Will fish for fun

If hunting isn't enough, we decided to camp out and go fishing today. Here is what it looked like on Lake Pend Orielle in Northern Idaho. I didn't fish as I didn't have a permit. The others fished and they all caught fish but let them go. I just took pictures and drove the boat. It was a very nice day and much hotter and more sunny than I made it look in this picture.

Tomorrow I plan to do a Cancer Patient Care bike ride / tour. I'm only going to ride 50 miles. You have to get up too early for the 100 mile ride.

Will hunt for food

I finally got Mr. Deer back from the taxidermist. I shot it a year and a half ago. It takes that long to get a mount back from a good taxidermist. I'm pleased with the results. Now Mr. Antelope has someone to keep him company. This is a whitetail deer. Mule deer are bigger but somewhat easier to get. In the west we would say this is a 5 point. 5 points on each side of its antlers. It scored 125 for Boone and Crockett. It's not the biggest whitetail in the world but the reason I had it mounted was because it was so even, and most likely I won't ever get a nicer one.

It's not like I shoot a lot of these, but it's nice to know exactly where your food is coming from. I suspect the day will come when you won't be able to just go out into the forest and shoot something like this.

Guard dog

Back at the salt mine,.. team mascot Jake pulls guard duty in the art department. Don't let his posture fool you, he's a real sleeper. No wasted movements. He knows exactly when to jump into action. Notice his summer do. I've been giving that some thought myself. Might go to his barber.

Bigfoot crossing

I noticed this sign on my bike ride at the lake over the weekend. Well that's just great... It wasn't enough to have bears, now there are bigfoots running around loose. Or is it bigfeet for plural?... And I'm sure they are "endangered" so we won't be able to shoot them.

Caution

Tonight I built a fire down by the lake. There was an offshore wind coming down from the hills behind me. I could hear it in the trees above, but the water was only lapping up on the shore. It was kind of unusual. If that same wind had been onshore the waves would have been crashing in.

An offshore wind is not favorable for sailing. Not that I'd want to be on the lake tonight. You can't really tell what's going on out there as it seems calm on the shore. If you had to return in a sailboat you couldn't because the wind would keep blowing you away. Tonight there is a caution in the air. Sort of a melevolant energy. It's as if a disaster is waiting to happen.

On my way over I took this picture of the Camas Prairie. I almost stepped on a rattlesnake here a couple of years ago. This time, it was socked in and raining but I still watched my step.

Cabin workstation

I hope everyone is having a good weekend. I went to Montana. Why I ever moved away I still can't understand. I decided to get a dial up connection at the cabin. So I found the phone box on the outside and tapped into it and ran a wire into my bedroom through the window. Here is a picture what my cabin workstation looks like. That's an electric light BTW. We do have a kerosene one but try not to use it as it makes the glass dirty. It used to be that you couldn't depend on the electricity, but you can now.

You can't believe how quite it is here. The wind is blowing down from the hills and you can smell the sage. It's still to early to have to worry about bears. I think..

Rhubarb pie

I bought a few garden plants today. Mostly herbs but also some tomato plants. I bought two roma tomato plants as they are my favorite tomatos, and one early girl tomato plant. I bought Italian parsley and also oregano. I wanted some basil but the didn't have any. And I bought a couple of pepper plants. I want to get some hotter pepper plants too. I've never grown peppers.

I also have a great big rhubarb plant in my yard and this year I plan to make a rhubarb pie. My mom can teach me how to make a good crust. She is really good at it. I'm not kidding, and she makes the best pies you have ever had. She showed me once before how to make a the crust dough but I never did it so I need to have her show me again. I usually just boil rhubarb it and put sugar on it and have it with ice cream, or bake it with an apple, cinnamon and sugar. When I was a kid we always had a garden. There was lots of rhubarb out by the fence. I'd just go and break off a stalk and munch on it.

Spokane River flooding

The Spokane River has flooded and gone over the bike path. I've seen the river flood over the path a couple of times but never as high as this. Coeur d Alene Lake has also flooded and it's all the way into the parking lot at the resort. I'll have to go in a different direction for my bike rides for a while.

New refrigerator

They came and delivered my new refrigerator today. I got it at Best Buy and they delivered it free plus they took my old one away free. All of the other places I looked at charged about $50 to deliver and $10 to remove. I think there is something to be said for big box stores. However I just showed up when this one was about to be un-boxed. If it had been then I would have had to wait until Saturday to get another one. And that just wouldn't work. When a refrigerator konks out you need a new one,.. like now. I'm at the point that I don't have time for that.

