April 11th

What a weird day. I finally fixed my mower, but spent most of the day raking starballs in the yard. When I came home after a noon meeting, there was a young turkey at the end of the driveway. I pulled in slowly to keep from scaring it, but it moved off toward the tennis court. As I pulled to a stop, I noticed a coyote running away across the dam of the pond. Daytime siting! I'm sure the turkey was aware of it, and torn between running away from me and into the jaws of the coyote.

Later that evening, I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper and noticed that an enormous raccoon was about 3' away from me on the other side of the sliding glass door. It figured out I was there about the same time I noticed it. I put a half a loaf of old stale bread out on the deck, and it was gone by morning. I'm just running the Critter Cafe here.

Butterfly Festival

I finally took the time to properly photograph the butterflies at the Powell Gardens Butterfly Festival this year. While I do not have a digital SLR yet, I have learned that using the iPhone 6 with my headphones as a remote shutter, and being patient and getting the phone within a couple of inches, as well as snapping dozens of photos of each subject, will yield at least one or two good photos.

Blue Morpho

I love the Butterfly Festival at Powell Gardens, and my favorite is the Blue Morpho. I remember the first time I saw them in the Jungle outside of Panama City, in the old Canal Zone. The Panamanians had slash & burned the rest of their jungle, so places in the U.S. controlled area were the last vestige of old growth jungle. When this butterfly is in flight, it alternates from it's dull brown underside to its bright blue topside, so you see the iridescent blue in wingstroke flashes. It's hypnotic.

Fear My Antennae!

This moth reminds me of that woman in The Hunger Games from the Capitol with the crazy hair

From the Underside

I love these huge veiny leaves.

Fly-by Goslings

Zach & I were at the Lakeside Pergola at Powell Gardens. While a large group of nuns in old-fashioned habits were standing in the shade behind us, Zach was fascinated by the "Water Spiders". I didn't know what he was talking about until I noticed there were what we called "Water Skeeters" and what Wikipedia calls Water Striders. They were the smallest ones I had ever seen. We had to get down on our stomachs and get our faces right down by the water to see them. So we were laying there, with Zach poking his fingers in the water, and the people behind us were acting funny, talking about something. I looked around and a pair of geese with 5 goslings were swimming right toward us. I warned Zach to be still and they came right by us, about 5 feet away. They went by and then started eating in a bed of moss about 10 feet away. It took about 10 minutes before they got sick of it and moved on, and by then, Zach was tired of sitting still. He was picking at the moss and dipping his fingers in the water, ignoring the geese. One of the adults made this little gobbling nose and wagged his head, which was obviously the signal to move out. The nuns had already moved on. I was surprised they didn't stay. Aren't they supposed to be more patient than that.

8/5/15

This guy was on the trunk of a car at the Frito Plant in Topeka.


Kind of like a fish out of water.  I know how he feels.

Turkey Convention

We used to always have 6 turkeys, a consistent little flock. Now we have 9, so I was trying to figure out which positions each played on the turkey baseball team. They all seem to be in left field to me.

I'm King of the World

Zach loved climbing rocks while we were in Estes Park.  Here he is after climbing the rocks behind him and declaring "I'm King of the World".

Konza Konquered

I have been asked, "why in the world would you want to do that?" when I tell people that I was going to run the 25k Konquer the Konza run.

Well, I don't know.  Maybe just to say I did it?  Maybe to have a goal to keep me working out and make me stay in shape?  Maybe because it's a really cool course out on top of the world in the Flint Hills?

Last year was the first time they ran the race, and it was brutal.  I got hurt water skiing over Labor Day and was not completely over the injury at race time.  I was fine until the last 3 miles of the run, during which time I questioned the sanity and whether or not I could finish.

This year, I did not train as well.  I had not really reached the point where I had any right getting out to do it.  The longest run I had accomplished was a 12 mile the weekend before, in which I hurt my calf at the 11.5 mile mark.  I didn't run or train during the week leading up to the run, with the exception of an 8 mile run on Tuesday which was painful and slow.

