In May of 2019 the three of us went out west to spend some time together on our motorcycles. One of the highlights of the trip was this ride through Joshua tree National Park.
Who knows what was being discussed in this conversation. I’m glad we stopped.
I had this photo professionally printed and it is now hanging on my wall. I never thought much about the importance of my photography until recently. As I walk past this picture several times a day I am reminded to slow down and live in the moment.
The trip was somewhere around 7,000 miles round trip, not counting the motorcycle riding. All the places we went together and then I was called in to work from the road and had to travel back home for a few days then return to pick up where we left off. What a crazy couple of weeks this was. But as I look through the photos of this trip I am, again, reminded to live for this moment.
Immature Golden Eagle at Lone Pine, California. This all happened very quickly and was over just as fast.It is May in Utah! Coming over the mountain passes every day was a freezing cold experience. Us on a break.Dad on a break at the “Valley of Fire”.Zion National Park. No photo will ever do it justice. And I am not sure how I got no people in this photo.
As I go through the photos I wonder how we fit all this in. I really don’t remember much about the logistics now that so much time has passed.
It was hot but I managed to survive. I was recently in Las Vegas where it was 111° at 9pm. This wasn’t so bad.
On the way home I kinda wanted to step off the planet for a while and take a break. Work wasn’t that great and I was having a hard time staying motivated. I had no idea what was about to come next. It would not be easy in 2019 through 2021. Between the shit show that was work at times and COVID life was about to change. I didn’t know that in these photographs and oblivious to what was about to happen (or was happening and we just didn’t know it).
Being a nomad can be freeing. I enjoy being alone where I am rarely lonely.
Joshua Tree was but one of the many places I visited on this trip. It was an fun journey to the west coast and back. I wish I could remember the details now. I’ve always had the best intentions of writing things down and doing a better job of journaling. As I look through my notes I see that i was gone 23 days total.
I live in this moment the best I can. I do the best I can to listen without interruption. I say what I need to say to those who listen.
After attending the eclipse in August of 2017 I knew that I would want to be front and center for the total eclipse that would occur in 2024.
We had a couple of logistical challenges.
Initially I thought that we would travel to somewhere like Texas from Virginia to get the best possible chance of not having cloud cover during the eclipse. I didn’t realize how lucky we were in 2017 that there were no clouds at all during the viewing of that eclipse in North Carolina. How could we insure this time would be the same? That will take lots of planning and options.
Texas is a very long way from home. It was going to be a multiple day drive or a very long flight to get there. Then there is the hotel availability, throngs of people trying to do the same thing. We could camp. Whatever we were going to do we would have to plan and commit to something. It got complicated. We both work where taking another week off would probably be difficult or impossible.
After trying to sort out the best place to be I decided that I should not travel over the road at all and, instead, fly to a location. The problem of cloud cover at any eclipse location was still very much an issue because for certain over the path of totality there will be clouds somewhere. Especially in the northeast part of the US.
So my plan took the shape and consisted of a “game day” decision of six different locations spread apart about 500 nautical miles in the westerly direction from Virginia in the path of totality.
On the morning of April 8, 2024 I checked the weather and made the decision that we will go to Tiffin, Ohio. Tiffin was right in the path of totality. The airport located there is a small field no where near any major city and certainly not a destination people would flock to.
Interesting bit of planning trivia; Tiffin was the only location that would be clear of the six I chose. That was the weather on this day. I’m glad I planned so many different routes.
There was a challenge, though, in that it was the best place to go given the weather in all my my choice locations but there was still cloud cover. And, to make matters worse, there were a line of showers between home and Tiffin. We would be in the clouds and rain for some portion of the trip for sure.
I am an instrument rated pilot with access to an aircraft so I filed and IFR flight plan to Tiffin from Hagerstown, MD. It will be about a 2 hour flight. As predicted, we encountered clouds and showers along the route of flight but it was one of those laminar days where the ride was so smooth you think you are suspended in air. Yes, we got rained on and were in and out of the clouds but at some point … “POOOOF!” … we flew right out of the back side of the front into clear blue skies. A few minutes later we landed at Tiffin. It turns out we were the first people at the airport that day. They were expecting a crowd.
