I am such a lazy skywatcher. Every work day this time of year at about 5:15 I get from my cubicle with my iphone and walk down to the west end of the building and check out the sunset. Sometimes if it is too cloudy or no clouds there is not much to see. I shoot through the glass and I have found a spot behind a pillar next to the window where I shoot through the glass at an angle, and that cuts the back reflection back tremendously. It is still there but you have to look hard to find it.
This is a bull from the ranch in western Oklahoma. The photo was taken by my wife’s cousin’s wife who sent it to me and I edited it a little bit. I love the scenery and people of Western Oklahoma. You can tell this bull has a little attitude. Life as a bull is a balance. You need to get the job done with the heifers and a little attitude is tolerated. Too much and off you go, never to be seen again except maybe at your local butcher shop.
A little closer to home is a family walk on Turkey Mountain the day after Thanksgiving. We had a nice Thanksgiving and we all (including my brother not pictured) went a little walk. I am pretty gimpy right now and I got real gimpy during the walk. I bit off a little more than I should have with my running. In the course of a month I ran three fairly long distance races, a 15K road race, a 25K trail race, and a half marathon on the road. So my knee is kind of sore. So I am working to strengthen my quads, and loosen my hamstrings, and try to maintain some sort of fitness with non running exercises all while loading up on ibuprofen, and icing my knee when I can. So far my it is getting better. I don’t think I will be running until January.
Anyways, thanks for visiting. Check out the fun folks at Skywatch Friday
My wife, Heather, in addition to being a wife, mother, daughter and all around great woman is an exercise instructor. She teaches Zumba, Drum Fit, Aqua Zumba and other classes to variety of people mainly at the Health Zone and other places. One thing she is certified to do but hardly ever gets to do it is teach BollyX. A dance fitness exercise based on India’s Bollywood music. Heather loves Bollywood films and dancing so she is excited about teaching it. She was very excited to get a chance to teach a BollyX class at Tulsa’s Utica Shopping Center at the Athleta store early last Saturday morning.
The class is free and it is outside so it was a little nippy at the start. Heather got the three people who showed up going though. I had never seen her teach a class before and I was really impressed how good she is. She even let me take photos and record some of the class. There were only three people but they were game and went to the end.
There was even a guy there.
The class was about 45 minutes or so. I got a little chilly watching but Heather and her students got warmed up very well and looked like they were enjoying themselves.
Even the nearby Nutrcracker puppets got into it.
And with BollyX you end the class posing with the “X”
And you have to have a dramatic pose as well.
I think everybody had fun. Afterward Athleta had water for everybody and a drawing for a gift certificate. Pretty good odds with only three people.
We are in between seasons. Lots of trees have lots their leaves and other trees still have them plus a lot of the shrubs are still green. A few more freezes will take care of all that. This is from my MIL’s house while I was getting some fresh air on Thanksgiving.
Long shadows in the early morning near the start of a race I was in. See the confetti on the ground. They used a confetti cannon for the start. I’m wondering if that is why the toddler has an umbrella. There was so much confetti you had to watch to keep it from going in your mouth as you ran through it.
I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. We sure did. We had plenty of food, turkey, pork loins, mashed potatoes, biscuits, dressing, cranberry sauce and a couple different pies.
While wandering my MIL’s house with my camera I found her coffee service with Fall decoration. There is something about reflections that not only reflect but amplify images as well. That change the appearance in a fundamental way.
I ran the Route 66 Half Marathon this past Sunday even though I wasn’t really ready for it. I ran a longer race previously, the TurkeynTaturs 25K and my right knee ended up being a little tweaky. Kneee tweakiness of any sort is not good for running, especially long distances. Oh well, I paid my money and by gum I was going to run it. Worst case, I would walk it. I had company this year for a good part of the race. From right to left above is Rick, Misti, and Paula. Rick is Logan’s former Den Leader in Cub Scouts. Rick is one of the world’s good guys. On the left is Rick’s wife Paula. I don’t know her as well, but if Rick likes her she is good people. In the middle is Paula’s friend Misti. So I walked with Paula and Misti off and on during the race. It makes a big difference I found, racing with company. Maybe we can do it again.
