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    Chapter 8 update

    March 14, 2009
    By Dan in Posts

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    Hi, Dan here.

    We decided to put some more of Chapter 8 up, and Molly asked me to shed some light on what’s going on and why we’re slowly publishing the story.

    First of all, we’ve had no word from Rich at all. I’m going to Belton in early April for a research trip and to see if I can find any evidence that Rich spent time in that area in the 1930s. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but have a few ideas. Rich left me a note with some instructions that after my trip, I may or may not reveal on the blog.

    Secondly, Molly wanted to keep the pace of updates intact when we took over, so we decided not to just dump the whole story online at once. Rich would write, then edit and post. Most of what he wrote past Chapter 7 hadn’t been heavily edited and cleaned up, so Molly (who happens to be an online news editor herself) is doing that work. She then sends me what she wants to publish.

    Working helps Molly a lot, but we’re both a little unsure about whether we want to keep updating the site, not knowing where or when Rich is. We see the web numbers, and know the site gets read a lot, but we’re not sure just how many people are really that interested in the story.

    Feel free to email me at dan.garmen@gmail.com if you’d like us to keep updating the site. Your feedback and input helps.

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    2. Chapter 7 – Acceleration

    November 16, 2008
    By Rich in Posts

    3 Comments

    Chapter 7 is in progress. I know there’s been a pretty long gap in posting. Life is so busy these days, and I can feel that something is very, very close to happening. I leave the house every day, knowing there’s a really good chance I’ll end my day in 1933.

    I’m getting lots of emails from readers asking if I’ve jumped to my Grandfather’s time. Well, not yet, but I’ve left instructions about what to do with this site in the event I don’t make it back. Whether she will want to if that happens, I don’t know.

    Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 7 – Acceleration. The in-progress chapter is here.

    Sadly, I wasn’t able to do anything to change Coach MacLaren’s life, or more accurately, his death. I had a number of talks with him during my senior year, and in the three years that followed, but since Coach had never had a single symptom or sign that anything was wrong with his heart, he shrugged off my nagging. We had a lot to learn about nutrition in the 70s, about cholesterol, fat, smoking and everything else. I even got excused from practice to be at the game the night I knew Coach MacLaren was going to have his massive heart attack in the locker room. There was usually an ambulance and EMT stationed at most games, but to be sure, I had ordered up and paid for a private ambulance service to be there as well, parked right outside the doors by the home locker room.

    It didn’t matter, though. It was Coach’s time. The heart attack was massive, and right on schedule. I was with him after he sent the team out on the court to warm up. I’d come to watch the guys play, I had told him, and would love to show my support in the locker room before the game. He bought it, and never asked why I wasn’t at school at practice. Coach MacLaren had asked me to go to his office to get him another play-plan clipboard, and must have collapsed right after I left the room. I picked up the board off his desk, and glancing through the window that looked into the locker room, saw him lying on his side on the floor. I didn’t even bother going to him, but instead, flew out the door to the outside and shouted for the paramedics in the amblance I’d hired. By the time they got to him though, barely a minute after I saw him on the floor, he was gone. They later told me that he was probably dead when he hit the floor.

    I’ll have this chapter finished in the next week, I think. Unless, of course…

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    3. A (short) addition to Chapter 6 – Time Passages

    August 23, 2008
    By Rich in Posts

    3 Comments

    As much as it seems that time is infinite, especially when you’re able (or forced) to jump around in it, forward and backward, it’s not infinite. There’s only so much time we’re allotted. And when you look at the trip you’re taking, from that rare vantage point outside the “venue,” it looks pretty small.

    Life in 2008 has it’s demands, right now. Work, family, all of it coming before telling the story, and as you can imagine, keeping notes, reading notes and sorting the whole thing out is getting harder and harder. But enough about my problems.

    I’ve gotten enough emails asking if I’m here, or in 1933, that I wanted to post and say STILL HERE and NOW! :-) People at work aren’t even asking about my “go-bag” anymore.

    I had started Chapter 7 a few weeks ago, but looking at it today, when I sat down to write, I realized it’s really the end of Chapter 6, so it’s now tacked on there.

    Without spoiling, I have to warn you, that things may be taking a turn you’re probably not expecting. I have no idea if it will make the story more or less interesting for you, but it’s the story. I hope it accomplishes the former, and not the latter.

    As always, thanks for reading.

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    4. No spoiler this time

    July 1, 2008
    By Rich in Posts

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    As I wrote recently, I’ve traveled to the future on two occasions recently. They weren’t particularly enjoyable trips, in no way similar to the warm “been-here-before” feeling journeys that trips to the recent past can be. I have to admit, for a long time, the feelings those trips to the past engendered were a reason I thought this whole thing could well be purely psychological, simple (if that’s possible) hallucinations. Let’s face it, for most of us, the past creates feelings of nostalgia. We remember the good things that happened, and forget the bad. There was a time when I thought my “trips” there were just fantasy.

    Those theories ended when I started bringing things back from the past, and in one case, the future. Simple things, nothing that would be at all incriminating if my house were searched. Just things from sometime else. I’ll follow up on my future souvenir at another time, but will say that it was a strange event in its complete normality. Truly fascinating, but again, another time.

    I think the good feelings a trip to the past creates are good because my past, for the most part, WAS very good. I’ve lived a fortunate and pretty happy life. I won’t say it’s been a life without challenges, but it’s been a happy one. I think if my life had been filled with tragedy and trauma, my trips to the past might be much darker than they are. In this, I believe I’m blessed.

    But, I will say that a startling thing about time traveling to the past is how vivid it is. Even a creative right-brainer like myself apparently tends to dull the colors out when memories are stored in our brains. Everytime I’ve traveled more than a few months past-ward, I’m struck by just how vivid and colorful it all is. We tend to think of the past like photographs before digital cameras, and anything before the 50s we’ve almost entirely experienced as black and white. I think seeing 1933 Indiana in the flesh will be shocking, since I’ve seen so many pictures of that time, and of Belton specifically, rendered in the black and white photography available then.

    Though it’s a very, very bad idea, I’m seriously considering adding a small digital camera to my TT go-bag.

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The Time Traveler's Blog is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.