Fecundity

On my way home from work tonight I came across a doe and two spotted fawns. (I took the back road, a Friday afternoon stress reliever). They wanted across the road so I stopped long before I got there, but they were still skittish and pranced back to the safety of a patch of shade. I had the camera along so tried to get some distance shots. a little blurry but proof of life as they say.



























Thats a fence wire running through the pics.

Further down the road I found another mother feeding her young. You can just see the little beaks strtching skyward to receive the strips of Dolly Vardon fillet mom offers. (click on these pics to enlarge them.)


































You can see in this pic that she's none too happy with my presence.
















Back at rocky acres I noticed the killdeer doing the incredibly fakey 'dragging the broken wing' attempt to lure me away. It could only mean one thing: I put the sneak on to the place she had started the charade and sure enough, she's hatched a second clutch. See any bird in this pic?

How bout now?

And hee I zoom in on them:

Meanwhile mom looks on nervously.

With the new camera I was able to get these pics with getting right on top of the chicks. But even so, amazingly still, camouflage is their only defense.

To bed early tonight, and a drive up to Seattle inthe morning for the second urban populaire.

One Man Rocks

Sounds like a book title right? "One Man rocks - An insiders look at the drug infested rock music industry".



Actually, one man rocks is a tech term in the landscaping industry, and is fairly self explanatory. "What size rocks do you want around the waterfall?" answer: "One man rocks." According to the industry standard, one man rocks range in size from approximately 25# up to 150# a piece.














As you can see from this photo, even though a half yard of one man rock isn't much (in terms of volume), but it weighs enough to make the little golden trucklette squat.












Coals to Newcastle? How about rocks to Rocky Acres?

My particular half yard is populated by rocks that probably run mostly to the smaller end of that spread. I have mixed feelings: Bigger rocks are much more impressive, also one of them takes up a lot more space than smaller rocks, and of course part of the idea is to cover the space. On the other hand, do you have any idea how much a 150 pound rock weighs? It weighs a TON! And since Juan, Pedro, and Ingmar have the day off, I'm not complaining too loudly about having to work with smaller (and lighter) rocks.

So the materials are in hand, the sweedish backhoe













is revved and ready to 'rock and roll', I got a good nights sleep. Guess all that is left is to .... complain about the weather.

It is strange, the weather. It has started to rain, nothing too strange about that here in the Pacific Northwet, but did it have to start Friday? Friday, the day I took off from work to play with my rocks, the start of my three day wekend push to finish this home handyman project? Well consider this: when it started raining Thursday night it ended a small record; the first rain to fall in 29 days. If it had waited just another 11 minutes it would have been 30 days.

As I have said so many times, It's just rain, I'm sanforized, color fast, water proof, ... oh, and it's good for the trees. In this neck of the woods we have come to the conclusion that you can do just about anything in the rain that you can do in the dry, (what else explains cycling statistics in cities like Seattle and Portland?) But still, rain reduces the fun factor on fun stuiff, and tends to further 'dampen the mood' for things not so fun.

Oh well, I was all about the big push on the pond project this weekend and was not about to let a little rain get in the way.

First up was 'deconstructing' the existing waterfall. I never meant it to be the final iteration when I put it together, I just wanted to see if the whole thing would work. At first it didn't, but fiddling around I was finally able to get this system to work as a, ... system. Ok, so now time to pretty it up and that meant water fall remodel. This is how it came apart (think 'befor', and 'after'):

While I had things opened up I decided to dig a little shelf in the pond to better seat water plants and ... rocks.

And this is how the new setup went together:

As you can see by the pics, we are not quite done, but I can see the end of this project from here, which is good, I'm about ready to start spending time on a few other things.

As we stood admiring our handiwork, Mrs C commented on what a nice sound the water fall makes. She said now it sounds like a real mountain brook. As I sit here typing this, the ssounds of the water fall just outside the window drift in on the evening breeze. It makes me think back on how many streams and creeks I've had relationships with in my life. This waterfall may need a just a little tuning. Right now it seems to be tunbed somewhere between Upper Bacon Creek, and maybe the outfall of Illabot Creek, from Illabot Lake. Maybe this is the sound of Rocky Creek.

I also took a little time to play with my new camera, Mrs C gave it to me for my birthday. This is definately a machine that is MUCH smarter than the operator. In these days of technology that seems always to be the case. But I'm learning my way around it, slowly.

Here are a couple pics of the first bloom on the white water iris. It is even more impressive in person.

And of course a new camera means more pics of birds, of all kinds: Some large,

Some small

.. and some in between.

Oh, and a pic of my little sharp eyed bird watching buddy too.

Remote Control

At 6:00 am last Saturday the Spring SIR 600Km Brevet was underway. This, the last brevet of the spring SIR rando series was well subscribed with about 50 riders pre-registering for the event. The ride got a lot of hype as a fast and friendly course, an 'easy' 600, with relatively little climbing. Still, I chuckle at the notion of 'easy' and '600K' in the same sentance, but there it is, thus the fairly high turnout.

For some, this would be a first try at the distance, others would be shooting for a personal best time. For many, completion meant achieving 'Super Randonneur' status (no cape or mask, but a nice little medal!) and possinbly qualification for an upcoming 1200K event. A few were contemplating a first try at 'riding through', meaning riding the route from start to finish without a sleep stop.

As the time drew near, I realized I would be in no shape to ride this event and so offered my services to the ride organizer, Albert. Actually in late winter, Albert had asked for a little help checking out the course and the overnight accomodations in Centralia, a town not far from Rocky Acres.

