A tale of one city, and three towns: Berlin (#147), Alstead (#148), Langdon (#149), and Unity (#150) — plus a rare supernova over Acworth, N.H.

In the past two weeks, I've added four more communities to the quest to run at least 5K in every New Hampshire municipality. (And unincorporated places, too!)

Here's a round-up of latest adventures.

• Friday, Oct. 20: a swing through the state's northern reaches and really mild weather for October provided a chance to bag Berlin (#147), so I took it.

Hoped to combine it with the adjacent town of Milan, but time didn't allow. So I measured off 1.6 miles from the Berlin/Gorham line, which put my start right in the middle of Berlin's modest downtown.

Out and back under the bright sun, windy conditions. Elapsed time: 37 minutes.

Never been to Berlin but know the story: ex-paper mill town that's now reinventing itself as an outdoor recreation hub.

The city's most lasting claim to fame? It's the birthplace in 1907 of Earl Silas Tupper, inventor of Tupperware.

Running through the streets in late October, even on a warm day, you get the unmistakable vibe of a city hunkering down for the long winter ahead.

Trivia: Berlin is one of New Hampshire's 13 cities, which are different from the state's 221 towns due to the way their municipal government is organized.

I just checked, and I still have one more city to go: Laconia, look out!

• Saturday, Oct. 21: silent film show in Vermont took me through western New Hampshire, so made use of another warm afternoon to claim Alstead (#148) and Langdon (#149).

Parked at shuttered Mascoma Bank branch (drive-thru now occupied by wasps) conveniently located on Alstead/Langdon border.

Once covered this area for local papers, the Claremont Eagle-Times and the Keene Sentinel, so the roads of these small and quiet and remote towns are still familiar.

First into Alstead, past modest homes built in an era of expectations that the town would grow much larger (but never did), then over the bridge across the Cold River, past the library and the store, and then up Route 123 past the Vilas School to turn-around point, just past the junction of Route 123A to Acworth.

Trivia: the town is not pronounced "Awl"-stead. It's "Al" stead. Even so, it's still obvious you're from away.

Upon reaching the bank, checking time at 44 minutes. Slow!

Hey: not only two towns, but two counties! Alstead is in Cheshire County, Langdon is in Sullivan County.

Now the other way, into Langdon, a rural upland town that's home to Fall Mountain Regional High School but still one of the smallest communities in these parts.

I wrote a lengthy profile of Langdon back in 1990 for the Sentinel, and at the time the town still hadn't recovered from depopulation that began in the 19th century and affected many upland towns.

Consider: the town's population peaked in 1830 at 676. Then people started leaving Langdon, and didn't stop until a century later, in 1930, when the census bottomed out at 267.

Things have been recovering since then, and by 1990 had reached 580—nice, but still below the Langdon's 1830 heyday.

Well, here's an update. I'm pleased to report that the U.S. Census of 2010 reported 688 residents. So, 180 years later, Langdon is back in growth mode.

That still didn't make for crowded roads. I jogged down Route 123, then up Cheshire Turnpike Road, encountering few vehicles and no people.

Due to Route 123 sliding across the border into Walpole for a stretch, I had to account for 2/10th of a mile that wasn't technically in Langdon.

But this put me further up Cheshire Turnpike Road, which was one long include up a ridge overlooking the rural valley below Fall Mountain.

With sun lighting up the countryside—stone walls and foliage and open fields laid out below rich blue skies—it was one of those days you're glad to be outside, and you remember.

Back at the car, time was another 44 minutes. So much for speed.

• Friday, Oct. 27: silent film show in Canaan, N.H. and another warm afternoon allowed me to bag Unity, N.H. (#150), another rural town in the state's western reaches.

Wanted to get adjacent Acworth as well, but alas, lack of time (and leaving my wallet at the office in Manchester) limited the day's activities.

However, coming through Acworth, I couldn't help but stop to photograph the town's immense hilltop 1821 meetinghouse, lit up by the afternoon sun.

In doing so, I accidentally activated my cell phone's "selfie" lens, which I haven't been using because images are blurred by an air bubble in the phone's protective covering.

But all of that, including triggering the camera directly into the sun, produced this remarkable image of a supernova over Acworth, N.H.:

The run along North Shore Road in Unity was marred by the realization that I'd left my wallet back in my office in Manchester, which would complicate the rest of the day.

But off I went, with part of the route on a dirt road. Another quiet afternoon in rural New Hampshire, slightly cooler than previous runs but still nice.

