Category Archives: Tulsa

Christmas with the Critters

Sorry, I’m still posting about Christmas. There’s twelve days of Christmas, right. I’m not sure what that means but I’m standing by it. If the Tea Partiers and Democrats can stand by their beliefs without understanding them so can I! This is America by goodness!

(Abigail, left and Rascal checking out SuperPizzaBoy’s stocking)

We are shameless about our animals. Yesterday, Nana brought over her two dogs, Fiona, and Reba, and with those to and our three plus our two cats, the critters outnumbered the people seven to four.

(More of Rascal)

Yep, we buy them presents and give them stockings and such. We give them treats but only sparingly. If you think kids get fussy and sick with too many treats, dogs are worse.

(Left to Right, Chrissy, LJ, Ginger, Abigail) Sweetie is helping them open their gifts.)

Sweetie is the pet magnet. Here she is attended by four.

Do you celebrate Christmas with your critters?

And kudos to all the people who worked so that many of us could have a warm and safe Christmas. Tulsa dodged a bullet on snow but our city trucks were out spreading sand and salt, the Highway Patrolmen (and Patrolwomen) were out and about. We don’t take you men and women for granted.

Weekend Reflections – An Old Swimming Hole off Route 66

All that is remaining from an old swimming hole in Catoosa, Oklahoma right off Route 66.

A shot from the short road trip Son and I took on Sunday.

Weekend Reflections.

SuperPizzaBoy Road Trip Skywatch

Son, SuperPizzaBoy took this image of the sky while we were coming home from our little roadtrip Sunday.

Skywatch Friday

Crystal Bridges Skywatch

The only thing better than the Tree Sculpture at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art in Bentonville, Arkansas is the Beautiful blue Ozark sky.

Skywatch Friday

Sweetie and SuperPizzaBoy on Television

Guess What! SuperPizzaBoy’s school, Town and Country School, here in Tulsa moved into some spacious new digs over the summer. Everybody is under one roof and we have lots of extra room to grow. Town and Country School is a private school that specializes in kids that have learning differences such as ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome. SPB has been there since Third Grade and the school has been a life saver for him and other children.

Channel Eight here in Tulsa showed up last week to do a story on the school. Sweetie (aka Heather Bates) was interviewed. While she is talking there is video of SuperPizzaBoy doing his rarely seen academic act.

KTUL.com – Tulsa, Oklahoma – News, Weather

I’m so proud of everybody. The Head of School has provided a big dose of leadership doing the move and afterward. Of course at small private schools everybody has two or three jobs to do right.

And being the wicked witch at Halloween is one of them. Of course a smile like hers gives it away.

And here are the two stars of the show!

Do I need to get them an agent?

I Gotta Go Find Something on Turkey Mountain

Saturday, I had several free hours. Anytime I have a few free hours I’m going to running and geocaching and photographing. Most likely I”m going to do that on Turkey Mountain. Tulsa’s urban wilderness area. Its close in and convenient.

So I hit the trail with a bunch of equipment. My running GPS enabled watch, my Geocaching GPSr, a camera, and my smartphone. And a pen. Can’t go geocaching without a pen, and a knife. Right?

An old cistern. I don’t know but I get the impression that Turkey Mountain was a rough and ready oilfield and farming area. There is some oilfield debris still left but very little left of farmsteads and such.

Parts of Turkey Mountain seem very remote. I’ve been all over the mountain and some areas, you just never see anybody.

Lots of mysteries, like what is this? An old outhouse? Who knows.

There are a few old pipelines left. I don’t know if they are live or not. I can tell you, and maybe you should listen. You can’t proceed just on assumptions. Unless you want to bet your life on it.

At the far end of Turkey Mountain from the parking lot you run into the Westside YMCA. Nice place for urban kids to get some nature in them. The Y has a “Ropes Course.” I helped build part of it as part of a United Way Day of Caring event about 20 years ago. Ropes Courses were all the rage back then but you don’t hear that much about them anymore. The theory is that you take a group of coworkers out in the woods and have them work on things together and that leads to better teamwork.

Sorry to water on the parade but let me tell you how guys work. (Women, you have to speak for yourselves.) The way guys work is that you can take a group of guys who hate each other and put them on a team to do something and it’ll be great. They will work together to complete the task. When they are done, they still hate each other. I did ropes years ago, climbed the rope ladder, did the zip line, walked the cable, jumped off the poles, did the trust fall, the whole shebang, helped my team mates over the wall. I’m done. No more. How about some golf instead? Does just as much good!

I finally reached my objective, Pepsi Lake. Don’t snicker at it, we have had a drought and the water levels are way low. I came out here to look for a geocache. named “What are these doing here...” A cache that I’ve looked before and couldn’t find.

The “these” are Pepsi delivery truck bodies arrayed on the dam. Why they are there. I don’t know. There is a Pepsi warehouse closeby. Maybe this is where they send their trucks to die.

Oh, by the way, I did find a cardinal playing hard to get in the shrubs near the trucks.

