The Road Less Traveled

Now the bonds are broken, but they can be re-tied

One more journey to the woods, the holes where spirits hide

~Bob Dylan

I've been trying to lead a less sedentary life. The transition to a desk job at my advanced age has caused me to pack on a few extra pounds. I've managed to get out and go on a walk several days the last couple of weeks. The constant rains ha been making it hard to do so.

At the beginning of the week, I went out to go on a walk. The first portion nearly always starts out the same, with a climb to the top of my street. It gets your heart rate up to start with. There's a little wall up there, and I'll usually take a little rest and catch my breath when I get there. That's how I started off. Just as I'm getting ready to head on, here comes another guy, heading the same way I'd been planning on going. I head on just a little behind, and when he gets to the end, he makes a left, the same way I'd been planning on going again!!! I don't like feeling like I'm trailing after someone, so I decided to go the other direction.

Going that way, you can do a loop on the streets behind our house, but at the end, there's a little short-cut trail to the next street down, and you can head down and across to the next major street over from there, after taking a little stairway down. I've gone that way before, but it feels like it's been a while. It climbs from there, sometimes gradually, sometimes steeply, until it dead ends into a park in a canyon, that I often get to going the other way, but on the downhill end. It has a dirt path through it, with a very steep climb at the end.

The foliage has really liked all the rain!!! The park is fairly overgrown, as are several areas around here. The path had been badly eroded, with a deep groove nearly a foot deep in several areas.

Just before the part where it starts climbing steeply, I came upon this wood nymph!!! Or whatever she was. She had a girl there taking the pictures, and a guy manning the light.

She was up on probably a six foot step ladder, and it was getting to be the part of the evening when it starts getting cool out. All that overgrowth no doubt makes for a great backdrop!!!

Nesting Season

Here's one you could file under the heading of "instant blogging", or one I've been sitting on for a while. It's actually I'd guess close to a month and a half coming.

To start off, this was at my parents' house. Just outside the walk-in door to the garage, a hummingbird couple had made their nest. Looks quite a bit, to me, like they found a good deal of the material in a paper shredder!!! That's my mom's hand in the first picture, with the tiny little eggs, smaller than your standard size jelly bean.

And there's momma bird, sitting on her eggs.

I don't know how long after they'd hatched this was, but that's the chicks a while after having hatched.

And, the final shot of the hummingbirds, I was holding up a smallish key, not in the foreground, but right next to the nest, for scale.

Around the back yard, there's a cow skull decoration mounted on the wall. Turns out to be a perfect place for a dove to build her nest!!!

This was while we were having a lunch there, probably for Easter. My younger tells me I should do a selfie with the dove on her nest... so that's what I did!!!

And, finally, I got to watch almost the whole process on these finches!!! This is right outside my work area, turning my head about 30° to the left from my monitors. I saw when momma and daddy started showing up, bringing nesting materials and weaving them into a nest.

Within around 2 1/2 to 3 weeks, they'd hatched, and the finch parents were bringing them noms. They grew up quick, and within a couple of weeks had left the nest.

I had been wanting to re-string the lights I'd gotten for my hanging Christmas tree at the end of last year, to run them all the way along the awnings, but I didn't want to disturb them, so I held off until they were gone. Speaking of disturbing them, back when it was the egg-sitting phase, I'd let the cat out into the front room once, and he would get up by the window, and stare at them, and they would get spooked and fly off. When I had the ladder set up, re-stringing the lights, he was at the same window watching me!!!

Critter Country

Something unique about visiting Catalina, even in the "big city" of Avalon, you always seem to be pretty close to nature. You've got the ocean to the front, and hills and mountains all around.

As you get out of the city, you are more apt to see wildlife, but even within, there is some to be seen. The day we arrived, we went over a block to get some lunch, fairly late in the afternoon. My wife finished all she could of her sandwich, and left a fair amount of bread. There were a few sparrows, so we began tearing off chunks, as you do, as tossing them to 'em. Didn't take too long before a crow picked up on the free buffet!!!

Usually you don't see them that close, but we lured him to the next table, and then he hopped up on the railing. I've heard that crows have great memories, so perhaps we've made a friend for life!!!

On the way over to Descanto Beach on our first evening walk, I got a shot of a bunch of gulls roosting on a breakwater, with a glorious near full moon!!! After I took my shot, my boy ran out after them and scattered them while I took a video. I thought it would have been a funny vengance if one had circled back and pooped on him, but that didn't happen.

The next day when we were at Descanto Beach Club for breakfast, a gull came and perched on top of an umbrella directly at eye level with us... Hope they don't have long memories!

