Quik Trip

OK, so I'm a little behind. I guess it was a couple of weeks ago on a Tuesday I had had all I could handle at work. I decided that rather than walk into my bosses office and quit, I should just get out of the office and enjoy what might have been the nicest day of the year. I have been meaning to get down to the Wichita Mountains...I used to spend a lot of time down that way. I told the office I was taking the afternoon off. I drove home, through my camera and a bottle of water into my backpack, filled up my motorcycle, and aimed it for the Wichitas. The weather was perfect for riding and it was a pleasant drive even though it had been a while since I had taken the bike for a long ride. I spent about 3 hours in the Wichita Mountain area hitting all the spots I used to frequent:

Mount Scott

The trailhead to the Narrows and the 40 Foot Hole

Hidden Lake


and the Sonic at the Medicine Park Exit off I40

It was a really fun spur of the moment trip and it helped get through a couple of days I might not have made it through otherwise. There were actually quite a few motorcycles riding around the refuge on a Tuesday afternoon for some reason. At one point I wondered if perhaps i wasn't the only one that just needed to get out of the office.

One funny thing that happened - When I filled up the bike my trip odometer read about 250 miles. I always leave my odometer on the trip meter and try to fill up around 150 miles which is a conservative average of how far I get on a tank around town. For some reason, I obviously didn't reset the trip meter last time I filled up and rather than realizing that I hadn't reset the trip meter, I subconsciously transposed 250 over 150 for my range. I made it just fine to the Wichitas and meant to get gas when I stopped at Sonic but forgot and just jumped on the turnpike and headed back for OKC. When I was about 25 miles north of medicine park m low fuel light came on. I thought to myself "I am way under 250 miles...I must have a leak!" Why that was the first explanation that popped in my head, I don't know. I pulled onto the shoulder and then it hit me...150 NOT 250! My trip meter read 167. Now, I was pretty sure the blinking fuel light meant about 1 gallon left and the solid meant about 1/3 gallon left. It was blinking so I prayed over what fuel I had and hoped to make it to Chickasha. I made it but kicked myself for being so stupid the whole way home.

Here are some more pics from the trip:

Really bright green goo in the creek...fascinated me

DCFD Paparazzi

I couple of weekends ago we (Deer Creek Fire Department) did some extrication training on a Saturday morning. I think it was the hottest day of the whole year! I was on the first team so I spent the rest of training taking pictures with my new D40.
Later that day we got a call to a grass fire. There were plenty of guys around so I let them ride out on the trucks and fight fire, and I just followed with my camera hoping to get some good action shots. Being a firefighter, I could anticipate what they would be doing and I knew exactly where to stand to be in their way...so I did just that trying to be extra obnoxious. I would also get in their business and say things like, "could you pretend like you're doing some work for this picture" or "would you take your shirt off for this one". One of the Oak Cliff firefighters asked where the Deer Creek Paparazzi came from. They got a kick out of it...I think they like the attention.
Here are some links to some of the pics.

Extrication Training

Grass Fire

Starz

I have been meaning to transfer some of my favorite blogs from the site that shall remain nameless. I thought I would start with this one since it does a pretty good job of capturing the strange places my mind goes sometimes (or most of the time):

OK, I love the stars and just gazing up at space and letting it blow my mind, but if you know me very well at all, it will come to know surprise that I place absolutely no confidence in astrology or any weight whatsoever on what my horoscope may say for any particular day. You may think that this has to do with the fact that my faith is instead in the One that created the stars and you would be right. But, I rarely leave things that simple. The horoscope popularity has toned itself down lately, but it still drives me crazy at how it is everywhere. So aside from the fact that God created the stars and your faith would be much better served in Him, lets take a scientific approach.

So what is a sign and how does someone get assigned their sign? Well, it would appear that the ancient Greeks had a heck of a lot of spare time on their hands (especially at night) and thought it would be neat to play a galactic game of connect the dots with all the stars visible from Earth. I can only imagine all the fights that must have taken place at 2 oclock in the morning...It looks like a scorpion. No it doesnt it looks like a ox. Anyway, they somehow came to agree on them some 3 millennia ago and what do you know they stuck. Worked out great for sailors!

Now you know its not good when youre not even to the meat of your argument and things already start to fall apart. You see, the ancient Greeks assigned each of the 13 major constellations a portion of the sky. Yes, I said it right, 13. If you know anything about astrology or been awake for any part of your life, you know that there are only 12 Zodiac signs. What happened to the 13^th sign you ask? I'll tell you what happened. The freakin Babylonians thought it was just too much of an inconvenience to have 13 and decided to nix one. And wouldn't you know it, those stinkin pagans didn't knock out the most obvious choice. No, they went after Ophiuchus the serpent bearer. Heck, the sun only appears against the constellation Scorpius for 7 days, but some knuckle-headed Babylonian pagan thought it better to cut Ophiuchus out and give Scorpius his space. Do you really want to be any part of something where blatant discrimination such as this is going on?

I regress. Anyway, you get assigned your Zodiac sign based on which of the 12 constellations the sun appears against on the date you were born.

Now this is where the good stuff comes in. As it stands this year, the sun will not even appear against the constellation the Zodiac says it should for 326 of the 365 days of the year. So there is an 89% chance that you are a month off on your horoscope. Furthermore, the same chance exists that you were assigned the wrong sign when you were born if you are less than 120 years old (in case you were wondering, if over 120 the probability is 88%) Sure, you may think you are a Virgo, but I say with 89% probability that you are actually a Leo or Libra.

Why the inconsistency? It is called Movement of the Ages. Movement of the ages is an astronomical (not astrological) phenomenon that exists as a result of the Earth not being a perfect sphere. Come now, surely you didn't think the Earth was perfectly round. Imagine a toy top. It seems to spin perfectly strait for a little while but in a short amount of time it starts to wobble about its axis. This is because it is not perfectly symmetrical and the forces acting on it (mainly gravity) point out its lack of perfect roundness by making it wobble. The Earth does the same thing. It wobbles about its axis like a top. The major difference being that it takes the Earth 25,925 years to complete one wobble. But the point is that at some point during a 25,925 year cycle, the sun actually passes through every constellation on any given month.

Yes, I am afraid that means that your Zodiac sign is even more meaningless than the Da Vinci Code.

If nothing else, now you know what a big dork I am and what happens when I can't sleep. Again, probably not a big surprise to those of you that know me well, but hopefully insightful to those of you that dont.

Just a few more

I promise these will be the last of the garden photos for a while. Yes, I have actually taken some photos of stuff other than my garden. I will get those up soon.

Before and After (More from the Garden)

I have to say I just about gave up on the tomatoes this year. It has been such a strange summer, I think they must have been confused, but a couple of weeks ago I started noticing blooms everywhere.
Now there are more little green tomatoes on the plants than I would have ever expected to see. We'll see if they make it.

Let It Begin

Nothing is more motivating, encouraging, and powerful to me than God's Creation. So I guess it took a little glimpse of His Creation to finally get me officially started in the world of blogging.
After a length of time (too embarrassed to disclose) that I spent researching the DSLR that fit me best, I finally settled on the Nikon D40 with a Nikor 18-135mm lens (I will explain this decision later). A couple of weekends ago, I took the opportunity to get used to my new purchase and play with some of the more advanced features. My vegetable garden ended up being the perfect setting.

This little guy was so cooperative in posing just where I wanted him...on a mature okra for this one.

One of my favorite things about God, and something that I believe reveals much about His character is His artistry. The flower above serves a specific function, but God didn't create a clunky "mechanism" to perform its function like we would...He created a flower...amazing!

Harmony!

I am very happy with my purchase...