Buffalo Jeep Tour in Custer State Park, SD

After lots of fun dealing with some staff issues we took off to the Park and got on one of theBuffalo Jeep Tours.

It was a lot of fun and a welcome distraction. Our driver was Christie and we shared the ride with another couple and their 2 children. Found a good size herd.Christie pointed out a lot of interesting things.You can hear one of the Bulls talking in this video you can also see his tongue which is blue.


This guy came running right up to the JeepMom giving her baby a bath.You lookin at Me??Lunch on the run.After spending time with the Buffalo we headed up a pretty rough rocky road to the top of this hill.What a view!Next we drove by the Wild BurroAll good things must come to an end! The ride lasted 2 hours and was quite enjoyable. Back to work :(

Till Later,

Meanwhile we keep on Trek'n

Melissa and Gary

The tidy up

The Edinburgh International Festival ends today. As I write, the final event is resounding across the city: the fireworks concert from the castle accompanied by live music from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. After the fun and mayhem, the city is in clean-up mode. What goes up during a performance, in the form of the glittery 'rain' above, comes down and tends to lie around.



The once beautiful grass in the quad of the University of Edinburgh's Old College is emerging from under its stage of the past month.







The quad was the venue for several plays performed by the Polish theatre company KTO. Below, a rehearsal of 'The Blind'. I didn't go to see the play - the synopsis of 'the blind secluded in a hospital-like camp soon lose their civic structure and create their own world based on violence and animalistic instincts' didn't attract me.







I was however fascinated by the moving hospital beds motif, given the National Health Service segment of the Olympics opening ceremony.

Imagine

Yesterday at our homeschool group sign language class, the teacher/mom had the group of twenty or so children standing in a wide arc.  She was teaching them how to sign to the song Imagine.  
Now I've heard that song sung before, and while it has always made me think about what heaven will be like, I really was moved by the words and the  music as I watched all those sweet children communicate without words.
Caed, my oldest grandson, had his back to me. His little skinny legs with the white socks, one higher than the other, were sticking out of his oversized carge shorts.  He looked so sweet and vulnerable standing there making big arm circles over his head for the word 'imagine'.  I got all choked up thinking that I might not be spending forever with him in heaven.  I know I'll be going there when I die, but I don't know his heart.  Will he embrace the faith so carefully passed down or will he go his own way; the way that leads to spiritual death?
All I know is that I need to pray so much more for all my family and live the kind of life that causes them to ask me about the joy that lives in me; and invite them to share in God's forever which begins right now on this earth.

Actually, I Would Have Preferred A FAT Tire

Six-thirty in the morning isn't the best time for a Fat Tire, but it seemed to be the right time for a flat tire on Wednesday.
This morning as I was nearing my point where I emerge from slow paced neighborhood streets onto busy Leavenworth Street at Turner Boulevard, I felt a kink in my drivetrain. I figured it was just a missed gear or something. However, then I heard a rubbing noise on my tire that worsened when I applied my rear brake. I pulled over and gave a quick look, but didn't see anything.
The rubbing noise continued, and I just attributed it to something stuck in my fender and decided to look for it later. I continued the remaining two miles in to work, and under the generous lights above the bike parking, I was able to inspect the wheel a little more closely. Spinning the wheel, I still heard the rhythmic rubbing sound, but still saw nothing for a couple of minutes.
Finally, I saw what looked like a little pebble sticking out of the tread. Plucking at it with my fingernail, I saw it was no pebble, but the head of a nail. Moving my focus of attention back a few inches, I saw that I had an entire one inch nail entering, and exiting my tire. Amazingly, the tire appeared to have suffered no loss in pressure.
My theory is that my front tire kicked up the nail, throwing it into my drivetrain. Then it went through my chain and somehow got thrown into the right spot for entering my rear tire. Maybe that's a wild theory, but it works for me.
"This is my lucky day!", I thought. Perhaps the nail entered the tire and exited the sidewall without encountering the tube. The nail was too tight to pull out with my fingers, so I used the can opener blade on my multi-tool to pry out the nail. The immediate sound of hissing told me that the tube was punctured. It's amazing to me that the nail sealed the hole for the remaining (and quickest and most dangerous) part of my ride to work.
Well, this was the event I was prepared for. In my saddle bag I had a CO2 canister and tire levers. I carry a spare tube in my commuter bag. So at the bike racks, I removed my wheel and changed a flat for the first time in 15-20 years. The quick release wheel made it easy to get the wheel off, but I had some trouble getting everything lined up to go back on.
They say once you learn to change a bike tire, you never forget. They do say something like that, don't they? Anyway, the actual tube replacement process went pretty well. I racked the bike on a bus to get closer to the Trek store where I bought a couple of new tubes, plus a mini pump before riding home on the changed tire.
Here's a list of lessons learned that might make this easier next time:

• Carry a pump. I only get one shot with the CO2
• Pack a small pair of pliers, or get a multi-tool with pliers
• Make sure CO2 canister nozzle is upright when using it. Otherwise it spits CO2 ice
• Pack a pair of disposable latex or vinyl gloves. My hands were filthy after changing the dirty tire and handling the chain
• Take more time inspecting the tire. I should have found the problem more quickly.
• Don't remove a nail until I'm ready to change the flat. I lucked out that I was able to continue riding. Had I pulled the nail on the road, I would have been forced to change the tire on the spot or grab a bus for the remainder of the commute.

