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As I lay in bed listening to the thunder last night, I was wondering how long it would be before we were on fire this year? Some of the strikes were pretty close, and the leading edge was dry and dusty wind, but the vegetation is still too green for a significant fire to get going this early. Even the cheat grass is still too green.
To quote Monty Python: And now for something completely different
You ever had one of those "nuclear" sneezes?
You know, the ones where it lifts you 1-2 feet up into to the air, and throws you back some 3-4 feet?
I really, really love my full-face helmet while skydiving....but..... Lord, what a mess......
Full face? Did everything become blurry for the bulk of the descent?
Luckily it was to the end of the dive, and i deployed some 10 seconds later.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker;[URL="tel:5608261"
still a mess….
Was it a case of, "well, I can't see anything, might as well deploy."
This is a really gross conversation.
That makes it pretty much on topic for this thread.
Yeah, pretty much.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker;[URL="tel:5608366"
i did receive the laughs and „ooohhh….gross“ though, when i went to the restroom to wash the visor
I don't go out to restaurants much. Pandemic years and age I suppose.
Son and daughter in law dropped the baby with my ex and picked me up for dinner. They are into "keto" now and thought I might like to treat them to a new place that opened here a few months ago.
The menu was weird, I had the "special." That turned out to be roast light and dark turkey meat, mashed cauliflower with some clear and greasy highly sage-spiced "gravy," some steamed kohlrabi and zucchini, and a very weird dessert. That was finely cubed Gouda cheese mixed with muddled raspberries, a dollop of artificially sweetened cream cheese and gelatin whip, sprig of mint leaf on top.
Wasn't cheap. I just had a water but for 3 people I put out about $130 with tip.
Is that what "keto" is like? Are prices really this high out there? I can't imagine people eat that way very often. No wonder people feel broke.
I'd say that's what fad is like. If you're buying in, you're paying for the experience.
I have to admit that at least it was edible. Not like the weird "tofu dog" I had a few years ago.
lolQuote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
Unfortunately $130 for three at a nice place in CA isn't unusual. Not a real nice place, just a nice place. Kids, they never stop costing you money. lol
It's sort of shocking to look around. So many places we used to go when the kids were small are now long gone. The pandemic ended many, but others were lost to fires or urban renewal projects. Places that were once small village before being overtaken by city expansion have had their entire downtowns obliterated and replaced by weird stuff like 4 story warehouses for the elderly.
I went to a place out in the San Juan Islands. It was the best food I've ever had, to be sure, but I got a piece of meat smaller than my fist, with a bone in it, a few slices of mushroom and about a spoonful of mashed potatoes. Each of those items was the best I've ever had of that item, but I realized I probably could have eaten the entire menu in a single sitting, including all the appetizers. I forget what the cost was, but I think it was around $70, or so, for one person, not counting the appetizer that I got (which was nine scallops). I didn't have any of the wine, but the first bottle was perhaps $600, and the second about half that.
The food was extraordinary. The price tag was, too.
Also, those nine scallops were an appetizer for two. That was a table full of programmers and mathematicians. Nobody commented on an odd number being an appetizer for two.
Nine scallops seems like a lot, if they were the large sea scallops. But if they were bay scallops, that's completely different.
There's no way I could pick the best food I ever ate. I couldn't even say what was the best steak, fish, chicken, casserole ..... I ever ate. It really depends what I'm in the mood for. I cook the same thing various ways depending on what I'm craving at the time.
I love eating, it's one of life's great pleasures. But I'm not a foodie. I usually keep it pretty basic.
Kind of an intermediate size, if I remember.
Interesting and funny video I think only programmers could appreciate:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoQLoKHhohg
Yeah, that's a fun video. Many of the clips used were from movies, but at 1:38, there's a very brief clip that appears to be Hans Niemann. That was a fun choice, if true.
Had another small series of shocks today.
Needed to get a vision test and new glasses, but last the two offices I've gone to are closed and gone.
Inside the nearby mall LensCrafters' still exists. Went to the mall, and wow is that place weird now. What used to be an entrance takes you into some sort of "juice and booze bar" in the darkness with black lights opening onto a strange electric go-cart course and padded cells for faux combat. When I got through and turned around a ratty paper banner proclaimed "High Caliber: West Coast Rallies & Snacks."
In the LensCrafters' itself everything looked run down. Staff looked pretty... minimum wage Millennial and acted very clueless, admitting they haven't been thee long. While the equipment is still there to grind and prepare lenses "in an hour" nobody is left to run it so they send out to get it done in a week or two.