My preference was to staff the Ranbow Falls Control.













This is about 373 Km into the ride, and about 33 Km before the riders get to the overnight control in Centralia. Ranbow Falls State Park is on a fairly lonely stretch of Hwy 6 (well it counts as a highway if you live out in the sticks). At this point riders had ridden close to 60Km since their last opportunity for any real civilization in Raymond.

Checking the NWS forecast for the Grays Harbor Bar it appeared a mixed bag for the riders. While there was no rain in the forecast, and the temps would be nearly ideal (highs in the 70's lows in the 50's) the forecast predicted a strong on shore flow in the afternoons:

"Synopsis...A SURFACE RIDGE OFFSHORE WITH LOWER PRESSURE EAST OF THE CASCADES WILL MAINTAIN ONSHORE FLOW THROUGH NEXT WEEK. THE STRENGTH OF THE ONSHORE WILL VARY FROM DAY-TO-DAY...BUT WILL TYPICALLY BE STRONGEST DURING THE LATE AFTERNOON AND EVENING HOURS AND WEAKEST DURING THE EARLY MORNING. "

For locals this means only one thing: Headwind through the Chehalis Gap and this route had riders in that local version of mother natures wind tunnel for some 85 Km. I felt no need to be a prognosticator, there's no point in annoucing that riders might encounter a headwind. really there is not much that can be done to prepare for it. Weather is always the wild card in these endurance events, and wind is a cruel adversary; you can't see it, you don't know where it will start, or where it will end, unlike a climb, you can't see where the harder parts are. That big, invisible hand pushing on your forehead. Oy!

Just to show how much the rando scene has changed in the last few years, there was actually a bidding war for rights to staff this control! These kind of controls, places just off the edge of the map, or maybe not even warranting a notation on the map, always got staffed in the past, but there were relatively few people interested in the assignment. I'm not saying that nobody wanted to be 'out there', maybe it's just that there were fewer people into randonneuring in the past.

My inspiration for this kind of volunteering came on my first 1000K brevet through the North Cascades. This is a beautiful but lonely part of the country, I was riding pretty much solo and coming out of the mountains to the west I was really punished on the second day of the event.

Now it happens that during the spring and early summer you have a very good chance of riding into a fierce up canyon head wind riding west out of the North Cascades. This always seems particularly unfair as you do some serious climbing to get over Rainy and Washington passes, thinking you're going to get 20 plus miles of fast fun descending, only to have to pedal on the down hills to get 25Kph, if that.

I had a long way to go to get to Newhalem, and it was late enough in the day that I knew all that would await me there was a vending machine with maybe a Coke and candy bar or bag of chips, and possibly a couple late summer moths flitting about a big sodium vapor light for company. I came around a corner and there was a heavenly apparition: Bill Dussler had a secret control all set up! I plunked in a lawn chair as he prepared me a Cup o Noodles and hot cup of coffee. There was sandwich to go with it, and some chips. He really knew what he was doing. It is just amazing how that little 30 minute respite reenergized me.

With more participants in the Rando scene I guess it just stands to reason that there are more people who can appreciate how much fun and how rewarding working this kind of control can be. At any rate, when the dust was all settled Mrs C. and I with help from John got the opportunity to serve the riders on this last stop befor the overnight control.

It's too bad the bridge across the river into the park is washed out (remember that flood in '07?)

The park has a fantastic setup but now it would be a 5 mile work around to get across the river, so the control was set up at the wide spot in the road that was the original approach to the park entrance.

And therin lie the seeds of a major SNAFU. Because the park entrance was closed due to the washout, there was a sign two miles down the route that announced the detour to Rainbow Falls State Park. We set up where we were supposed to, however the route sheet and the brevet card identifed the control as Rainbow Falls State Park. The route did not indicate a turn, it showed the control on Hwy 6, but at that point along the route almost ALL the riders assumed they should turn at the detour to get to the park.

After the first bunch came through and told of their problem, we quickly made up a sign out of a cardboard box and taped that, with a red blinky light to the sign post. The sign we made said that the control was straight ahead, but still, most riders went off route in search of the state park.

I really feel terrible about this. That far into a ride (or anywhere actually) no one wants to get lost, especially if they think they are following the right route. The problem was confounded by the fact that my cell phone service provider does not have coverage in the area so people could not call and ask us where we were (another new adjunct to route navigation). So, to all the riders and all the other volunteers on this event, I want to apologize. I should have found an effective way to prevent or solve this problem.

We had a decent control set up, the Coleman stove and one of those pop up shelters with a propane heater and an assortment of lawn chairs. We served clam chowder (a hit later in the ride) cup O noodles (a SIR standard), sandwiches of lunch meat and cheese, and PB& J. The fresh watermelon and strawbewrries were pretty well received too. We made a few of the old stand by Swiss Miss mochas and the Starbux coffee was a favorite.

I was really impressed with the riders. Almost everyone who got to our control looked very strong and quite likely to finish the event (I have not yet seen the results). in spite of the headwind leg, all seemed to be in fantastic spirits, well almost all, and the rest were still pretty cheery. Attitude does not seem to be the challenge it once was.

We had a running battle through the night with a local family of racoons who were entranced with the smells of a rando control out in the woods. When we packed up we left a few of those not so popular Costco muffins by way of a peace offering. Randos should always try to leave a positive impression with the locals.