Who am I?

I have to say, I'm a man who has strong convictions, but not a whole lot of follow through.  I've made resolutions in the past, especially with regard to blogging, but usually have fallen through.

Just last year, I participated in P.J.'s 20 days of Chill Writing blog challenge and swore I was going to do better with my blogging.  I posted 23 blog posts in January of last year, but only 34 overall.  Needless to say, January was the high water mark of my blogging last year.  So I'm not going to make any promises this year.  All I know is I had a lot of fun with this writing challenge last year, so I'm going to participate in it again this year.  

Today's prompt is "Who am I?"  

I'm a teacher.  I've taught in the same school for 32 years, plus one additional year at another school.  Interestingly, I've taught at my school longer than four other teachers at the school have been alive.

I'm a husband.  I've been married for 27 and a half years.  As in every marriage, it's not perfect, but I know for sure I got the better end of that deal.  Why my wife would want to put up with some of my antics and shenanigans for the past 27+ years is beyond me, but I'm glad that she has.

I'm a father.  I have three children, all beyond their teenage years.  My daughter, my oldest, is a teacher up north.  She is a fifth generation teacher in my family.  My son, my middle child, is in between jobs right now, but just moved back down here to Southern California.  I hope that means I'll bee able to see more of him in the coming year.  My younger son is still at home with us.  He's attending community college and looks like he's going to major in Psychology once he gets to a four year institution.  We will be making the rounds to different colleges this spring.

I'm an outdoorsman.  I enjoy being in the outdoors.  If it's hiking, or camping, or geocaching, I'm probably doing it and doing it for much of my off time when I'm not working.

I'm a photographer.  Believe it or not, my parents bought me my first real camera when I was in 3rd grade.  I wish I still had that old camera that took roll film, but somewhere when I graduated to better cameras, that one went by the wayside.  I still enjoy taking photos and you'll see many of them in this blog and on other sites as well.

Day one done.  I'm looking forward to the next day of this challenge.

Hey Butthead

Today's prompt for blogging today was: "Take a quote from your favorite movie — there’s the title of your post. Now, write!" After looking at some of the photos I took on Saturday, this particular quote from the movie Back to the Future, stood out above all the others in that movie.

Unfortunately, the desert has become for many people a dumping ground, a place to throw their unwanted crap so they can avoid paying a fee to legally dump it in a landfill.  There are few times when I'm hiking and geocaching out in the desert when I can walk more than a tenth of a mile and not see some kind of refuse strewn out there.  

Granted, there was nothing that could be done for this one as this was a permanent structure, but if you could have seen the inside.  This particular house will not surprise me in the least if sometime in the future it becomes part of an arsonist's ritual.  Looking through this window, there was probably close to a foot of debris inside.  I went around to the right of this shot and looked in another window and there was even more stuff in there, perfect kindling.

And if it were to happen, the house would go up and not much else.  But on my hike Saturday, I also passed several other abandoned houses, plus a jacuzzi.  Broken, with the insulation hanging out, someone didn't want it anymore, so instead of taking it to a landfill where it could have been disposed of properly, the owner decided to take it out and dump it in the desert.

And it goes on and on.  I saw at least four chairs, two mattresses and one couch out there as well.  It's interesting in a morbid sort of way too as things tend to clump together, as if they migrate to like minded junk.  The chairs were all in one spot, the television and computer monitors were in a different spot out there.  Oh, and let's not forget the entire load of about 25 or 30 used diapers I came upon.

And unfortunately, the title character of this blog piece just won't get it.

Total Random stuff

I have been challenged by my blogger friend P.J. to a post of randomness.  11 random thoughts about me, 11 questions from P.J.  Then I'm supposed to challenge 11 other bloggers to do the same thing.  That's the tough part, which won't get done, and you'll see why in the randomness below.  I hope not to repeat any randomness that P.J. might have already stated, but that's the randomness I guess.

So here goes.

1.  There are 58 National Parks in the United States.  I have been to 24 of them.  I will not list them all here as that would be tedious. At one time I had a goal of seeing them all.  Whether that will happen all depends now upon how healthy I can stay over the next 20 to 30 years.

2.  I think most people who read this blog don't realize that I am happily married.  I post a lot of photos of my kids, but very few of my wife.  I've been married for 26 years and they have been the most fulfilling years of my life.  I would not be the person I am with her.  Therefore, every photo in this blog will feature her.

3.   I have had two concussions that I know of, but it could be more.  Perhaps the dain bramage associated with concussions has knocked that out of my memory.  First one was when I was 8 or so and I got run over by a neighbor while we were playing kickball in the street.  I was knocked unconscious and lay there for a long time.  I have no recollection of this incident outside of what my parents have told me about it.  The second time was between 8th and 9th grade in a bicycle incident.  Not saying I wouldn't have gotten a concussion had I been wearing a helmet, but I wish they had been mandatory back then, especially with all the evidence coming out recently over head injuries in sports.