At least the Eye Doc is hanging on. I think he was glad to have a customer with insurance and cash good enough for a full set of testing. He even threw in retina photos for free to forward to my Primary physician.
People seem dumber and the economy seems to have "rougher edges" every day.
Sort of surprised at what people have forgotten.
Young couple moved into the neighborhood a few months back. He was complaining about the cost of clothes. Turns out they've been ditching stuff that doesn't come clean in the wash. Mainly collar and armpit stains.
Showed them the results of treatments based on baking soda and dish soap scrubbed in with a nail brush or old toothbrush, rinsing and wringing out then soaking the stains lightly with 3% hydrogen peroxide followed by air drying in full sunlight.
They came by today to express their appreciation. They both "rescued" a lot of light colored blouses, polo shirts, even tees. He's out there putting in a permanent back yard clothesline now, having returned the folding rack I had lent them.
If I did that, the clothes would end up muddy. Too much dust out here.
It helps that we've had a respite here recently from both dirt and smoke in the air.
What got me was that they thought throwing clothes in the trash regularly was just a normal thing. What's a basic polo shirt go for now? $20 at least I'd think for even a lightweight cotton/poly blend.
It's funny how many words and phrases, admittedly mostly idiom, younger people don't seem to understand or even be aware of. Of course "younger" can be a pretty relative thing too.
I was talking with my son, his wife, and a couple they know. All of them are 36 to 39 years old. The topic was emergency preparedness, and I had to keep guiding it back toward practical things like weather emergencies and power outages rather than more fanciful SHTF which I suppose are more fun (?) to talk about.
At some point I said something like "Well when the balloon goes up you'll want to know where your keys are" and 3 of the 4 started side-eyeing and giggling. They had never heard this before.
I thought that idiom was pretty common currency, but perhaps that isn't the case any longer.
Considering, the "root" of "when the ballon goes up" is from World War 1........ :-)Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
Could use a weather balloon, myself. I'm taking a day off on my bike ride to sit out a rainy day. There's a record cold low coming through, with hours of rain, at least where I am. The snow level is supposed to be down to 5000 feet, and my plan had been to camp at 5600 this evening. I think waiting one day wouldn't be too bad.
Oh yeah, I'm on a five week long bike ride that is all on back roads, rail-trails, and the like. I spent most of yesterday on railroad ballast, scraped down to dirt...somewhat. It was pretty scenic, but by the end of it, my arms and shoulders were tired from the constant shaking. Only got to see one snake, too, which was a bit disappointing.
I've always lived in the Great Lakes region, where "mountains" exist but are nothing like "real mountains" in height. Once when I was young I went to San Diego on business, and on a day off there paid a visit to Mt. Palomar Observatory. I'd been into a lot of the usual stuff as a kid: chemistry, mathematical recreation, dinosaurs, electronics and radio, and astronomy. By the 4th grade I'd pretty much been through a good fraction of the school library books in the 500s (Dewy Decimal). Computers were barely known to Average Joes aside from stuff in movies.
No grizzlies, but I did see a mountain lion while ascending. At my destination though the trail was littered with rattlesnake warning signs ("Stay on the path!").
I'm not sure why I hadn't expected that. I suppose I figured there was an elevation where snakes and such ran out. I guess that's a lot higher up than the 6000 feet or so where I was.
You saw a mountain lion? I've been out in the woods my entire life. I've seen one Florida panther (endangered, but still a mountain lion) and three others, which was a mother and two second year cubs (almost as big as the mother) in my entire life. You were doggone lucky to see that.
As for the snakes, when you get that far south, snakes can be found at remarkably high elevations.
What the heck is mathematical recreation?
When i was in grade school we's start math class by standing in a circle. The teacher would call out a number and toss us a ball. We'd have to say the square of that number and toss the ball back. Is that mathematical recreation?
I'm old but have never heard that.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
Surely you've heard of Martin Gardner, right?Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
I was creeping up the mountain, driving slowly to avoid overheating the rented car and I'd entered the cloud layer on my way up. It ambled across the road in front of me, maybe 30 feet ahead.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Having no real clue I just rolled up my window and slowed a bit more until I get past that section of road.
It was about the size of a large dog, with a long tail that was clearly catlike with a slightly upturned blunt end.
Shaggy,
What rail trail were you on? I hope you are on a full suspension bike. Washboards can be tiring and make you sore, whether on roads or rail trails.
