Because It's There

Over the weekend we celebrated my dad's 70th birthday. For a momentous occasion, he had something a bit unusual in mind.



He wanted to backpack into an area he'd been to around 20 years ago, Fish Fork on the back side of Mount Baldy. It's a bit more than five miles, but gains & loses a lot of altitude on the way.



Unfortunately, that area is currently closed down. As an alternate, we selected the hike into Upper Bear. It's about the same distance and similar altitude gain & loss. I think this is my 5th time hiking back there, although it's probably been around 20 years since I've been to there, too!!! Once you get off the highway, there's really nothing developed except the trail (to varying degrees) and mile markers, so you have to take anything that you want to have with you.



He'd been training, hiking up and down a fairly steep hill in his neighborhood. I thought he'd be in the best shape for it of the three of us (myself & my oldest).



I'd forgotten how steeply it climbs at the start!!! In the first 1/3 mile or so, he was considering wrapping it up. I wasn't doing a lot better, but I was going to stick it out. We all continued on, though, and made it to Smith Saddle, the 3 mile mark, at the juncture between two peaks.



At that point, it was fairly late in the afternoon, and we decided to camp out right there with the plan of continuing on the next day. I'd remembered several large boulders in that area good for resting on, but none are there now.



The next morning we decided to leave our tent set up and our full frame packs and take my son's two day packs and do a day trip down to the actual creek. A short ways in, though, the trail was very loose and eroded, with a nasty looking slide down from there. My dad considered briefly, and decided to turn back. Not worried so much about crossing it going in as heading back with wobbly legs from the climb up.



My boy and I continued on, and there were a couple more slidy spots, then several small stream crossings, and we made it there in fairly short order. After a couple hours we headed back, which took considerably longer. Around 1000 feet of elevation change!!!

I took along my GPS to see what the distance traveled and altitude changes were, as well as to get the coordinates of the various points. The only one that seems to show properly on maps is the start, n34°17.243' w117°50.574'. If you check out the Google map of it on the satellite view zoomed in, you can see the parking area and the trail.



While we were camped, only saw three other people hiked in, a couple who were leaving when we arrived (thanks for taking the first picture!) and a guy by himself the next morning who went up to one of the peaks. No one at all while we were headed down to the creek.

I'd taken my old camera along, and got several good pictures, not all of which seem to want to post here currently. Blogger does seem to have picked the good ones to keep, though. On the way down to the creek there were some areas with many butterflies. Actually got a picture of a couple of them mating, and a short video of the same that I may post on YouTube.



The tent we had seemed too short to stretch out all the way in, and there were many flies and bitey insects, and it got quite cool at night. We all had a great time!!!

Orbs

While I was out walking & photographing last weekend







I saw three different orbs.



Here they are, for your perusal.

Everybody's Heard...

About the bird!!!



Went for a walk on Saturday around the neighborhood, with my camera. I got a few decent shots, but these were the ones that made it all worth it!!!

I spotted the hummingbird up on a wire, and it took off then returned to wire. Another one joined him briefly, so I'm guessing it's the season.



I had to pull the zoom out when it took off, and it wasn't too easy to get it lined up and zoomed back in again, but I did it!!! The pictures have been cropped down to just the bird.

Now You're Baking With Portals

Last weekend was the observance of my firstborn's Birthday. He didn't have any specific idea what he wanted for his cake, but on his wish list was the Portal 2 video game. Oh, and he wanted two cakes.



This is what I came up with.

In case you're not familiar, that's Long Cat going through a portal!!!



The party was pretty low key. The boy & his friends mostly played video games & watched videos (a little clip of them singing along to one is here, the first vid from my new camera I've posted) The part I found most amusing was when they got on a kick where they were watching "My Little Pony" videos!!! That just says Happy Birthday!!!

