Vacation, 2026

Aug 2026 23 by Ted

I’ve been on vacation this past week. I didn’t really plan it out, because I’ve been dealing with some health issues, but I knew I wanted to revisit the White Mountains on the motorcycle, which means I had to book the trip with an eye on the weather.

It’s turned out to be a wet week. We had rain last Sunday into Monday. The forecast called for rain ending Monday, some scattered showers Tuesday, fine on Wednesday, and more rain in New Hampshire on Thursday. So, while I’d hoped to do a four day trip beforehand, I settled for three days, leaving Monday and coming back on Wednesday.

Monday

Monday morning started with light rain, but the rain stopped by the time I left the house around 11:30. The jacket I bought last fall came with a rain shell, so I put it on, but it turned out to be mostly unnecessary. I made surprisingly good time through Boston, then headed north on I-93 until Plymouth, and then switched over to Route 3 until I reached Route 112, which becomes the Kancamancus. I just love that road. Today, it was cloudy and overcast, with clouds wafting over the mountaintops.

Clouds over the mountains in the distance, trees in the foreground — View from Kancamancus overlook, showing clouds in the distance

I was tempted to take Bear Notch Road into Bartlett, but I had a 9 AM ticket for the Conway Scenic Railway the next morning, and wanted to scout out a place in North Conway for breakfast the next day. I was disappointed to find that the place I’d gone last year was closed, but did find that the Rise and Dine Bistro right off the main street in North Conway would be open. After determining that, I spent a little time bopping around North Conway before heading to Attitash, where I was booked for the next two nights.

After a day in the saddle, I’d been looking forward to spending some time in the hot tub. My back was comparatively better than it had been the year before, but it was still a little sore. So after a quick dinner, I spent some time soaking in the jacuzzi by the pool.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning I’d booked a 9 AM trip on the Conway Scenic Railway’s Mountaineer, which runs from North Conway along the side of Willy’s Mountain to Crawford Notch. When I’d done it before, I’d booked a Comfort Class ticket, which is a reserved seat in the main coach. This time I booked a Observation Dome Class ticket, which puts you in an exposed clear dome at the top of the train. It’s nice, but not necessarily $68 nicer.

One of the things I’ve been dealing with all summer is recurring low level nausea. (Yes, it’s been checked out, and no, there doesn’t seem to be anything horrible going on.) Some days it’s fine, other days, it’s been bothersome. It flared up again this week, and I’d been concerned the day before with throwing up inside my helmet. This morning, I was trying to balance the need to have something to eat vs feeling queasy. In the end, I ordered pancakes, and was shocked to see the biggest pancake I’ve ever seen on my plate. It was very good, but there was no way I was going to be able to eat the whole thing. I managed to get about a third of it down before heading across the street to the station.

When I boarded, I slipped into the first empty seat I spotted, and realized about 30 seconds too late that I should have picked a seat on the other side — the right side is very definitely better than the left on the Mountaineer. Still, my table companions, Dennis and Patricia, were pleasant company, and it was a nice trip up to Crawford Notch, where we were able to get out. You do switch sides for the return trip, so we had the scenic side for the trip back.

The Observation Dome is great for looking out, but not so wonderful if you want to take pictures, due to reflections. Eventually, I found the trick was to position the phone — this is the first trip I’ve done where I left the Nikon at home — fairly low on the window where the reflections are less. You can also look directly along the top or rear of the train and see along the direction of travel.

This week was largely improvised, but one of the things I was thinking about was taking the Mount Washington Cog Railway up Mount Washington. The problem was whether I could get from North Conway after the Mountaineer returned to the station, up to the Cog’s base station in time for their last trip of the day. Siri seemed to think it could be done in less than an hour, but I’ve learned its estimates aren’t always reliable. I was also feeling slightly queasy, and wasn’t sure I wanted to. But we got back to North Conway, and I decided to give it a go, heading west along Route 302. I do like that road on the motorcycle, and was able to get up there in ample time to buy a ticket and nibble at a muffin and have a cup of coffee before it was time to leave.

