Pictures from outdoor exercise.
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Some ice in my glass.
Sometimes the fish fight back. Those scratches are the entry point for the dreaded "steelhead fever".
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The City installed a pair of Bocce pitches in a local park. My buddy can't throw discs right now (hurt his shoulder... playing disc), and he has some Bocce balls. We walked down and had a fun time for an hour or so yesterday.
Got pretty parched, so had to walk to the watering hole and slake our thirst.
Today was my shift at the aquarium. I got to do both dives, which was therapeutic for some of the ikky things in my life right now.
Water was cold. Below 50 degrees. First job was scrubbing, so stayed warm except my fingers. Second job was vacuuming. Mostly we lie on the floor and don't move a lot. After about 45 minutes, I asked my buddy if he was cold. He said he was ok. I knew we only had maybe 15 minutes or so of air left anyway, and about two minutes later he realized he WAS cold, so out we came.
Stopped by Local Ocean. Their special soup o' the day was smoked salmon, smoked bacon, potato, cilantro, and some other yummy stuff. I had to get a cup. Catch of the day was Ling Cod, so I had to order some tacos. Should I bring a Dungeness crab home? That's the question I asked myself. The answer was yes -- a small 1.5 pounder.
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Another funny thing happened today. Went to the big box electronics store where I bought my Fitbit to see about a replacement. Guy I talked to said that a lot of the HR3s were having issues with the display going black just like mine had, but since I was past the return with no questions date (30 days? 60 days? I didn't ask) I'd have to deal with Fitbit's customer service directly.
So I call the number the guy had given me, expecting the hurry up and wait game to start, but was answered quickly and by a guy with pretty good english (slight British accent maybe with just a hint of Hindi). Went through the normal handshake routine; name, phone number, what's the issue, repeats it all back to me, yes, good, OK, does green light on bottom work, yes, does it vibrate when I hit the button, yes, Ok, let's try a hard reset. OK, plug it into the charger and hold the button until the smiley face appears, 10 seconds or so... OK, sure, why not....
WHOA!!! The smiley face came one, and now I can see the display,... wait, there's a couple of pixels in the upper left that look out of place, OK, do the hard reset again, OK, why not. Yup, smiley is back and...
Yup, that did it. Display looks like it should. No need for a replacement at all.
Weird. Guess the pressure of the water at 90 ft caused the touch/display screen to hiccup. Still not sure what the deal was with the sync issue for a week but doesn't look like it was caused by water leaking into it. All of our phones were acting up strangely requiring us to restart them almost daily to reset some issue. Who knows? Just glad the Fitbit is working apparantly no worse for the wear of seventeen dives as deep as 90ish ft.
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I've been having to reset my phone pretty regularly too. I thought is was just me.
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You just knew there would be more ski pictures.
I was going to wait to go tomorrow for the SUN, but there was a festival today. It's called Viking Fest (Celebrating the Heritage of Traditional Skiing). What I didn't realize until the other day; this was FREE-HEEL SKIING! Yes.
So I called a buddy who's a telemark instructor to see if he was going. Well, duh. He taught a class. I headed up a little late, but managed to score a spot right in front of the lodge as someone else was leaving.
Sweet.
Took a lift ride, and I found the class. I crashed the last half of it and got a few tips. The sun was ALMOST out. The snow was SOFT! Not much wind. It was a great day.
My friend encouraged everyone in the class to go join the "Kristiana Swoosh/Ofte Lofte Start – downhill race & big air contest." What the hell. So I entered. It starts with a few gates to telemark through, then a ledge to get some air (judged), then a 360-degree banked turn. Just try to get enough speed going in to make it all the way around. Then a few more gates and through the finish line for times. And then hike up hill and blow a cow's horn. I think I got bonus points for that.
Then you go get a long bow and hurl three arrows at three targets (bear, deer, and turkey). What a hoot!
Then a few more runs with my buddy and then a couple more on my own. Got over to the back side where some snow was piled up.
