Category Archives: Uncategorized

Greenleaf Trail Run – 2019

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(I stole this Paula’s facebook)

Saturday, I ran in the four mile event of the Greenleaf Trail Run at Oklahoma’s beautiful Greenleaf State Park. I say I ran, its more like I participated with my running friends Paula, left, and Melissa. We trotted a few hundred yards out of the four miles and the rest of the way speed walked it.

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There were three races, a twelve mile, eight mile, and ours and each started separately. Since these are trail races, there is almost always a traffic jam right away. Nobody worries about it much though.

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We ran through a bunch of great views including a segment out and back on a dam.

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The State Parks do a great job of keeping the brush down in the parks. The lack of thorns is especially appreciated.

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Melissa and Paula on the trail. I was wearing some brand new Hoka One’s that I bought over a year ago just before I had to quit running. A lot of the trails were on side slopes, which is fine, but the Hokas were too high and put a lot of torque on my ankles. Plus they were not broken in yet.

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Warning ahead! Bigfoot area. Eastern Oklahoma is a hot bed of Sasquatch sightings.

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And here is the critter himself. It was groundhog day. I didn’t see any groundhogs but Sasquatch couldn’t see his shadow, so does that mean we are having an early Spring?

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All three of us finished the race vertically so that was good. I thought the race was great. The course was beautiful, the package pickup was well organized. I love the cotton poly blend long sleeve tee shirt.

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They had cool coffee mugs at the end for everybody.

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They had great medals as well. You can see Melissa’s above. I went bushwhacking for a nearby geocache at the end of the run. I didn’t find the geocache but the medal fell off when I was out there. Anyway it was cool.

I give this race five stars out of five. Thanks to the organizers and the army of volunteers who did everything from handing out packages, cooking and dishing out the food, marking the course, directing the runners during the race, and a myriad of other jobs.

I am linking with Our World Tuesday

ABC Wednesday – Deer, Donkeys, and Doodlebuggers

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I love hunting deer, with my camera. I surprised this beauty on a trip to Mt. Rainier National Park several years ago.

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Donkeys are cool as well. This trio is on a ranch in western Oklahoma. Cattlemen like donkeys because they protect cattle from coyotes. They hate coyotes. They like treats though. An extra “D” is the drilling rig in the background. Its drilling into the Colony Wash formation. Yep, they fracked the well. All the donkeys survived the fracking.

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The last D is Doodlebugger. Doodlebuggers are earth physicists who do the geophysical measurements to find formations deep in the earth that might have oil and gas. I found this sculpture in the lobby of a building here in Tulsa that housed the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.

That’s it for D’s this week. I’m linking with ABC Wednesday.

Our World – Leonard Bernstein at Tulsa’s Woody Guthrie Center

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Son Logan and Brother Bob from an earlier visit to the Guthrie Center

This past Saturday Heather and I ventured to the Woody Guthrie Center in the Arts District to see their exhibit Leonard Bernstein at 100 co-hosted with the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art.

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It is hard to believe that he has been dead for almost thirty years. He was certainly bigger than life while he was working. An acclaimed conductor and pianist and composer of West Side Story and many other works of classical and popular music.

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The center has a lot of items such as his piano and personal effects even a broken baton.

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He was also an educator. For years, he gave talks on television about classical music. I’ve seen some excerpts before and he was a great communicator, able to talk about complex subjects in an understandable way.

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This is some clothing of his from the 1980’s. I was living near Houston, Texas at the time and had season tickets to the Houston Grand Opera and attended the premiere of Bernstein’s Opera, “A Quiet Place” in June 1983. Of course everybody gave the performance a standing ovation and Bernstein appeared on stage wearing an outfit like that above holding his hands together and pumping them up and down and people were yelling “Bernie” like they knew him or something. Or so I have been telling people that story. And now I read that people called him Lenny!! So don’t listen to anything I say. Not that you were, but don’t be mean about it. The link above goes to a New York Times article on the premiere. They hated it. Anything the yokels like in Houston has to be terrible, right?

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They also have a few of Bernstein’s many Emmy (above) and Grammy (below) awards. They also have several videos to view and lots of music to listen to if you wish.