More Fun with Labels

Since the last time I made mention of killing labels, I haven't made a single ball of bar codes since!!! The next thing I made was a pyramid. It came out kind of irregular, not a single side the same as the other. It was too strange, so I didn't do any pictures of it. The next time, I started out trying to make a cylinder. It was coming out very oval. I joked that I could go to the bank and get a $100 and wrap it around the outside. At any rate, I wasn't terribly pleased with the way it was coming out.

Then I remembered something my younger boy had made mention of a few weeks before. He'd been saying he would like a sword made of wood to play medieval hero or something. Hmmm, could this be done??? Why not??? I started adding length to it, folding the labels around the edges much like the artisans of old crafting Samurai swords. It gained length, and I got several admiring comments from my co-workers.



Brought it home and gave it to the boy. He was impressed.

Oh, and that shirt he's wearing is another one I got him from Woot! I think he'd wear it every day if he had his way!!! Check out here for the fairly amusing write up on the shirt!!!

Just today I finished the latest creation. Came out pretty nice, perhaps it will make an appearance here later!!!

Chicken Boy!!!

Haha, I was looking on Google Maps at a place near my home, and happened on Chicken Boy again!!!



Not as good a shot as the one I got, but it's always good to see him!!! Every time we drive by him, we shout out his name!!!

Great Expectations

Lyrics | Great Expectations lyrics

Apropos of nothing, just really like the song...

Momentous Update II

A month or so ago our longtime animal companion went missing. We all wondered what happened to her. She had been getting girthy around the sides, actually looking quite a bit like she had kittens in there. After her disappearance I wondered if she'd hatched 'em, or if she might have had some sort of blockage. A week or so later I found her remains, in surprisingly advanced decomposition.

My younger boy wanted to get another cat from the pound, but he's also often expressed interest in getting a dog. I liked the idea, and was going to look into putting up a fence around our yard to accommodate a dog.

However, when I got home Monday, there was a surprise!!! Someone at my wife's work had a teenage cat, and just had a baby and didn't want to have the two together (guess they were afraid of the cat sucking the baby's breath out...), so they'd brought him to work. My wife took that action!!!



He's the first tom cat we've ever had, and he's quite a character!!! As you can see, he's mostly black, but he's got a white milk mustache!!! White whiskers & eyebrows, too. Nice, long tail on him, usually straight up with the tip flopping over to the side. He's characteristically curious, and still has the playfulness of a kitten. He's plenty sociable, and enjoys curling up in the bathroom sink, or even taking a drink from it, if you'll turn it on for him.



He's got a nice, noisy purr, which he always seems to do when we're getting up in the morning. Everyone really likes him, and he seems to be fitting in quite nicely!!!

Bonus Weekend 3

Over the weekend Runescape had another Bonus Experience weekend. Of course, it was on a weekend that I was quite busy working on Janice!!!



I did manage to log more than six and a half hours, though, and it was profitable. The big one I trained was construction, one of the most expensive skills to train. I led up to the weekend by cutting willow logs and having them made into planks. As soon as the weekend started, I used them up for three levels advancement!!!



I also worked on my slayer assignment, which I leveled on, and just as I was getting ready to leave the area, finished off my last fire giant to complete that assignment!!!

I ran several loads of rune essence to the nature altar until I leveled my runecrafting, and also got a pair of the strange rocks for the Shattered Heart distraction & diversion for that skill.

Finished off the weekend by doing some hunter training, leveling that skill and obtaining the strange rocks for that skill also. As of this evening, all I'm missing for the complete set is one more for cooking.

CupDate: The Truth is Out There

And the truth is this: It's been a long, long time since I've had a chance to do any cup artwork!!! Work has been busy, but last week it seemed like there were a lot less lines per person, even though we were still doing a lot of business. Anyway, I finally had a chance to do some!!!



If you know at all, you will recognize this as a rendition of the poster Fox Mulder had (in his office or room??? Can't remember which) in the X-Files. Even people who aren't familiar with the show like the artwork.