Oh yeah. I hadn't seen it that way, but I do see how that would be mathematical recreation.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
Yeah, that tail is distinctive. That was a very fortunate sighting. I have always heard that a whole lot more mountain lions see you than you see. They generally just watch people walk by. We aren't prey to them, so we're a threat. That isn't the case everywhere, and they will attack people running or biking, but generally not walking.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
I have heard that, at one point in the past, mountain lions were about the most widespread predator in the US. They were found in pretty nearly every state, though they were called different things in different places. Mountain lions out west, panthers in Florida and Texas, Catamounts in Vermont, and HOLY @#%@#%!!! when encountered suddenly.
It was a good sighting.
I'm on the Weiser River Trail, and have a few miles left before moving to a Forest Service road over to Donelly and McCall. The bike is a hard tail, not full suspension. Full suspension bikes don't seem like they can take a back rack very easily, if at all, and you lose a bit of energy with every stroke, which adds up on long flat stretches.Quote:
Originally Posted by jdc2000
You can get full suspension bikes with lockouts. That can help with energy loss. For a back rack, I have one that mounts to the seat post. However, that might not be capable of carrying the load that you are likely hauling. I bought my full suspension bike to use as a race bike, so I could run over things that I would have had to go around on my first mountain bike.
I have not yet ridden the Weiser River trail, but it is on my list of trails to ride. I think that there is at least on other trail on the west side of the state that I should be thinking about riding as well. It was on an Outdoor Idaho segment at one time.
I don't know of another one on the west side of the state. The Weiser is a great trail, especially if you are going downhill. I could totally tell the difference between flat stetches and uphill through the canyon. I biked the upper end of the trail (Tamarack down to Fruitvale) twice. That part is nice any time of year, but the open area probably gets pretty brutal in the summer. I guess I'll find out, though, as I'll be going back down it in a few weeks..
All the other rail trails I know about in Idaho are up north. The Trail of the Couer d'Alenes is terrific, but I wouldn't call it west.
Locally I've always heard "cougar" except for some older folks who said "catamount" but then we had a lot of in-migration from New England when the Northwest Territory was opened.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
While extremely rare here, DNR-confirmed Michigan sitings aren't unheard of. That's far more often in the U.P. than down here "under" The Bridge.
We have three high-traffic international bridges, but everyone here knows what you mean when you say The Bridge even if they've never seen it themselves.
https://www.mackinacbridge.org/history/the-mighty-mac/
I'm almost certain that my Mother never saw it. Looking back, there are many little things like that I wish I'd shared with her before she passed. She kept a souvenir knick knack for decades that my Grandmother bought for her at the original opening celebration. What was a 6 hour drive in 1957 takes a mere 3 1/2 hours now with highway improvements.
I've been with so many people who've said, "look, there's a bobcat!" When I looked, it was gone, so they'd add, "it just left." To date, I've never seen a bobcat in the wild. In fact, I think I've mentioned that in Post Race, before.
Animals are funny that way. Seeing a mountain lion is pretty cool. Seeing one too close...tends to make a story.
Made a grocery run. Prices keep inching and jumping up and as usual random shelves are bare or selection is limited.
But I'm not in any panic. I do think part of it is binge-buying driven by rumors as much as true supply problems.
Groceries have gone nuts. I've seen a 25-50% rise in several of my normal purchases. Don't see why. Seems like price gouging in the disguise of "COVID has caused this".
Noticed a few things not around but not much.
There have been some unusual patterns post-pandemic. There was an odd rash of chicken processing plant fires for example. Perhaps mere coincidence, but similar patterns have popped up for other foods, paper products, etc.
Letting that slide, future supply problems seem likely due to unusual weather patterns and fertilizer sourcing hampered by geopolitical events and trends. Not to mention interruptions and changes in our degrading freight carrying infrastructure.
We had some interesting weather yesterday.
It has been pretty dry for several weeks now, but we got some light rain while I was driving to the cardiologist yesterday. Not a lot of it, but what we got was very clean compared to earlier in the year. It almost had the character of car wash softened water. The dust slid right away, and after drying there was no spotting. Earlier we were getting everything from dirt spots to mineral/salts spots.
This came in from eastward this time, so it probably didn't have the tilled-up dust we get from the west. Or even the smoke from Canada, since that system had come in from below that activity.
New pattern coming in from the west, as more typical rains do. We expect more sludge.
My trip might be derailed. I'm getting an MRI on Monday (hopefully) to see whether I've done something serious to my right Achilles tendon. Kind of a bummer.
Sorry to hear that. Did you wreck or just over stress it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
I think it was the 11 hour day that ended with a roughly 4000 foot vertical climb in hot weather. I was so tired by the time I got to sleep the exhaustion seeped into my dreams. A dream would start, then there would be some message about "this dream is still under construction" and I'd go on to some other dream. It was really weird.
Soon AI will have our dreams for us.