I got there the morning of the run, after driving all through Kansas due to a road closure and a ridiculous detour, making it in time, doing everything right before the run.  I was hydrated, had gum, had my iPhone loaded with podcasts, and an iPod with tunes and audiobooks.  I did not have my water bottle belt, so I was running, quite ludicrously, with a bottle of bottled water.  OK, not the best gear, but something.  I plugged in my iPod and turned it on and got the "low battery" sound right before it quit.  I think the button gets pushed when it's sitting in my bag, running the battery down.

The race started, and I remembered sunglasses, because the first 2 miles are running directly into the rising sun.  I'm feeling pretty clever until I hit the .5 mile mark and my calf starts to hurt.  Not just little mild pain, but "Ouch.  No way.  Uh oh." pain.  I could run on it, but I think it was with a visible "limp".  So much stuff goes through your mind... "Should I quit? Naw, it's not that bad.  Wait, this is pretty bad.  Well, I can still run.  I spent the time and money and training to get here, I might as well see how far I can go.  Maybe it will quit hurting when I get warmed up." So my conflicted internal monologue played out and I kept going.  And it did get better for a while.  Then it got worse, and then it just stayed at a consistent level of no fun.  But I completed the run!

Running with that much pain took a lot of the fun out of it.  I had a lot of people fall in next to me and engage in long conversations.  That has never happened to me on a run before.  One woman, probably about 30, says to me, "You're an inspiration, sir.  I don't think I've seen anyone as old as you out here." Maybe the pain had prematurely aged me.

It was odd, though.  I got what I call the Invisible Man Syndrome.  I'm kind of used to it.  With a generic name like Mike Jones and generic looks and generic mannerisms, I do tend to fade into the background.  I've never been described as particularly memorable.  This was a little more extreme than that.  They had volunteers at several points on the trail, and they would be cheering for the people right in front of me, fall silent when I ran by, and start cheering again for the people behind me.  There was a pair of course photographers at the 7 mile and 11.5 mile point (you pass it twice).  The second time around, he stopped shooting when I went by.  It was giving me a complex.  I had overheard a couple of women running near me earlier in the race.  One said, "My life goal is to become a photogenic runner.  I want to be one of those women they always take great pictures of while I'm running."  Maybe I had become the opposite, an unappealing runner.  One that you would never want to advertise or promote the run with, because I'm in obvious pain and making the run look grueling and uncomfortable, rather than the uplifting and transcending experience it's supposed to be.

I don't know, I recognized my invisibility and fell into the mode, embracing it.  When I finished the run, no one spoke to me, so I stood there for about a minute and then just left.  I guess it's not a whole lot different than the way I approach my daily running.  I get out and do it by myself, listening to audiobooks and podcasts, and enjoy the time by myself.  I've always felt, since my time in the Army, that running with people is too much work.  You end up getting paced by the people with the worst run times, or you get strung out when some gazelle sets the pace.  In any case, it's usually not your own pace, and it's usually not comfortable.  I also like the thought that my success is in no way linked to anyone else.  In fact, there is no success or failure, it just is what it is.  It's just whatever distance I go for whatever pace.  Sometimes there are those Forrest Gump moments where you see something beautiful or inspiring, but mostly, you just plod along until it's done.  I guess that's not a bad metaphor for life.

Grasshopper & Spider Summer

I heard that spiders are getting bigger because of climate change.  I can believe it, the Orbweavers are huge this summer.  The grasshoppers are different this summer, too.  Usually, we have those yellow/tan ones that are armored, have spiky hoppers, and spit "tobacco" at you when you pick them up.  This summer we have these big green ones with yellow stripes as well as tons of other types.  We also have a Gardener Spider back in the front yard, and I believe he really likes grasshopper blood!  Cool.

Frozen

Zach and I spent part of the day watching the Disney Movie Frozen.