Funny thing, when I googled "I want to believe" to see if I was getting the look right from memory, I clicked on the "shopping" link, to see what it'd have. I expected it to have the DVD of the second X-Files movie, which was called "X-Files: I want to Believe" in the first several slots, but instead most of it was for the actual poster!!! If I ever get the basement cleared out and make up a man cave down there, I'm totally getting that poster, as well as hanging up my wife's "Tombstone" poster.



A funny observation that I noticed when I was first penning this, and several others have noticed since: The saucer looks an awful lot like a sombrero!!! I joke to people who comment to that effect that after I drew the sombrero-saucer, I had to decide if I was going this way, or drawing the Tapitio man!!!



I spent entirely too much time photoshopping the saucer onto his head. Not so effective, actually. I notice that the actual sombrero I took out, the edges look a lot like tire treads!!!

Bonus Birthday

Today and one week ago today we've been celebrating my younger boys' birthday. Last weekend we had a party at my parents' house, with all the cousins, because they are going out of town afterwards.



I think the first cake I made for that event ranks as one of the best I've done!!! He wanted me to do the look of the Halo Reach logo, only replacing the words with "Nine Years".



It came out quite nice, I think, with the exception of the "E" on nine kinda looks a bit like an "O". Nino years???



For this weekend, we invited several of his friends from the neighborhood. Of course, I didn't want to do the same cake, so he said he wanted Super Sonic.



I think this one came out pretty nicely, too!!!

Defying Gravity

A few of the MANY action shots I took today, all the ones I found with their feet off the ground!!!















*With the exception of the one where I caught a ball in flight!!!

A Day in the Park

The weather here has been just phenomenal of late!!! I was thinking the other day that it would be a shame to spend the day inside or just doing things that needed doing like shopping and the like.



I looked up on Google maps to see if I could find a neat looking park to head out and have a little picnic at. I found a real nice one along the foothills, but upon arriving found out that reservations are required. No cost involved or anything, just a required reservation. Perhaps another day we'll return.



We drove down from there and located this large park with plenty of room.



Bonus, just the night before I received the replacement for the camera I'd bought for myself for Christmas. This one cost $13 more that the last kit I'd bought, but it has a 300mm zoom lens instead of the 200mm the previous came with. Brought it along to try it out. So far, the flash still works!!!



I can set it to run mode and whip off a series of pictures in rapid succession. With a couple of under 30 second videos set to the lowest setting and a bunch of those pictures you can quickly fill up a gig of memory!!!

Local Mounties made an appearance.



I found a set of velcro discs & ball set before we left. Makes playing catch considerably easier. We played for about ten minutes before the boys decided playing Tron Legacy with the discs would be more fun!!!



And, in case you wondered, this is how the moon looked today!!!

The Code Companion Cube

Bar codes. They're incredibly resilient. They can be torn in two, or faded to where you can hardly see them, or all dirty, and they are still scannible!!! One of the occasional duties that I end up doing at work is retiring (or as everyone calls it, killing) labels on the containers that get used up. The actual retiring is pretty easy, the time consuming part is peeling the label off afterward.



One of the guys started making his labels into a ball, kept working on it every time it was his turn. Got near to the size of a bowling ball. Said he was going to urethane it and drill it with finger holes when it got to the right size. I said he should get a chain and shackle it to his leg and go around dragging it behind him, see how long that lasts!!! Anyway, many others of us did the same, although none of us got to such a grand scale. I just did one day's worth that came out about the size of a tennis ball. Brought it home and called my younger boy. When he looked my way, I pegged him with it and shouted, "Bar code ball!!!" Well, he fell in love with it!!! He'd get upset when his brother would take it, took it to school, ect. The week before Sammy and I went to the hockey game, I made a puck of labels. I did a few days worth of labels, the last day being a couple days before Christmas, and when one of my friends was admiring it, I replied "Yeah, at least now my kid will have something to play with on Christmas morning!!!" I did it, too, wrapped it up in a box and gave it to my younger boy. My wife was manning my old point and shoot camera while I was shooting video with my SLR, and she got this picture a split second after he'd tossed it in the air and caught it.