The Half Marathon people like me, Paula, and Misti started with the Full Marathon people. I don’t know how many people there were but it was considerable and so we started in “corrals” we were in the last Corral, Corral D. There was about five minutes between corrals so we were blocks back from the start of A and it was twenty minutes before we started. It’s all good though.
And so finally we moved up and the gun went off and then the confetti canons started and so off we went.
Paula and Misti trotted off and I hadn’t warmed up my knee (mainly because I had 13.1 miles to get warmed up) so I walked. It felt funny getting passed by everybody but experience told me that I would be passing a few of them back later on.
We ran by the First Methodist Church and they had their choir out rocking and rolling doing their best to entice us pagan, heathen, runners off the streets and into the pews. I didn’t see any takers. I heard that some of the choir threw off their robes and entered the race endangering their eternal souls.
Soon, we entered midtown. A beautiful part of Tulsa especially in the Fall. AFter a little while I caught up with Paul and Misti and we walked together for a ways.
The first set of porta potty’s were only a mile or two in the course and they had a huge line. I thought, seriously people? But sure enough after a while, I was getting a little antsy and was evaluating my options, which are not much in the tony neighborhoods of midtown. Then when we were going through Hogwarts, I mean Cascia Hall prep school, these popped out of nowhere with no lines!!! Boy was I glad to see them.
And afterward I caught up with Paul and friend again and we walked some more.
We went by the Philbrook museum who had signs out. “Run like an art thief” is my favorite. I think it would be cool if the race diverted into the Gardens of Philbrook for a little bit.
And then later on, at a “Bandit” (Non official) aid station, I had my first jello shot in my life. Can’t say that I liked it. I chased it down with a beer.
And then I was back to evaluating my options again when I saw this Quik Trip on Peoria. I made a little detour off the race course, which I am sure is going to keep me out of the next Olympics but at least it stopped the evaluating. It was kind of unfair though because the men’s room was empty and there was a line for the womens room. I told them that they just needed to post a guard and take over the mens room also for their own use. They looked at me like I was Judge Roy Moore or something. Oh well, I had seen people doing similar things elsewhere.
I always love the Lululemon guys and gals. They have a lot of fun with their signs.
We went down Peoria, and turned the corner on 41st street and went west to Riverside Drive and then north. Well past halfway and headed back downtown so I knew that I was going to finish, tweaky knee and all. I had been trotting and walking but the trotting ended about a mile past the time we got on Riverside. I was really loving the Fall foliage.
We nosed back into the neighborhoods at some point and I found Rick. He was driving, staying ahead of Paula just to check on her. But while he was waiting he was encouraging everybody and talking with people. I had lost Paula and her friend at Woodward Park.
Sorry, too tired to take pics the last five miles or so. So I made it to the end, got a couple slices of pizza, got my space blanket, a bottle of water and my two beer ration and then sat on the grass at Guthrie Green and rested.
The medal they gave out. Very cool, I loved how they put a base on it. I put it on the mantle last night and Heather hasn’t taken it off yet which means she must like it or hasn’t noticed it yet. She does have a good eye for things. Every year I try and put the Dallas Cowboys Star on the top of our Christmas tree and it stays up there for an average of oh say, 15 to 30 seconds.
Tell you what though, she made us stacked enchiladas for dinner. That is a New Mexican way of doing things, with green chili. Doesn’t get better than that.
Thanks to the organizers of the race. I cannot think of a thing to do to make it better. The race is perfect, the route, the water stops, the runner expo and the smooth process to pick up the race packets. The finish, with ample water, food, and other refreshments, the entertainment, the web site, the fast results. It is all great. Thank you also to the army of volunteers that made it work. The many neighborhood bandit stops and other bandit stops especially the Runners World stop on Peoria. The police and sheriff’s departments that kept the course clear. And everybody else involved. Great job.
And thank you to my fellow runners who made the race fun and all the residents of the neighborhoods who were stranded for the better part of a Sunday and endured it with good humor and cheered the runners on.
This is the view from my office building on day last week. Sunset looking over the Arkansas River as it winds its way down from Kansas through northeast Oklahoma.