Then we went out and experienced it.  It was probably the last day before the sun would be coming out and the temperature would be rising, so the snow and ice might be gone soon.

We walked out onto the point at Jacomo and found that someone had used the dock and chopped a hole in the ice to fish, but no one had come down the walkway out to the main body of the lake.  Ours were the only footprints.

The sun came out from behind the overcast shelf of clouds overhead, and gave us a colorful sunset, and the ice shelves shown beautifully.

We hiked up through the woods to the rock bluff above, slipping all the way up.

I think it helped to want to be out in the elements after Disney made all that ice and snow seem more magical.

Speedy Lost

Well, we lost another Tortie.  Speedy was the almost identical twin sister of Cupcake.  Cupcake died by getting hit by a car, almost right in front of us.  Speedy just disappeared.  Like Cuppy, Speedy loved to go outside at night.  For a long time, I would go outside and get her when she was out late at night.  Often, when she was hard to find, it was because she had a mouse or a mole.

Sunday night, she had gone into the spare bedroom upstairs, as she often did, to nap.  I had closed the door, and heard her scratching sometime later, and opened the door to find her eager to get out.  Shortly afterwards, she asked to go outside (by standing at the back door on her hind legs, pointing to the door handle and meowing at me a certain way).  I let her out, figuring she had to go to the bathroom after being stuck inside and politely not using the spare bedroom as a litter box.

I never saw her again.  I tried to search for her from the time she was let out around 9pm until about 2am.  She always either sat in the window in the wing wall or came across the roof to my office window and meowed to be let in, but sometimes you could go down by the barn and scare her out.  Not this time.

She stayed out all night a few times before.  She would always be at the back door first thing in the morning, waiting to be let in.  Not this time.

I searched the barn, the woods, and nearby neighborhoods to see if I could find her, but no luck.

A second night passed, again with no luck.  A second morning came, again with no Speedy at the back door.

I remembered losing El Tigre years ago, around the time my father died.  She fell through a very old and thin roof on the well and clung to the edge of a pipe and died.  It was terrible to find her, because you just knew if you had found her in time, you could have saved her.  I remember a kitten years ago went into the barn and was playing on a pile of wood that fell over and trapped her.  I found that one, barely alive, covered with fleas.  That was terrible.

In some ways, it's worse to have them simply disappear.  I assume that a bobcat, fox, or coyote (possibly an owl) got her.  However, she could also have been chased but escaped, in which case she might have lost her sense of direction in the pursuit and is out there somewhere, confused about where home is.  She might also have gotten beyond a yard with dogs in it, and now does not want to cross to get back.

We put up Lost Cat signs around the neighborhood, but after two nights, I'm not so sure we've got any chance.  She was always shy or terrified of strangers, so I'm not sure how she would go about looking for help from some other house. Maybe if she was hungry enough she might approach someone.  Given the way so many people hate cats, they might be just as likely to take a shot at her as to help.

In any case, it's probably likely that we'll never find out what happened.

Speedy was not my favorite cat, that was Cuppy.  After she died, Speedy kind of took her place.  She used to come up and try to get in front of my work so she could get some attention.  I put a little blanket on my work table and she used to nap at my elbow while I worked.  Occasionally, she would drape herself over my arm.  She would crawl up in my lap and fall asleep, contented dead weight pinning me down.  She always jumped up on the counter when you made cereal in the morning, knowing that she'd get some milk for her efforts.  She was pretty consistent and predictable, a sweet and kind-hearted little cat, but a night prowling hunter, too.

She will be missed.

Back in Action!

Fixed the Dishwasher, finally.


Lived without it for a couple of months and could not figure it out.

The error code when you tried to start it up was "uo".  I started Googling....


I discovered that UO is supposed to be VO, which is "Vent Open" since the display could not make a V.  The vent was controlled by a little solenoid, and if it can't seat properly, it won't let the dishwasher work.  There were plenty of videos on how to fix your dishwasher, but the only one that showed my Frigidaire Dishwasher Model # FGHD2433KF1 did not show how to fix the vent.