I fueled the aircraft for the flight home and paid for the fuel before parking in a spot we could view the eclipse. And we settle in for a couple of hours while we wait for the stars to align, so to speak.
40°25’42.3″N 81°42’57.4″W – Somewhere in Ohio the weather started to clear.My co-pilot sleeping on the job. My brain, on the other hand, was on fire.
After we landed and got settled in we decided to order a pizza which was promptly delivered to the airport. The sun was out yet the air was cool. It was turning out to be a perfect day to view an eclipse. I mean, really. It all worked out so well.
Then one after another small planes started to land at Tiffin as well. I’m guessing there were probably around 50 small airplanes that decided to make Tiffin their viewing location. The staff at the airport were very accommodating. Of course, it is going to be a big revenue day for them with fuel and other sales that will happen on this day.
This is my second eclipse so I knew what to expect. Soon we could look up at the sky and observe the moon start to cover the sun. The bright day starts to fade as the moon moves into its place in front of the sun.
Partial coverage. Taken with a 10,000 ND filter on a 600mm Tamron lens on my Nikon camera.
It is still very bright out. But we all know it is coming. Soon day would fade to near darkness and the entire environment around us changes. The winds calm. The clouds that were there seem to disappear. The birds change their tunes.
Then it happens. And everyone as far as you can hear starts to clap and cheer.
This is a true color image taken without any filters on the same 600mm Tamron lens on my Nikon camera.
At the point of totality it is very hard to describe how you feel. Something special is happening and it is just an amazing human experience to be a part of it. Everyone around you feels the same; “small” but satisfied and amazed.
And 5 minutes later it is over. And 5 minutes after that people start to leave.
Leaving an airfield is very different than leaving in a car. Pilots fired up their engines, lined up at the end of the runway and shot back into the sky. Those were mostly VFR pilots. I filed another IFR flight plan home.
Once I obtained my IFR clearance we were one of the last planes to leave for home. I departed the field, got radar contact and positive control with the controllers and soon they turned us towards home. It was about another 2 hours to travel back to our home airport. We put away the plane and drove back home.
What an amazing experience these things are. The next one will be August 12, 2045. If I am still alive I will be over 80 years of age. And, yes, I will do my best to get in the path of totality one last time.
When we get summer rainbows around here they are very, very tall and wide.
I was going to post this on my Instagram account but the platform crops to its liking. That crop would only take about 1/2 of this photo and display it. I recognize the platform is trying to fit everything in a 1:1 square so this one definitely does not fit that model.
Even in the photograph I was not able to capture the entire rainbow. I forget when I stitch 10+ pictures together I need a ton of overlap to do it properly.
It kind of happened rapidly. I was looking for foxes on the ground when I looked up and saw this monster. I quickly turned my attention to the rainbow, took the photos and then went back to hunting foxes.
As is sometimes the case, I wish I had spent more time capturing the rainbow because a full rainbow like this would hang nicely on a wall somewhere. Next time, less ground and more sky.
After a year long planning effort that started in 2021 we took a trip to Portugal last October to see what this country is all about. What started as a casual conversation with a new friend on my radio ended in a two week cultural exchange. When I was chatting with my new friend he let me know where he lived and while we talked I did a ton of research of things to do near where he lives.
Close to his home there was a monument of some sort but I could not make out what it was. So I asked him. He said that it was a monument to Jesus and his mother Mary that had been placed there over 600 years ago. This thing piqued my interest because the USA has only been a country for 246 years at the time so this monument has been there 2.5 times as long as the US has been a country.
This conversation took place early in the morning when most others in the US are sleeping. When I got up the next day I asked my partner if she wanted to go to Portugal and check things out. I knew this was a place she wanted to go so the answer was a very quick “yes!”. So the planning began.
We knew this would be another “slow travel” event for us. We do not like vacation “packages” where things are all planned out for you. There are certainly a ton of those you can do in Portugal that look very nice but that is not our thing. We planned out the days we wanted to go and the basic route we wanted to take and then went to work to make it happen.
The dates we go are not as easy as you’d think. Because we both still work we have to make sure we are not leaving anyone at work in a lurch while we are gone. There are certain times of the year I can not travel because of work obligations. Same for her. That said, we marked our calendars and “backed in” to the travel there.