The last time I’d ridden The Cog, in 2008, most of the locomotives were the old steam locomotives. Now, they still run a few steam trips during the week, but most of their trips are done via biodiesel engines, which permit faster and more frequent service, and don’t send plumes of coal smoke into the mountain air.

Unfortunately, like the Conway Scenic, The Cog uses assigned seats, and like the Conway Scenic, there is a good side and a bad side of the train, and I ended up on the bad side, so most of the view was of trees until we cleared the tree line.

The startling thing about The Cog is the incline — average is over 25%, with a maximum of 37% over Jacob’s Ladder. The steam engines have inclined boilers, in order to keep the steam tubes within the boilers under water; the stations along the way up, although level, appear crazily canted from the trains.

Observatory and visitor center in the distance

It was mostly clear at the base station, but as we climbed the mountain, you could see clouds and fog wreathing the mountain tops. When we reached the top, you could see the clouds moving in; by the time the returning train arrived at 4:30, the top of the mountain was socked in.

We had about an hour layover at the top. There is a visitor center at the top, with a museum describing the wild weather conditions, and the work of the weather observatory. We weren’t able to go into the Observatory, but I was able to walk around the top. Unfortunately, my phone’s battery had drained during the course of the day and I wasn’t able to take as many pictures as I’d liked.

The return train arrived shortly after 4:30, its headlight shining through the fog. Once it pulled into the station, it loaded up for the last trip down of the day. As we descended, we emerged back into sunlight. Soon we were back at the base station, and I hopped back on the motorcycle for the trip back to Attitash.

Wednesday

Wednesday was a motorcycling day. The plan was to ride back along the Kanc, and then south along Route 3 until Laconia, or thereabouts. I started the day once again at the Rise and Dine, then headed south onto the Kancamancus, into Lincoln, then followed Route 3 south. This stretch of Route 3 is really nice on a motorcycle — very little traffic, scenic, and in good condition.

One of the things I try to do when heading south through New Hampshire is stop in on my mother’s cousin when I can. She’s in an assisted living facility in Concord. We had a very pleasant visit for an hour or so before it was time for me to get back on the road.

I got back home around 6, and after unpacking, immediately headed for the jacuzzi to ease my aching back.

Thursday

When I was mentally sketching out my plans for the week, I’d left Thursday empty, because I was expecting it to be rainy. This turned out not to be the case. Thursday was bright and sunny, and I really didn’t feel like spending it doing chores, and didn’t want to spend another day on the motorcycle, so I put the bicycle in the back of the Jeep, and headed for the Cape Cod Canal. I parked on the Sandwich side, and rode the bike path to the end and back. I was feeling really good about myself on the outbound leg — I was zipping right along, and figured I was getting into better shape. And then I turned around, and realized I was now riding into the wind, and going much slower. Still I chugged along, and decided when I was done that I was very much deserving of an ice cream.

Friday

I’d heard at the beginning of the week that they were taking USS Constitution out into the harbor on Friday, and that it would be visible from Castle Island, so I headed in, getting there around 10:15 or so. I found I could look down the length of the harbor, and with the Nikon’s lens set to 300mm, just make out the ship heading out in the company of a tug and a bunch of police boats. Slowly, it made its way out of the harbor, until it was just even with Castle Island, where it turned, and fired as salute, which was answered by some howitzers set up in front of Fort Independence

Once the ship turned around, I took a quick walk around Castle Island, then headed into Cambridge for a quick walk around Harvard Square.

Saturday

I have a modest interest in art. I do like going to art museums and looking at the paintings. I find my interest lasts for an hour or so, and then I’m “arted out”. Saturday, I decided to head into the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum with my sister Nancy.