I took apart the dishwasher and replaced the "vent" in the door for about $15.  The vent was a static piece of plastic with no moving parts. That couldn't be right.  It wasn't.


So I thought about it for a while.  I would Google it from time to time, with the same results.  I could find lots of places that wanted my parts business, and lots of semi-amateur videos on YouTube, but I couldn't get Google to give me anything other than the same set of hits on the first two pages and nothing of value anywhere further back.  I read a lot of comment threads and gathered that the dishwasher I had was a cheap piece of trash, according to many frustrated owners, and that this problem could never be resolved by trying to repair the part, you would always have to replace it.

I called a couple of repair places and asked them if they could explain to me how to get to the vent motor.  They do not give advice over the phone, and it's at least $80 to have someone show up at your house.

Finally, I decided to try some different search engines, and saw something on DuckDuckGo that jogged my memories.  Find the Vent Motor, not the Vent.

I was looking at the "manual" which was simply some exploded drawings of the dishwasher and parts lists, and I noticed that the "vent motor" was listed with the "tub" not the door.  The tub is the whole body of the dishwasher.  Unfortunately, it did not show where the vent motor was located on the tub.  Finally, I pulled out the secret instructions that are clipped inside the door of the dishwasher (you have to disassemble the door to get to them).  They state that these secret instructions are very dangerous and should not be used unless you know what the heck you are doing!  There was no diagram or instructions about the vent motor, but there was a description that explained that the "vent" is actually two openings in the dishwasher, an inlet and an outlet, and that the vent motor blew into the dishwasher and a fixed vent in the door allowed the air to escape.  Ah ha!  There are two places on the dishwasher that have vents, not just one.  So then I looked at the drawing again, and it showed a "bezel" which is really just a great big plastic nut that would hold the vent motor on.  This part would be visible from inside the dishwasher.  I looked a few times before, but now, knowing that it was a ring shaped piece, I found it on the inside top of the dishwasher.


I pulled the dishwasher out from under the cabinet and loosened the bezel so that the vent would come free.  The vent had a little electrical connection, which I disconnected.


The vent motor assembly was in my hand.  This part costs $93.40.  Everyone online says you can't fix it.  So it's trash.  So why not try to fix it?

So I took it apart and a bunch of parts fell out on the table and a spring sproinged across the table, which I caught deftly.  I did not see where it came from so I know at this point that I'm in trouble.


I find the gasket which is supposed to seat nicely into the opening, and I see lots of little black plastic pieces in there.  I dump them out on the table.  How in the world are there broken pieces of plastic here?  This is a pretty simple and gentle part and it doesn't even have any black plastic parts, much less any that are obviously broken off.  So I took the gasket and scrubbed the hard water deposits off of it and put the little vent motor assembly back together.  I even figured out where the spring went.


I reinstalled it, put the dishwasher back together, and turned it on.  It worked.


When I was cleaning up, I went over to the table to pick up the pieces of black plastic.  Before I swept them away, I took another look and recognized them for what they really were.  Mouse droppings.  We had a little visitor sitting on top of our dishwasher using the vent like his own personal outhouse.  One of the little nuggets wedged itself into the vent and held it open.  I can't believe this insignificant mouse dropping almost cost me hundreds of dollars.


But I am glad I figured it out.

Unity Fountain Magic

Zach runs so fast around the fountains at Unity that he is a blur.

Jacomo at Sunset

Blue Herons, old fishermen, mirror like lake, sailboats, sunset, and hot air balloons.

What's not to like?

Reed House Seance

We had a pleasant evening at the Reed's house, including mainlining sugary whipped cream directly into the children's mouths:

 

Followed by a candle lit séance.

Barney Allis Plaza

Zach likes to go to the "big buildings".  We get out of the car and walk around the fountain at Barney Allis Plaza.  It was a pretty night and a good time to try the panorama function on the camera.