Out and back, through the rolling countryside, total 43 minutes.

And that makes it 150 towns, which I was the short-term goal for this year. Yay!

A few nice weekends might allow me to push past that. We'll see.

For now, the immediate challenge is an upcoming chance to add not one but two states to the trophy case in my quest to run at least 10K in all 50 states. Stay tuned!

Claiming Plainfield, N.H. (#146) and running amid the pumpkin people

Where I started, and also where I finished.

Pretty nice fall day for a run: a bit warm but overcast, with a light rain falling.

But whatever the weather, I sure picked the right time of year to pick off Plainfield, N.H., making it Town #146 in my quest to run a minimum of 10K in every town, city, or unincorporated place in New Hampshire.

I didn't know this, but turns out October is when the Pumpkin People emerge in Plainfield. Not content with mere Jack-O-Lanterns, it's an annual tradition for town residents to create elaborate roadside tableaux featuring everyone's favorite seasonal gourd.

How elaborate? How about this re-enactment a scene from the movie 'Titanic' (1997), which I passed on Stage Road?

How about something more topical, such as this eclipse-watching pumpkin astronomer?

Driving too fast? Meet the Pumpkin-As-Officer-Running-Radar, posted on a fast stretch of Route 12A north of town?

Officer, why are you smiling at me like that?

And how about this whole pumpkin family, stepping out?

So altogether, this made for a pretty entertaining run. And when there weren't pumpkin people, other objects of interest filled the gaps:

Want something more Halloween-like. How about the town's picturesque village cemetery, which seems to have plenty of open space...

And yes, before I forget: I did go for a run: a nice out-and-back on Route 12A, which for much of its journey through Plainfield is a narrow winding highway with no shoulder to speak of.

But about a mile-and-a-half before Plainfield Village, the road suddenly broadens to a whole new and more generous set of specs, with great visibility and a wide breakdown lane.

The post office in town was exactly 1.6 miles (by my odometer) from this point, so that was my route: out and back, a total of 3.2 miles.

As a bonus, the widened highway started at a crest in the road, just before a long series of smooth and gentle downgrades into the town.

Where Route 12A widens, facing south towards Plainfield Village.

So it was mostly gentle uphill to the turn-around point, then a nice forgiving downhill all the way back.

If any of the landscapes seem familiar, it's because Plainfield was for many years home to renowned American artist and illustrator Maxfield Parrish.

Although Parrish passed on in 1966, he's still a big man around town. In the Village, I ran past the old town hall, which boasts a set of scenery designed and painted by Parrish back in 1916, and it was open for weekend visitor scrutiny. (I demurred, not wanting to drip on the historic Parrish set pieces.)

Back at the post office, a bulletin board of real estate notices included what seemed to be a major one: for the first time in decades, the actual 45-acre Maxfield Parrish estate, known as "The Oaks," was up for sale!

Wow! If you've got a spare $1.3 million, it could be yours. It all sounds pretty nice, although you might end up being asked to paint some new scenery for the Town Hall.

And what about my time? I'll call it 37 minutes even to run 3.2 miles, good enough for claiming the Connecticut River Valley town of Plainfield and filling in a gaping hole in my office map, which I did this morning.

What's next? Now that I'm back in the local running groove, I'd like to pick up a few more towns before the weather turns. Maybe get to #150—we'll see.

Stay tuned!

Bike routes, plus some notes about Summer 2017

This season I've had it in my mind to do what I call the "New Boston loop" before Memorial Day weekend.

Well, I'll be on the road for Memorial Day weekend, so I took advantage of a warm late afternoon yesterday and did it.

The apex of the loop is "downtown" New Boston, a small crossroads with Dodge's Store as a landmark:

Click to enlarge.

The route out is rolling countryside with many ups and downs, but none really epic.

Going back, it's a different story. Check out the hill, circled in the grade profile at left:

That's the big climb up one side of the Uncanoonuc Mountains in Goffstown, of which Wallace Road skirts the eastern slopes.

It's not bad, but loooong, and climaxed by a couple short but very steep pitches before cresting the high point at Shirley Hill Road.

Then it's a long glide back to home base. Total distance: 28.3 miles. Time: about 2.5 hours, but I didn't really time it closely.

The other looping bike route I've been doing since the weather changed is a much more level loop that takes me south along one side of the Merrimack River to my hometown of Nashua, then back up on the other side.