Other than the monument, I knew very little about Portugal. I would learn there were so many “World Heritage” sites there with history dating pre-Roman eras. That is kind of hard to wrap your brain around because it is so long ago. Again, the USA doesn’t have this kind of history so this is going to be a good history lesson for us.
Having been there now over 6 months ago the route we took, the maps we used and the places we visited make much more sense than they did during the planning stages. The whole country is about the size of Indiana and is adjacent to Spain and just north of Gibraltar.
Roughly, our plans were to fly into and out of Lisbon and for the longest time that was all we planned. We had days we would be there so we booked the plane tickets round trip. Even though we had no place to stay and no route decided we now had plane tickets to get there and back. That put the planning into a little more urgency than we had up to this point.
Here are my “highlights” take on our trip we took to Portugal. I figured you would want to look at the map and maybe send this information to others. The map makes much more sense to me now.
We did eventually figure out what we wanted to do and the number of days we would spend in each location we would stop for the night. Our itinerary was roughly as follows. I have provided hyperlinks to most of the places we visited.
Fly to Lisbon and stay 2 days around this large city.
We would eat lunch in a mom/pop restaurant in Pinhão (Touristy)
We would spend some time near Castelo Melhor viewing ancient rock drawings there (15,000+ years old).
One of the places I really enjoyed was São Xisto in the Douro River valley. We spent 3 days in this area.
We took a drive up to Gulmarae which is really where Portugal started as a nation state.
Then down to Porto for a couple of days. Nice but super crowded and touristy. Lots of history. We stayed in the old/original city there.
Then Colmbra, Ourém (lunch), Fatima (to see all the Catholic happenings) ending up in an AirBnB in the country.
A friend of mine, lives in Nazaré, sent me a text inviting us to stop by if we had some time. That is the place where world class surfers do their thing on the crazy waves there. Look that up on YouTube. We would visit them in Nazaré for an evening. It was fun catching up with them who we had last seen in the late 1990’s.
That was the end of our journey. From there we went back to Lisbon to catch a flight home.
Church high up on the hillI took these photos at different times of the same day
The flights to/from USA are long but easy. Customs gave us no problems on either side. I have “Global Entry” and an electronic passport which makes going through the system easy and fast. As you know I am a photographer so I have tons of photos if you are interested in what it may look like there. I had problems flying my drone due to regulations that I didn’t not plan well in advance of the trip. Didn’t think it was going to be an issue but it is. They have very tightly controlled air space.
The people are nice and accommodating. We had no issues anywhere. It is a safe country but I’m told there are pick pockets which we never encountered. The people we encountered were all very kind. The larger cities have some of the same issues we have in the USA but felt safe to me.
Get your money in the airport. Don’t wander the country without cash. Once inside, it is very difficult to get Euros with US dollars. Take the hit up front and deal with the exchange rate or have a plan otherwise. I used my credit card everywhere and never had an issue. But some people do not take credit cards.
They do not tip for anything in Portugal. It is hard to get used to but they can be offended if you give them cash outside of a normal sale. Not everyone, but many. We did tip a guide and when we used Uber which they seemed to appreciate. The guide, in particular, only made money from tips so that was helpful for him.
Cost for things is about 25-50% of the USA rates. Food is markedly cheap. The only thing more expensive in Portugal than anywhere in the USA is the fuel which was about $8/gallon while we were there. But you pay for liters so it feels like the per gallon price, just 3 times as expensive.
Driving is easy but the streets are TINY. Signs are easy to adapt to but some of them are weird. I recommend reading up on the signage before you leave to have that in your head before you start driving. There are so many 1-way streets that I tangled with some while we were there. Parking in big cities very hard. Pay in advance, reserve your spot for easy in/out. I can see why people would not want to drive there yet we did not have any issues. If you are comfortable driving a manual transmission and have good situational awareness you will find driving there quite easy.
We were there to chill. And chill we did. Never in a hurry. Never rushed.
As I mentioned above, what started all this for us was a guy I talked to on my radios back in 2021. We did end up meeting him and having a nice long conversation with him. Super nice guy. We did this on our last night there. I got to see the monument I had seen on Google maps and met my new radio friend at the same time.