Not a Good Shortcut

No matter how tempting it is, you cannot wash your children in the washing machine.

Mt. Crested Butte

The top of Mt. Crested Butte is at 12,126'.  You ride the Silver Thread gondola from the resort (about 9500'?) to 11,800'.  The last 300' of elevation takes 1.5 miles to traverse and is not as easy as it looks.

It was for Zach, though.  Andrea and Jodi were getting tired and winded and Zach was barreling along with no sign of fatigue.  I tried to get him to slow down to let the ladies catch up.  I told him, "You have to slow down a little bit, because you're the strongest climber, and everyone needs a chance to catch up."

We got to the 2/3 way point, a big saddle with a view of the crest.  Zach and I kept going while Andrea and Jodi found a good place to watch from.  Zach was tireless.  People were looking at him and making comments about what a tough little climber he was.  "I'm the strongest climber!" he told anyone that tried to talk to him.  He was.

Too Gutsy

I took Zach for a walk in the woods Sunday and found an enormous hollow oak tree on it's side.  He actually fit into the log and wanted to crawl through it.  I was struck at the willingness to jump in and do things that I wouldn't want to do, but part of that is the lack of experience of childhood.  Who's to say our fears and aversions are right?  I try to remember to error on the side of letting him live his life and not be a paranoid helicopter parent.

We went to the Elk Enclosure and were putting carrots through the fence to the young bull elk.  It was cold and Zach got bored quickly.  "I'm through with the elk" he said, announcing his desire to move on.

This morning, it was about 23°F and I was trying to get him dressed.  As usual, he saw the situation as a game where baby tries to run away and daddy struggles (hilariously, to him) to put on the clothes!  I hate it, but it's hard to get mad because he's giggling like a little crazy man and having a blast.  So this morning, I got his PJ shirt off, and couldn't get the day shirt on.  "Do you want to go to Kidz Kabana without a shirt?"  No! He let me put the shirt on.  I got his PJ bottoms off and he was naked, but he wouldn't let me put his underware on.  "Do you want to go to Kidz Kabana with your potty pee hanging out?" No! He let me put his underware on.  Pants proved to be more difficult.  "Do you want to go to Kidz Kabana without pants?"  "I don't wanna wear pants!  I wanna wear shorts!"  Explaining to Zach that it was cold out didn't make a dent.  Maybe he had to experience the cold to understand.  OK, shorts on and out the door (he had a coat and shoes on).  I had his long pants ready, but every time I asked if he wanted them on, he said no.  We got all the way to Kidz Kabana without him caving in.  I understand three things: 1) the lesson was mine 2) when you don't have to spend much time outside, it's not that tough to wear shorts for the time it takes to get in the car and for the car to warm up 3) maybe he's just tougher than I thought.

I explained that it was a lesson that backfired and left him at Kidz Kabana in shorts.  We'll see what he's wearing when it's time to pick him up.

OUT OF PICTURE SPACE!

I tried to post another blog entry from the Colorado vacation and got a disturbing message.

I have used up my free picture space!  So now, I plan on making a little self published book, then purging the older entries off the web.

The book will probably be Animal Tales 1, pulling all the old entries from back to the first entry about my Visitor Snake on June 5, 2007, 5½ years ago to however long it takes to fill up a little book.  Since the first entry, we've been on many vacations and welcomed Zach into the world, so a lot has changed.

Unfortunately, one change that may have hastened this delay in the standard was the purchasing of a new camera at the beginning of the vacation.  The picture file size jumped up and I wonder if it was a coincidence that the end of the available space hit at about that time.  The quality of the photos went up, so it was more tempting for me to put more photos in, too.

So it's time to dial back, do a little written entries with no pics for a while, and then get back on track after I put together my book project.

Thanks for watching.

