Just to be sure everyone knows what I mean when I say "Y2K," a little historical background. Unless you are thirty or older the odds are you have never heard of "The Y2K Bug." For us over forty, we all knew it well. Y2K stood for "Year 2000" and Bug as in a thing that made a computer not work right. I've explained earlier how the change from 1999 to 2000 was expected to cause computers everywhere to malfunction so I'll not go into detail again, but in essence it was this: because all programs before 1997 used a two-digit year code (as in "97" rather than "1997") the year 2000 with its' "00" was expected to cause serious computer problems. Some of those problems had catastrophic potential, like causing the world wide power grid to fail. Not everyone believed this was going to be a serious problem because there was a huge worldwide push to correct the computer code to avert the problem. But computer programmers like me understood just how much work was involved in correcting all of that old code. And not just a lot of work, but a lot of difficult work in old computer languages. Most of the "legacy code" that needed to be fixed was written in antiquated languages like FORTRAN and COBOL, languages that relatively few active programmers still used. For this reason, retired programmers were pulled into service, but still there were far too few to get the job done.

Every programmer I knew believed the year 2000 would start with a failed computer grid. Without power most societal standards would fail. Without power society would crumble. Most of us believed this would happen to one degree or another. I believed the year 2000 had catastrophic potential solely because the power grid would fail. I recognized that there could be degrees of failure and that it was possible the power grid could be repaired and brought back on line. But even the best estimates I had heard were that if the power grid went down, that it couldn't be repaired for four to six months.

The Y2K Bug was the reason we bought an Amish house deep in the woods and the reason we kept it off the power grid. My reasoning was that if we didn't use electricity in our normal daily lives, then we would be well prepared for the power grids failed. It is important that you understand that this was my mindset in August of 1999 when I returned to Pennsylvania. I believed the power grid would fail in four months and that when that happened my family would need me more than ever before. I also believed that when the power grid went down no one would be looking for me anymore. There is no question that at this point I wanted Y2K to be the catastrophic disaster everyone feared. If it was then I could stay with my family. And I could protect them.

I knew better than to go straight home, but I needed to be close. The SUV I had now was an olive green Chevy Tahoe, which was perfect for what I had in mind. For miles and miles around our home there are heavily wooded and sparsely populated hills that we on the east coast call mountains. Having lived in Alaska I wouldn't go that far, but they were rugged enough to make them a great place to hide. I found a place about twenty miles north of our home where I could drive the Tahoe deep into the woods. There I hid the SUV in a way that I could get it out when I needed to and set up camp five miles from it. I'd found a nice cool spot. There was a brisk stream of clean water. Water to drink, but also water to bathe in. The water was so cold that bathing in it was tricky, but it worked. The spot was hidden so well that I doubted anyone would find me if they were looking, nor was anyone likely to find my camp site by mistake. It was a great spot to settle in and wait for the world to change so I could go home.

I had carried in lots of food and supplies. So much supplies that it took me six days to haul it all from the hidden Tahoe to the camp site. I don't like tents, have always preferred to camp under an open tarp, so that is what I brought to keep the rain and morning dew off me. However, since my plan was to remain here until mid-December I would need a stouter shelter to survive the cold Pennsylvania winter. From the beginning my plan had been to take this time to establish a secondary shelter for my family. Sounds crazy now, but my thought was that if things got too bad to stay in the house, then we'd have this hidden spot deep in the woods. That was why I had selected a location twenty miles from home. I could get home through the woods, and if needed we could all get back here the same way.

So I began cutting logs and building a round hut. Before it was completed two men walking through the woods walked into my camp. They stood there looking at me and my makeshift camp completely dumbfounded. When they ask what I was doing I said, "Minding my own business." They took the hint and left. It took me about three minutes to pack what was important. I ran most of the way back to the Tahoe, which thankfully I was able to get out of the woods and back on the road.

After having decided on a course of action and then acting on it I was disappointed that I'd been discovered. It seemed so unlikely that anyone would have walked up on me so far back in the woods, but now that it had happened I had no choice but to abandon the plan. I had to assume the men would go to the authorities and they would come back and figure out who'd been here. There was no doubt my finger prints could be found on stuff in the packs. With the feds knowing I wanted to hide out in the woods near home I had no choice but to abandon that idea. I drove south with no plan other than to put distance between myself and my home.