Here's the route down, which runs through countryside that's still quite rural, with a lot of land in active farming:

And here's the route back, which is mostly through suburbia:

Total distance on this loop is 31.5 miles: longer than the New Boston circuit, but because it's more level it usually takes no more than 2:15 to complete.

One thing I like about this route: both directions take you near the enormous Anheuser Busch brewery in Merrimack, N.H. You can tell which direction the wind is blowing when you encounter the aromatic cooked malt fragrance that comes from the place.

What's next? Before I start longer rides out to the hilly west, or east to the coast, I need more time closer to home.

So one loop I will try is to go counter-clockwise completely around the city of Manchester.

Using the Auburn Village School as the apex, the first part of the route would look like this:

Then back, the lack of bridges over the Merrimack to the north means I'd have to come through Manchester's North End to get home:

So the total mileage is 33.3, a slight increase and a new route besides. I'll try that one when I'm back in town after Memorial Day weekend.

Longer term, I'd like to bike at least once to the coast (for fried clams at Ceal's Clam Stand in Seabrook, N.H.)and then all the way back. Long ride of about 95 miles.

Here's my preferred route out:

Coming back is a challenge, with a steep climb from Candia into Hooksett on Route 27, then a descent into the Merrimack Valley:

This route map has me heading in the wrong direction. :)

And two routes to the west: one a loop out to Harrisville Pond (for a mid-day) swim and then back, about 90 miles through some very hilly terrain; the other a long one-way to Bellows Falls, Vt.

Injury-free right now but just overworked with not enough time to push myself. Not running too much but will try capturing a few towns this season.

Updates as they happen.

Getting my chest shaved in London, and other adventures in the ER

Souvenir from St. Mary's Hospital in London: the readout showing where my rapid heart beat was halted, then restarted at a slower pace. Click to see detail.

We travel to London for the theater. But a brief visit last week brought some unexpected drama in which I played a leading role.

The story: in the wee hours of Saturday morning, I awoke to find my heart beating much faster than normal.

Also stronger than normal: BAM! BAM! BAM!

I couldn't imagine why this was happening at 2 a.m. I hoped it would just go away, but I couldn't get back to sleep.

So after an hour, I woke up my wife. She measured the pulse as 140, and it showed no signs of abating.

What was up? Was it finally time for my big life-changing health collapse?

Time crawled by. Earlier that evening, we had seen 'Fawlty Towers: The Dining Experience,' a dinner-theater recreation of the iconic British TV sitcom.

Now, lying there, I found myself thinking of several 'Fawlty Towers' scenes set in British hospitals, and also of the episode where a hotel guest dies overnight.

That led me to think of a good option for an epitaph, should one be needed. It's what John Cleese says to three hotel guests whom he mistakes for undertakers.

"Your dress is very modern," he tells the bewildered trio. That would work well on a gravestone, I thought.

I know this sounds ludicrous. But what else would you think about in a hotel at 4 a.m. with your heart racing like you're running a marathon?

Daylight came at about 6:30 a.m. By then I was seriously short of breath and feeling light-headed, so we knew I'd have to get checked out.

One issue: my wife's relatives were scheduled to arrive in London by train at 8:50 a.m. for an action-packed day.

Well, it was clear I wasn't up for that. Just climbing the stairs to the lobby (we were in a lower level) made me feel like taking a siesta.

Fortunately, St. Mary's Hospital was two blocks from the hotel. I felt well enough to walk to the ER. So that's what I did.

My wife would meet the relatives at the train and wait to hear from me.

The main gate at St. Mary's Hospital in London.

So I trudged across Praed Street and entered the St. Mary's campus. A map directed me to the emergency department, and a woman at a desk sent me upstairs. (Yes, I took the elevator.)

The hotel desk clerk had advised I might want to wait for an urgent care clinic to open because St. Mary's, as a large inner-city hospital, could be kind of a madhouse.

But early on a Saturday morning, I was the only customer. No waiting! Thus was my introduction to Britain's National Health Service.

And get this: besides my symptoms, all they needed from me was my name, address, and (because I was a foreigner) my passport info.

I was then put in a wheelchair and rolled down a corridor to the ER, where I was evaluated by several nurses working as a team. Everyone wore the same blue hospital clothes.

Before long, my chest was partially shaved so they could attach sensor contacts to me. I was placed in a gurney and wheeled into a medical room, with my heart racing as fast as ever.

All this before 8:30 a.m.!

Two doctors, Danny and Helen, tried non-invasive methods to corral my pulse: having me blow into a syringe, and then giving me a neck massage. (Thanks, Helen! I mean, Dr. MacKay.)