So here is a new picture of the new refrigerator. I'm going to remove the handle used to open up the freezer on the bottom. I don't need it and I think it looks goofy. Notice the bicycle refrigerator magnet. (upper left) That was a gift from a girl at work.

And here is picture of my new phone. Also a gift. I turned on the answering machine. Now other machines call and leave recordings that my machine records. Sometimes my phone answers and the machine on the other end doesn't bother to leave a recording. So my machine records a machine hanging up on it. I'm not sure what to make of this.

Anyway I got two phones like this. One is in the bedroom. It has a green light on it that tells me that it is charged, but the light is so bright in the dark that I put it on the floor and not on my night stand. I like it to be dark at night. Unless the moon is out. I don't want my phone to light up the whole room with a green light.

Bottom feeder

I took this picture on my way to work today. I didn't ride my bike because I had to go and shop for a new refrigerator as mine konked out. The freezer part still works but not the regular part. I haven't had this one too long. This winter I came home briefly from taking care of my mom (who was going through cancer treatment) to find that my refrigerator had konked out. It was a mess. I was so stressed out. I just wanted to come home and crash, but I had to remove all of the food and clean up the mess before I could return to my mom. So one of my friends gave me another old one as he was just using it in his garage to keep beer in.

This time I decided to get a new one. I've never owned a new refrigerator. Of course the new trend is stainless steel. I've always liked stainless sinks. I decided that I didn't want a stainless refrigerator for three reasons. They are more expensive and are black on the sides usually, I couldn't find a stainless one that had the freezer on the bottom, and they get finger prints on them really easy. That just won't work for me.

My mom told me that if she were to buy a new refrigerator she'd get one with the freezer on the bottom and so did my boss. I was just going to get a regular one but then I got to thinking about this. I'm almost 6 feet tall. I almost never get into the freezer section but I always get into the regular part. So every time I'd want to get something out of it to eat I'd have to get it from the bottom.. What the heck!

So I decided to get one that had the freezer on the bottom and the regular part that you always get into on the top despite the extra cost. If you think about it, it only makes sense. You want it designed ergo?.. It's going to cost you. I think it will be money well spent. I won't have to bend over all of the time.

Anway, I like it when someone draws a picture in the dust of a back window of a car like this. It's a very nice looking fish, but It might be a bottom feeder...

Big sky

I went to Montana yesterday. The sky was so strange. So strange that it was hard know how to make a picture. If you've read my blog you might know that Montana is known as "The Big Sky Country". The strange sky made the land look strange. It was confusing. Hard to put things in order. Not that I feel any need to put things in order.

Catch me looking

It smelled nice tonight after work. I could smell the river. I know it's going to get too hot for comfort soon, at least for me as I'm a cold weather person. Spring is a nice time of year but unlike winter it doesn't seem to last as long. At least not here. It goes from cold to hot all too soon.

I saw a girl today. She had a tattoo above her,..well below her waist on her back. I noticed it but didn't take the time to read what it said because I would have had to stare. So I tried to ignored it. She looked back at me as if to catch me looking.

French Cooking

Something tells me that food is sort of like music. Some people can sight read a score and play pretty well, but a true master knows the music so well that they don't need the score. Like Vladimir Horowitz, they know the music by heart.

Perhaps cooking is much the same. I love to cook. I told myself that if I like something I'll learn it so I can do it from memory. I'll do it over and over until I have it down, and I'll get a feel for it like music, and I won't need to read the instructions every time when I make it.

Of course it takes a while to build a repitiour like that, and some things are just too complicated to remember. A guy at work brought in a bunch of books to give away. I searched through them and found this one, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking by Julia Child and Simone Beck. I loved Julia Child, so I'm going to dig into this book and see what I can find.

Ram it

Right after I said on my last post that men driving great big trucks to commute in will be the last hold outs converting to something more reasonable on gas I saw this Dodge Ram for sale. Perhaps it's already starting and I was wrong.

This Dodge is really nice. There isn't a scratch on it. I don't know what year it is but I suspect it is about a 1999 or something like that. Dodge trucks really didn't sell well until they came out with this style and they made them look like semi tractors. Peterbuilts and such. People bought them like crazy, and I'm sure some people used them for work. But lots of people just drove them to work like this one.