That evening, we walked out on the pier. Earlier in the day, we'd been out on the pier and several people were fishing off the end. The kelp bass were biting, and we got to see several get reeled in. As we left the hotel, my boy spied a dollar on the ground!!! He thinks it's a lucky dollar, because afterwards we saw a couple of the kind of animals we'd never see back home!!!

Out there, you've got the noise of the surf on the beach and the pilings, and the surrounding boats in the surf. Heard some splashes off the side, and looking over there, there's a gray blur under the surface... Then it pops up!!!

There was a porpoise, or several of them, in Avalon harbor!!! Didn't think I'd ever see that!!! Not a great picture, but I took some video, and it came out a little better, even though there's a lot of it with not much going on.

After that, we headed to the back of the town. One of the streets lead to a park as it goes back into the hills. If I'm not mistaken, as a teen when we'd gone on a couple of family vacations over there, my brother in law and I had biked back to the same park in the evening and sat there for a while. Anyway, as we walked back there, we caught sight of this guy!!! It was a Catalina Island fox, native only to the island!!!

Got a few pictures of him, and a video of him doing his thing. Then my son goes, "I'm going to see how close I can get to him!!!" OK, hold on, I'll take a video of that. Started the video, he starts towards him, and Mr. Fox skitters off up the hillside, all in about a two second clip!!!

Geo Tag You're It

Just recently my younger son has discovered geocaching. I had heard of it years ago, and thought it sounded interesting, but never went any farther than that.

He found one fairly close to our house, and a few down in the flatlands. There were a couple over on the other side of the mountain, so last weekend we trekked over to see if we could find it.

There's a wildlands park over there, and that's where we went. Things I always saw in cartoons growing up, but had never seen in real life, hollow logs, a hollowed out tree, and a bee hive in a tree!!!

It's a pretty wild place, for being in the midst of the city. We'd never been in this area before.

Of course, we hit a couple pokestops and Pokemon gyms on the way, one of them having a raid.

Came across a rope swing along the way.

There was a lot to see out there!!!

This weekend we headed out to hit a couple of raids in Pokemon Go, as well as spinning some pokestops. We each had two Team Rocket battles, too. After the second raid, he saw that there was a Snorlax a ways over from where we were at, and he was off!!! I caught up a little after, and fed it a golden raspberry and used an ultra ball on it. It was considerably higher level than the one I have (which I'd caught in a battle encounter), and after it broke out of the second ball, it ran away!!!

But my son finally got one of his own!!!

Meet Virginia

This is most interesting. Around seven years ago, our last outdoor cat passed. In the last few weeks, another cat has shown up in our neighborhood, and, not having seen her in around seven years, she looks almost exactly the same!!! I suppose it's completely possible that this one of her descendants. My younger boy did the same move we'd done with the original, gave her some food. She's been back a few times. She's a little spooky, but kind of a people cat once you get up to her. Entirely possible that she's someone's pet, and thus far she's eluded the coyotes. The original we'd named Shenandoah, and for the last six months or so, the John Denver classic, "Country Road" has been on the boy's list, on account of Fallout 76. Since Shenandoah Valley is mentioned in the song, he thought the new one should have some name also from the song. I suggested "Ridge", short for Blue Ridge mountains, also unique and monosyllabic. That didn't stick. He dubbed her Virginia.

Breakfast is Served

I've been doing the Saturday shift at work for about 2 1/2 years now. It's not as easy as it used to be, weekends have gotten busier than they used to be, but it's still OK. Only thing is the shift starts almost 4 hours earlier than during the week, so, depending on the time of year it's either full dark or just getting light when we get there.

This is a little clip from my dash cam when I was pulling in this morning. On the left side, you'll see a coyote skulking off, but you probably can't make out that he's carrying a critter in his mouth!!! I caught it (my head apparently turns better than my cam) by eye and took it to be a rabbit. I've seen both rabbits and coyotes in the parking lot before, so I guess that's just what my mind filled in.

My co-worker in the white Benz had his phone in hand, and was able to get this picture!!! No, I'm pretty sure that's a cat. Poor kitty!!!

It's the circle of life...

Rite of Passage

Between childhood, boyhood, adolescence & manhood (maturity)

there should be sharp lines drawn w/

Tests, deaths, feats, rites

stories, songs, & judgments

From "Wilderness"

Jim Morrison

Here's something of a rite of passage!!! I did it as a teen, as did my friends, and now both of my sons have, too. When you go to the junkyard, you are supposed to be at least 16 years old to get in. We've all now violated this rule. I suppose that if you are going to violate an age ordinance, this is about as benign as you can get!!!