4.  I have broken my right pinkie finger twice and my left arm once, all between February 1972 and July 1972.  Let's just say that the last part of my 8th grade year, I was always splinted up in some way.  I broke and dislocated my pinkie playing basketball.  Three days after the doctor took the splint off of my finger, I bumped into a friend of mine and broke the finger again in a different place.  That splint lasted until the end of the school year.  My left arm was broken in the above mentioned bicycle accident.  As an aside, I am still very good friends with the girl who I bumped into when I rebroke my finger.  She doesn't know about the incident, unless she figures it out by reading this.  Also, when I hold my palm up on my right hand, my right pinkie doesn't meet with the other fingers.  These are the only bones I've ever broken.

5.  I have cool looking eyes. They are bluish gray with gold flecks in them.  Looking at some photos of my youngest son, he has similar eyes.

6.  I do not read very many blogs.  In fact, I don't think I could tag 11 other bloggers to get them to repeat the process, so I won't be doing that part.

7.  I used to do counted cross stitch.  I entered several of them in the Los Angeles County Fair and one year, my design took home a first place ribbon.  Our home is decorated with many of my designs, most from patterns that I used to buy.  When people visit and see them for the first time, they always compliment my wife over her stitchery and she always has to refer them back to me.  I don't do this anymore because it aggravates my carpal tunnel syndrome.  My hands go to sleep in minutes after starting to stitch.

8.  There has been a teacher in my family since 1896.  I consider myself a fourth generation teacher.  My dad was a teacher as were both of his parents.  I have a newspaper clipping from 1896 that shows my great aunt as the teacher in a one room school house.  There is a little doe-eyed kindergartener sitting in the front row - my grandmother.  She was being taught by her oldest sister, who was basically a full generation older than she was.  My daughter has continued on the tradition.

9.  If I wanted to recreate my proposal to my wife, I couldn't.  I proposed to her as we floated over Fantasyland in Disneyland on the skyway.  That ride doesn't exist anymore.  Why Fantasyland?  It was too noisy on the Tomorrowland side, so I waited until we rode through the Matterhorn into Fantasyland where it was a little quieter and then popped the question.

10.  My favorite painter is Pablo Picasso and my favorite photographer is Ansel Adams.  I could look at paintings by Picasso or photographs by Adams for hours on end.  When we go to the Los Angeles County of Art, I always head to the Picasso area first.  After Adams died, I went to a showing of 100 of his photographs.  He is a fine landscape photographer, but I don't think he could do portraits very well.  In my opinion, they lacked something that the rest of his photographs had.

11.  My favorite singer when I was in high school was John Denver.  I saw him in concert twice, once at the Universal Amphitheater and once at the Inglewood Forum.  The concert at the Forum was in the round and he was on a revolving stage, so he faced the entire audience at one time or another.  He put on a very good show both times.

Well, those are my random thoughts about me.  P.J. also posted 11 questions that I'm supposed to answer too, so here those are.

1.  What is your dream vacation spot and why?

One of the national parks I have not visited is Arches National Park in Utah.  I would like to go there, spend an entire day sitting near Delicate Arch and watch the light play over it, all the while taking photos.  I guess, in the long run, any place I haven't been to yet would be a dream vacation for me.  I love to travel and going somewhere new would be incredibly fun for me.

2.  Where did you come up with the name of your blog?

At the time, I was doing my 365 project, taking at least one photo every single day.  So this is another part of it - A Photo a Day.

3.  How do you define blogging success?

I think success is dependent on the blogger.  What some people would consider success, others would consider failure.  As long as I continue to write here, I consider that a success however.

4.  What is your favorite type of "going out" entertainment?

Getting outdoors and hiking with someone, or geocaching with a friend is what I enjoy the most.

5.  How many states have I lived in?

I was born in Indiana, lived there until I was 3 and a half, then my parents moved us out to California where I've lived ever since.  Interestingly, it wasn't until I was in my 20s before I stopped thinking about Indiana as "back home."  

6.  What is my favorite holiday and why?

This may sound selfish, but I like President's day.  It happens right around my birthday which usually means I get a three day weekend out of the deal.  I kind of like that.

7.  What your favorite number and why?

13  My favorite football team is the Miami Dolphins and my favorite football player is Dan Marino who wore 13 during his career.  I also like the fact that most people view 13 as unlucky.  That makes it good for me.