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The guy was amazing and left a huge legacy behind. The Sherwin Miller Museum also has an exhibit at their location that reportedly more emphasizes Bernstein’s Jewish heritage. Checking out that exhibit is on my near term to do list.

Check out Leonard Bernstein at 100 for information all things Bernstein.

I am linking with Our World Tuesday

Skywatch Friday – January 2019 Lunar Eclipse

This past weekend we had a stellar lunar event. It was a Full Moon, check, The January full moon is known as the Wolf Moon, check (also known as cold moon.” The moon was close to earth, so it was also a Super Moon because it was fractionally bigger (although I couldn’t tell) and we had a lunar eclipse going on and with the lunar eclipse the the moon turns a shade of red. Thus the Super Duper Blood Wolf Moon. Maybe we like our moons too much?

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So here is the moon about an hour or so before anything starts happening. I don’t use my “good” camera to shoot the moon. I have a Canon SX40 SuperZoom. I saw on youtube that with it you just put the camera on Auto setting and then zoom up the moon until it is a big part of the screen and then click. And you know what? It works. I don’t worry about settings and tripods, I just hold it in my hand and do it.

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And here we are with the eclipse just starting.

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And further almost to a complete eclipse and this is where my method really falls apart because there is not enough light for the auto settings to work. So the camera ends up with like a 1/10th of a second shutter speed instead of 1/200th like the photo above. So this is out of focus and I had to use some heavy duty editing to amplify the light that did come out. Still not too bad a pic.

And a finale pic

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I took my Nikon to work the other day because of Martin Luther King’s Day and at the end of the work day I used it to shoot a few shots of the western sky. So that is looking west and includes the Arkansas River. Works much better than the iphone pics I generally post. I’m going to start carrying the Nikon around with me more. It takes much better photos than the phone camera.

And that is about it this week! I am linking with Skywatch Friday

ABC Wednesday – “C” is for Construction Equipment

It has been a while since I have participated in ABC Wednesday. It used to be one of my favorite meme’s and then life and instagram kind of got in the way. This week’s letter is C so I decided on Construction Equipment.

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A small “trackhoe” out in front of our office last year. I’d love to have one of these of my own.

Once upon a time I used to be involved in construction. As a project engineer I built pipelines, compressor stations, gas processing plants and other pipeline related facilities. I loved construction. It’s basically a scheduling issue: getting your land, permits, materials, and a contractor coordinated.

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A trackhoe is basically a backhoe only with treads instead of tires. They are the workhorse of construction.

A trackhoe with a view.

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A big trackhoe doubling as a road block.

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A regular backhoe. I have seen backhoe operators do some amazing things like moving across a swamp with just the hoe and front blade and the wheels not touching the ground.

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A little cultural difference. Growing up in the mountain west I always heard of this as a Grader. I moved to Texas and they call it a Maintainer.

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Pipeline construction is not too exciting. These are called sidebooms and are used to move a pipeline after it is welded into a ditch. They have counterweights to keep the equipment balanced as it extends the boom out to place the pipeline in the ditch. I have come to find out that the railroad industry uses similar equipment.

Anyway there you have it. Come join the fun at ABC Wednesday

Marching in Tulsa’s 2019 Martin Luther King Parade

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Tulsa has a big Martin Luther King Day parade every year in the Greenwood Area north of downtown. I’ve known it was there and I’ve had a couple of employers who sponsor floats and encourage employees to march together but I had never done it mainly because it is dang cold in January, right!

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So this year I broke out of my comfort zone and signed up and got a nifty jacket with a hoodie to wear. I rode the shuttle bus from work up to the staging area and spent the next hour and a half freezing like a popsickle while talking with coworkers.

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I checked out Tulsa Health Department float while waiting.

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And here is the ONEGAS Float.

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Finally we went to get in position and off we went.

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And it was fun. Lots of people along the way waving so we waved back. Lots of kids were begging for candy and I guess that used to be done and the organizers ended the practice for some reason.