Rainbow over Douro vineyards
We were quite the spectacle in his neighborhood. It is a tiny place and all the neighbors came out to see what we were about. they helped us reach out to Tony who was not home when we arrived. He had no idea we were coming so him not being home was not a surprise. When his neighbor called him he insisted we stay and meet with him at a coffee shop in his town. Which we did.
Tony claims we made his whole year. He was over the moon that we dropped by and spend a couple of hours with him. Really, that was what Portugal was about. It was an uneventful, history laden, quite, relaxing time with kind people everywhere we turned.
Someone has a sense of humor in downtown Porto
We enjoyed Portugal and would like to go back someday if this life allows us the time to do so. In the meantime, we are working on the next International adventure that we hope to take sometime this year. It is about the same distance away but currently with a little political unrest. Still, we’ll keep on planning and probably go there anyway.
Before the sun went down today I wanted to get some grass cut. When I started it was warm and dry but on the horizon I could tell it was raining. The rain didn’t really look like it was going to come meet me but about half way into my task it really started to rain.
It was one of those rains that wasn’t overcast; just showery. I was thinking, “Why don’t I just park this thing and be done with it for the day?” I was soaked all the way through all my clothes and getting cold riding on the mower. “Just another 15 minutes and I’ll be done,” says my internal voice (like it always does).
Then I looked up and saw a full, very bright and vibrant double rainbow. By the time I got my phone out, figured out how to get into the camera app in the rain this was all I could capture:
Just like that, the sun went back behind the clouds and the rainbow was gone.
I was sitting next to my bees, in the rain with nothing more important to do.
I’m reminded to slow down and enjoy the moment. It may not seem like it but little bits of nirvana surrounds us all the time. Everything is as it should be.
Today nirvana was a rainbow sitting in the rain at the end of a busy work day. All I had to do was look up.
Saying goodbye is never easy. Some are harder than others.
Where did the time go?
Saying goodbye to Olivia.
I wouldn’t be so bad if she weren’t 1,500 miles from here and could pop in anytime she wanted. It’s back to work for all of us in the coming week. The holiday is about over and time to get back at life.
Gloria is off to a wedding. Helen and I are home with the cats. The cats want to be in someone else’s home. Well, two of them do anyway.
After getting up at 4am I think I’ll go to bed early tonight. Or not. Depends on what I get involved with between now and then. Ha. It always depends.
It was a quiet but very full day. I spent most of the day on the phone on work related projects that I needed to complete today. I don’t normally talk about work but that’s what I do during the week from the time I wake until the time I sleep. I may play in between but I think about work all the time.
Speaking of playing, I was able to fly both my drone and RC plane today. It was one of those super harsh sunny days where there is no clouds in the sky. On these days it’s super hard to take a good picture that is not all washed out. It’s hard to look up at what you are controlling from the ground and for the same to look down and take a decent photo.
Of all the photos I took during the day this the one I liked the most.
Sunny day in Virginia, September 19, 2017
I post in Facebook as well but Facebook will down sample the image and make it look like junk. If you touch the one here you’ll get a full photo that you can fill your screen with and really see what it looks like. Even this one is downsampled a bit. It’s only a JPEG image out of a GOPRO 3 camera. It’s amazing what that little camera will do. When it’s hung under a drone and lifted into the air I just think it changes everything about photography.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a picture from the bottom of a drone. It was way, way before it was the cool thing to do. I was mesmerized. I mentioned to Gloria that this is going to be a big thing when it catches on. And it did catch on. People like Casey Neistat became quite famous flying drones and publishing videos.
One of the things I did today was work on my weather station. The Raspberry Pi computer had a disk failure and won’t boot. A year ago I bought some “cheap” microSD cards to use as disks. They have all failed so that didn’t pay off. Name brands for me from now on. I’ll pay a little extra for those things now. None of the SanDisk brands have failed even after years of use. They are not hard to fix but it takes too much time. I’ll have my weather station back working again tomorrow.
Mongrel and I didn’t go for our normal walk today. Instead we played in the grass. Well, he played in the grass while I troubleshot my weather station some during one of my breaks from work. Watch it to the end if you want to see what it looks like for a cat to run through grass like a deer … but he’s only a cat.