The Gardner is an interesting place. Mrs. Gardner was a very wealthy woman with an interest in art who got into art collecting. Over the course of a couple of decades, she amassed a large collection, and when her husband died, decided to create a place, then called “Fenway Court”, where the public could view her collection. She arranged her collection meticulously, and then set up her will, the terms of which dictated that her trustees would maintain the collection unchanged in perpetuity. They are not allowed to make any kind of permanent change to the way the collection is presented, or the whole thing will be forfeited. The museum is a four story mock Spanish “palace”; the bottom three floors are public, while she lived on the fourth floor. There is a glass covered atrium in the center, filled with flowers, while ringing the atrium are a series of rooms displaying her treasures. There are paintings, there are a number of tapestries, some of which are over 500 years old, there are sculptures, and there a number of everyday items.

Gothic room of the Isabella Steward Gardner museum. — The Gothic Room at the top floor of the Gardner. A John Singer Sargent picture of Mrs. Sargent is in the corner in the right side of the picture.

It felt like we timed our visit just right; it was becoming noticeably more crowded as we left. Overall, a nice end to a good week off.

Fifteen years of tedohara.net

Aug 2026 8 by Ted

I recently got some domain registration emails, and realized it’s been fifteen years since I started this site. That’s a lot of water under the bridge.

One of the main reasons I started it was because I was worried about my job (rightfully so, though not on the timeline I feared) and felt that as a web developer, I should have my own website. And so, after months of research and vacillation, I registered the three domains, tedohara.org, tedohara.net and tedohara.com, with tedohara.net being the primary domain, and the other two being redirects to tedohara.net. (I later added teohara.blog which is also a redirect, tedohara.me, which is currently parked, and tedohara.photography, which currently points to the Photography category of this site, but which could become a site of its own at some point. The point of having all these extra domains is to prevent domain squatting).

I requested the first three domains Thursday night, August 11, 2011, and they became available on the internet the next day with a placeholder site. I spent Friday evening just playing with the Dreamhost control panel, and uploaded the WordPress software and wrote my first post on Saturday, August 13.

My First Post, using the stock Twenty-Eleven theme and imagery.

It’s pleasant having my own website. While I intended originally to devote a lot of time to web development posts, it very quickly became (devolved?) into a place where I could post about anything I wanted to, so it became a mix of photography, posts about vacations, motorcycling, diving, kayaking, and whatever else I was up to, or have an opinion on.

Although not every post is a winner, in general I enjoy reading my own writing, and I’m especially glad I’ve written about my trips to Bonaire and the United Kingdom, as it helps me relive those trips.

I also feel it’s important to own my online identity. While I enjoy Mastodon (and until Elon Musk took it over, Twitter) and sometimes post there, here is where I post something if I have anything in particular to say. This is my domain, not beholden to the whims of some social media company. I’ve been very happy with Dreamhost over the past 15 years, but if something were to happen to them, or they become unpalatable as a company somehow, I own the domain, and I can move it elsewhere.

For a while, I strove for a minimum of a post a month, which I was able to maintain for eight years, until my mother’s illness; I will admit to being more sporadic since. Part of that was busy-ness during the time she was ill, and part of that is that I have less going on in my life that I want to share at the moment. I haven’t been diving in years, though I miss it, and haven’t been traveling either. I am still motorcycling, but I find long days on the bike painful, so I haven’t been riding as much, though I am thinking of another trip to the White Mountains.

But while I haven’t posted as much as I did in the early years, this site is still alive, and very important to me.

Crockett’s Victory Garden

Aug 2026 3 by Ted

When I was a teenager, my Dad got into gardening; he had a big patch of tomatoes, plus some other vegetables, and I got into gardening with him. And one of the things we liked to do together was watch Crockett’s Victory Garden, hosted by Jim Crockett.

You could tell Crockett was not a television pro, but he was a born instructor. He’d written a number of gardening books, including a series for Time-Life, which led the producer, Russ Morash, to offer him the job. The format of the show was quite simple: Each week, Crockett would go through the garden and demonstrate the various jobs that needed to be done. The Victory Garden itself was a small plot outside the WGBH studios, and each week, Crockett would sow seeds, thin seedlings, weed, deadhead flowers and harvest vegetables; showing all the things that needed to be done, and more importantly, explained why they needed to be done. No garden tours, no guest gardeners, just simple explanations. Most everything I know about gardening, I learned from Crockett.