8.  What would be your dream vehicle to own?

Pretty much anything from the 1950s would be really cool to own.  

9.  What is your favorite hobby?

Geocaching.  Some would say it's an obsession of mine, but I enjoy participating in the silly game.  It keeps me busy and out of trouble for the most part.

10.  How do you try and keep your blog fresh?

My first blog was entitled Electronic Breadcrumbs and it was solely about geocaching.  After awhile, you can only talk about geocaching for so long before you end up repeating yourself.  I found I was doing that and started to write less and less on that blog.  That's one of the reasons I started to write this blog.  It's about anything I want it to be, which keeps it fresh.  I don't think I'd write a specialty blog again.

11.  Where do you do your best thinking?

When I'm out mowing the lawn.   Mowing the lawn is pretty mind numbing, so I think about all sorts of things while I'm mowing the lawn.  It keeps me occupied and seems to shorten the process of getting the grass cut.

Well, there you have it.  That's probably way more than you ever needed to know about me.  I'd love to hear your feedback, preferably here as opposed to on Facebook, but I'll take it either place.

Thanksgiving

Yesterday's post originally was entitled Thanksgiving.  I changed it after I started writing, so since today is the actual day this year, I'll be posting some of my thoughts on what I'm thankful for.  You may not agree with all of them, but that's your right.

This will not be a post about being thankful for friends, family, etc.  I'm always thankful for them.  I want to show some thanks for other things that I think many of us take for granted.  And while it's true, we may take our family for granted, I hope that I don't.

First off, I am going to say I'm thankful for our health care we have here.  My dad was an "orphan" by the time he was 27, my mom was "orphaned" before she turned 40. Both of my parents are still alive as is my father-in-law.  Without advances in medicine that we've had in the last 50 years, it's very likely that they might not be around to enjoy their grandchildren.  While it weirds me out a little to realize that I'm now the father of three adult children, my parents have seven adult grandchildren.  I don't believe my dad's parents even got to enjoy one adult grandchild.

I'm thankful that I can get up in the middle of the night and get a drink of water if I want.  Nearly one billion (yes, you read that right, billion with a B) people don't have access to safe water on a regular basis.  According to water.org website, 3.4 million people die each year from a water related illness.  The majority of those illnesses are caused by fecal material (still hungry for that turkey dinner?).  More people have a cell phone than have safe water to drink.  Those are some sobering statistics.

I'm also thankful that I live in a country that allows me to worship, or not worship as I please.  Can you imagine living in a country where you could only worship via one religion?  What if you didn't agree with that religious philosophy?  Think about that the next time you kneel down to pray.  Our country might not be perfect in many ways, but it's a lot better than many other areas out there.

Lastly, I'm thankful that we can all share in discourse about what we think is right and wrong with our country and with the way some businesses choose to run their business, which is what I'm going to do right now.  

Over the past week, I've seen many posts on Facebook from people voicing their displeasure over certain stores opening for business today.  The business of the company is to make money for the company.  They don't make money when they're closed.  If they believe this will bring in more money for them, then more power to them.

You don't have to go.  Yes, I respect your right to voice your displeasure, however, I believe you're wrong.  If you don't like it, don't go.  When I worked as seasonal help at Disneyland back in college, I never worked on a holiday.  Why?  Not because Disneyland was closed, but because the permanent employees all wanted to work.  They got paid time and a half.  Granted some stores might not do that because they aren't unionized, but the employees might need that extra money down the road for Christmas presents.

I also find it interesting that all this complaining has been directed at stores opened on Thanksgiving Day.  How many of you watched the Macy's Thanksgiving parade?  Do you think Macy's produced that out of the goodness of their heart?  Why are there no complaints about the people holding onto the tethers of the balloons at the parade?  In fact, why is there no complaints about the NFL playing football on TV?  All those poor football players, and referees and stadium employees away from their families on Thanksgiving Day?  What a travesty.  I think we should boycott that too.

Tongue in cheek aside, I hope all of my readers have a happy Thanksgiving, no matter how you choose to celebrate it.  As for me, my plan is to watch the Lions win on Thanksgiving for the first time since 2003, then drive with my wife and boys to my sister's house to gather around the table with the family that's here in Southern California.  My thoughts will be with family members (especially my daughter who will be celebrating with her boyfriend and family in San Mateo) who weren't able to make it down.  I know we shall be seeing them at Christmas.

They're Baaaaacck!

One of the curiosities of living in Southern California is the climate is nice enough that many non-native species can call it home.  This might not be good for native species but in this case, it appears as if these Red Crowned Parrots have found a niche in our ecosystem without disturbing the native species.