We won’t tell him he’s any different.
It’s quiet here. Everyone is sleeping. Tomorrow is on the horizon and should be similar to today.
I hope you’ve had a nice day today. If not, I hope you have a better day tomorrow.
This weekend was about goofing off. Goofing off as much as possible. It all started like this:
… sunrise September 17, 2017
Officially I had to do some volunteer work for my radio club but that was over before 10am Saturday which left the rest of the day to do something I’ve had in my calendar for a while now: The Flying Circus.
We didn’t stay long but we made a day of getting there and back like we tend to do now and again. Typical trip down I-81 where you have to be crazy to be with crazy. But it was OK with both of us in the car together to stay distracted. Although I think my driving drives Gloria crazy. She has to listen to me postulate about statistics of queuing and crowding; the mathematical advantage of being in a small car in a big car world. 210 horse power helps but not as much as being small.
The venue for the RC event is atop a hill south of Covington, VA where people are flying all kinds of different aircraft from fixed wing to drones and even some cars and the like. But it’s mostly about flying something. It’s put on by Jeremiah at Stone Blue Airlines. Jeremiah owns the place there in Lynchburg two hours away from Covington. He’s helped me outfit some of my RC gear here that I fly. It’s cool that he’s made a living out of his passion. It’s really hard to tell when he is working and when he is playing. Which is I think the point to life.
After looking through my FPV goggles at other people flying we took back off for home in hopes of getting back at a decent hour. We lumbered along the back way home up SR220 through some really pretty West Virginia and Virginia back roads. After a dinner at the Fireside Cafe it was slabbing it back home as fast as we could once the sun went down and both of us grew tired.
Gloria had a big morning on Sunday and presentation in the afternoon so we needed to get her back and rested. She had a good, productive presentation on how to make Kombucha. She makes really good Kombucha!
Not me. I took the day (Sunday) mostly off. Besides a 5 mile run at sundown I really didn’t do much but goof off with electronics, some photography, RC flying of various types, radio. Some people have said that my goofing off looks a lot like work. I resemble those remarks.
Oh, radio. I chatted with a “DXpedition” station from the Czech Republic operating in Mauritania using call sign 5T5OK. I was parked on a 14 mhz frequency when I noticed the activity on the spectrum scope. Turns out these guys were testing their station and I was able to snag them in a “pile up” on the first call once I figured out how they were set up on the split frequency. We really didn’t chat long and they went on to making more contacts. It’s about 4,200 miles from here to there. I’m always amazed that I can just “key up” and talk to a totally different country on the planet. Makes the world seem really small. I was on and off the radios all day today which was particularly fun.
I’m working on an adjustable square wave generator circuit with a 555 timer chip. I’m not terribly good with electronics so this is half learning and half doing. I want to create a string of LEDs that use a transistor to switch between on and off at a rate that I can control with the timer chip. The circuit is gonna look something like this:
555 timer circuit
I got my bench power supply back from the shop so I can start building stuff again. Or breaking stuff, depending on how badly I mis-calculate things like voltage, current and the like. My method is less “Ohms Law” and more “Poke-n-Prod” until the blue smoke comes out. When I see blue smoke it’s generally back to the drawing board. It’s a good way to learn but leads to a lot of dead parts.
I’m sure I could buy the circuit from China for a buck but what’s the fun in that? I have this idea on making an LED string look like it’s pumping electricity like water through a tube. I want to vary the alternating lights at a rate and amplitude I can control. Yea, boring.
Mongrel and I got to walk together some today. When we weren’t moving he was chasing his tail. I can’t tell if he is goofing off like cats can do or if he’s frustrated that he can’t control it. One thing’s for sure is that he is very transparent because of that tail which exposes his current mood. The little biting flies were bugging the crap out of us both too.
We were also still a lot today. It’s interesting to watch Mongrel. He generally sits facing opposite of me. If I were to lay down he sits on top of me. Must be some weird instinct thing going on there. Seems to watch out after me when we are together. Anything out of the ordinary while he is on watch will render a “growl”. Could be a dog ½ mile away or a person riding a horse. He just lets me know it’s out there.
Watching everything that is moving.
