I learned a couple things one evening a few years ago about athletic training.' I know, I know, I think too much.' Maybe someday I can put all this information to use and write a book or something.' I learned it while biking, but I believe it has a broader application. 'It just goes to show, the more you know (or think you do), the more is exposed that you don't know.'

One weekend in the middle of July, 2004, the St. Paul's Episcopal Church trekked to the idyllic, pastoral conference center in Valle Cruces, Watauga County, for their annual retreat.

The long weekend of July 4 - 5, 2004, Will McElwee and I (Bob Laney) took a backpacking trip on one of the most scenic, and famous, sections of the Appalachian Trial called Max Patch. This section is located on the North Carolina - Tennessee border southwest of Asheville.

The day before the July 4 holiday in 2001, I (Ranger Bob) took a paddling trip on the New River with my daughter Allison and her friend Beth Ann Dellinger. It was a pleasant day with a nice lunch along the way.

The first weekend of June, 2004, Bill Booth, Thomas Crawford and Ranger Bob went fishing on the Green River in Rutherford County. We had a good time with clear, warm weather and fish that were biting. I used my first live bait minnows and caught my first catfish, besides some beautiful red and yellow sunfish perch. Thomas kept the larger fish for his family's supper. [You're welcome!]

On April 24, 2004, a group from Wilkes and Ashe County caravanned to Turtle Island Preserve. Joining Bob were John and Ann Willardson, Randy and Angela Gambill and children, Beth Martinson and her sister Kirsten, and Roland Scroggs and his son Andrew. We went to enjoy an Open House sponsored by Eustace Conway with his staff and friends Yvonne, Beau, Dave, Spencer and Lindsay.

On April 17, 2004, Bob Boettger, Paul Anderson and Bob Laney left town a little after dawn and headed to Grandfather Mountain for a substantial day hike. We ascended the Profile Trail from the parking area on NC-105, which is well graded with beautiful stone work. In my opinion, it is the best graded and most beautiful stone work on any trail I have seen in the U.S.

First, we want to apologize to Mike and Tom Haire. We are sorry that we had to shoot one of your cows, but it was a battle out there.

The middle week in February, 2004, my boon traveling companion Carroll Lowe and I spent a week in Jackson Hole, WY. Our esteemed travel agent Annie Garwood fixed us up at the downtown Best Western Lodge. It would be over-simplified to say we were skiing. It was a varied, scouting, testing, experimental snow trip.

The weekend of February 6, 2005, my buddies Bill Booth, Mike Haire and Tom Haire from Rutherford County have invited me to go rabbit hunting. If you have not been, it may not sound like a lot of fun. But I have been with this bunch before, and it is cool. They hunt with some high quality rabbit beagles raised by their friends James, Colon and Larry Saunders of Morganton.