This truck has never worked as a truck. At least not on any ranch I've ever been on. The wheels are chrome. That's just not very manly or practical. The tires are too wide to work well in the snow and are too wide to chain, as narrow tires work much better if you get into deep snow. They might work ok in a swamp or sand or something. They might be ok on the highway I don't know. The bed isn't long enough to hold a full sheet of plywood which are 8 feet long without putting the gated down. The bed is probably 7 feet long. Even small campers are 8 feet long. Why have a a truck with 3/4 ton capibility and then minimize the space to put a load? The bed is short because of the extended cab, a feature to make it more car like in interior space. It has a V10 motor. I honestly don't know much about that motor but it kind of sounds like a sports car motor to me, like a Dodge Viper. I looked inside and it has all of the creature comforts. You never used to see that in a truck. And even though it has an extended cab it really doesn't have much leg room.

They only want $8k for it. That's a pretty good deal. I wouldn't mind having it to pull my boat with,... if I thought it would do it without breaking down. But I have to admit,.. it's really pretty.

Never ever

For some reason it seems like my life is on dial up and I keep getting bumped off while everyone else is on broadband. The only time I ever go fast is when I get the wax right on my skis. Thankfully I got through the ski season without hurting myself. If I had goofed up my legs I'd really be living on dial up.

This week is national bike to work week... I was talking to this woman who was cutting my hair. We were talking about the price of gas and the cost of food. Her husband went back to school for some reason. So she was supporting both of them and two kids on what she made cutting hair and things were tight. She was making a point of how much gas it took for him to go back and forth to school. Then somehow the converstation shifted to how she wanted an SUV like a Chevy Tahoe and her husband wants a new big pickup. I didn't know what to say.

I don't know how much gas is going to have to cost before people will change their ideas about driving. I don't think bike to work week is going to make any difference at least not here. Only a fraction of people live close enough to work do it, and are willing to make that kind of adjustment in their routine. Plus many of the streets just aren't designed for bikes. Most people here where I live never ever go anywhere without getting into a car or a great big truck. Ever.

Jimmy Carter nut

I seem to be in a bit of a void. I've started cycling every day now. Yesterday while riding, pop and country music didn't do it for me so I settled on a classical station. One piece was Wagner, I knew that but I couldn't name the piece. The other one I knew also but couldn't name the composer or the piece. Both unwound my mind.

I'm getting kind of burned out on politics. A couple of weeks ago I watched Howard Dean, chairman of the DNC on Meet the Press. He seemed to be moderating his position with regard to Clinton and Obama, as he then mentioned that the delegates from Michigan and Florida should be seated. Before that it was my impression that he wanted to stick to the rules, and perhaps not seat those delegates, I think to favor Obama. Perhaps now he realizes that it might not matter.

George Shultz was on Charlie Rose recently and spoke about Jimmy Carter's recent trip to meet with Hamas. Schultz compaired it with Armand Hammer's meetings with the soviets. Back then Hammer's trips were problematic for that administration and they had to tell the soviets that Hammer didn't represent the US positions. I tend to agree with his viewpoint on this even though Carter's intentions were good.

Here's a picture of my Carternut. (the things I collect..) There's a peanut inisde there. Perhaps I should sell it on e-bay. I think I'll wait until his peace plan starts to work.

Evil grouse

I went skiing and was attacked by a vicious PTARMIGAN . I tried to ski away but it chased me down and bit me!
(photo credit, Roger. I handed my camera off to him so he could capture my last moments)

It was an evil grouse in a fowl mood.

After it attacked me, it brought down a kid on a snowboard many times its own size.

I was thinking,.. They could make a new movie like The Birds. Except it could be at a ski resort in the winter, and vicious ptarmigans could run out of the woods and attack unsuspecting skiiers and snowboarders. Instead of The Birds, it could be called THE GROUSE. People would flock to see it...

Just kidding. It must have had a nest somewhere it was protecting.

River cleanup

It's been a little over a week now since my cat Spunky died. We'd been house mates for so long that it was difficult for me to get used to a new routine without her. My vets (there are two of them) sent me a nice sympathy card today. I don't think there was anything they could have done to save her. I think she had a stroke based on her behavior. It was sad at the end, but she had a full life.

I rode my bike at lunch and again after work. I'm trying to loose my winter fat and it's starting to work. The kayak guys were playing on the river when I crossed the bridge tonight so I took a few pictures. Here is one of them. It's a beautiful river, but I heard today on the radio that you can't eat any fish out of it due to mining waste. Too many PCBs and other things. Downstream you can eat 1 fish a month depending on what kind of fish, but two was max. I got a letter in the mail that told when and where they are doing cleanup. It's pretty serious. Sad to think you can't catch a fish and eat it out of such a beautiful river.