Yesterday, a couple of friends of mine and I decided to take a hike along the Pacific Crest Trail west of Wrightwood, CA. Those of you who know me well, know that this wasn't just a planned hike, but also a geocaching excursion. We do this all the time.
We started our hike, heading up to the first geocache. There were some high clouds in the sky, but they weren't really blocking the sun much so it was a warm day, perfect hiking/geocaching weather.
The first cache took the most time, mostly because we didn't find it right away and so resorted to the hint which threw us off of our game. At one point, I spotted a rattlesnake in a rock crevasse near the cache. I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at, at the time, but once it moved and rattled, I made a hasty retreat. Eventually we spotted the cache and moved on down the trail. I took the first shot from that cache spot.
As the day went on, we found a variety of caches, stopped for a quick bite to eat and to allow one of my friend's dog to rest her feet in the shade. The sun had heated up the trail and it was rather hot for her out there. At the next to last cache, we ended up soaking her feet quite extensively, then started back down the road that paralleled the Pacific Crest Trail. By taking the road back, we shaved about a mile and a half off of our return hike, still getting a nice 5.34 mile hike in.
There was a cache alongside the road and by this time, we could tell it would be better to rest the dog here. Her owner stayed with her while my other friend and I hiked the rest of the way along the road to retrieve the car. By the time we got back to the pullout, our friend had found the last cache.
In reality, this wasn't planned to be our last cache, but it worked out that way, because sometimes things happen. When we go geocaching, our unwritten rule is, whoever retrieves the cache needs to replace it. We do this because that person knows where it was exactly hidden. I've been in a group where another person re-hid the cache and we accidentally lost it because he put it where he thought I'd found it and ended up dropping it down a hole where it was non-retrievable.
As our friend returned the cache, he decided to place a rock on top of the cache to keep it in place and to add an additional layer of camouflage to the hide. Had he not done that, I wouldn't be writing this story and we would have gotten a couple of more cache finds before we called it a day.
The rattlesnake, lying nearby, took exception to my friend placing that rock there, and bit my friend on the hand. The snake had been there all along, but for whatever reason, didn't make its presence known when he retrieved the cache, nor did it rattle when he replaced the cache. It just bit him when he tried to place the rock and then rattled. Biting and then rattling, I think, is fairly typical of baby rattlers, which this one was. The photo is not the rattler in question, just another rattlesnake that I've encountered while out geocaching.
Our first order of business was calming our friend down and then getting him to a local hospital. We decided to take him to Loma Linda, which was the closest and also the best equipped hospital in the area to handle snake bites. Coincidentally, my other friend with us had been bitten by a rattlesnake a couple of years ago. I mentioned it, in this post from my other blog.
Needless to say, we got him down off the mountain and at the hospital in 45 minutes without having to drive recklessly in the process. And it is amazing how many people you get to bypass at the emergency room door by say those two magical words, rattlesnake bite. We got pushed to the front of the line very quickly, they took his vitals and got us into the emergency room right away. As of this writing, he's still in the hospital, undergoing treatment but appears to be improving.
What this leads to is a public service announcement. Snakes are out there and they are common. I overheard a nurse in the ER say the hospital is getting between 1 to 2 snakebites victims per week. And I have to say we're fairly careful, yet one of us still got bit yesterday. Things happen, so be prepared, be calm should it happen and seek medical attention right away.
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.
A lot of my friends get that glazed over look when I start talking about geocaching. Pure and simple, it's my hobby and I enjoy it and I like sharing it with other people. Once I know people aren't interested in it, I'll stop talking about it to them, but I won't stop talking about it. I hope that makes sense.
This past weekend was my birthday. My parents called me fairly early in the morning to sing Happy Birthday to me. They figured I'd be out geocaching and they were right. I was eating breakfast waiting for my friend, Jim to show up and then we were going to head down to Lake Elsinore for some caching.
Lately, he and I have gotten into challenge caches. A challenge cache is just that. It gives you a certain challenge, then you have to meet that challenge before you can log a find on the cache in question. We looked for several challenges on Saturday. One of them, at least for me, was the most memorable, Discovering and Logging California's 58 Counties. Back when I was writing Electronic Breadcrumbs, which was exclusively about geocaching, I wrote about that challenge.
A year and a half ago, I qualified for that challenge by finding caches in the last four counties in California where I hadn't found a cache. The last county was Napa County. Saturday became the day that I wanted to get the final for that challenge, so my friend obliged me since he hadn't fulfilled the requirements yet. We had the coordinates and we made the half mile hike up the side of this small hill near Lake Elsinore and I made the find.
In Geocaching, I'm usually not interested in anything that's inside the cache. It's more the thrill of the hunt that interests me. There are times when I don't use the GPS at all, preferring to use wits (some would say I only have half of those anyway) and Google maps to find the cache. Most of the time I'm successful with those finds.
Jim and I ended up finding two others later in the day, one of which ended up being my 5500th geocache found. I'd actually planned for that to happen, since the numbers will probably only coincide this one time, it was kind of nice to get #5500 on my 55th birthday.
As always, I like to cache with someone else. My usual caching partners are my friend Jim who lives in Camarillo and my son Elliott. Elliott doesn't go out as often as he used to, but he likes to cache when we go camping every summer. The photo of him is in the Zion Narrows taking coordinate readings for a cache we found there. That was actually tough to do since the canyon walls are so narrow, satellite reception is very sketchy back there.
