April Sweeps - Day 72

I made a wonderful discovery today.*  I started uploading my Lara and the Witch 2 chapters to Audible, and as of this month, they've changed the way they do things: now, as soon as you've uploaded a chapter, they put it through an automatic check for hiss, volume, file type, bitrate, and silence (or what have you), and it either passes or fails within a second of uploading.  Thank the Maker for this, Artoo, as it red-flags any of the files where I make boneheaded moves like not saving at 192bps and 44100hz (which, sadly, happens all the time), and I'm able to make a fix and try to upload it again.  What used to take weeks to do . . . well, I could probably fix every file and re-upload them within a couple of hours.

So, as of this moment, I have two hours and one minute of audio uploaded.  I may have to ask someone to listen through it all for me though (I found one repeated line today, just going in and raising the volume, checking for clippy moments).  I also have to sit down and re-record two sentences from the first book (a character name got changed in between the two installments, and it's easier to change the two uses of it in the first story than the fifteen to twenty uses in the sequel), and one more little bit in the second book for the same reason, but switching out the new name (Spindler) for the old one (Bunting).

Last night, I sat down and recorded a couple of short bits for the above, and then intended to do an audio version of an older story "Father's Day In August" or a 2019 story "The Many Faces of Christmas Eve."  I noticed the Christmas one was over eight thousand words long, and, feeling lazy, decided to do the older story instead.  It turned out, I noticed partway through, to be over nine thousand words long.

That was a story I wrote in 2005, as part of a trilogy of small town carnival stories that all take place on the same day.  It had been long enough (the last revision I'd made on it was in 2008) that I couldn't really remember what was going to happen, and was actually a little repulsed by one moment of very adult violence in the tale.  I recalled having the idea for it, and it taking a long time to get finished, but it's funny how the details drift away (there were a couple of moments out of my own life referenced in the story that would have identified me as the author even if I had completely forgotten the darn thing existed).  In our most recent That Gets My Goat episode, Big mentions that some of my stories included deleted scenes, and this one was one of those--where there were a couple of segments I had cut out (the piece was still way too long), including an encounter with the main character from one of the other two stories that took place at that carnival.

As overlong as the story was, it impressed me that Rish of a dozen years ago would've cut out parts of it, since I only ever expand stories nowadays (point of fact: I added almost a page to "You're In Good Hands" today, despite having already published it last week, when I discovered another one of those inconsistent names--this one in the same story).

I don't know that I'll run "Father's Day" on my podcast (because it's too long, and there's the graphic bit), but it was my intention to do so, probably around real Father's Day.  I wonder if I ought to record the other two stories (I should say re-record, because I did do both of those in audio in the early 2000s, say 2003 or so), because those are related, and my friend Ian said one of them was the best thing I'd ever written.  I could put them in an audio collection, or that'd be three episodes, if I did run them on the Outcast.  Food for thought.

So, it was particularly cold today, preventing me from going up to the canyon like I'd wanted . . . oh, eff it, I decided to go up to the canyon anyway.  A couple weeks back, when I called Big from the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain where all the windows were fogged up, he asked if I'd ever gone up a certain road near me, and I told him I hadn't.  I had intended to go where I went last week, a lonely hiking trail I was the (literal) only person on, where I took this picture:

Did I not blog about that?

I also recorded two Storage Unit Serenades without the storage units.  But I saw the sign leading to the road Big had asked me about, and took it instead.  It turned out to be about a mile before it stopped, closed off for the winter still.  But a bunch of cars were parked there, and people had gotten out and hiked up the road on foot (or on bicycles, or one crazy dude on a skateboard).

Me before hiking

I had a long-sleeved shirt on, and had a jacket I always keep in the car that I tied around my waist, and decided to go up the hill and see what could be seen.  There were very few people I encountered the whole afternoon (probably ten in all, going up or coming back), so I could set my own pace, take pictures, and even sing along to the radio without ever encroaching on somebody social distancery.
I was reminded of my buddy Rhett, who used to love to go up into the mountains by himself and take solitary hikes and tell me about it.  I could never believe that he liked to do that, being a subscriber to the belief that I would only ever exercise if something dangerous was chasing me.

Me after hiking.

But I felt a kinship to Rhett today, knowing that I was out here by myself, taking in the sights (I saw an eagle swooping down, hopefully to catch somebody's kitty cat, but I didn't see what it was going after), and . . . well, thinking about the same old thing, I guess.

Amazingly, I experienced both an icy wind and a sweaty body at the same time.  That may be typical for you, but I've always either been too cold or too hot, never both at the same time.  I hiked for a mile, then for another one, and around the third mile, I started to wonder what it's all about, Basil.  Sure, there were impressive vistas, like this one, where you can see the lake, many miles away:

But that was not even a mile into the hike.  And there was tons of nature and trees and rocks and sheer cliffs and places where snow was still on the ground, and areas where I wondered how many dead bodies it contained.  But I never got to the make-out point Big had told me about, and the road just rose up and up and up.**  Finally, I put on one last song and told myself, when this track ends, I'll turn around and head back.

At that point, still alone as far as the eye could see, I sat down, took a drink, and considered doing a song there on the side of the mountain.  But instead, I just took this picture:

sang "The Heart of the Matter" without recording it, and then started on my way downhill.

And this was kind of amazing.  For more than two miles, I just ran, letting gravity carry me.  It was absolutely effortless, so much so that I tried singing "Is She Really Going Out With Him" to the beat of my footfalls, and was never really winded.  The steep angle made it so easy, but it wasn't steep enough that I ever feared I'd go out of control or slip and break my tailbone and roll the rest of the way down the hill.

It had taken me approximately ninety minutes to get to the top of the incline, but I was down and back to the parking lot in fifteen to twenty minutes.***  I thought Rhett would have been proud of me, but man, my legs complained about it when I finally reached my car, sweat running down my brow and neck.  Plus, I smelled like those dudes in the locker room in high school who had to lose two pounds in twelve hours in preparation for a wrestling match.

I have been sitting here, editing audio and sitting for fifteen minutes and my feet are still throbbing.  It's actually (there you go) an unusual feeling.  I guess they took such a (literal) pounding that they've swollen in my shoes and need to be soaked or something.

I didn't get much writing done on my Christmas story (or anything else) today, but I'll explain what I did do in tomorrow's post, since it's past two now, and I need to get some rest.  Sorry.

Words Today: 580
Words In April: 13,523

P.S. Every day I'm posting one of these:

Day 12. "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News.  No reason, I just remember that summer.

*Actually (yes, every post), Abibby Hilton mentioned this to me in a text a couple of weeks ago, but I quite frankly had no idea what she was talking about.  Our last master was Captain Antilles, but with what we've been thr--  Oh, so yes, she was aware of this (great) improvement of their program before I was, and that means that I can upload "The Calling 2" again, maybe this weekend, without being quite as frustrated as I was a week ago.

**Seriously, it was so steep that, at one point, I heard a high-pitched whizzing sound, and coulnd't figure out what it was.  Turned out it was the guy on the skateboard, hauling arse down the mountain so fast (maybe forty, possibly even fifty miles an hour) that if he crashed, he would break both his legs or his neck (but not both).

***At one point, I passed a dude--who looked like he'd picked today to try every drug he'd always been afraid to use at the same time--who had taken off his shoes and was walking down the trail in his socks.  I don't know why I mentioned that, it was just weird.  About a half hour after I typed this, I gave up trying to edit and drove back down the canyon.  A couple of miles down, I passed this guy, now on the side of the road . . . STILL CARRYING HIS SHOES.
I'll let you decide if I'm a bastage for not stopping and offering him a ride.