So, a few weeks ago I'm killing labels again, and starting another ball. It was kind of lumpy, with a couple flat spots. One of the guys sees it and says, "Everyone does a ball, you ought to make a cube!!!" Challenge accepted. Could this be done??? The flat spots were already close to 90° , so I started on from there. I filled low spots as best I could, and would fold them along the middle and stick it to 2 sides. The corners were pretty soft to begin with, but eventually it came together. Not a perfect cube, but everyone who saw it was quite impressed. The last day I was working on it, this Wednesday, I took some blank labels and colored them red and cut them into hearts on my last break. When I wrapped up for the evening, I applied them to the sides for my own bar code companion cube!!!

It's now on display in the boys' room...

Trash Creek

My oldest walks the neighbor's dog. He enjoys the time with the dog, and he gets a little bit of money out of the deal.



He told me about this area he sometimes takes the dog walking, a place he has dubbed Trash Creek. I thought it was the area he described to me, but I'd never inspected it that closely. He told me of this one area that has a bunch of tires.



Before I sent my new camera back, I had him take me on a tour.



Turns out it was right where I'd thought it was.



And the tires??? I had pictured them just resting in the bottom, but as you can see, someone fashioned them into an effective retaining wall!!!



It was a good hike, and I got to get a few decent pictures as well!!!

Bad Scene at Eaton Canyon

Over the weekend we went for a hike up Eaton Canyon again. I realized as I was preparing for this post (and looking at the previous Eaton Canyon post) it's been almost four years since we were up there!!!



The weather has been excellent, and it looked like everyone else had the same idea!!! The place was PACKED!!! My dad had suggested bringing a change of shoes & socks, as it had been quite wet leading up to this. He'd anticipated the stream being swollen and that we'd end up getting our feet wet.



We probably could have avoided soaking our feet, but it was so crowded that it would take a while crossing on rocks & such, as you'd have to wait for people coming the other way. The stream was a bit fuller, but not that bad.



Of course, the water was freezing. I kept saying, "It's as if they made it from melting snow!!!" My younger boy would complain when he'd get his feet wet. His brother helped him across several times by carrying him on his back. We made it up to the falls and were resting, taking pictures, enjoying the view. The falls, I'd say are 30 to 40 feet, with the canyon walls rising 45 to 55 feet on either side, a classic box canyon.



Now for the bad scene: After we'd been there a few minutes, there's the noise of rocks coming loose and bouncing off the walls. Shortly after that, we hear screaming and crying. Looking over, there's a young teenage girl out cold. Quickly a crowd is gathered around her. I check to see if my phone gets any reception, but no. Fortunately, someone else has better reception that me and calls 9-11. We left pretty quick after that, as did a few other hikers with small kids. Guess no one wants their little kids to have to deal seeing a dead person, or whatever.



It was rather chaotic there, and we're not exactly sure what happened yet. The official story that the local paper had on their site was what we'd thought had happened: She (and other hikers) had climbed up over the falls, and she ended up falling down, and in the process knocking a few rocks loose that ended up raining down on her. We did see people up there, and it seems like an exceeding bad idea. The other stories we'd heard were that she had been down below, and someone above inadvertently loosened some rocks, which fell of her, or they were tossing rocks down from above. The latter two scenarios seem plausible, as I would have expected to hear some yelling if she'd fallen. Of course, one rap on the head right at the beginning of a fall and you'd be silent the rest of the way.

Anyway, there was just a little bit of blood. The paper's site said she was in serious condition. We got to see the rescue helicopter nice and low on the way out, and saw a couple police and half a dozen firemen, as well as a couple of park rangers heading in as we were on our way out. I looked up the hospital's phone number today and was considering calling and seeing if I could find out any more information, and even toying with the idea of paying a visit. Hope she's OK!!!