Near Death Experience

Here it is, the "Offramp from Hell". Several weeks ago now, Carissa and I were heading up to the Boston Temple. I had noticed some jolting going up I-395 in Connecticut and thought to check the tires, but figured it was just bad road. In retrospect, I think I had been riding the parking brake. It cleared up so I kept going. We drove probably 30 miles without having to stop or slow down.
When we came to this exit off 395 and 290 to get to I90 (Mass turnpike), I tried to slow down, but to my suprise the brakes had no effect at all and pushed to the floor, we kept going about 65 or 70. I was yelling that "WE'RE GOING TO DIE!!!" Carissa was surprisingly calm, she says "resigned to death". We went screeching and fishtailing around the corner. I was amazed that the van didn't flip over, utterly amazed. The back seemed to shift about 45 degrees in a split second. I'm convinced the back lifted off the ground for a second.
My next concern was: "now there are going to be cars stacked up at the bottom of this offramp and we are going to plow into them or I'm going to have to drive off into the trees and kill ourselves so we don't kill anyone else." I had no idea what was off the side of the road. A ledge maybe?
There were cars stacked, but fortunately, I saw a gap between the barrier and the cars so I took it, but this crossed into a two lane road with traffic both ways so thinking the only way to stop was to throw it into park, I did so thinking that it would destroy the van's tranny. Amazingly though, it didn't make a hideous sound and drop the transmission, like I expected and traffic seemingly opened just right. A car did have to slow down coming southbound and he honked, but we crossed the street and went into a gravel parking lot where the van came to a stop.
I immediately opened the door to see if there was anything wrong and a Mass staty pulled up.
"Where do you come off driving like that?! Do you know you almost hit 15 people?!"
I responded, "my brakes wouldn't work, I don't know what happened."
Still upset with me, he said "well do they work now? How did you stop?"
I said "I'm not sure, I put it in park maybe that did it. I don't know?"
"Well, does it work now?"
"I don't know"
The whole time, you know what was going through my head? I thought of the movie "We Were Soldiers". After he had this incredibly profound, intense and traumatic experience and had his "boys die", he had to face the press. They asked the colonel all these stupid questions that seemed incredibly pointless and inappropriate considering what he had just been through. He just looks at them in amazement and says nothing.
This is how I felt.
"Do I know I about hit 15 people? Duh, of course I do! Where were you? I'm the one driving."
He turned out alright. "Well if your van still works, wait a while, compose yourself and then you can go ahead."
Amazingly, it worked after we had been stopped for a half hour.
The transmission worked and the brakes worked so we finished our trip (maybe not the brightest thing, to keep going), but it was a neat temple experience.
After coming that close to death, it changes your perspective of the temple. That's for sure!

More Mohegan State Forest

The good thing about the forests in Connecticut is that they're beautiful! The bad thing is "watch out for ticks". Oh yeah, there is the small matter of, if you're not careful, you might end up down an old farmer's well. At one point, it was completely deforested out here and farms as far as the eye could see "old man Peabody owned all of it, had this crazy idea about breading pine trees" J/K (lil movie reference. Anyway, now it is all grown back, you can see the rock walls that used to separate the farms. A lot of times, one side will have dirt piled higher against the wall than the other. This indicates that, on the dirt side, there was a farm, on the non-dirt side, there was a pasture with cows or something. It is generally more rocky on the pasture side and their sometimes is a big tree which provided shade for the cattle. I'll include a pic with just such a tree, if you can find it.
PS God Bless America

Pictures of Mohegan State Forest in Connecticut

These pictures were taken when I was out groundtruthing in Mohegan State Forest.

The Evil Spirit Teacheth a Man Not to Pray.

This is interesting. Do a search of "Don't pray about the Book of Mormon, that's how they get you." Apparently, this was put on the marque of a certain church that will remain nameless. If you want to know, you can do a google search and find it yourself.
When I heard this, I thought of the scripture that Roger posted on my blog a while back:
"And now, my beloved brethren, I perceive that ye ponder still in your hearts; and it grieveth me that I must speak concerning this thing. For if ye would hearken unto the Spirit which teacheth a man to pray ye would know that ye must pray; for the evil spirit teacheth not a man to pray, but teacheth him that he must not pray."

Time Square

Here they are strolling through Times Square. This is about the only place, I feared we may lose track of them.
This can be a little overwhelming.

Grant's Tomb

James is in front of "Grant's Tomb". This is on the Hudson in Midtown.
The guide said that it was the least frequented tomb of any american president. Wow! What about Benjamin Harrison or Van Buren or someone like that?

Empire State James

James looks at lower Manhattan from his perch on the Empire State Building. The wind was blowing quite a bit up here and it felt good after being in the hallways with thousands of people.
James almost cracks a smile in this shot. It was torture getting him to smile. We had to have Hanna tickle him.