I might actually go again tomorrow!
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I was asked on another group what my favorite dive was during my recent SCUBA trip to Cozumel Mexico. Here is my response.
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While all seventeen dives were great, my favorite was a shallow 40 ft. dive at a location called Paraiso Reef (Paradise Reef in English). White sandy bottom with mounds of coral here and there, and tons of wildlife.
Cozumel has an indigenous fish called the Splendid Toadfish. Kind of shy but very striking. (Called a toad fish not for its looks but for the sound it makes at night. First time we heard it during our night dive we thought someone's dive computer was on vibrate and going off constantly.)
The divemaster is the one petting the toadfish.
(not my photo but shows the unusual and colorful fish much better)
Also had a curious turtle check each of us out in turn as we hung in the water at 15 ft for our safety stop.
Very much like swimming through a large commercial aquarium. Definitely my favorite dive of the trip.7 -
Great dive pics. I’m off to Jamaica in a week. If I throw off this head cold I plan to do two dives a day. Otherwise, the rum stocks will take a big hit.2
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I can't tell you how much this fabulous day fed my soul. I've had some crap going on lately, and I haven't been able to really enjoy anything the last few weeks near as much as I should have. Because there have been AWESOME things the last few weeks. And one that isn't so good.
So what a gift it was to have today. Today is always a gift, but this one? Special.
I even slept in.
Went up to the mountain pretty late. Got there easily without traffic but with just three hours of lift time. No big deal. The sky was blue. The wind was calm. The snow was soft, but not mushy. The wind wasn't blowing much. There was almost nobody there.
This was kind of the day I had been waiting for. Not only did I show up late, but that really awesome parking place I got on Saturday? This was even better.... the BEST parking spot in the entire lot. Right next to the lift. Oh goodness.
I had no idea I could actually enjoy life right now, but I sure did. I rode the lift with some guys who work at the ski shop in Eugene, and I was able to show them a part of the mountain they never knew existed. They smiled all across their faces. It's a long, steep back side. There's a price to pay which is a cat road out at the bottom. One of them was on a snowboard, so I told him -- get enough speed to get out of there. The other guy was on telemark skis, so we had fun trading telemark jokes and just enjoying the day. I ran a few runs with them, and it was nice to know someone was looking out for me if I went into a tree well since I'm usually skiing alone. Yeah. Great day. It let me put some of my sorrows aside and realize I can still enjoy my life and smile.
I always thank the lift operators. I was one a million years ago. They always thank me back. They know if nobody came up, they wouldn't either! So I had a really fun time my last few runs when I realized how much faster I am than the lift. I was maybe five chairs from unloading when the lift slowed so a liftie could get on to ride down. As he passed, I thanked him. He said, "No; thank you." I finished my ride, got off, ran the mountain, and got back on the lift. About a third of the way up, he's coming down, and I say, "NO! Thank YOU." He smiled. Sadly, they shut the lift down one minute early or I would have got a last ride. Oh well. What an awesome day. Just what I needed.
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May I join? This looks like a fun forum! Love all the great pictures.
I am well over 50 and most of my fitness activity is done outdoors.3 -
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Thank you!
Here is a picture of a wall of ice that was on one of my snowshoe hikes.
Snowshoeing in a winter wonderland
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This message is just to whet your appetite. Looks like I get to float the Middle Fork Salmon River in Idaho in June. I will probably take some pictures.
Today we're off to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. The only exercise will be walking around -- we are NOT going to the water park.2 -
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The museum was amazing. Most of it was inside, but the walls are mostly glass, so there was lots of natural light. We did walk around outside part of the time and saw some planes that are probably going to be restored for display at some point, and we saw this gem out front:
The air museum was pretty cool. They had a replica of a Wright Flyer. They had a lot of very old engines, early aircraft like the Curtis Robin below:
They had home-built and other experimental aircraft. They had a replica and a scale model of the Spirit of St. Louis. They had a large variety of military aircraft from the USA, USSR, Spain, Germany, and others. Some are parked outside with the information kiosk inside. The big thing in the background? That's the Spruce Goose. It's the giant flying boat that was built by Howard Hughes. It flew once for one mile at 70'. It's so big there's really no way to get a picture of it.