These parrots, or more likely, their descendants have escaped from private hands over the years.  No one really seems to be sure when they first appeared in the Southern California area, but they've been here for at least 50 years. Based upon several websites I looked up while writing this, there appears to be several flocks.  I think that these probably came from Pasadena, about 20 minutes to the west of here.  They've been here a couple of times in the past and I'm sure they'll reappear sometime in the future.  As far as I'm concerned, I hope they don't permanently roost here.  They're very noisy.

Sadly, because of the caged bird industry, these birds are endangered in their native areas of northeast Mexico. Ironically, these birds, the product of the caged bird industry, are actually helping keep the genetic diversity of the species.  And because we, as humans, have imported so many non-native plant species where ever we go, these birds are also not competing with native species for fruit and nuts, so they not called an invasive species.  

How many birds can you see in this photo?  There were upwards of 40 birds in this flock that flew over our house late Friday afternoon.

Sources:
The Concrete Jungle
The California Parrot Project
10,000 Birds
The Wild Parrots in Whittier, California

Photo Blogging Challenge (September 2013): Outdoors

When I saw this challenge show up at the beginning of the month, I really didn't give it much thought.  I haven't participated in a couple of months of the blogger's challenge and I actually feel quite badly about that.  I made a commitment to the group that I would participate and I feel like I've dropped the ball, so here's my five entries for this month's challenge of Outdoors.

1.  Veteran's Memorial

I found this Veteran's Memorial maintained by the city of Burbank on Labor Day while out geocaching.  Once again, this silly game takes me to a very memorable spot.  In fact, four of the five shots taken for this month's theme were taken while I was out geocaching, either by myself or with a friend.

Memorials were set in stone around this eternal flame obelisk for the various wars in which the United States has participated.  Plaques honoring Bob Hope, as well as the different branches of service were there, including the Coast Guard.

My friend and I were on a mission on Labor Day to find at least 10 multi-caches in one day as part of a geocaching challenge that's been set up in my area.  The challenge is to find at least 10 of a particular type of cache in a day.  However, there are seven different types of caches (icons) you have to find before you can claim the challenge cache.  I already have a day with at least 10 Unknown finds and also another day with at least 10 traditional finds, so this day was dedicated to Multi-cache finds.  Believe me when I say it's harder than it appears.  We had 17 multi-cache finds that we attempted and we got exactly 10 that day and spent most of the day doing it.

2.  Fire fighting 101

Usually, when people think about forest fires, or brush fires, they think disaster.  In most cases they're correct, but only because we have had about a century and a half of fire suppression that has resulted in areas that are supposed to be open, now densely foliated and ripe for huge fires like we've seen burn across the western United States over the past couple of years.  Only in recent decades have we learned the benefits that smaller fires have on the ecology of any region.  Giant Sequoias have those burn marks on their bark for a reason.

Several weeks ago, a small fire started about 2 miles west of my house in the Claremont  College's Robert J. Bernard Field Station.  Local fire fighters, including this water dropping plane, one other just like it and several helicopters quickly were able to get the fire under control and the fire only burned 17 acres of the 86 acres of what is mostly coastal sage scrub, a plant ecosystem that is becoming increasingly rare due to suburban expansion in Los Angeles County.  The Claremont Colleges are excited about observing how the area regenerates itself over the coming months and years.

3.  Zen

Another geocaching trip yielded this shot of a large cement Buddha.  I had been out geocaching in the local area and I found myself close to this virtual cache called Bronze Carriages.  The answers I needed took me inside the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple, one of the largest Buddhist temples in the area.  

Once I got the needed information for the geocache, I wandered around the gardens.  They are immaculate and very calming to the soul.  There were several signs as I entered the temple forbidding photography, so I honored the request and kept my camera shuttered.  This photo was taken outside the grounds in the parking lot where photography is allowed.  It's really too bad they don't allow photography as I think the place would be a Mecca for some photographers.  Still, it was nice just to enjoy the scenery without having to worry about "getting the shot."

I decided to process this in monotone because I think it brought out more of the texture of the figure than did color.  I was able to up the contrast quite a bit which really helped accent it.  The only think different I would do with this shot would be to PhotoShop out the chain in the lower part of the photo.

4.  Lemon Creek Egret

On the same day as I visited the Buddhist temple, I also found myself in a small park hunting for a geocache.  As I walked along the trail next to this small creek, I spotted this four foot tall egret wading in the waters.  I think it was casually waiting for small fish to swim by.  I missed several attempts it made, but got several nice shots, including this one just after water had dripped off its bill and created splash rings in the water.

My wife and I visited Yellowstone National Park on our honeymoon and something a ranger said at one of their ranger talks has always stuck with me.  He said, "If you cause an animal to move, you're too close."  That's good advice to heed, especially in that neck of the woods since getting too close to a bison, elk, moose, or grizzly bear could be fatal.