A cattle herd in western Oklahoma, taken by my wife’s cousin’s wife Cheri Lou at her family ranch in Washita County, Oklahoma. Cheri Lou takes pics, I edit them and post them on Instagram. We make a great team. I love the donkey in the middle of the cows. The purpose of the donkeys, besides providing comic relief, is to protect the herd from coyotes. I give the cows names that Cheri Lou doesn’t appreciate. Names like Little Brisket, Rib Eye, McDonald, Wendy, Burger King, and Chuck (roast). It’s all in fun, don’t report me to PETA okay. Honestly, do people think these cows are going to die of old age.
Sunday afternoon, after setting the DVR for the Dallas Cowboys game, son Logan and I headed off for an outing at Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum of Art. I wasn’t interested in the art on this trip as I was the gardens of museum. They have spectacular gardens and there is something to see in them all seasons. Thanks to Logan’s grandmother, my MIL, who buys us a family membership every year, we get to go see Philbrook a lot.
First up they had a Special Exhibit called “Museum Confidential” that was about, among other things, why some works that museums have in the their collections never get exhibited. They had a pretty dense display of Philbrook owned art that never gets displayed. A lot of it is funny looking, or worn out, or they are not sure exactly who painted it (provenance that is called). I thought it quite interesting. My theory is that a lot of stuff is donated and they don’t know what to do with it. My dad was involved in a museum in Idaho and he talked about all the worthless stuff people donated just to get a tax deduction.
Anyway, we checked the exhibit out in a couple minutes an then toured the rest of the three floors in about 15 minutes. It doesn’t take me long. I have been to the museum dozens of times and I just like looking at the stuff I like and it is like saying hello to old friends and I never get tired of the collection, and every once in a while I notice something new or rather, noticed something that has been there all along. So, after our whirlwind tour we headed out for the gardens.
The focal point of the gardens is the tempietto. The money shot is the tempietto reflected in the pond. I wonder how many photos have been taken of it over the years. I think it has led to an imbalance of photons in this world that is causing many of our current problems. So I know that it is somewhat of a cliche but you know I have been clicking away for years and will keep on clicking. I think the scene is gorgeous.
And then we went off. I found this foliage right next to the employee parking lot. I’ll take it.
Some more Fall color.
By now you have figured out that I have a thing for curved walkways that go underneath colorful trees.
And on our way out, I stop for another shot of the tempietto. I like all the purply colors in this scene and how the colors are reflected in the pond. I also love all the textures in the scene. I am not bragging about the photo, I love the what my eye sees and what is weakly captured by the camera.
If you plan on visiting Philbrook check their website. They have lots going on including both big special exhibits and smaller. Note that they have a monthly event called Second Saturday where the museum doesn’t charge admission and they have all sorts of activities for all ages. it is quite fun and is sponsored by my employer.
They are also very photo friendly. You can take photos of almost anything in their permanent collection. Just don’t use flash and don’t be a pain to your fellow guests. Special exhibits are sometimes different because they bring in art from other museums and private collections and sometimes there are restrictions. If you have any questions, just ask the people at the front desk. They are very friendly, well trained and can answer all your questions.
The family went to see “Only the Brave – The Story of the Granite Mountain Hot Shots” last weekend. It is a great movie about a group of 19 elite firefighters who died fighting a fire in the Weaver Mountains near Yarnell, Arizona in 2013. It was a shocking loss by any measure but especially because these were guys who were trained to avoid such disasters. I mean the movie was great but it was based on a true event and to me that kind of overshadows everything.
Below is one of the eeriest videos I have ever seen. It includes some footage shot by the guys who died soon afterward.
There is a lot of commentary and articles speculating about what happened. Just google it and you can find plenty of articles with all sorts of speculation about how these guys ended up in such a terrible situation. It is all overwhelming especially since nobody knows for sure.
There is now an Arizona State Memorial for the hotshots. It is definitely on my bucket list. Check the link. It has brief profiles of each of the guys who died. It is heartbreaking, these guys were in the prime of their lives.
