Having never been to a Balloon Festival, I thought this would be a good event to go take some camera shots. It was glorious the first morning, so I decided to attend the second morning. Well the weather did not cooperate at all with clouds and very flat light. Disappointing but I got a few shots that I figured I would post.
It was pretty interesting watching them “cold inflate” with fans, then when they got upright you the hot air flowing. It looked like the teams for each balloon was from 6 to 8 folks.
I think there were about 20 balloons total, I do with the sky was clear with the sunrise making them glow but so be it.
One of the joys of owning a salt water based boat is that you need to get it out of the water once every three years, scrape the barnacles off and paint the bottom of the boat. It makes for a much easier path through the water when you are not dragging a bunch of growth and critters with you. So if you have never experienced this type of event, I have captured it and will post it for you all to enjoy.
As for who does this, I went to the Port of Olympia, Swantown Boat works which is run by the City of Olympia. The bottom painting was done by Pettit Marine who is also based out of Swantown. The haul out/return trip, 3 lay days, and various environment fees ran about $500. The bottom paint and some mechanical work ran about $1,000. So here is the boat journey.
I had two great helpers, in Stet and Lynne Palmer a Big Thank You to both of them for their assistance. The picture above is Stet aboard Moon Glow, who was there to Shepard Star Gazer over to Swantown as my shifting linkage was a little shaky. Lynne was aboard Star Gazer to help me not smack into anything. Olympia always looks awesome from the water!
Here they are staging the boat lift and making sure the straps are correct so they don’t damage the prop and shaft or drop the dang thing.
Well they got her out of the water, now let’s see what issues we have. The best case scenerio is she if filthy dirty. The worst would be some major damage in blisters or chunks of fiberglass coming off. This is generally not the case in this vintage of Catalina. It was born in 1978 and they did not know that much about fiberglass and built the boat about 3 times thicker then it needed to be. This boat is a sailing battleship.
Dirty she is, but no real issues. Pretty happy about that and now she just needs to get laid up on the hard.
About every six months you need to replace the Zinc’s. They go on the shaft and stop the electrolysis from eating the prop and shaft and anything else metal. It is a good day when there are zinc’s to remove! Last time I swapped them out was August 2014, which considering it is May 2015 I am glad to see some zinc left.
All painted and ready to head back to the open sea. Hoping for a great summer of sailing and boating in the beautiful Puget Sound!
It is the end of April and you know when you ride enough miles something “sub optimal” is going to happen, law of averages. I know it, I expect it, and it is part of my mileage goal, I am confident I will most likely miss six weeks of riding in a 12 month period. Over the last 3000 miles I have averaged a ground encounter about every 1000 miles. For the last three times it has involved water on the roadway. And yes, I do not ride any more if there is water on the road/trail/path. Well at least I am trying to not ride…
I was riding Thursday night and was about ¾ of the way through my ride zipping along at about 20 mph going through the outside of a roundabout in a neighborhood with NO traffic. It was a bit warm around 82 dry, glorious and no wind. That means NO WIND, which is significant here in Texas. I was feeling good, and I headed into the roundabout on the far right turning to take the first “out”. It is a little S move in and out. A simple move to the left into the roundabout and a little move to the right and out of the roundabout or so I thought.
Well there are some fairly large boulders on the side of the road on the grass. They are on my right and far enough off the cement roadway that I don’t pay much attention to them.
As I get to them, having passed two of the five my front wheel gets to the third boulder. Unseen by me was a 3 to 4lb rabbit having a pre-dinner salad I expect. The grass is really green with all the rain we have gotten so lush and great tasting grass it was. This is a fun neighborhood to ride, nice homes and very smooth cement streets. Well I must have startled Mr. Rabbit about the time my front tire got to his face. This would have put him right into my spokes. I believe his initial reaction was to bolt across the street to safety in the very nice shrubs of the $700K house across the street. Surely it would have injured him permanently with his little face poking out the other side of my spokes till he got to my forks which would have killed him, permanently… I would have been flipped off my bike and I would be sending this email from my hospital bed, I am confident of that after reliving this moment several times.
Well that silly wabbit was not about to have his dinner interrupted by some fat dude on a bike so he did the most logical thing a rabbit could think of, if you can’t go straight, jump for your “blinking” life as high and as far as you can.
He cleared my tire easily and rammed his little head smack dab into my left handle bar and left hand. This was easily a good six to seven feet of aeronautical theatrics. It was at this point I noticed him as he smacked in to my handlebar. This caused to a good 2ft swerve scaring the Beejezus out of me. But when I am going twenty, I always have a solid grip on my bars and recovered from my swerve to see Mr. Rabbit walk at a wobbly fast pace to the other side of the road. No major damage from what I could see to that silly Wabbit, but he certainly was saying to himself, what the hell just happened?