This encounter didn't endanger my health at all, but I got to experience that proximity rule.  The egret was perfectly happy to be wading along with me on the bank at a certain distance.  But at some point, I crossed that invisible barrier and the egret then quickly moved away from me to get me out of its proximity circle.  We were almost playing a little game of cat and mouse as I was trying to see how close I could get before it would move.  Invariably, it always seemed to be the same distance before it would move away.  I guess what this really tells me is I need a longer lens for these kinds of shots.  I can get closer with the lens yet still let the animal enjoy its solitude.

5.  Spruce Needles

Finally, here's a shot I don't normally take.  This past weekend, I went out hiking in the Deukmejian Wilderness Park with a caching buddy of mine.  This would be the first hike I'd been on since May because of the heat buildup from summer.  It's not fun to hike in extreme temperatures, so the fall, winter, and spring are really good times out here to enjoy good hikes.

Neither of us had been to this park before, so it was going to be a new experience for both of us.  The city of Glendale, CA has developed several trails in this park and placed benches in strategic spots long the trail for hikers to relax.  We enjoyed a 2.75 mile loop, found 7 caches in the park and had a great time.

But back to the photo.  As I noted above, I don't normally take photos of tree branches or needles.  However, there was something about the needles the light in the background that look intriguing so I fired off several shots, getting this one that I really liked.  I guess I just need to retrain myself to look at the smaller things and not concentrate on the pretty flowers all of the time.  There's beauty all around us, even if it's not pink or yellow and blooming.

Well, there you go.  My five photos for September's challenge of Outdoors.  Please stop by P.J.'s blog page to view other like minded individuals and their interpretations of Outdoors.

That's a lot of people

This is not a article I would usually write, but I stumbled across a website today that had some pretty sobering statistics.  According to this site, I was the 2,909,470,267th person alive when I was born and the 76,444,994,032nd person to have lived since history began.  In my mind, those are staggering numbers.  Think of all the people that have ever been on this earth and 1 in 15 are alive right now.  Between the time I was born and my daughter, my first born, was born, 3.7 trillion people were born, including my three sisters and my wife.

Since I was born the population of the planet has more than doubled with the population surpassing 7 billion people in October 2011.  If that trend continues, the population of the earth will pass 8 billion in the year 2025 and it could conceivably triple since I was born by the year 2043. With good health, I think I have a reasonable chance of still being alive then and 9 billion people on the planet sounds like just an enormous amount of people. 

With the strain from this many people, resources, such as food, water and fuel will become increasingly scarce.  Based on the consumption of resources and the population increased, sometime during the 2030s, the UN estimates that we will need the equivalent of two earths in order to support all of the people in it.  Of course a lot can change between now and then.

Clearly, this can't happen since we only have one earth.  But technology could bail us out.  200 years ago, 97% of people in the United States lived and worked on farms supplying the needs of the entire country.  Today, only about 3% of our population lives and works on farms and those farms supply most of the food for the world.  Somewhere down the road, there has to be a limit to the amount of food that can be produced.  What it is, we don't know yet.  Perhaps we've already hit the limit.  That food will be a limiting factor on the population of the planet is a foregone conclusion.  Fresh, clean, drinkable water will be the other main limiting factor.

I do not know what the answers to these problems will be and of other problems that plague this planet, but it seems as if we need to work together.  I'm concerned about the future of number 80,198,082,265, number 80,520,546,297 and number 81,067,205,912.  How we react to this in the future will probably be our legacy to not only our children but our grandchildren, great grandchildren and beyond.  What numbers are you concerned about?  And consider this.  In the time it took you to read this short article, the earth's population increased by slightly more than 1000 people.

Camping trip

Those of you who know me fairly well, know that I enjoy camping and usually end up taking at least one camping trip every summer.  Last year, we went to Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks.  This year, we plan to revisit San Simeon State Beach and Hearst Castle and then later on in the week, we'll travel up to Lassen Volcanic National Park.  We've been to both, but the kids were fairly young when they visited Hearst Castle, so it'll be neat to visit it again.  My youngest and I were at Lassen three years ago, but the older two have never been there so it's new to them.

For those of you who have never been to Hearst Castle, I have two words for you.  It's amazing.  William Randolph Hearst made his fortune in newspaper, yellow journalism and then used his fortune to amass massive amounts of statuary and pieces of art.  He then housed them all in his "La Cuesta Encantada."  Two pools, one outdoor larger than an Olympic swimming venue and the other indoors, under a tennis court and inlaid with 20 ct. gold are just part of the things that you'll see at the castle.  There are rooms at this place that are larger than your entire house.