I had a very personal interest in the movie. My father, who passed away in August, worked in the Forest Service and although he wasn’t a hot shot, or spent much time on the front lines, he fought forest fires for years. When I was a kid, during a dry summer he’d be gone almost the whole season, Idaho, Montana, California, Nevada, Arizona. We didn’t hear anything from him, and then he would show up one day covered in dirt and soot, smelly, and exhausted. Afterwards he would have to be very careful around my mother to give the impression that he didn’t like the work.
Payson, Arizona
When I was a kid, the hotshots, the smoke jumpers, and helitack crews were hard as nails men doing back breaking labor. The hotshots rode in trucks to as close to the fire as they could and then humped across country with their equipment, food, shelter, and water on their back to the fire. The theory was that you get these guys on a fire fast to keep the fire from getting bigger. They were expected to handle anything that came up. I remember my mother talking of the hotshots as being a rough bunch.
Payson Hotshots, playing frisbee football
So nowadays, they have a little bit of glamor to them and have really nice vehicles to ride instead of the backs of trucks that I remember but the work itself is just as hard if not harder. After a half century or more of fire extreme suppression, and perhaps global warming, the fuel to burn is more than ever and the weather conditions hotter and drier than ever and so the work may be difficult and dangerous than their predecessors had it.
Forest Fire in Idaho, 1960’s, photo by my father.
I have only seen a few fires and they have been from a distance and they definitely puckered me up although I was miles from them.
Forest Fire in Idaho under control, photo by my Dad.
I can only imagine what being next to one would be like. It is hard to figure out what my Dad went through. He tended to downplay everything to no big deal and my mom’s Irish tended to embellish things perhaps a bit much. She was part of the Forest Service wives club that was pretty close knit so she could find out about stuff that dad didn’t like to talk about. She said she heard one time he drove a truck through a fire to get a guy that had been stranded behind the lines and that the paint had got burned off the truck in process. Dad said nonsense, he got the guy sure, but there was no danger, and no paint was burned. And it wasn’t just Dad. In the small towns we lived in, the Forest Service guys were the dads who took the Boy Scouts camping and led all sorts of other things. They were community minded men, and so were their wives. It was very close knit. Whenever dad got transferred somewhere we generally knew people where we were going.
Slurry bomber in Idaho, mid 1960’s, photo by my Dad.
So anyway, it is a great movie. I think it accurately shows how brave these guys were. And like I said, I have never been anywhere close to a fire but I think it shows accurately what being near a fire is like and how backbreaking building a fire line and clearing brush is. So as you can probably guess, I strongly recommend this movie.
Well it is November and our weather up until today has been pretty mild, blue skies, and sunny skies.
My photo doesn’t really show but we had a crystalline clear moon one night. These was a few days ago just shy of the Full Beaver Moon or Frost Moon. I love moon shots.
My wife’s cousin’s wife (got that?) Sheri Lou has been taking photographs of the goings on around the family ranch in Western Oklahoma and she sends them to me and I doctor them up and post them and we have a pretty good partnership going on. I love the wide open skies of Western Oklahoma and the tough, big hearted people that live out there.
We have had a few funky skies in Tulsa. Here is a few weeks ago downtown in the late evening.
Turkey n Taturs on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain has to be one of the oldest trail races in the area and the most handy being right in Tulsa. It was my first trail race in 2009. I was not very familear with that style of racing nor Turkey Mountain and I was bewildered by how you run a race on narrow trails and was totally lost on the mountain. If it were not for the great marking I would not know where they heck I was or where to go. It was my first trail race and I have run it several times over the years. It has lengths of 50 kilometers, 25K, and 10K. 10K to the hard core crowd is barely a fun run. Somehow I felt the need to try the 25K even though I had not trained for it. My plan was to walk the rocks and uphills and trot the flats and downhills and not worry about my time. I knew that it could take me a long time.
So I got to the back of the crowd of the race. One thing I love about trail races is that there are not that many people in them and everybody is very nice, no pushing and shoving. It is a very friendly crowd and very accepting of newcomers. They asked how many people were in the first trail race and a bunch of people raised their hand. So the fun goes off and off I go!! I love how the women turn around and give me a look after the gun went off.
I went running with the rest of them, and then it was like. Wait, the plan, the plan. So I stopped and started walking and let everybody go on ahead. And I strolled along. I hadn’t warmed up or anything and I wanted to walk a half mile before running so that is what I did.
