22 October, 2013    Wonder and rejoice

“…everyone hears an inner voice

A day at the end of the week

To wonder and rejoice”    – Paul Simon, How Can You Live in the Northeast?, 2006

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m training a lot as my race draws near. I was on a long (five hours!) very rainy solo ride last week. When I’m on a ride like that I tune out a lot but tune in to my “inner voice” and it made me think of that song. “Inner voice” is not a great blog title (maybe it is) so I went a line or two later.

My race (Beach2Battleship) is this coming weekend. You can see my times for each section of the race in real-time. You’ll need to enter my race ID #, which is “9”. Very low number since I entered really early. Here is the link: Live results . It says this on the race site: “(NOTE – Nothing will populate until athletes start to cross the timing mats at swim finish on event day).” Also FYI, my times are incredibly slow; it may be more exciting to watch your grass grow. But the results will be there.

I love comments on my blog, by the way. Some people are regular commenters, which I love, and some  are occasional, which I also love. But I love any kind of comments and I reply to all of them. I don’t reply instantly but I reply. I always enjoy hearing what people are interested in.

I’ve said it often – a lot of the reason I get good pictures is because I have my camera with me. The other day I pulled into my driveway and looked out the car window and this guy was hanging on the fence. I just put the window down and he stayed. I picked up my camera and there it is. Fun shot:

Handsome male downy woodpecker next to my driveway

I also played around with moon pictures a little more. The moon was rising very, very clear on Monday, October 14. I got a handful of pictures of it at 5:30 or so, still over an hour-and-a-half before sunset. Then I took a couple more around 7:30 and a final set close to 9:00. I use an app called MoonPhase that shows some moon info. So I took a screenshot each time I took a photograph. The screen shot is of the “ephemeris” data from MoonPhase.

“Ephemeris: a table or data file giving the calculated positions of a celestial object at regular intervals throughout a period.”

I’ll put one picture I took from my front porch followed by one MoonPhase screen shot. It’s interesting (to me). :

Moon – October 14, 5:37 PM EDT

Same moon, 7:29 PM:

Same moon, 8:55 PM:

Same moon, 8:55 PM

More moon info

Enough about the moon – hope that wasn’t overdoing it.

Except for swimming I do all my training outdoors, which is maybe my favorite thing about long distance racing. Not only do you spend a long time outdoors while you race, you spend hundreds of hours outdoors training. Some of it (a lot of it) is running at West Creek, and I even get enjoyable pictures there. I took this one standing next to my car:

What a present.

Human beings (with notable exceptions) are warm-blooded – we have an internal heat source. Not so for turtles, they rely on the environment to keep warm. Mackey and Turner and I were at the river on October 15th. In mid-June the sun rises around 5:45 AM and sets after 8:30 PM – it’s above the horizon for nearly fifteen hours. If you rely on the environment to keep warm, you are loving life on those long days. We all notice the days getting shorter, but if we pay our utility bills and dress right we keep warm no matter. When we were at the river on the 15th, the sun rose at 7:15 and set at 6:30 – above the horizon for barely 11 hours. These guys don’t have calendars or anything else but they are totally making the best of these shortening days. Notice their heads are way out of their shells and check out those guys on the right, spreading their toes to get every last bit of sunlight:

Making the best of this moment

Or maybe they were just spreading their toes in ecstasy because this was the view. I mean, seriously:

Those turtles were craning their necks to get a better look at this. Can you blame them?

If you look very, very, very carefully at that picture, just below the middle and just to the right of center, you can see something sticking out of the grass. This is the zoom-lens version:

Aren’t zoom lenses incredible? Look what you get to see. Without even bothering him. 

Sometimes when we’re down there I look at the water and just stare. I mean, this is water. I just pointed the camera at it and pressed the button. That’s one of the treasures, if not the treasure of being in a river environment like that. You can go there hundreds or thousands of times and each time there is something new. You just never know what it will be. Look at this:

It’s a photograph but it looks like a painting.

We were down there on a less sunny day this week also. Turner and Mackey run hard on the river side and settle down by the time they reach the woods:

Happy hikers

Turner has his own special tag. I made it myself. There wasn’t enough room to write “USUALLY” after the second “I’M”:

I’m USUALLY a great little boy! (OFTEN, really)

I took a little time off filling bird feeders but I bought some bird seed and we’re at it again. I took these pictures out of my car window so the focus is not what I’d like. I’ll perfect it. This tufted titmouse was filling up:

Handsome tufted titmouse (with a mouthful of sunflower seed)

Meanwhile, this squirrel found a safe place to contemplate his (or her) next move out of reach of marauding dogs:

Remaining above it all

 = = = = = = = = = = =

I’ve enjoyed training but I’m looking forward to settling back into real life. Or what passes for it. I’m also looking forward to seeing everyone soon! Have a great day,

Jay