Different Grading Systems
July 17, 2010
There were about 15 people signed up for this trip but only 5 people could join. It was because we were short of cars on this weekend. 2 drivers couldn’t make it so I regretfully had to turn down 9 late registrants. My car could take only 4 more and the winners were Sherry, Eric, Rose and Chung Kwong. It was the first blueberry picking trip for Chung Kwong so he was so exciting to see fruits in the nature and picked for fun.
We arrived at the parking lot before 9:30 am but no one remembered it was the same one that we took a picture on the 20 miles trip. I joked it was nice to know that I led a group of hikers who could never hike on their own. We started by crossing Route 106 on White Bar and switched to White Nurian Trail. It was a hot day so we sweated a lot at those 3 very steep spots of uphill slope. Sherry was a beginner so got support from Eric and Chung Kwong was hurt in the trip of last week so gained help from hiking poles. We slowly climbed up to the big bare rock. I asked Sherry to sit exactly on the same spot that she stayed for 3 hours on the moon watching evening to capture back her memory. We were at the summit where blueberries were exposed to us and we were also very exposed to the sun. I brought the group to the bushes where I remembered we found a lot of blueberries last year. It was disappointed that the fruits were very small according to my standard. It might defeat Chung Kwong more if he thought about the blueberries in supermarket. There were big difference in grading systems of blueberries between nature and farms. But, here we produced only organic products.
Since it was not so hot in the morning, we started picking some bigger ones to make sure we wouldn’t go home with empty containers. Rose didn’t have enough hands as she had to carry 2 hiking poles, prepare a camera, pick blueberry, hold a plastic container and throw blueberry into her mouth. Sherry and Eric were not eager to pick so only threw a few into a plastic bag. Chung Kwong picked and helped to fill up my container and Rose’s. After a few minutes of warming up, everyone got into the mood of picking when Eric asked me to give him my extra container. I needed to pull the group to move on as I remembered there were other blueberry fields on the trail. I kept searching at the front to spot for better target of attack. Nothing was too good on the route we reached the Bare Rocks Shelter at 11:30 am. As it was too early for lunch and too far from the mission fulfilled, I suggested going on Yellow Trail to Bowling Rocks. I was sure we had good harvest there last year. We took group pictures with Eric’s handsome pose and Sherry’s pretty pose on the sides. Finally, we located a blueberry field on Yellow Trail. We found our main battlefield. The fruit was big enough and easy enough to be picked because these were tall trees. In order to look for bigger fruit, we had to leave the trail and went into the bushes. Sherry was now very excited to pick more while Eric concerned more on safety. He said he would rather hit the bushes to frighten away any snakes underneath.
We combined our fire net on the same trees to try to complete the mission. We kept hiking on Yellow Trail to look for more good spots. It was so fast that we had spent an hour and it was time for lunch. When we turned back along Yellow Trail, we found another target trees. I thought no one needed lunch before we filled up all our plastic containers with blueberries. As time was late, we decided to take lunch on Yellow Trail under a shade with breeze. I refilled my water bag after lunch and now I had another empty bottle to be a new container for blueberries. There were blueberry bushes right at the lunch spot. I was magnetized to the bushes immediately. Sherry’s container was full so she asked me for another empty bottle for Eric. The AmiGor and AmiGal were working hard again without a long lunch break. Rose and Chung Kwong were in a team but 50% of Rose’s pick were put directly into her mouth.
We finished only 3 miles by 2:30 pm because at least 2 hours spent on blueberry picking. We turned back to R-D approaching Blue Lichen Trail. There were still some blueberry fields but the sun was too strong so we had no much mood to stay. My forearms were colored with a thin layer of chocolate. The bare rock formation on R-D attracted models to pose. We met a huge group of Korean hikers in opposite direction. We turned into Lichen Trail following the trail marks with a letter L. Chung Kwong and Rose were disputed on who was the owner of this trail because they both had an L on their last names. Rose would probably want to forget this trail because she carelessly knocked at a rock and hurt her knee. We completed the L trail and spent 15 minutes on Red A-SB Trail. We had last 2 miles on relatively flat White Bar which was kind of easy. There were no more blueberries on this section but also no much breeze. Chung Kwong had difficult time as his knee pain kicked in. Rose felt she had eaten enough during the hiking so she generously gave me about half a bottle of blueberries. It turned out that only Sherry and I brought home 2 full containers of flesh blueberries. We finished today 6 miles by 5 pm with 2.5 hours on handwork instead of footwork.