I drove south, but not far. As I've said before, my pattern is to cover great distances when I run, but this time I did not do so because I needed to stay close to home. Now that I had pushed all thoughts of abortion clinics out of my mind my deep rooted concern about the Y2K Bug was foremost in my mind. Today I find this the height\ of irony, but at the time I thought I was "seeing clearly" what my objective should have been now. That objective was to prepare as best I could then be close enough to reach my family when the new millennial rolled in and power grid failed.

As I write this I understand how crazy it sounds. I had started obsessed with the Y2K Bug, changed to being an anti-abortion extremist, then gave that up and went back to being obsessed with believing the Y2K Bug was going to bring about the apocalypse. It was a wild shift from one extreme idea to another. Being an anti-abortion extremist was a new thing to me, but I had long believed I would see an apocalyptic event in my life time. Today we call guys like me "Preppers." As in those who attempt to prepare for the end of the world. There's even a reality TV Show. The show gives the veneer of making the subject seem serious, but underneath it is designed to make the "Preppers" look like lunatics. The show achieves its purpose. It's not difficult to make those obsessed with the end of world look deranged. When I see the show I think those people are out of their minds. So I can only imagine how I look, because I was worse than all of them combined.

With the end of the world at the forefront of my mind I limited my roaming to two to three hundred miles from home. And after my last close call I was also being super careful. After losing most of my camping gear I had to resupply, which I slowly began to do. I was running low on money and no longer had any form of identification so I stopped staying in motel rooms and spent my nights in the woods. I wasn't ready to lose my transportation so I had developed a rather effective system of picking spots to hide the SUV while camping.

In the area I roamed I selected a series of wooded spots where I could hide the SUV so it couldn't be seen and camp there. Even though the SUV was a convenient green, it had lots of shiny surfaces that would reflect a spot light. Even the windows reflected back when a light was shined on it. I know because I tested it. So when I camped I covered the SUV with a camouflage tarp. Many nights I slept in the Tahoe, so I cut a four by nine-inch hole in the tarp directly in front of the driver's seat where I slept. This way I wasn't blind to someone coming up on me. I always parked pointing towards the direction danger was likely to come from knowing that bright lights would usually be a harbinger of any one approaching. I also secured the back of the tarp to the ground or a tree if one were convenient. Though I never had to use this the tie down was to pull the tarp off as I drove forward. I didn't want the chase to be a parody of a stupid criminal driving blindly with his windshield covered.

My favorite places were jeep trails with a chain across the path to block anyone from going down them. I liked these spots because the chain would keep a law enforcement agency or kids out looking for a private place from driving down the path and seeing me. I felt more secure parking back in a spot blocked in this manner. For this reason, I had bought the bolt cutter, chain, and pad locks. States like Pennsylvania and West Virginia were full of dirt jeep trails into the woods that had a chain across them to prevent cars from going down them. To me these were perfect if they were rarely used. Often I would pick the pad lock, which I had trained myself to do, drive through then secure the chain again with my own pad lock. When I left the next morning I would replace the original pad lock and who ever controlled the property would never know I was back there. It worked well. An old lock was often too rusted to pick so those I cut off and replaced with my own.

One such place that I had used a few times was within a hundred miles of home. In every way imaginable it was ideal, so any time I passed that way I picked the lock drove deep down the never used jeep road then pulled off into a bushy area and went to sleep. The last night I used this spot, things went bad.

I had set up as I always did and slept in the driver's seat with it slightly reclined. It had been raining all day and continued raining that night so I'd only lowered my window two inches to allow fresh air. From experience I knew that if I didn't do this my breath would fog up the windows so that I couldn't see out them. The intensity of the rain and wind often changed and shifted during the night and several times I was woken when the wind caused the rain to hit my face. Each time startled me awake, so I hadn't slept really well. For this reason, when I woke to a sound my head wasn't very clear.