They might already. I was playing around with an AI concept a couple decades ago that was based on using dreams to train the AI. That was an evolutionary engine approach, so the dreams would allow for a diversity of AI brains to all work on the same artificial problem. The nice thing about the dreams was that it was possible to create automated 'problems' for the brains to solve, and each would be able to do as it would. The key was being able to automate the evaluation of success/failure in the dream.
Our dreams seem to serve the purpose of reinforcing learning, as well, so perhaps there's something there.
Rains came though, we got a good soak. Looks like we won't be dry for a while now with scattered rain here and there over the next 10 days. Not that really clean rain this time though.
For now we're back in the haze from Quebec fires again, probably the worst we've seen so far. Not just a hazy sky, but smoke in the air you can clearly see looking across the road. Much of the time you can smell it too.
We don't have a lot of big fires over broad areas. I'm not sure we ever had smoke like this since maybe the days when people all burned leaves in the fall.
I remember a couple of years ago when the fires were everywhere here in CA. The sky was just brown for days. Could see long distances.
This June has been great, mild 75-85 just about all month. Usually we have some 95 days, maybe even a 100. But that's changing, suppose to be 107 Saturday.
Well, my ride is done, but I didn't tear my Achilles. I was told I probably would if I kept going, but considering how swollen my ankle currently is, I was already on to plan B...or C, or whatever I'm down to. Bummer, but at least I won't need surgery and as long as I rest it for a month, or so, I should be good to go.
Glad it's not torn. These adventures of yours seem to be pretty hard on your body. If I remember right, last year you ended up with bad sores on your feet. Later in life these things seem to come back to haunt you. I've damaged my shoulder so many times that now I can't get it to heal. Been getting cortisone shots the last few years, now they don't even help. Things definitely take longer to heal the older you get.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Maybe you could finish your vacation working on your tan on a nice beach. lol
Skin damage is also cumulative. Sometimes everything seems to go well until some seemingly unrelated condition arises. That can trigger fragile skin that appears just fine... into anything from "crepe skin" to itchy rashes that are hard to control to skin cancer.
A guy I used to work with was fine until around age 48 to 50 an itchy rash arose. His doctor put him on a course of steroids that masked it somewhat, but then it came back with a vengeance. He ended up getting lots of tests with a dermatologist and they finally figured out that it was many years of wind and sun exposure from sailing, the rash triggered when he changed the multivitamin he was taking to one with less intense doses of vitamin A. From the time it cropped up to finally correcting it took around 6 months altogether. I remember he always seemed to be slathering a prescription Retinol cream on in the men's room to keep it in abeyance. He had a sort of "sponge on a stick" he used to get his back.
I think a bunch of us got hired in around the same time in our 20s. By the time we'd all reached 55 or so it seemed like everyone had something to deal with, even if it was just a second pair of glasses for using screens and reading. Rumor was that for the women it tended to be things like bladder control or emotion and mood management meds. Before I retired it seemed like the new Employee Service Program counselors were always buzzing around or holding seminars.
The damage is already accumulating. Both knees have some issues, though they are far from needing any work done. My right shoulder is a bit of a mess. Both feet are a mix of hypersensitive and numb. It's like I can feel some things too acutely, and other things not at all.
And yet you can't wait to go on another trek. lolQuote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Don't get me wrong, I completely understand. My life is full of such choices. Humans are funny creatures.
But honestly, I can't decide if I regret doing the things that caused the damage I'm dealing with now. Strange.
Shaggy,
For the feet, if your are riding the bike but not using cycling shoes, you definitely need some. They have a stiffener in the forefoot that distributes the force on the foot. I assume that you already have decent hiking footgear.
Canadian forest fires are still raging, and we've been getting quite a dose of smoke. So bad it gets swept as far as the Carolinas, and now I hear it has reached Spain.
This must be why I'm seeing people walking the neighborhood in masks again. I hear they are cheap now though, even the one-time-use N95 masks can be a cheap option. They got overproduced and are now warehoused in massive numbers.
I made the mistake of hanging a knit shirt in the sun yesterday, not taking my advice about the smoke that I gave my neighbors.
When I brought it in at dusk ahead of the rain (that we got little of here) it smelled a little funky. Today it smells rank, like the weird smells in a department store shoes aisle or something.
Doesn't appear we'll be clearing until 7PM to 7AM tomorrow. Might be leaving that shirt out overnight!
https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/
lolQuote:
I made the mistake of hanging a knit shirt in the sun yesterday, not taking my advice about the smoke that I gave my neighbors.
Sounds like something I'd do. I'm great at giving advice, not so good at following my advice.
You should hang some gouda out in the shirt.