Hitchcock Woods
Colorful Walk
We went for a 4-1/2 mile walk in Hitchcock Woods this morning. And like last weekend at the Gap, the trees are past peak color, but there are plenty of spots that still look pretty darn good.
We drove the Sonata to DD for breakfast, the Miata to Firehouse Subs for lunch and if we had thought about before now, we could have ridden the tandem somewhere for dinner, instead we will dine at home.
The Purple Whales started the day predicted to get 125 points and were a 35 point favorite. During the first 3-1/2 hours of NFL football this afternoon the 125 fell 45 points to just 80. Fortunately for me, my opponent’s 90 fell to his now predicted 60.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1092
The Trail With No Name
The trail this photo was taken on goes from the Mange to Rabbit Valley crossing several major thoroughfares in the woods, including Pioneer Trail, yet it has no designation of its own. I like to call it the Clint Eastwood Trail.
We did in fact go find the new cache in Hitchcock Woods this morning, but we didn’t just park, walk to, find and leave of course, we took the long way. The temperature was in the middle 70s, but the humidity felt higher and by the time we were done with our 3-3/4 mile walk my T-shirt looked like I had been running from the “Others” along with Jack, Kate and Hurley. It was a very nice walk and I think we saw or heard more woodpeckers eating breakfast than we saw humans.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1056
Black Gum Pond
We went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods this morning. I can’t tell you how far we walked because for some reason the GPSr stopped creating a track part way. It was still on when we got home, but the green line only went about a 1/4 of what I perceived we walked. Weird.
After the walk I headed out back to finish pressure washing the deck. I had done about 1/3 of the job on Thursday night and I got another 1/3 done today before the brass nozzle in the end of the plastic wand was spat out and disappeared onto the lawn. I made a short search of where I thought it might have gone before giving up looking. The last time this thing broke it was at the handle and the local Big Box Home Improvement Warehouse had not repair parts, so had to buy the handle, hose and wand assembly online. I had little hope of getting the pressure washer fixed today, but I was pleasantly surprised that the first BBHIW I tried not only had a universal replacement wand for $20, had I needed it they also had hose & handle replacements on the shelf too.
Pigeon Trap Loop
For the first time in quite a while we took a walk in the woods and were not looking for an ammo can or 35mm film canister well integrated into the environment, we were just going for a walk. To beat the heat we stayed close to home and enjoyed Hitchcock Woods virtually to ourselves early this morning. I am not a botanist and I’ve never played one on TV (nor have I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express lately), so I have no idea what those two different yellow flowers are, but patches of them were blooming within feet of each other along the west side of the Ridge Mile Track.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1033
Aiken Horse Show
The above is not a photo run through some sort of plug in filter to make it look “artistic”, but an actual image captured by my digital camera (click on the image to see what it should look like.) It started today while we were at the 2011 Aiken Horse Show in Hitchcock Woods. All of a sudden the LCD on the back of the camera looked all purple and scrambly. I spun the mode dial and it cleared up. It happened again and I cleared the same way. It would crap out randomly, sometimes I’d get 10 pictures and others only a couple. After awhile nothing would get it out of “Purple Expressionist” mode, even resetting the camera to its default state. Do you think I need a new camera? I do.
So I did some shopping this evening and ended up buying another Panasonic. The recently deceased TZ3 was purchased in August of 2007 and if I can interpret the file numbering system it took 5,946 images. The new camera is a model ZS5 that is 12 megapixels instead of 7 and has a 12x zoom instead of 10 with a slightly wider angle setting of 25mm instead of 28. It has a panorama assist mode and those manual exposure controls I wanted back in 2007, but didn’t get. At 7.3oz it is 2oz. lighter and is almost exactly the same overall size. The LCD viewfinder is a bit smaller at 2.7 inches instead of 3, but that should help increase battery life. (I wonder if they use the same one?) It is black in color instead of blue, $100 cheaper and should be here Wednesday.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 984