This summer, Elliott and I plan on camping in Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. I haven't been there since I was in Junior High, so it will be all new to me as well. Since we're going to be close, we'll probably geocache not only in Colorado, but also New Mexico, which will give me 10 states that I've found caches in. And yes, there is a challenge for that as well. I've already found it, but haven't logged it. After we come back this summer, I'll log it as found - Challenge accepted - Challenge accomplished.
For those of you who follow this on a regular basis know I write about a variety of things, but mostly this blog focuses on photography and geocaching. It's what I like to do, it's what I'm knowledgeable about and I figure why not?
Today, I just want to feature some of the blogs I read on a regular basis. The list is actually rather short, mainly because I don't have a lot of time in my day to sit and read blogs all the time. Not like that won't change in the future, but for right now, I don't have many.
Latitude 47 is the official blog of geocaching.com. It gets published several times per week. I read the articles and usually watch the videos that are posted there. It usually leads me to other videos which in turn help me create better caches for people to find.
I will readily admit that I don't hide really hard caches. Some of my caches might be challenging because of the nature of the puzzle involved, or the skills needed to find the cache, but once you get to the cache site, it should be fairly obvious where the cache is hidden. This blog highlights some of those caches that are just amazing with regard to camouflage or the type of puzzles involved. If I see something really interesting, I might incorporate it into my next cache hide. That's why I read that blog.
A 'lil Hoohaa is a blog about this and that. P.J., the writer is a geocacher in New York and also a photographer, so you can see why I'm interested in what he writes about. He posts old photos of his family every Saturday on his blog. He's also a frisbee golfer and writes about that as well and although I don't participate in that hobby, I can see the interest. P.J. used to follow me when I was writing Electronic Breadcrumbs which was exclusively about geocaching.
The blog Various Vanities looks very out of place for a guy like me to be reading, especially since it's a fashion blog written by an almost 24 year old woman who's working on her master's degree at the University of Santa Clara in northern California. I'm very proud of this woman, as she also happens to be my daughter.
Puppy on a Roomba is a little blog written by two Corgis dogs with no tails named Ty and Eve. Their secretary mommy is also a geocacher who I met via the geocaching forums. Mostly, it's photos of the two corgi dogs with no tails romping around at their house in Illinois.
Brave Gnu Whirled is a blog written by my friend Steve who used to work with me at my school. He's moved on and now teaches at the community college level in Visalia, CA, but writes this blog about politics with some other slices of life from time to time. Steve was best man at my wedding and we've kept in touch over the years via email and through comments on both of our blogs.
The photos have nothing whatsoever to do with this blog piece today. They are photos of my wife with her flute. The reason I'm choosing these photos is because my wife keeps me grounded. 26 years ago tomorrow on Valentine's day, I took her to Disneyland and proposed to her while riding over Fantasyland in the Skyway. It was the single-most important decision I ever made. I have lived a fantasyland type of existence ever since. Why she puts up with me, I'll never know, but I am truly grateful that she does.
Four years ago, I started a blog with some geocaching friends entitled Electronic Breadcrumbs. The purpose of that blog was to share our knowledge about geocaching and outdoor activities related to the use of a GPS. Very quickly, it became clear that the group of people that we'd assembled wasn't going to be posting very many things on the site and I ended up being the main poster for the first couple of months and the only poster of anything afterwards.
The other thing that caused the demise of Electronic Breadcrumbs was I was introduced to another website called 365 Project. The purpose of this website is to encourage people to take photographs and post them on the site. A true 365 project would be taking a photo every day for an entire year starting on January 1st. I guess any day would work, but I thought I'd give it a try. I was worried back then that I would lose inspiration quickly and end up taking many photos of my toes. I learned quickly that there were a variety of subjects out that were just begging to be photographed. I dove headfirst into photography last year and Electronic Breadcrumbs fell by the wayside.
On December 31st of this past year, I finished my first 365 project. I completed it without using any fillers, taking at least one photo every single day for the entire year. In fact, I am now at 383 consecutive days of taking a photo and always, that means more than one photo.
Last year, I took 7200+ photos during the project. I was absolutely amazed by that stat, especially because I was usually so conservative with my photo taking when I was using film. Digital is easy however and you don't have to worry about the expense of development. If it doesn't come out, just trash it and move on. I have just started my second year project which will cover 2012. Hopefully, that will also cover an entire year, that is unless the world ends on December 21 as predicted by some.
The purpose of this blog is not just photography however. I'm a very visual person. If you look back over the old Electronic Breadcrumbs blog, you will find very few entries that aren't accompanied by photos. A picture really is worth a thousand words. I intend to write about daily happenings. Many of the posts will be about techniques I used while taking my photo of the day. I will probably include how I processed the photo with PhotoShop Elements or other programs that I have on my computer. Just about any other subject that I'm interested in talking about is fair game as well.
I might not post every day. In fact, I'm positive I won't post every day, but I would like to post at least twice a week, if not more. Photos will accompany each new post. Please, as always, feel free to comment if you have questions or if you just want to comment. Feel free to disagree. Let's keep it civil and get along is all I ask in return.