I also found the cache. Not very many people have found the cache. I’d love to show it to you but the owner of the cache has threatened to delete the logs of anybody who gives a clue. DELETE the LOG, to a geocacher that is worse than any fiscal cliff, or the Affordable Health Care Act, or even the Designated Hitter Rule. So sorry no clues from me.

I will tell you that I climbed in, under, and on top of these before I found it.

I wore my GPS enabled running watch. It ran out of juice while I was searching for the cache. You can see me route to the cache from the parking lot, just hit the white triangle on the green circle. It’ll take you to the web site. Hit the button that looks like your DVD play button and you will see just how slow a runner I am.

ABC Wednesday “U”

U is a real stumper for me. I can’t believer that I didn’t have a decent U pic such as an umbrella or I don’t know I can’t think of too many nouns that begin with a U. Universe maybe.

So I got on Flickr and looked for “Untagged” and I came up with both Untagged and Unidentified.

I have no idea what this is. I have a vague sense that it is just east of downtown Tulsa but that is about it.

Are you prepared to present a U photo if you had to?

ABC Wednesday

Where East Meets West Sculpture by Robert Summers on Route 66 in Tulsa

Where East Meets West is a newly installed sculpture by Robert Summers at Tulsa’s Cyrus Avery Plaza. Cyrus Avery is considered the father of Route 66 and interstate roads in general. Cyrus Avery Plaza is right on Route 66 right on the Arkansas River just outside of downtown Tulsa.

The sculpture done at 135% life size depicts a horsedrawn wagon from the oilfields of west Tulsa encountering an autombile driven by Cyrus Avery. It depicts the transition from the old to the new.

Avery is shown getting out of his car to deal with the situation.

While his daughter tries to hold onto the terrified family cat without getting clawed to shreds. Of course being the good blogger that I am I neglected to get a picture of Avery’s wife.

There are numerous details on the piece that show the care that Summers took. This is Avery’s shoe.

My favorite detail is the dead grasshopper on the grill.

He did a lot of research also. The oilfield tubing in the back of the wagon has special joints called upset tubing. I don’t think your typical artist would know what that is.

More detailing on the wagon. Notice the wood grain and the screw and fitting. Very impressive.

I had never heard of Robert Summers before but it turns out that he has several well known works to his credit. The Dallas Cowboys commissioned him to create the likeness of Tom Landry, pictured above, that is placed just outside Cowboy Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

So if you driving on Route 66 stop and spend some time at Cyrus Avery Plaza and admire the sculpture installation.

Our World

Strike a Pose!

Sometimes the spirit moves me to gather up a notebook, trinkets, and a recyclable camera and put them into a container you might use for leftover peas and then go hide the container in the woods for others to find.

The woods I’m thinking about are about a half mile from the house. I’ve been mystified lately because a photographer has been taking clients here in among the knee high weeds and garbage strewn from the McDonald’s across the street.

This is where they have been setting up their cameras and hauling out wing chairs and fancy sofas, tripods, reflectors, and other such things. I am a mere picture taker and not a photographer so what do I know, but I still don’t get it why this is such a great place for wedding photos.

For my cache location I pushed on well past where the photographers click and their subjects pose.

By the time I found a place, hid the cache, checked and double checked the coordinates, the sun was going down and the moon was going up.

Not bad for hand held moon shot, for a picture taker like me that is. A photographer would hide their head in shame.

This is your only clue. Go check out Strike a Pose! if you want to find it.

I would like to thank my fellow Americans, both Democrats and Republicans as well as the few independents out there for being so supportive of spending unrestricted billions of dollars for high tech satellites in space so that I can go hide tupperware in the woods. I salute you all!

If you were trying to find this cache first (FTF – first to find) you are too late. RobPillageBurn (What a name!) found it within hours of the cache going live. In the dark. He ran into some thorns that I forgot to mention.

Geocaching.com

Tulsa’s Williams Route 66 Half Marathon

Sunday I ran the Half Marathon part of the Williams Route 66 Marathon. It has been since the late 1990’s since I’ve run the distance but I thought I’d give it a try.

The race had about 6700 people overall. They formed us into groups called corrals. I felt like saying moo several times. They started us in groups also. First time I’d ever encountered that but I’m told that that how the bigger races do it.

Lots and lots of people had to use the portapotty’s. My office is a block away from the start so no portapottys for me! At the start anyway.

Oops, I digressed, at each start they shot confetti in the air. It was everywhere.

By the time I made the turn onto Cherry Street, I was way behind. Actually that was by design. I decided to run four minutes and walk a minute through the race. I hadn’t trained for the distance so I just took it easy. Makes it easier to take photographs also.

There were lots of good bands on the route playing some solid rock and roll. Flutes and violins are nice but not during a run.

I loved these ladies and their signs. I hope nobody is offended.

We ran past a local synagogue with reminders of the Ten Commandments.

Midtown Tulsa was in full Autumn color mode. It was beautiful.

Because it was chilly at the start some runners take clothes they can discard and throw them down on the ground as they warm up. The organizers pick the stuff and it is distributed to those who need them. I hope that the clothes are washed first!