The show started locally in 1975, and became available to other PBS stations in 1976. Also in 1976, Crockett published the first of three companion books, Crockett’s Victory Garden. Unlike most gardening books, it’s organized by month, not plants. Each month details the jobs to be done that month, plus a feature germane to that month. The foreword describes how the series came to be. I still have my well worn copy, taped together but intact. It’s my gardening Bible.

The show continued for three or four years, and I watched it faithfully. Some years it ran seasonally; at least one year, it continued on through the winter, the whole show being shot in the greenhouse. I remember seeing one show where he remarked that they were shooting under floodlights; in hindsight, I wonder if that episode had aired live.

I still remember the horrible news in the spring of 1979 that Crockett was ill, and would have to be assisted by Bob Thompson. When that first show aired, it was dreadfully clear that Crockett was desperately iill; he was emaciated and frail, and Thompson handled most of the work of the garden. Shortly thereafter, he died.

Bob Thomson became the regular host of the show, and it was retitled The Victory Garden the following spring. But it just wasn’t the same. I didn’t care for Thompson, and the show spent less time in the original Victory Garden and more time at the suburban site — actually Russ Morash’s yard — and started adding features like cooking tips and interviews and garden tours. I suspect some of this was the natural evolution of the show that might have happened with Crockett as well, but it just wasn’t the same, and I lost interest.

It’s always surprised me that WGBH never dug into the archives to re-run the Crockett era episodes of The Victory Garden, and so I was delighted to see that they’ve finally started posting them to YouTube. The videos are a mix of shorts and full videos — or almost full videos — they’ve had to remove the theme music, Bill Spence’s recording of “Gaspe Reel” for copyright reasons. They’re careful to note in the descriptions that the episodes are a snapshot of gardening procedures from the mid-seventies, especially calling out the use of pesticides and fungicides that aren’t available anymore.

So what’s it like watching these episodes after fifty years? Crockett is still a damned good instructor, and the format of following him around the garden and watching him demonstrate things still works well.

I hadn’t realized back then, just how strong his New England accent was. The accent is authentically New England — he grew up in Haverhill. It’s not at all like the fake Boston accent you get from actors. He sounds a lot like a bunch of my older relatives and friends who aren’t around anymore, and you just don’t hear that accent anymore — it’s disappeared to a large extent over the decades. GBH has put together a couple of shorts gently poking fun at the accent.

I’d forgotten just how lush of a garden the Victory Garden was. The book focuses on closeups of individual plants, but watching him walk through the midsummer garden with all the beds overflowing with foliage was a good reminder of how impressive the show was. (To be fair, Crockett did not maintain the Victory Garden himself; it had a full time gardener doing the maintenance)

I’d forgotten how often he planted seeds directly into the garden. I’d gotten into the habit of mostly buying plants at a nursery and transplanting them into the garden; Crockett was, in fact a strong proponent of planting seeds directly, both for reasons of cost, and because of the greater variety available as seeds.

In his book, Crockett mentions how terrified he was at first, and it’s interesting, going through the episodes in sequence, seeing him become more at home in front of the camera. It’s clear he wasn’t reading from a teleprompter, as you can see him making false starts, then restarting a thought, but he became noticeably better as time went on.

I wish WGBH had’t had to remove the theme song. I understand they’re a big organization and can’t afford to trifle with copyrights, but I wish they could have come to an agreement with Spence or his estate to use the theme, or failing that, used a different version. “Gaspe Reel” is a traditional folk tune, and not itself under copyright. The channel appears to be monetized, so I think they could have earned the money back.

I also think they could have added some titling showing the varieties used, and calling out those procedures, like insecticide use, that are obsolete.

All in all, though, I’m grateful to WGBH for publishing these episodes. Even after all these years, I still feel this version of The Victory Garden is the best version, and I heartily recommend it.

Ted O’Hara .net

The random mental leaps of a grasshopper mind

Monthly Archives: August 2026