We plan on camping just south of the castle at San Simeon State Beach, then taking the main tour the next day.  After then, we'll pull up camp the next day and head to Lassen where we'll camp for the rest of the week.  Lassen is the last volcano in the contiguous United States to have erupted before Mt. St. Helens.  Lassen was very active between 1914 and 1919.  

Our original plan was to spend one of our days hiking to the top of Lassen Peak.  There is an earthcache (geology related) located at the top of the peak.  Three years ago when we were there, we were blocked by tons and tons of snow.  I've noticed several people have logged the cache last month so the trail was open.  Yep.  The key word in that was sentence is the word was.

We'll be getting to the park on Tuesday.  The park is closing the trail down for about 6 weeks for needed trail work beginning Monday.  We missed it by a matter of days.  Fortunately, there's plenty of other things to do there, so I doubt we'll have a lot of free time on our hands, but it was a little disappointing to have worked toward getting to the top only to miss out by a matter of days.  We'll have to satisfy ourselves with other hikes in the park.  Either way, it should be a lot of fun.

We will eat s'mores, take photos of ourselves in front of the entrance signs to the park and document our campsites like we have done every year with just a couple of exceptions.  The campsite shot here is our campsite in Mill Creek Campground in Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park.  It was a very secluded spot, one of the best campsites I've camped in over the course of my many years.  There was actually a small staircase leading up to the site itself.  If we get campsites as nice as this in this upcoming week, we'll be doing well.

I shall be offline for the better part of the week, but I'll be posting photos of our trip in the upcoming weeks.

Photo Blogging Challenge (June 2013): Bridges

As the title says, P. J.'s blog challenge for the month of June was Bridges.  One of the bloggers who participates in this monthly challenge suggested that any of us who live in California hunt down one of the Bridges actors, Beau, or Jeff, or find Lloyd's grave and take a photo of that.  Well, Lloyd was cremated and the resting place of his ashes are unknown according to Find a Grave.com, so I decided to go a different route.

1.  The traditional bridge

About a week into my summer vacation I had planned to go geocaching with a couple of my friends.  We ended up taking two cars mainly because one of the guys thought he might have to leave early, so we ended up meeting at a geocache entitled Bridging the Gap, where the Union Pacific Railroad tracks run under Highway 18 out in the Mojave desert. 

This day was to be mostly car caching, driving from cache to cache with very little hiking involved, which ended up being a good things as the heat was getting to the point that we decided that even in the car, getting out all the time was strength sapping and we called it a day at around 1:00 in the afternoon.  My friend's car, fortunately, stayed relatively cool in the shade of this bridge.

The clouds really make the scene although I'm a little perplexed to what caused the streaks in the sky, but overall, I'm very pleased with how this image turned out.  And in reality, I had visions of grandeur that I would end up near San Francisco sometime this month so I could go on a bridge shooting spree, but it was not to be.  This would be my only traffic bridge that I would shoot during the month.

2.  The musical bridge

I've shot this particular bridge many times over the years including one other time from a different perspective for P. J.'s weekly challenge on Flicker.  Our family is very musical with all of us playing or singing at one time or another during our educational years.  My daughter received her college degree in violin performance.  My son played the piano and my other son played the viola and sang all four years of high school in his school's top choir.  My wife plays the piano, flute, guitar and clarinet, although the latter two she hasn't picked up in several decades.  I sing in our church choir on Sundays.

This is my son's old viola that he obviously doesn't play anymore since he discovered he enjoyed singing so much so it sits in its case, only coming out when I want to take another photo of it. The purpose of a bridge on stringed instruments is to keep the strings off of the finger board and to transmit the vibrations of the strings to the sound board.

3.  Lucy

Named after Lucille Ball, Lucy has been our pet for about 10 years now.  Lucy is a California Desert Tortoise, an endangered species.  I have a permit which allows me to keep her in our back yard, the only legal way to do so with endangered species.  

California Desert Tortoises have been losing their habitat mostly to development.  As more and more people move to California, the encroachment on their territory becomes more severe and their range continues to shrink because of it.  While out geocaching, I've run across empty tortoise shells but have never seen a live one in the "wild" so I count myself fortunate, that I get to see one almost every day in the summertime as she cruises around the yard in the early morning or late afternoon when it's not too hot out.

With more and more areas in the desert being turned over to wind farming or solar gathering, not to mention housing, development by humans continues to put more pressure on the native species of tortoises.  Unfortunately, domesticated species, which is what Lucy falls into, cannot be reintroduced into the wild, because the domesticated ones tend to have respiratory problems they could pass on to the wild species.