When all that is done and we are back in the quiet, cool of the house where his guard comes down he starts to slow down after some dinner. Quietly protesting that he doesn’t want to be inside he climbs in his box next to my desk. He starts off looking at me. Then falls asleep.
“In the safety of my box”
Soon he is on his back with his feet in the air. This cat can sleep like none other I’ve ever met. And will sleep like that all night long.
I hope you’ve had a day that was fun like ours. And that you are back in your safe place where ever that may be.
I’m done goofing off. Work tomorrow. Headed to my box.
Yesterday I was reading yet another article about what “mode” to keep one’s camera in so that it is always on the ready. The consensus is that no “pro” would shoot anything other than in full manual mode in raw format. The stories go something like, “5 reasons why you should alway keep your camera in full manual mode…” blah blah. It’s all BS.
In the last year I’ve learned that capturing the shot is the most important thing. Forget how the camera is set. Set the darned thing in a way that when you pick it up the next time you are ready to capture the shot when the shot happens so that you are not “fiddling” trying to figure it out … sometimes in complete darkness.
Tower #2 in the back yard with the Milky Way as a backdrop.
You just can’t predict where you’ll be and there is just no such thing as a perfect camera setting. And you don’t need a “pro” camera to take good pictures. You don’t need the latest technology. You need to get in the back yard and take the picture with the shit you got right now. That’s how this works.
So touch the picture above and look at the details. It’s not like standing in my back yard and feeling the dew on your face as it moves about in the cool breeze. But you’ll get the idea.
I woke with no specific plan and no place I really wanted to go.
After reading a bit I got up, showered and headed out the door after feeding the cats and eating a light breakfast. Mongrel was all over me to go for a walk so off we went. Like our other walks we stopped at the same trees, inspected everything we’ve inspected before just to be sure and walked essentially the same path as we always do. There’s always something new to see and interesting lights to capture.
Me and my shadow.
Mongrel is content just to be with me. But we’ve got to figure out how to travel in a car together if I am to satisfy his need to be around humans all the time. He’s not a fan of the car.
I ended up in Shepherdstown, WV where I visited with Timothy a little as he played guitar on the steps of the old McMurran Hall. His message is the same; be patient, read the bible, be kind to others, do as Jesus would do.
Timothy with two books: bible and music selections.
I like his guitar sound. But we mostly talked.
On the way home I hung close to the Potomac river and the tiny roads next to the C&O Canal. I stopped at places I normally just drive past to take a few pictures.
I tend to like the landscape photos but this one shows more of the sky and clouds. This part of the Potomac is dammed up south of here near Harpers Ferry that allows people to use normal boats here. There were several pontoons and others mixed with a kayak or two.
The C&O canal extends as far east as Georgetown, District of Columbia all the way up to Cumberland, Maryland. It may go further up towards Ohio but I’m not sure. It’s a long way. You could spend several days on a bike on this if you wanted. It’s said to be slightly declining as you go east. However, when I get on it it is uphill in both directions. I can’t figure that out.
What day would be complete without several ascents into the trees?
Mongrel very focused during his tree acrobatics
Gloria came home tonight from her trip with her mom and sisters. We got to walk together before the sun went down. It was fun to hear about her travel to Cleveland, the restaurants, boat, people and other stories. She let me try to take some portraits of her.
Weary traveler back home – I love her smile.
I’m trying to teach myself how to augment some of my photography with a flash. Flash photography is something I just haven’t spent much time doing over the years. You wouldn’t think you’d need a flash on a sunny day like today … but it helps when the sun is in the sky like this.
And if I could fit just one more thing into the day it would always have something to do with an RC plane or drone. Mongrel joins me in these 20-30 minutes flying sessions. As I bring the plane in slow for landing he will chase after it like it’s a rabbit. It’s pretty funny to watch.
Mongrel ready for “final approach” and landing chase – the plane sounds like an owl when it flies (very quiet). – Photo credit: Gloria Westerman
I started with no plan and ended up with a full day. It’s dark now. I’ll finish this blog and go down and do radio for an hour or two before I finally give in for he day. I did as many of the things I like to do as I could. I was with as many people that I love that I could. Tomorrow’s a “work day” but I hope it is as interesting as today.
