My name is John Ring. This past year was a tricky one for me and in late October I felt the need to put a stop to everything and get away from the world for a while, be totally alone, fly under the radar, whatever.

Hide away and decompress and remember what it was like to be a human being.

Through an associate I got set up in an old fixer- upper of a farmhouse outside a little town in the

Laurel Highlands, a two stoplightburg called Red Friend, 90 minutes southeast of Pittsburgh. Interesting name, Red Friend.

The farmhouse was secluded just off the side of a road in a rolling valley, picturesque and silent if you dig that kind of thing.

Everything was good for a couple of months and then the ice storm came

December 29th

and didn't the good folks of Red Friend freak out about it?

The gas station and the little supermarket shut down ahead of it.

Sure.

Even hardcore Northeasterners get nervous about the damage an ice storm can do.

It was all the same to me.

The thought of being stranded cozily inside for three days, plunging back into my studies and my

hobbies and listening to the Steelers trou troughts the Titans on the radio seemed just fine.

But I made sure to walk the couple of miles into town at dawn and get some candles and

sterno before the front really blew in.

I cut it too close, really.

Typical.

One of my many faults.

I left O'Hannigan's with everything I needed for the storm plus a couple of stakes and tried to avoid

eye contact from the cashier as usual, pulling my knit hat low.

When I need to get away from it all, that means not a lot of contact with the locals, too.

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