Hiking on Sugarloaf Mountain – Mileage for the year – Increasing popularity of chess – The dying dinosaur of Trump’s election fraud claim – Evening statistics
Sugarloaf Mountain is a fairly unusual feature in the mid-Atlantic states. It is a small isolated mountain, or what in geological terms is called a monadnock. There are several in the Carolinas and Georgia to the south and in New England to the north, but there are few of them in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Virginia. It was formed by erosion, the bedrock being formed of quartzite much harder than the soil in the surrounding area, and thus it has endured while the nearby land has been worn down by millions of years of weathering. I led a hike with the Vigorous Hikers there today and we covered nearly all of trails that cross over it. None of the ascents are particularly long or difficult, but we managed all the same to climb a total of nearly 3000 feet during the hike. The weather was much better than previous forecasts had indicated. I was expecting a rather gray and raw day, but instead we had no wind, dry air, beautiful blue skies, and temperatures in the high forties. We lunched at White Rocks, the midpoint in our hike, and the site of the best views on the mountain. Sugarloaf is a popular destination, being so close to Washington; there were not many cars in the area when we started at 8:30 but when we returned the parking area was nearly full. We encountered numerous other hikers on the trails.
At this point my total mileage for the year is over 1900 miles (this amount is for hiking only, not walking along the streets of the city and suburbs). Hiking periodically both with the Vigorous Hikers and subsets of the Wanderbirds has caused the total to mount up. And, of course, my attempts to complete the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania had added significantly to the number of miles covered. I expect to end up with over 2000 miles by the end of December. It will, in all probability, be the most active year I have had in this respect. To some extent this result can be attributed to the virus; there has been little in the way of visits to the theatre, to museums, to concert halls, and not much in the way of social gatherings, so I have had to fill up the time in other ways.
During the hike MG mentioned that she and her husband are trying to take up chess, and added that the manufacturers of chess sets are having great difficulty in keeping up with the demand. The effects of the virus have caused many to take an interest in the game who might otherwise not have invested much time in it, for while its basic rules are easy enough to learn it is difficult to play the game well. Apparently the Netflix film, The Queen’s Gambit, has also had a share in stimulating interest in the game. I have not seen it, but others tell me that it is one of the few onscreen dramatizations that depict chess realistically. Most screenwriters who tackle the subject know very little about the game’s strategies, and their ignorance becomes very apparent whenever the camera focuses on the pieces standing on the board; they are often arranged in a position that is unlikely to occur in real life or in a position in which an immediate win by one of the players is so apparent that no player of even moderate abilities could overlook it. I played a good deal when I was younger and reached a rating between 1700 and 1800, but it has been years since I have found anyone else to play the game with. Perhaps that situation will alter once social interaction with others indoors becomes feasible again.
The recent flurry of news headlines have died down now that the GSA has enabled the transition to begin. By degrees Trump’s supporters are resigning themselves to the inevitable and have realized that the continual repetition about the election being “rigged” is a non-starter. Rush Limburgh, the radio host, has actually voiced open dissatisfaction with the efforts of Trump’s legal team to discredit the election results, although his disappointment is chiefly focused on their ineffectiveness rather than their turpitude. Tucker Carlson, similarly, has called out Sidney Powell for not providing evidence of several of her claims (such as the election software manufacturers were used by “Venezuela, Cuba, and possibly China,” a claim that they have denied with some emphasis). I don’t see that any of these erstwhile Trump supporters have gone so far as to say that the promises of evidence of election fraud have not been fulfilled because no such evidence is to be found; but possibly such an admission may come forth in time. This may represent the triumph of hope over experience on my part.
The virus, of course, remains unaffected by party politics and continues to expand at a faster pace than ever. Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 60,086,831; # of deaths worldwide: 1,413,778; # of cases U.S.: 12,954,671; # of deaths; U.S.: 265,889. And Thanksgiving will be coming in two days, which will accelerate the rate of expansion still further. .