Look at the bicycle tire behind mine in the top photo. I just noticed that the tire is flat. I assumed that the owner of that Giant bike beat me in to work each morning and stayed late each day. He/she seemed to me to be very hard core, due to his/her commitment to ride the bike even on the nastiest weather days. Now I think it's obvious that the bike doesn't move. I suppose it's possible that the bike doesn't even belong to an employee at my place of business and has been abandoned. I wonder what its story is.

Mother Nature’s Gift … a Good-Weather Day

Hunting Island State Park — South Carolina
Temps: Lo 55F / Hi 67F (13C / 19C)

First, let me finish off yesterday. Even though we didn’t go out to explore Beaufort as planned, we did go out to run a few errands and also have dinner at the 11th Street Dockside, a restaurant in Port Royal. It is a casual seafood eatery that overlooks shrimp docks on Port Royal Sound.

At low tide, these boats aren’t going anywhere; their masts serve as overnight
roosting spots for the pelicans flying about.

The Dockside only serves dinner; we arrived at 4:30p when the doors opened and had
our pick of the tables. The place filled up quickly soon after we were seated.

The restaurant was recommended to us by several locals, and has good reviews on TripAdvisor. We give it a thumbs up as well — the service was excellent and the food was quite good.

The portions are quite large; we had plenty of Mui’s grilled shrimp with rice and
my flounder florentine with pasta left over for lunch today.

That really was all the excitement we had yesterday. But today was entirely different and was filled with fun and cheer.

We were actually prepared for another quiet day at home since the forecast was for a “blah” day. In fact, we greeted the day through the veil of a thick fog that hid the ocean from view. By 10:00a, it was a different story. The sun had burned off the fog and the sky was a beautiful bright blue. Mui was already outside washing the car, so I went for a walk around the park to explore the back loops with the 50A hook-ups. I returned via the beach, wading through the high tide in a few spots.

Having tackled the front of the coach, Mui’s giving the toad’s floor mats a good rinsing.

It’s a beautiful morning for walking in the high tide … or for fishing.

Since we weren’t expecting this bonus good-weather day, we didn’t have a plan in place. So, over lunch we talked options and decided to walk the Magnolia Forest Trail and take the connector trail to the lighthouse on the outbound leg while the tide was still going out and return to the campground via the beach at low tide. (About 2½ miles [4 km].)

The arrows show the approximate area that we hiked (and later triked).

The natural earth trails followed a hilly terrain, but were far from difficult. Both trails wound through pines, oaks, palms, and palmettos; and of course the wispy Spanish moss was everywhere. There were magnolia trees as well, but not in bloom this time of the year. I bet the tail is even more beautiful when the flowers are blooming.

I love the contrast between the spiky palmettos and the wispy Spanish moss.

Once we reached the lighthouse, we headed out to the beach where we ate our snacks and did a little people watching. There weren’t many people out — just a father and son throwing around a frisbee; a mother and son shelling; a family strolling along the sand dunes. We contemplated the ocean for a while, commenting on how calm it was today, but never forgetting that beneath that placid surface powerful currents were at work, eroding the beach.

We’re two hours from low tide, and there is a wide expanse of beach now between the
ocean and the lighthouse, but it’s a different story at high tide. Once the waves crest
the dunes, it’s just a couple hundred yards at most to the base of the lighthouse.

Although the water was out considerably, we still had to deal with the “River Jordan” (photos here) on our way back to the campground. Our makeshift bridge from Thursday had shifted into a tangle of other debris, but we figured out the right tree trunks and thick branches to use as stepping stones and made it across without being dunked. Then we hurried back to the campground to gear up and go for a trike ride on the beach. Riding along the shoreline, the water lapping at our wheels; detouring here and there to check out things small and big. What fun!

Left: a beautiful shell on the trunk of a toppled tree catches Mui’s eye.

Right: We thought this horseshoe crab was alive, but when Mui went to return it to the ocean, we realized that wasn’t the case; all that was left was the top shell.

Thanks to a recent post by Sherry, I recognized this as a “living” sand dollar.
It was stranded on the beach, so we returned it to the sea, giving it a fighting
chance to survive one more tide cycle.

Ring-billed gull going for a walk in the surf!

As the sun dipped low on the horizon, we called it a day and returned to the coach. With rain in the forecast, we decided to take down the screen shelter before it got wet again. We have just one more day left here, so it needed to come down tomorrow anyway; we’ll just sit on the beach instead — if Mother Nature decides to gift us with another good-weather day.

Playing with PhotoShop

I have been in the hospital since Tuesday. Nothing major - biopsy and colonoscopy. Just that being on coumadin, it take 2+ days in the hospital before and procedures and 3+ after.
Anyway - so I have been playing with the filter effects with PhotoShop and Microsoft Picture It! Really like the glowing edges filter.
Downloaded filters from Filter Forge and The Plugin Site. Its amazing the artistic effects with PhotoShop filters.
I was able to get the hospital to bring a stationary bike into my room. Been getting some time on the bike - just not like riding outside. Still have to finish my Christmas cards. Other projects had with me in the room - so lots of stuff to do. But really want to be back home. Hopefully tomorrow.

Kimbolton-Tilbrook, Pertenhall, Stonely, Kimbolton

Led by Barry, with me Eddie and Maureen - weather grey, some drizzle, improved to sunshine. Just over 10 miles (including mini-detours).

Llamas and a mini-cow?

Pertenhall church in the diocese of St Albans - we took shelter in the porch for our snack break

One more mile, guys! We can do it!