Sunday morning found me on the Appalachian Trail in Virginia just west of the Roanoke metro area. It’s a great moderate hike to one of the most famous places on the AT. The fame attracts sizable crowds, so I suggested the best times to go to beat the crush. Read the whole story at Two-Heel Drive.
It was the 12th of September in 2001, the day after the 11th, and I was driving to work to fill a newspaper with followups. I lived Alameda County, California, and every day I crossed a minor mountain pass and descended into the wall-to-wall...
The wilds of capitalism require a lot of skills that hikers take for granted. Among the habits we’ve acquired while walking in the woods: 1. We adapt to the terrain There’s never only one way to climb a mountain, cross a stream or camp...
It used to be easy to explain how I earned a living. Just show somebody the daily scandal sheet and point to the headlines, captions, photos of a proper proportion, etc. All that ended a couple summers ago when I left the San Jose...
When I’m not noodling with my various blogs, I’m often killing brain cells at these online hangouts: Facebook I was geeky enough to snag facebook.com/thomasmangan before somebody else did. Twitter Twitter was a mildly diverting toy till I discovered a site called Paper.li, which...
I’ve been a movie junkie as long as I can remember. I recall ripping through the TV section of the Peoria Journal Star every Saturday, looking for hopeful signs on the next week’s movie horizon. I couldn’t have been older than 9 or 10,...
Funny how necessity recalibrates your intentions. Back in California I’d do almost anything to avoid long drives to trails — it seemed like a crime against nature to spend more time driving than hiking. The reality, though, was there were so many excellent hiking...
| Abide in Clemmons, North Carolina.
| Accompany one wife, one cat.
| Sling nouns, adjectives, interjections at VerbNerd.com
| Blog for fun.
| Hike for exercise.
| Read the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly.
| Watch movies from Netflix.
| Listen to tunes on XM Satellite Radio.
| Drive to the mountains and the sea in my Honda Element.