As a caretaker of Lucy, I view myself as a bridge keeping the species alive.  Should desert tortoises become extinct in the wild, I may be asked to give up Lucy so that she could become involved in a breeding program to help perpetuate the species.  I would gladly do that. 

4.  The Claremont Colleges

I live in a college town.  Actually, there are five colleges, a graduate school and a school of Theology within the city limits of Claremont, California.  There are two buildings on the Pomona College campus named Bridges - Big Bridges and Little Bridges.  Originally, I wanted a shot of Little Bridges, a converted chapel on campus because it's where my daughter performed in her orchestra when she was in junior high and high school, but the area was cordoned off due to construction, so I wandered over to Big Bridges.

Bridges Auditorium is a memorial donated by the parents of Mabel Shaw Bridges, a student  at Pomona College who died at the age of 22 in 1907.  Construction of the building cost $600,000 and was completed in 1932 with a performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Arthur Rodzinski.  I found this billboard window outside the entrance to the auditorium and the reflection of the grounds beyond the front entrance I thought was very inspiring.  

Every time I walk by this area, I am reminded of my own college and how similar these two areas look, most likely because there are many coast redwood trees around the outside of this plaza.  The coast redwood tree was the dominant tree on my college campus, Humboldt State University, located in northern California.

5.  The bridge to adulthood

On June 13th, my youngest son graduated from high school.  It was a gloriously warm afternoon and there was a slight breeze blowing as evidenced by his tassel flowing in the wind.  This is actually one of the few shots I have of him with his tassel as he ended up losing it sometime after receiving his diploma and reuniting with us after the ceremony.  He didn't seem to be too concerned about it, so I'm not concerned.

This fall he'll be moving out of our house and into the dorms at UC Riverside where he'll begin his college days as a physics major.  Both of his older siblings chose schools in northern California and his stated preference was far away from mom and dad too, but in the end he chose a school that was close enough that he'll be able to come home on weekends if he so chooses, although I would expect him not to do so very often.  With his older siblings both graduated from college, we'll soon be crossing over that bridge to the empty nest come September.

If you click on the link to P. J.'s page at the top you'll see how other bloggers interpreted the theme of bridges for this month.  I'm looking forward to next month's challenge.  Hopefully it will be something where I'll be able to use some of the shots I take while we're on our camping trip. 

Fullerton Arboretum

This past Tuesday, I went geocaching in Orange County.  I  only found two geocaches, which doesn't seem like a whole lot for a 6 hour tour behind the "Orange Curtain" but there were extenuating circumstances.

My friend Jim and I had decided to come down and get some caches and play a couple of other GPS games that we play from time to time.  We scored points in the other games, plus found one cache before lunch, then headed over to the Fullerton Arboretum, located on the campus of Cal State Fullerton.

Cal State Fullerton isn't a well known school unless you follow college baseball.  They are quite often in the College World Series, as they are again this year.  I attended the school for a year and a half while I was getting my teaching credential in the early 80s.  The campus was smaller and looked a lot different than it does now.  New campus housing, a new baseball stadium and the arboretum are all new additions to the campus in the past 30 years.

I don't know why I should be surprised about this, since my own school, Humboldt State University looked a lot different when I visited there several years ago.  Change happens.

The cache we were looking for in the Arboretum was a 5 stage multi-cache.  That means we'd have to find four different points, gather clues from each point, which would then lead us to the final cache.  We also needed to bring a QR reader along because the clues were in the form of QR codes.  I had a QR code reader on my iPad, so I brought it along.  With my cell phone, iPod, iPad, camera and GPS unit, I was a well geeked out techie on this little hike.

Once we got over to the first stage, we started looking around for the first QR code.  Unfortunately, we didn't find it, so we could have been done for the day, but the cache page gave us some other clues that gave us an idea of what we were looking for so we started walking through the Arboretum.

We weren't really sure what we were looking for the first time around, so we ended up wandering.  We actually walked right by the cache and one of the clues, but didn't spot them on the first time around.  We were actually enjoying ourselves with the butterflies, hummingbirds and the large expanses of native vegetation.  There were large displays of Mediterranean type vegetation as well as areas devoted to desert environment and African savannah.  Pretty much any plant found in California was represented here plus several other areas as noted above.

After walking all the way around the Arboretum once, I think we both figured out what kind of signs we were supposed to be looking for, so we tried some secondary paths that we hadn't walked on before but we still came up empty.  Needless to say, I was getting frustrated.  My friend Jim wasn't nearly as frustrated and kept persevering suggesting we go back to the beginning again and check out some things that we might have missed on the first two go arounds.

