My Mountain Trail

Mymountaintrail 1.0

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Okay, I can live with this for now.  Using a Firefox plugin called Firebug, I have been able to figure out how to change most of the colors in this Worpress theme.  I wanted to darken most of the graphics so that the photos will stand out more, and I have been able to do that.  There may still be some text or graphics that don’t quite look right, but I will try to fix that going forward.  Feel free to leave me any feedback (positive or negative) about the new site and its look and usage.

This photo is from my ride in to work on Monday.  It is a composite of several photos taken with my 45-year-old Yashica Minister-D camera. 

Back in May I misplaced the camera while packing for our vacation trip to Utah.  At the time I was debating what cameras to take with us — film (which ones?), digital (which ones!?), pen and ink…  I finally settled on my choices, but at the last minute I threw the Minister-D and GSN in the center console of the truck.  They both had film in them and I guess I figured I would finish out the rolls w/ snapshots. 

Anyway, the time was so busy I kind of forgot that I put the cameras in the truck.  I ended up using the digital cameras and Hasselblad for the trip.  When I got back home I went looking for the two Yashicas (thinking I had left them at home) and couldn’t find them.  I remembered the camera selection process before leaving on the trip and figured I must have actually brought the cameras with me and put them in some safe place in the camper.  After searching, no dice.  Then I searched the rest of the truck and Jeep.  Nope.  The garage (did I store them away???), no joy.  I finally gave up in frustration, figuring they would show up some day.

Well, that day was Sunday.  I happened to look in the truck console for some bottled water while working on the acacia forest, and there were the two cameras!  I am sure I looked in the cosole during my search, but somehow I missed them.  I guess.  I don’t know, but at least I found them.

So this week I finished out the film in each camera.  The above picture is stitched together from scans of 7 different photos.  The actual combined scan is quite large, and pretty okay quality for such an inexpensive camera.  And it’s hard to beat the retro fun.

What about the bike?

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

That’s what Eddy wants to know at least.  I did  ride my mountain bike on Monday and my steely Serrotta to the top of East Peak on Wednesday.  But poor ol’ Eddy is still packed up in his box.

Today we spent some  time in Yardville again.  The Black Acacia infestation along the back fence was today’s challenge.  I cut down about half of it today.  That is a full, packed down, heaped up truck load.  Edgewood Ave. was starting to get encroached on, so I had to go after the mess.  I have about four more hours of fun to get the rest done.  Maybe tomorrow.

We have made a lot of progress on the Jungle, but it’s mostly been heavy lifting.  Once we get the fire danger down to a manageable level, we’ll think about making some part of the yard or garden pretty too.  Hopefully we won’t be too worn out. 

Not to worry about the blackberries of course.  I have left enough of them to produce plenty of jam and pie this summer.  Then maybe I’ll even hack them down.  That doesn’t get rid of them anyway, so it’s really just about controlling the overgrowth. 

Here at the Duck Shack we pride ourselves on organic, basically, wild fruit and berries.  I think that will be the case for some time to come…  Too many other things too do to get too ambitious with the yard and garden.

Move Forward – Lookout!

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Today I completed my training to be a lookout at the Mt. Tamalpais fire lookout (the small building at the very top of the mountain here).  I have completed a 4-hour orientation session, a dispatch/ECS tour and orientation, and now some OJT.  It’s not that hard.  You are a set of eyes, with the ability (let’s hope) to communicate what you can see to those that need that information.  Then, let the pros in the field work.  I can do that.

The county is no longer funding paid lookouts, so they have been looking for volunteers.  I found out about the opportunity through my activity as the Assistant Chief RACES radio operator at the Throckmorton fire station. 

Don Keylon, an engineer at Throckmorton mentioned the need for volunteers during one of our emergency planning meetings for the neighborhood RACES guys.  Sounded like an opportunity to me.  It’s an even better way to serve the community than RACES.  It includes real training and actual work.  RACES doesn’t do real (or at least not effective) training and the real work is, fortunately, infrequent.  Lookouts are needed all summer, and we have to actually do the job.  I have enjoyed the training, and look forward to gaining experience. 

My initial impression is that the hardest parts are understanding the radio communications and landmark reporting.  The radio communications are easy enough to understand, but getting a picture for what is actually happening is more difficult.  There is a lot going on, and only some of it matters to the lookout.  Of course, talking on the radio isn’t a problem because of my amateur tradio and Navy experience, but talking at the right time is the difference between the novices and the veterans.  I’ll get it eventually.  Nothing wrong with being a novice I guess; as long as I learn as I go along.

So, for you readers, this means that you get to work your way through a bunch of pictures of the Bay Area from the Mt. Tam Lookout.  I may also work some in the Barnabe Lookout, so you may also see pictures for West Marin and Sonoma from there.  I hope you don’t mind that view of Paradise.

The hike from our house to the top of Mt. Tam took me 50 minutes today.  That’s not too bad.  It takes 40 minutes using a car to get to the parking lot and then hike the last .5 miles anyway.  Of course, if there is a lot of stuff to take up there, the hike may not be an option.  I guess we’ll see.

Ah well, this is my first non-test post.  Hope it looks okay…

A New Blog Launch

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

We are in the process of rebuilding our work website in WordPress.  The goal is to modernize our look while keeping the same information.  Of course, we also want it to be easily manageable, so that is why we are using WordPress.

Worpress uses themes to create the look and feel of the site.  We will use a canned theme to start, and then customize it a little to set it up the way we want it.  In the interest of understanding how things work, I have downloaded some themes and I am setting up my blog and website using WordPress. 

It’s been slow going, but I am making progress.  Expect to see this site changing it’s look for a while until I get it dialed in…