The Spruce Goose is actually made from birch, not spruce. Who knew? I did get a picture from inside looking back at the back half of the fuselage.
There were helicopters, amphibious planes, an odd plane that had two engines, one front and one rear, and it had a propeller on each end. One pushed while the other pulled. They had some really odd emergency instructions on one plane.
As interesting as all this was, it wasn't until I got to the space museum building that my jaw hung open for the rest of the day. I was surprised when they made an announcement that the museum was closing. I didn't get finished the space building; I will have to go back!4 -
The space museum was really awesome to me. When I grew up, my family went to Huntsville, Alabama pretty often. I went to that Space and Rocket museum during my formative years. Now, 40 years later, we've come even farther with space, and I have a different perspective on history and all that. It was amazing learning about the early science into getting to space and everything else.
The museum is roughly a timeline, but it's hard to follow completely. As you go in the timeline, there are three parallel tracks. One is NASA, one is USSR, and one is military rockets and missiles. They have an actual Gemini capsule on display. It's behind acrylic, so you can look inside to see the controls.
And they have an Apollo command module. Quite amazing. I remember seeing one of those you could climb up stairs and look inside at the Fernbank Science Center in Atlanta, and it was also really neat to see it hanging from a helicopter with all the stains from where the ablation shielding melted off during reentry.
They have a Titan missile on loan from the military. On loan. Ha. It's the sole remaining Titan missile on display in the world, and one of only a handful left in existence. On loan. Ha. I bet they're going to want that back soon.... There's a stairwell going down into the bottom replicating a part of the silo. There's a control room with age-appropriate computer hardware, and there's a simulated launch sequence. The historic launch is on a video screen.
They even have a section of the Berlin Wall.
They have a control module from a Saturn V rocket as well as a J-2 engine. They have lots of engines. If you think the wiring harnesses in a car are confusing, go look at a Saturn V control module. I couldn't get a good picture.
They had all sorts of rocket engines and some replicas of others. They have a copy of Sputnik. They have a Soviet capsule similar to the one that took Yuri Gagarin to orbit. There were "artifacts" of all sorts. Various tools, uniforms, food packs, and space suits that had been to space and back. They have a little rock that came from the moon, but people didn't bring it back. It was found here on Earth. It was thrown off the moon from a meteor impact. Its glued into a place you can touch. I wasn't going to touch it because of all the germs. I've been vaccinated, but not against the common cold, and I know there's a flu going around that folks who had their flu shot can get floored by. But.... I couldn't help myself and eventually touched the moon with my own finger. Freakin' awesome.
Yeah. I will be going back. If I go back before the end of the month, I get in free.
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The Canadian National Aviation Museum is in Ottawa and I had the dubious distinction of having been up in one of the aircraft which is part of their collection. Yes, I've been Goosed...
https://ingeniumcanada.org/aviation/collection-research/artifact-grumman-g-21a-goose-ii.php0 -
They had a Goose in this museum, too! I'm not talking about the Spruce Goose. It was your amphibious airplane. How fun is that?1
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One thing I was thinking about relative to the space museum was that I found in interesting was how close we are in time to the artifacts. Much of what is on display at the museum is from my own lifetime. That's a little unusual for my personal experience with museums. Back in the days when I would go to the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, it wasn't a museum per se. It was all current. More of an exposition. Just odd to feel like I'm becoming an antique person as parts of my life are now in museums. Even if I didn't fly 'em.
The Saturn V rocket has always been, and always will be, my favorite launch platform. Oh, how I wish I could have been close to one when it launched. The control module they had on display touched me as did so many other things they had there. Really a good museum. Check it out if you have a spare day while you're visiting the wine country of the Willamette Valley. Give yourself the whole day. The wine will taste even better.1