After a moment, I immediately thought what the hell just happened.
Well it was not my day to kill a rabbit and go to the hospital, so again I get to ride another day happily in Texas.
I found a video of the roundabout, it was filmed in January after significant drought. This was filmed on a head cam so it is a bit jerky. Think of the grass as six inches long, and lush green.
I am trying to expand my portfolio in the types of items that I can take pictures of, so for my next session I choose my Vulcan Nomad. It was a good sunny day and I did a bit of detail work on the Nomad. Here are the results.
It was a great sunny morning, after some thunder boomers around 3am. They laid a good bit of rain around but it cleared up by the time I was rolling around. Walked out to the yard and took some morning shots. Enjoy.
I was able to get in 36 miles this weekend. I was traveling all week so that is my total miles. I am 8 miles away from my monthly goal and should be able to get there. I knew it was windy but it was not warm till after noon at 64 degrees. Windy is an understatement, Yikes.
So you might be asking why would I put new rims on my 2 year old Cannondale CAADX, well that would be a great question. The answer is, my fat butt was just too much for the bike. While it was rated for 300 lbs and I certainly don’t weigh that I was still consistently breaking rear spokes. So after my 5th such break, I decided to take in to the Cannondale dealer in Allen and see what we could do about it. The answer is new robust wheels and hubs. Just another $250 of bike stuff.
Nice looking rim all black on the all black and white bike. I think it looks bad ass. Here is a full shot of the bike.
Revitalized CAADX
I have about 50 miles on the new rims and they are working great, so far. The goal for January is 110 miles and I have 26 to go. I should get 18 today and will ride during the week on the trainer so getting the 26 should happen barring I don’t re-injure my back which has crushed me the last two weeks. Thankfully I can still ride, slowly but still ride while my back gets better. Here’s to another 110 for February.
My Cannondale F400 a midrange Mt. Bike has seen it’s better days go by. I never really did have a love for this bike but it was used regularly as a commuter when I lived in Tualatin, and with road tires on it did a good job for it’s purpose. All my real road riding was done on the CAAD’s. The F400 has been relegated to being my trainer bike during the winter and it handles the trainer abuse fairly well and I don’t mind any damage it gets. I have bounced the dang thing off the ground a couple of times and now I can no longer get it to shift correctly and it does not stay in gear consistently. I just replaced the chain hoping that it would make the bike marginally better and that I would then adjust the rear derailleur enough to get it rideable. Well that did not work out so well. I have decided to retire the F400 from any real riding and will keep it to be nothing more then the trainer bike.
Welcome my newest ride. After looking around and realizing any decent bike is $1,000 or above and that being more than I want to part with for a Mt. Bike since my idea of a Mt. Bike is something with road tire and is for paved trails. Ah, the life of a road bike guy. So I find this $1600 bike on sale for 50% off. Hmm very interesting. I have never heard of the brand but the components on the bike are worthy. I pulled the trigger and bought the new ride.
This bike is a beast, it has 29 inch wheels, the standard bike has 26 inchers, that is a bigger difference then I expected. The reason for the new ride was I headed down through Austin, TX on my way to Padre Island for the Christmas break. Hoping to do some beach riding. While in Austin it is exactly 10 miles from the Hotel all the way around the lake (Colorado River) on the hiking trail. Took the pictures on the trail overhanging the water, downtown in the background. Great little ride.
Down on Padre Island I ended up staying in a Hotel on the beach and while dealing with a little back issue, I have still been able to get 50 miles on the bike while down here. The weather has been glorious it should be 70 tomorrow, sweet. Lot’s of sun and not a lot of people.
Very blessed to be healthy enough to give my all on my 20 mile ride this morning. 10 miles out, against the wind average speed 9 mph. I finally got to turn around and Whoa, 18 mph with the wind at my back, flew home. Awesome!
When you travel a lot for work you really don’t want to travel for play, at least I don’t. But alas I needed a few more miles for my United Platinum status which I was willing to pay for. So travel it is, heading off to Hawaii for Thanksgiving. I can’t think of a better place to enjoy some free time. High’s in the low 80’s Lows in the low 70’s, wow a bit different from Texas. Here are some shots of the island.
Oahu South Shore
And of course you always need some Sunset shots to show you are really on an Island in the middle of the ocean.
Yup this is Hawaii!
someone created a statue of me surfing, thanks for the flowers.
Zboatman's Journey 