There I was at the Big Bear Lake Library.  Had a quick chat with the librarian on how to get on their PC so I could blog.  What a great lady.  She got me set up so I could use the PC and let me know that I could carry this temporary card to the next town, Wrightwood, and use it at their Library too to get access their PC’s as well.  Decided to grab some coffee before I started blogging, etc.  Ran over to Starbucks… a 30 minute round trip.  Came back, and sat down on one of the 20 plus PC’s they had set up in a double row.  You are only allowed up to 3 hours a day on the PC’s, and the Library closes in about the same amount of time, so I got to it right away.  I was really hoping on catching up on this blog and putting some good time on the posts.  Only a couple PC’s away there were three people that were chatting so load it sounded like they were at their dinner table.  This is a library right??  When did people stop being quiet in a library? It was so bad I got up and moved to a table without a PC behind them to get some journaling done instead.  Yeah, that didn’t work either, so I stepped outside and sat in front of the building.  When I did all I could do, I went back inside to see if it was any better. Nope.  I sat in a further section away from them, still not at a PC, and I ran some backup uploading of my pics to my Google Docs drive.  Finally, their time ran out on the PC’s and they left.  Am I too nice to complain?  Yeah, probably.

Before my backup finished two guys grabbed the same seats, annnd started talking to each other, apparently catching up on things. Ha! It’s gotta be those seats.  It wasn’t as bad as before so I sat down, but at the furthest end of the aisle of PC’s.  Not too bad.  I started clacking away at my blog post.  Before long an older gentleman, around mid to late 70’s,  came in and said hi to the two guys chatting and also sat away from them because they were too loud for him, and across from me.  Before long he stood up and politely complained to me that I was moving his desk on his side by typing.  Ummm… ok.  I told him sorry, and that I was blogging on my website.  He didn’t understand what that meant and asked if I was a writer.  I explained that I wasn’t and what it meant to blog.  Well he didn’t want to move closer to the guys, whom he had asked several times by this point to be quieter and that he could here them ‘all the way down here’, so I suggested to move to my side a couple spots away from me.  I was still trying, now desperately, to blog.  He, of course, took a liking to me, and started chatting me up.  Still trying to blog.  He told me about how he was sending his almost 100 year old father and email.  Trying to blog.  Regaled me of stories of how he used to walk all these trails, but didn’t really know the PCT, and was really interested in what I was doing. Yup, trying to blog still.  Asked me questions of gear and water filtration, which I politely answered.  I did find him a nice man, but still trying to blog.  One of his last stories came out of left field, and to this moment I still don’t know why he brought it up.  Why, can’t I just finish this blog?He informed me that I should be careful when eating olives when they haven’t been pitted, because you could break your tooth like he did, and he showed me his busted tooth.  Really trying to finish this blog now.  He then added that I should be careful of grizzly bears too.  Blog, blog, blog.  Without warning, because I hadn’t been paying attention, my PC shut down.  The timer had run out on my session.  Sigh.  I did not finish my blog.  I got up from my chair, gathered my things and got ready to leave.  He re-iterated that I should be careful of Olives and Grizzly Bears.  I thanked him for the good advice, the pleasant conversation, and shook his hand.  He was, after all, a nice guy and an interesting man.  I just wanted to blog.  I left the library with some good advice though.  I should be careful of Olives and Grizzly Bears!

That blog I was working on, which I had to finish the next day, was ‘Please Stand Up…‘

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