I'm not sure what I'd heard that woke me but what I heard next was a man shouting. "Hey! You're not supposed to be back here." When I looked forward I couldn't see any one through my view hole, so I did the only thing I could think to do. I started the engine, put it in drive and pulled forward until the tarp pulled free. What I now saw was some type of enforcement officer, I think he was Fish & Game, but I'm not sure. He was standing beside the open door of an official looking truck. He stared at me for a heartbeat, then got in his truck and rapidly backed down the jeep road. As far as I knew that road was the only way out with a vehicle.

I don't know what inspired me to stay so calm, but I got out and retrieved my tarp. That done I slowly drove down the trail. Before going around the last curve I got out and walked through the woods. At the point where the trail reached the woods the guy had his truck parked across the trail, effectively blocking my regress. I didn't get a good look at the guy but I could see that he was talking on a cell phone. Back in the Tahoe I reversed my course and looked in vain for another way off this mountain but there was none. Seeing no other choice, I back tracked from the end of the trail to a spot I noticed where there was a steep downward slant across rough ground with no trees. I put the Tahoe in four-wheel drive and drove down the slope. I drove over bushes and saplings trees before I came to a final stop with my front bumper against a tree too big to mow over. Not being able to drive any further I grabbed my "Go Bag" and ran into the rain.

It rained for the next two days so I was wet and miserable as I tried to evade a pursuit I never saw. Because the area was so rugged I'd only traveled five miles from where I began. This didn't seem possible but I was sure of it. Part of my Go Bag was a handheld GPS receiver, which I had used to tap the location on the SUV where my foot run began. The terrain was so rough that it might have covered three times that distance, but from point to point it was only five miles.

This GPS was archaic by today's standards because it didn't have a digital map. Nothing but compass directions, latitude and longitude numbers. It did show the spot I marked to start my "hike" and the point where I stood, but both were on a screen void of anything other than the jagged route I had followed to get to where I stood. I knew that rugged mountains had forced my route, but it was still shocking to see how many changes in directions I had taken to get to where I stood.

Where I stood, or more accurately where I sat, was on a ridge that looked over a paved country road. I had sat there for five hours watching that road. In that time one pickup truck had passed four hours earlier and it was clear it had not been part of any hunt for me. It was now eleven p.m. and I had a decision to make. If there wasn't a hunt going on than I could use the road before me to start walking back towards civilization, but if there was then I needed to go deeper into the mountains. I had the supplies to go deeper and spend a month in the woods if necessary, but I was beginning to believe it wasn't necessary because I hadn't seen nor heard any sign of a chase.

As soon as I was clear of the SUV I had pulled my police scanner out of my pack and listened close. I had heard a few scattered police calls, but nothing that related to me. After two days of no traffic related to a hunt I was beginning to wonder if I was being chased at all. My decision was to walk out. This would be interesting because if I had the roads figured out, this one would take me right by the spot where I abandoned the SUV.

I walked down that road for four hours. The entire time I was ready to duck into the woods at the first sound of a car, but no car ever passed. When I finally reached the place where the jeep road I had used met the road, I was extra careful, but no one was around. Using my flashlight, I examined the lock and saw that a new lock had replaced my lock. It didn't look like any cars had went down the trail but I couldn't be sure due to the rain. After a few minutes of looking at all the signs in the dirt I made another decision. I walked down the jeep trail towards where I had left the SUV.

By the time I reached the SUV I wasn't surprised to see it setting where I had left it. The keys were still in the ignition where I had left them and nothing had been disturbed. I had no idea what had happened, but I intended to take advantage of the situation. I didn't think I could drive uphill over those saplings so I used a saw from my pack to clear a path back to the jeep trail. Then I put the Tahoe in 4X4 low gear and drove it backwards uphill over rough, muddy ground. It was an impressive feat for the SUV. Would have made a great Chevy commercial and sold me completely on the Tahoe. That would not be the last Tahoe I stole.

Back at the road I used bolt cutters to remove the new lock then put my own new one on it. That was the last of the locks I carried so would have to get a few more. Those had served me well. I was a bit apprehensive as I drove away, but no one was after me. By the time the sun rose I was a long way from that spot. After two days of running in the rain through those mountains it felt good to me driving again. I had a big breakfast, then about two in the afternoon rented a motel room, took a long hot shower and slept for many hours.

I never did figure out what had happened back there.