October GrexWalk

Every Saturday morning between 10 and 10:15 a group of Grexers meet at Gallup Park for a walk through the Arboretum, followed by lunch at a local eatery. If you've been to one of these, you know what they're like; if not, this is an opportunity to meet and socialize with other Grex folks and get some exercise in the bargain. Plus the Arboretum is really beautiful this time of year.

Everyone is invited to come to a Grexwalk. You do not have to be a Grexer, or even to own a computer. The people of Grex are very friendly and will welcome you.

We meet in the parking lot just off Fuller Road, opposite Huron High School, just west of Huron Parkway. In this map of Gallup Park, the blue dot is the starting point, and the blue arrows indicates the path of the walk and the return path from the Arboretum.

Click on this map to view an ASCII version, useful for non-graphical browsers.

The walk usually gets underway at about 10:15, so don't worry about being a few minutes late. If you don't know what anybody looks like, just look for a bunch of people standing around together who don't appear that they could have anything whatsoever in common with one another. Those are the Grexers (we're easy to spot!)

Here we have six Grexers standing around while waiting for the walk to begin.

Once the walk begins, it proceeds west along the paved path that runs between the Conrail Tracks and the Huron River. The picture on the left shows that the pretty fall leaf colors we are going to be treated to on this walk. Ten of the Grexers begin their walk in the image on the right. There were actually two more on the walk ... me and Marcus Watts. Marcus brought a video camera on this walk, and was probably taking a picture of me at the moment I snapped this.

These pictures were taken on Oct. 21, 1995. It had been a month since the previous time I had been on a GrexWalk, but you can see how different it was one month earlier when it was still summer, by examining last month's version of this web site.

The walk proceeds upriver for about a mile, sandwiched between the railroad tracks on the walkers' left and the river on their right, until the walkers suddenly turn left off the path and cross the tracks. Here, as we look back we can see them coming towards us, and then poof!, they're gone, crossing the tracks into the Arboretum, as seen on the right. If you look carefully at the second picture, you can see Marcus sneaking off to the right to take more pictures with his video camera.

Here is a picture of Marcus taking a picture me taking a picture of him, etc. Once we successfully avoided an infinite loop there, we entered the eastern meadow of the Arb. You can see some Grexwalkers admiring the ripe tall grass of the meadow and the beautiful fall colors of the trees beyond.

When the path through the arboretum finally comes to the area known as "The Beach", the river reappears and is partially dammed by a rock wall below the surface. I knew that I had taken a picture of this part of the river last month, so I figured I would save a shot and just use the one from before, but as you can see, I was caught cheating in this manner, because the trees on the far side of the river are far too green and lush to have been taken in October.

The walkers, at this point, were kind enough to pose so I could get almost all of them in one picture. They are, from left to right, with login IDs in parentheses, Dan Romanchik(danr), Kami Landy (kami), Meg Heberlein (eeyore), David A. Dorney(dadroc), Marc Bowden (shepherd), Scott Helmke (scott), Valerie Mates (popcorn), Mark Conger (aruba), Jan Wolter (janc), and Anthony L. Chamberlain (chamberl). Not shown are me (srw) taking the picture, and Marcus Watts (mdw), who was probably taking a picture of me at that moment.

At this point the walkers turn left, leave the river, and begin to walk toward the top of the arb. As they walk up the hill you can see some bright fall yellows in the woods behind them. When the group nears the top of the arboretum, there is a place to rest from all of the climbing. This is the official rest spot for the Grexwalk, and everyone sits down and enjoys a little conversation, or just takes in the sights from this excellent vantage point. This is about two miles into the walk.

After taking one more look (large image below) back into the arboretum from the top, the walkers leave the Arboretum through the upper gate onto Geddes Avenue, and proceed East along Geddes Avenue, following it all the way back to the starting place at Gallup Park.

The total distance is about three miles, and the walk is usually over by about 11:30 AM. When the walk is finished, the Grexers will usually head to a local restaurant to "debrief", where sometimes they may be met by other Grexers who chose not to walk. The location of the debriefing is agreed to by consensus on-line on Grex. A schedule of upcoming debriefing sites can be viewed on the Grex system.

It costs nothing to use Grex. All you need is a terminal or a computer with a modem. Dial 761-3000 and log in as "newuser" to get a free account for yourself. Then you can discuss matters both great and small with others, and also participate in the process of deciding which restaurant will be the one chosen each week.

The text, drawing, and photos for this site were all made by Steven R. Weiss and are all copyright 1995, Steven R. Weiss. The Ascii map was drawn by Mark Conger. The web site was made available by the Huron Valley Community Network. Please direct any comments or suggestions to Steven R Weiss at srw@cyberspace.org.