Lake Logan at the West Side Y. A little muddy but beautiful.
So after a half mile I started trotting and walking at regular intervals, especially walking the rocky areas. I fell on my knee about two years ago and still feel the aftereffects of that so I tiptoe when I am around the rocks.
I made it up to the upper parking lot and stopped for a little refreshment at the aid station there. Trail Races have top notch aid stations. Lots of water and gatorade, salty snacks, sweet snacks, cookies, sandwiches. They also pretty much had a full bar. If I was just doing the 10K I might have had a beer or a shot, but not for 25K (which is over 15 miles). I drank a ton of water the gatorade. Had some of the baked potatoes rolled in salt, pretzels, and some other snacks. I also carried a hydration pack with 1.5 liters of water that I sipped on periodically every so often. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that dehydration is a bummer and it can happen even in cold weather.
My race started at 7 am. The 10K started at 7:30 am and I started getting passed by the 10K guys before I got too far. Those guys were flying.
After a while it got to be a regular processing. Life is humbling being a slow plodder.
But other than getting passed I ran by myself. I was really enjoying the Fall colors.
And it was kind of funny. The mountain is not closed during the race and all the trails are open and so there lots of other people out and about. I ran into my old boss and his wife. We stopped and chatted for a while. And then he said, “We are not slowing you down are we?” Well actually I am pretty slow all by myself and don’t need any help but we parted. I ran into a family who looked pretty tired with some small ones in tow. They asked me if they were headed to the parking lot. I said no they weren’t, they needed to turn around and go the other way. They asked how far, and you should have seen the look on their faces when I told them that it was about a mile and a half. We talked a little bit more as the Dad couldn’t believe that he was going north when he thought he was going south and I thought he was going to plow on ahead going the wrong way. I think I got him convinced to turn around but they were still standing there when I left. You know how guys are, right?
I think that I had been on all the trails the race used before except for this one.You can see the markings and it is the faintest trail I have ever seen. It was all good.
When I got to the lower parking lot I ran into these ladies. The Wonder Women were operating an aid station. They had all sorts of goodies including my new favorites peanut butter and pickel wraps. I ate a bunch of those along with water, gatorade, salted potatoes, a few pickles, pretzels, and fritos and a few cookies. (And you wonder why don’t lose weight with all my running.) They were great hostesses and great sports and a lot of fun. I was at about 10 miles into the run by then and I didn’t take too many other photos.
I left the lower parking lot to get on the Red Trail which goes even lower than the lower trail and then it is uphill quite a ways to the upper parking lot and I walked pretty much the rest of the race.
When I got to the upper parking lot aid station, I lingered while resting and one of the people there said “I feel like I need to do something for you, but I don’t know what.” So I said I was okay and just needed to rest a little bit more. I made sure to hydrate and get some calories in and then I took off, if walking away means taking off. My calves hurt, my feet hurt, and I was tired. I did perk up and run the last couple hundred yards at the finish. I mean you have to finish strong and make it look like you have been running the whole way. It me about five and half hours or more to finish and I am proud as can be about it.
I am not a big fan of doing races you are not ready for but I think my plan for the 25K worked pretty well. I dreaded the red trail up to the upper parking lot and it turned out to be worse than I thought it would be but I didn’t stop. I did make baby steps though up the steeper parts.
Here is my relive video of the first 12 miles or so of the run. My gps enabled watch ran out of juice before I finished so the video is incomplete but you can see how intensively the trails were used for the 25K. The 50K was two laps of the 25K. Those guys and gals are my heroes. I couldn’t imagine doing what I did twice.
The run was sponsored by Runners World Tulsa and the Race Directors did a great job. Great well marked course, lots of aid stations, nice t shirt and medal, food, and liquids. Check, check, check, check, and check. But did everybody have fun!! Yes!!
Thanks to Runners World for sponsoring the event, and the co-directors Kathy Hoover and Bryan Drummond, Brian Hoover and Tatur for timing the event, and the army of volunteers who set up the aid stations, cooked the food, and did lots of lugging and packing and for the participants who make it fun. They all got up well before light on a Sunday morning. And a huge thanks for the Wonder Women!!
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