I don't know if I've ever explained how Scruffy got her name, but the driver's side rear quarter was slightly cracked when we got it, but not enough to worry about. A year or so later, I managed to take out a pillar in a parking garage with the two doors (and rear view mirror) on that same side, as well as further fracturing the quarter panel. Made a junkyard run & picked up all three of these around a year and a half back on one of the junkyard half price days. Not long after, some idiot changed lanes into the front fender, also on that side, while my wife was driving, and she has failed at getting any of the insurance information, so on yet another sale day, I picked up one of those. There's always plenty of Saturns, but there is a difference between the 1996-1999 bodies and the 2000-2002, even though they are very nearly the same. I'd gone through and found the best looking one, and just as I started pulling it, checked the style. Early. Whew, glad I checked that!!! Back around again, and found a late model in good shape. Last weekend, I pulled all the parts out to clean, sand and primer them, and discovered the doors and quarter panel were all early style!!! This also worked out, as last weekend for the Fourth of July weekend, the junkyard was doing a sale weekend again. I notice they have gone from half off days to 40% off days. So began the rite of passage!!! It's something he's been wanting to do, so before we visited my parent's house on the 4th, we went. Instead of getting all new door and the somewhat rare wagon quarter panel, I just got an early model fender to go with what I have. Once I've got it all together, if you are Saturn nerd enough to tell the years apart, you won't be able to tell what you're looking at if you notice the difference between the sides!!!

One of the things that always seem to happen is the removal of several emblems. Hehe, sexus!!!

He liked the aesthetic of the place, thinking it looks a bit post-apocalyptic and commented that it smelled like the paintball arena. I'm glad he enjoyed the trip!!!

Lilly's Layin' Eggs

Welcome to the second installment of Pictures & Stuff from our vacation to Florida!!! In today's installment, I'm sharing some pictures of one of the things that I think was the best part of our trip, our visit to Gator Park!!!








When I was 14 years old, my family had visited Florida for a cruise, as well as visits to Disney World & the newly opened Epcot Center. We drove from Florida to Orlando that time (which I'm sure affected my decision to fly instead, but given the expense and time wasted in the airport, not sure I'd do it again that way), and on the way stopped at an airboat ride place. It was fun enough, but I don't recall having seen that much wildlife.



I wanted to bring the family to the Everglades for an airboat ride, and this looked like a pretty decent place. Ended up getting WAY more than I'd bargained for this time!!!



To start with, they had an animal show with birds, skunks, alligators, and even a lemur (not native to the Everglades, in case you didn't know). I've got some video that I may edit & post of that, the guy has a most unique voice. Afterwards, they had a real live alligator you could hold, which all but the youngest did for the photo op.



On to the airboat ride!!! This was the epic part of this event!!! Our boat captain would hold out bits of bread for specific birds at different points of the ride, and they would either land on him, hover by his hand or pick it out of the air as he would toss it to them.



Got out a good distance, and he cranked up the speed and hot dogged about the swamp, over razor grass and shallow waters.



Happened upon a great egret, which I'd spotted on our first pass around a little island, and he came back & tried to get close. He didn't get that close. I managed a decent picture anyway.



My oldest ran the video camera the whole time. We've got around 45 minutes of that.



Oh, and did we see any gators??? Oh yea!!! Like the birds, there were specific areas that the guide knew that certain ones would be at, and he'd call 'em out by name!!! The trick to calling alligators, he says, is to sound like a sick pirate (I'll likely edit some of that portion of video down to share how that would sound) and the gator would swim right out. I think around half a dozen we saw. There are three whose names I remember. Tripod (lost one of his arms in a territory dispute with a bigger gator) and Smiley (who'll swim right up to the boat with his jaws open) and Lilly.



Never did see Lilly, however. Lilly's layin' eggs.

Bonus Weekend

Here's something cool Runescape did, to my knowledge for the first time this weekend. Instead of the normal experience earning levels, they were doing a bonus weekend.



It started at 2.7x the normal rate, and diminishes on a curve for the next 10 hours. Of that, I only logged 7:41 hours, but that's OK.



I primarily worked on skills that I usually don't train, or don't train much. I upped my construction skill from my previous 28 all the way to 31. Woop. Summoning I took from probably around 22 or so (I didn't get a baseline before I started in) up to a respectable 33.



The one I really worked on though, was the hunter skill. It was probably around 31 or so to start with, and it's now all the way to 46!!! Nice gain!!! Speaking of gain, when I first started doing screen prints to use on tonight's post, I had 5937xp gained. I'm not sure if that was just for this session, or for the whole weekend, but by the last one (1 hour 11 minutes later) I was all the way up to 13298xp!!! Again, nice gain!!!

I also leveled my fire making and herblore skills a bit. All in all, a great promotion!!!