version, based on current tech, with lots more goodies, big images, and ought to work nicely on your iPhones, Androids, tablets or what-not.  It’s the same URL, with a “/wp” after it:  terrapinphoto.com/wp.  It’s got tons of photos and hiking journals.  The blog so far is just me talking to myself, though it has an important announcement.  Enjoy!

Yesterday was my last day as a full-time employee writing firmware.  It’s time to hang it up.  My trade has turned into trudgery.  My skills are rusty.  My tolerance for the Dilbert World has been exhausted.  Doing firmware for a living hasn’t been fun for a while.  For sure I enjoy the occasional victories, moments of insight and inspiration, but these seem to be the exception rather than the norm.  Working conditions have become a joke.  I will not work in a windowless room, spending my days fixing other people’s bugs.  Enough of that.  It’s time to change the pace, pursue other pleasures and opportunities.

New content on this site:  A page of photos of my earliest hikes in the White Mountains, with Bob Bailey, Bob Baker, Dan Coleman, Gordon Ledgard et. al.  Also, a page devoted to nieces, nephews, and their kids.  I’m enjoying the time working on the blog, recalling the places and events.  I may be the only one looking at these images, but what the heck.

Edited and organized photos and journals of these two hikes.  For LT, the photos are one big jumble; for MidState I put each section in its own gallery, but on the same page.  In both cases the journals are assembled into one long page.

Also added a couple new vacation galleries, one for Bryce and Zion National Parks, and another for Barcelo.  Also, cleanup of the AT-1990 journal.

Next big project is to organize the rest of the hiking pix (hundreds? thousands?) that don’t fit neatly into any of the existing bins.  That would include years of rambles through the White Mountains, climbs of Katahdin, hikes in the Adirondacks, and a series of fill-in-the-gaps hikes on the AT in New Hampshire in the summer and fall of ’89, and winter and spring of ’90.

Oh and of course more local stuff, maybe a few of those jaunts up Monadnock and Watatic, the Bay Circuit Trail and who-knows-what.  It never ends (hopefully!)