Once we got back to the first stage, I found something that we hadn't noticed before: a magnet on the back of a sign.  Now why would there be a magnet unless it was meant to hold something?  The something that this magnet was supposed to hold wasn't there, but it gave us a glimmer of hope that we were at least on the right track.

We took another path that we hadn't tried before and I spotted one of the signs we were looking for about 12 feet from where we had walked a couple of hours earlier.  The QR code was attached to the back of the sign, which was read by my iPad and it told us where the final was supposed to be.  We'd bypassed stages 2 and 3.   We hiked further up the trail and found stage 2 as well, but without a QR code, so we decided to head back to the final and see if we could find it.

It didn't take too long to find the final cache, so although we didn't do the cache as intended by the cache owner, we'll take credit for the find, since we did find the final.  Overall, it was a fun cache.  It got us into an area we hadn't been to before, so that was a good thing.  If all the codes had been where they were supposed to be, we probably wouldn't have stayed there as long as we did, so in a way, that's also a good thing.  Hopefully, the cache owner will see our logs and replace the missing QR codes so others can enjoy the full experience.  

As it was, we never did find one of the stages, but we found the stage that counts.  In other words, sometimes, you're good and sometimes, you're just lucky.  In this case, I'd say it was a little bit of both.

A day at the zoo

Yesterday, my son and I decided to do a spur of the moment trip to the Los Angeles Zoo.  We had planned on a trip to the zoo over Christmas break, but the one day when everyone could do the trip, it started to rain, so we didn't go that day.  On Friday of this week, it had been cold and rainy, so I thought perhaps that might keep the crowds down which is why we decided the trip might be a good outing.

I hadn't looked closely at the zoo's website.  The past two days had been advertised as "snow days."  They trucked in a lot of snow and deposited it in several of the exhibits.  The snow leopards were in their element as were the river otters.  Siberian tigers and the American Black bear had snow in their pens as well.  Needless to say, the zoo had lots of people there, but really no more than usual.

The zoo, over the past 5 years or so, has been undergoing some major renovations, including expanding their elephant facilities.  When they expanded the elephant grounds, the reptile house was taken down.  The past year or so has seen construction on a new reptile house called the Lair.  Yesterday was the first time we were able to walk through that exhibit.  They did a good job in there, although I think they could have made the aisles a little wider to allow a less claustrophobic feel to the place.

My wife hates zoos and her opinion has rubbed off on me to a degree.  I don't hate them, but I tend to have mixed feelings about them.  Looking at them one way, they are viewing pens for people who don't have the wherewithal to take a trip to the different continents to see the animals in their native habitat.  In essence, they are a kind of prison.  They do, however, help educate many people, some of which would never be able to see them any other way.  And they do perform a necessary function by keeping species alive that would probably be extinct due to shrinking habitat which is mainly the cause of our actions.  Zoo are like a double edged sword.

The shot of the desert bighorn sheep above is one of the shots I took yesterday.  My son and I went to Zion National Park this past summer and saw some bighorn sheep in the park.  That was the first time I'd ever seen the sheep in their native habitat.  We saw yearlings and females but didn't see any males like the one above.

I had a great amount of success taking shots at both the orangutan and gorilla exhibits.  I think their particular exhibits bother me the most.  You can't help but see their human-like behavior and wonder about our common ancestry.  Looking at the shots I took, I chose this one of Evelyn, mainly because it made me wonder what she was thinking as she watched us watching her.  Evelyn has known nothing but the zoo as she was born there in 1976.  She knows nothing about the outside world, or what it was like in the wilds of Africa.  This has been her entire existence.  

Knowing the laws of our country, you know she's been treated well, has had the best medical care and has been fed a balanced diet, probably much healthier than any of us have had over the last 37 years.  And yet, you can't help but look into those eyes and wonder what she's thinking about all this.

Flashback Friday

A neighbor down the street has an excellent front yard garden.  Repeatedly, over the past couple of years I've walked down there because there seems to be so much activity with butterflies flitting about, ladybugs doing all sorts of things and an occasional squirrel.  

This particular squirrel, however, is an European Brown Squirrel and it's an introduced species into the environment here.  We should see lots of gray squirrels in this area, but they are being pushed out by the more aggressive brown squirrel.

I can remember talking with my neighbor about seeing this squirrel in his olive tree and he said with a disdainful look, "Oh, that's Fred."  or something of that nature.  It was clear my neighbor wasn't happy with Fred at all and would probably have liked to have seen the demise of Fred.

What I remember about Fred is he stayed perfectly still for me while I stood about 10 feet away from him and composed my shot.  I liked the way he was peeking out from behind the tree trunk and how the small olive branches framed him.

Photo originally taken March 25th, 2011.