These had no effect, so the decision was made to use a drug that Dr. Danny warned me had an unusual effect: people who take it, he said, "feel like they're doing to die."

What? They feel like they're dying? What does death feel like, exactly?

What he meant was that the drug, Adenosine, would temporarily stop my heart from beating (for the first time since 1964!), and then very soon after it would start again, ideally at a normal rate.

But that time in-between was what people described as death: with the heart shut down, the body instinctively begins going into shock. The heart restarts before this gets too far, but it can be very scary if you're not prepared.

"Can I have a lollipop?" I asked, laying there, still wondering if this was what Redd Foxx used to call 'The Big One' on the old Sanford & Son TV series. (Wow, everything in life is related to TV!)

Before I got an answer, 6 milligrams of Adenosine were released into me through an IV.

I waited for death...but death did not come.

The verdict: I was a bigger moose than they'd figured. Hence the next step: double the dose!

In went 12 milligrams of Adenosine, and then I felt it.

For me, death felt like a huge weight pressing on my chest, and then quickly morphed into the sensation that there was some kind of strong vacuum pulling at my chest from the inside, trying to collapse it.

I tried inhaling but couldn't. I closed my eyes in response to this, and found I couldn't open them!

But before anything else happened, my heart resumed beating, and at a much lower pulse rate of 90. It would drop further as I returned to normal.

Laying there, I was overcome with a huge sense of relief that was physical and mental. The moment my heart resumed at a normal rate, everything felt right again, finally.

Also I was relieved that I'd have time to think of a better epitaph than "Your Dress Is Very Modern."

After making sure I was stable, the doctors wheeled me into a holding area, where I needed to wait until they got blood test results back from the lab.

The hospital had great wifi, so I updated the wife and wished them all a good time! I would try to catch up later if I could.

The actual Emergency Department within the hospital, which is named after the Queen Mother, a long-time patron.

So for the next six hours, I got to watch the ER of a busy London hospital in action. It wasn't that busy, actually, but still a lot was going on—a broken femur here, a fall with head injury there.

More than once I heard people being asked "Who is the Prime Minister?" or "Who is on the throne?"

At about noon, Dr. Danny and Dr. Helen came by with an update. My results were fine. But because I was going to be on a long flight the next day, they wanted to keep me for one more round of blood tests as a precaution.

Specifically, they wanted to see if levels of a certain type of enzyme were increasing, which would indicate damage to the heart muscle or possibly another cardiac malfunction in the making.

By 3 p.m., the second results were in: I was free to go. And that's when I got my biggest surprise.

After putting myself back together, I asked Dr. Helen what I needed to do next.

"You're discharged," she said. "You just go."

"Go where?"

"Out of the hospital," she said, realizing that I was one of those foreigners who may not understand how National Health works.

"Isn't there some kind of paperwork I have to fill out—disclosure forms or insurance info?"

"You have a discharge paper, which you should bring to your G.P. back home," she said. "Emergency care is provided free to everyone."

There's a phrase you don't hear in U.S healthcare. Free to everyone!

You mean, I just took up eight hours of time in the ER of a major London hospital, and the cost is...nothing?!

Even better—I found out later that if I had travel expenses, I could take receipts to the bursar's office for possible reimbursement. Wow. In Britain, they pay you to go to the hospital!

But what impressed me most was the sheer simplicity of the transaction. No paperwork. No forms. No codes or waivers or disclaimers or disclosures.

And no gigantic billing infrastructure that adds to costs without medically helping anyone.

Of course there are costs. Someone had to pay for the services I received. In this case, it was the British taxpayer.

It didn't seem proper to take photos inside the ER, but I did furtively snap this one shot of my "holding cell," which had a nice view of a canal filled with houseboats.

But that same taxpayer does not have to pay always-rising insurance premiums or cope with massive deductibles like we do.

Example: Last month I had an MRI done as a precaution. The total cost for this two-hour procedure was just under $10,000, of which I had to pay 20 percent.

Thinking about that bill would be enough to prompt a cardiac incident.

But in my case, what seems to have been the culprit in London was me unthinkingly downing five or six cups of coffee during the previous day, and then drinking beer and wine in the evening, topped off by more coffee.

By the time we got back to the hotel, it's no wonder my heart went into overdrive.

But I'm fine now. It's been three days and no sign of any relapse. I even had a cup of coffee today!

So all's well that ends well. Speaking of which, I do need to work on finding a better epitaph...