Crested Butte Quarters

We took a vacation without reserving a place to stay in advance.  While driving out to Colorado, while still in Kansas, we got on the phone and started calling around.  Without a computer with a big screen, we were unable to see what we were getting into.  The Real Estate companies in Crested Butte also made arrangements for rentals of cabins and other properties.  Labor Day weekend is apparently when summer ends and there are not near as many tourists, because we had a lot of choices.  It was also considered off-season, so we didn't have to pay peak skiing season or peak summer vacation prices.  Sometimes it pays to wing it.

 View to the South

 View to the East

 Our Cabin (with south facing deck).

View out the living room window to the East.

First View of the Mountains

We did the regular game on the way to out to Colorado to try to see the mountains as far out as we could.  Sometimes you see them 20 or 30 miles out, but this time, the haze was thick and we did not see them until we were almost in Colorado Springs.  We were expecting to see a huge burned area when we entered the city from the huge wild fires this summer, but the fire must not have been anywhere near our route.

Kansas Homestead

After spending part of the summer searching for the remnants of old homestead era houses around home and finding mostly foundations and filled in cisterns if I was lucky, it was interesting to see a very old house mostly intact on the Kansas plains.

Wind Power

Here's some shots of one of the newest wind farms in the state of Kansas, just west of Abilene.

I discovered that there are 14 wind farms in Kansas right now, generating about 1.6 GW (gigawatts) with 5 more plants slated to be opened this year for an additional 1.0 GW.  That means Kansas is generating around 3 to 5% of the nation's wind energy.  This from the native tribe's area where they called themselves People of the South Wind.  That's a lot of households running on wind energy.

Abilene - A Little Slice of Paradise

While driving out to Colorado, Andrea was teasing me about my love for travel brochures and maps from Visitor's Centers.  We were looking for a place to stop and have lunch and Abilene was coming up soon.  I told her that they had a great Visitor's Center, and she thought I was joking, giving her another chance to make fun of my brochure obsession.

We did stop in downtown Abilene and found a spot of shade in the Eisenhower Boyhood Park in downtown, but it was not helpful because it was miserably hot and we were still melting in the shade.  While going back to our car, we detoured over to the Visitor's Center and stocked up on promotional pamphlets and informational flyers, as well as the mandatory State Hiway Map.  We did notice that Abilene had a trolley, perhaps even fancier than the one at Powell Gardens.

Topeka Zoo

Several years ago, they re-routed the turnpike going into the east side of Topeka and put a big new toll plaza in.  One of the prettiest farms you will ever see is about 400 yards away from this stark industrial bottleneck of traffic.  We always look over and feel sorry for the people that own this really picturesque property, that they have to put up with the ugly mess of slow moving trucks and cars.  The other way to look at it is that these people made this little spot of heaven on earth, and it's so much more pleasant to look at than the tail lights of the car in front of you.

Snail's Eye View

This was shot while right under theNew Paseo Bridge aka the Christopher S. Bond Bridge

Zachers the Flash

Everything else is a blur when Zach gets going.

Chapel Views

There were many compelling views of the Chapel through the summer.

For some reason, Zach was always so excited when we got to the Chapel.  He would take his shoes off and run around.  I like the fact that his feet are both off the ground.

 His favorite thing to do at the Chapel was to take off his shoes and socks and soak his legs in the cool pool at the bottom of the fountain.

 He loved to stand in the middle of the huge window and look out on the lake.

 Climbing the walls of the fountain was a especially fun.

I always loved looking up at the glass in the Chapel ceiling and trying to figure out the reflections in the glass.  You could never be quite sure which was the wall or ceiling and which was the reflection.

While the land baked under this summer's drought, there were signs of the extreme conditions everywhere.

The water was so low that the cooling coils were visible in the lake.

Some of the cracks were so large, you could stick a baseball bat down the crack.

Zach was a trooper through it all.  We hiked almost every weekend and he never complained.

 The dust was pounded into a fine powder and no rain or wind disturbed the days of turkey tracks that accumulated over the weeks.

Zach enjoyed the fountain as the heat of the summer's days drove us to seek shade or water help us keep cool.