My employer had a drill team and they stopped it seemed about ever hundred yards or so and performed. I was much impressed, they were good! Above is a video of them practicing before the parade started.

I had a good time and will be back next year. I am not joining the drill team though.

Tulsa Time – Out and About

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Orpha’s Lounge in downtown Tulsa. I’ve seen lots of scuzzy people going in and out. I’ve also seen lots of them passed out in front. If you are looking for a good place to go slumming, this might be it.

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I was out west of Tulsa in Sand Springs looking for a geocache and spotted this sign. I sure didn’t dump anything there. We love our guns in Oklahoma! Gun owners have all sorts of rights in Oklahoma. The rest of us just need to stay out of their way.

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This is the Rock Creek Bridge in Sapulpa. It is a landmark on Route 66. It runs several hundred miles in Oklahoma. That brick on the bridge deck is the original brick put in way back when. Route 66 no longer goes over the bridge. That is one thing I’ve learned about Route 66, the actual roads it goes over has changed continuously almost from the start.

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A bison sculpture on Route 66. I love public art like sculptures.

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A big tree out in the middle of an abandoned baseball field in Sapulpa.

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I stopped by the an industrial area of downtown Tulsa to take a look at the Creek Hanging Tree. Over 200 years old and supposedly many a rustler and other criminals have been hung off the branches. Great story right? I can find almost know documentation of it. I googled it just now and number one on the list is a blog post I did several years ago.

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I found this little rock hut about eleven miles from downtown Tulsa in Osage County.

How about you? What have you seen where you live lately?

I am linking with Our World Tuesday

Skywatch Friday – Scenes from Kansas

I am punting this week. I reached deep into the archives and searched for “Kansas Skywatch” so this is what I am doing. Why Kansas? I don’t know, Dorothy and Toto were from Kansas maybe. I was in the mood for Sky photos with you know, clouds or a little color. Lately here in Tulsa it has all been either gray skies or nice blue skies.

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Here is a Kansas sky with a little color. A little grainy but still, I love the color.

#ferriswheel #countyfair #coffeyville #kansas #roadtrip

And this is from Coffeyville, Kansas a few years ago. I stopped for gas and a carnival was going on close by.

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Our World – Sign Farm

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I was out and about Sunday afternoon out in the country west of Tulsa when I encountered a sign farm. It was a bunch of long forgotten old gas station signs arranged in a giant semicircle in a field out in the middle of nowhere.

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I passed this once before last spring on first Bike Run, the Tour de Cure 2018. We passed it and I remember being very interested but being my first ride I didn’t feel like stopping and taking photos.

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Remember the days of full service gas stations? You’d drive in and run over the cable making the bell ring, and somebody would be right out and you’d tell them to fill it up. They’d check the oil and fill the windshield washer tank. Ah, them were the days.

Somebody has spent a bunch of money not just collecting the signs but restoring them to mint condition and then installing them. To whoever you are, I salute you!!

I’m linking with OurWorldTuesday

New Car – 2019 Subaru Crosstrek

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I purchased a new car last week, a Subaru Crosstrek. I got the “Premium” trim which is the middle of the road level. I opted for the “Eyesight safety system” that uses a stereo camera mounted close to visor and nag me when I go over the strips or median line and will stop the car if a collision is imminent. It also has all wheel drive. Other than that it is pretty basic, no power seats, or push button start. It does have seat warmers though.

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Buying it was grueling and took a long time. I test drove the top of the line “Limited” version and they told me that had five of the premium’s available. When it come time to start talking specifics, it turns out that none of the five were available. I laughed to myself. Car dealers are all the same I said to myself. So I told them. Well that is too bad, give me a call you get some in. On the way home I called Heather and told her what happened and predicted that I would get a call within two hours about the miracle of miracles, they actually did have a car I wanted. So we went back and got the deal closed. I was not upset about the miracle of miracles. Life is a game right, and I enjoy my role in the game!!

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My old car, the Kia Soul, served me well. Incredible at parking, and 100,000 miles and I all had done was maintenance, new tires and a battery. It was rough riding though, and noisy on the freeway. I drove 65 mph in 75 mph just so I could hear myself think.