Tulsa Boat Show 2018

i went through this boat. I think it was 43′ long and cost about $800,000. It was nice!!

I took a little longer lunch the other day and went to the 2018 Boat Show at the River Spirit Expo at Expo Square (aka the Tulsa State Fairgrounds). It costs ten bucks to get in and I gave the ticket lady ten ones and she asked if I was buying and I held up my two remaining greenbacks and said, yep, if I find one for two bucks I’m getting it. Kind of lame, but she got a good chuckle out of it.

I like looking at the big boats and the fancy RV’s. They have gotten very good over the years with space organization, amenities and storage space.

The pontoon boats have gotten bigger and more luxurious.

I love these fishing boats with the center console. Didn’t use to see too many away from the cost but there seems to be more and more of them.

The small campers are getting lighter and nicer. I know several families with small kids that have these and use them quite a bit.

This is like the sports car of boats. So sleek and I think the price was only about $75,000 or so.

I love looking at motorcycles. I think Indian makes some very stylish bikes. They are beautiful and so sleek and stylish.

And they make the best logo ever.

I saw a lot of retro colors. It used to be just beige, red, and navy blue. Now you see colors reminiscent of the 1950 Tbirds.

The smaller boats used to be dominated by bass boats but things seem more diversified now. Bass boats are kind of fun. I used to have one when I lived near Lake Conroe near Houston, Texas. Big motors, and the platforms and chairs where you have good visibility, and a trolling motor for fine tune control, live wells for the fish and rod cabinets. They were fun.

Anyways I there less than an hour and although I saw a lot, there was a lot of other stuff. If you want to go they are open Saturday 10 am to 10 pm and Sunday 11 am to 5 pm. (Yeah, you don’t want to spend the Superbowl at the boat show).

Skywatch Friday – The Super Moon Lunar Eclipse

An almost full moon. I took the photo on Tuesday night so this is actually waxing gibbous at 98%. But hey, it is full enough for me.

Then this is the following morning. I got up and went out to get the paper at about 5:30 am and I had to run back in and get my camera and then I had to go across the street and stand in my neighbors yard to get away from the trees. Yes, that is part of the eclipse I didn’t hold my finger in front of the lens to fake it.

And this is Wednesday night’s moon. Yes, I used a Topaz filter on it to jack it up a little. Jacking up is a technical term here in Oklahoma. Do you jack things up where you live?

And this is my favorite Wednesday night moon. Yes, another Topaz filter. I love messing with photos.

I’m taking a photography class and one of our assignments to get a photo of a flag in manual mode. Being the apple polisher that I am I got a bunch of flags flying in a good stiff Oklahoma breeze.

What about you? What have you been looking at?

I am linking with Skywatch Friday

Our World – Woolaroc Geocaching Outing

Logan and I went up to Woolaroc Museum and Preserve today to check out a couple of geocaches installed on the grounds of the preserve.

“The Trail of Tears” by Robert Lindneaux. Andrew Jackson oversaw the ejection of thousands of Native Americans from the southeast USA to Oklahoma and elsewhere. Many died on the way over. To this day Andrew Jackson is not a popular guy among the tribes in Oklahoma.

While there we breezed through the museum. We have been there lots of times but it has been at least a year and a half for me and I was glad to see a few changes from the last time I was through.

I love this chuckwagon exhibit. I love chuckwagons. That is where the food is!!

I checked on some old favorites. This is a bust of Geronimo the baddest of the bad (or the baddest of the good). My late father was a student of western history had studied up on Geronimo. His favorite story was about the Tonto Apache Tribe who were scouts for General Crook who finally convinced Geronimo to surrender. When Geronimo’s braves were on the train to Florida to begin their imprisonment, Crook’s troops told the Tonto scouts to get on the train also. One reason why we have trust issues with Native American’s maybe?

They have machine guns on exhibit also. One time several years ago when I was there. A guy was inspecting it really closely and said, “You know, I don’t think that this actually works. I am not sure it is going to help come crunch time.” We are kind of hard core here in Oklahoma.

I always love the airplane hanging from the ceiling in the basement. I wonder if they would ever take it out and fly it again?

Enough of all that! Time to hit the trails. We found a couple of nice full size geocaches on the trails in the preserve on the beautiful 60 degree sunny day we had in Oklahoma.

I am linking with Our World Tuesday

I’ve made about a dozen and a half posts on Woolaroc. Use the search icon (the magnifying glass) on the upper right hand corner of this page to see if some of them might interest you.

Getting Schooled on this Picture Taking Thing

I am pretty excited. After years of thinking about and delaying and making excuses, I signed up for a four session photography class at a local junior college and already had the first class.

It is after work on Mondays for three hours. The teacher got us all up and going. Showed us what all the dials and adjustments were and we jumped right into how to do the much feared “Manual Mode” with the in-camera metering. She talked about how to hold the camera and gave us a few tips about what shutter speed to use for what situation and how and when to adjust the iso level. We went into the white balance adjustments and reformatting the memory card. How to, and how not to, clean the camera and lens and all sorts of stuff.

And then the homework assignment. Go out into the world and take pictures (she said we are really “making pictures.”) In the manual mode, no editing!! Bring your memory cards next time. She will put everybody’s photos up on the whiteboards and critique them. Anonymously she said because she is very frank and wants us to learn. I guess the giveaway will be if I start sobbing when she is displaying my images.

We are to bring six images. Take them in bright sun, with the sun at our back, set the iso level as low as the camera will go, set the speed at 1/125th of a second and use the camera’s meter to manually set the aperture. For moving objects increase the speed to 1/500th of a second.

So I have taken a couple walks with my camera. Manual mode is not natural to me physically. I have to search for the buttons and dials to make it work and sometimes in bright light the camera metering is hard to see. Plus I have to remember to get the white balance, speed, and iso set right. The feel for it will come. I’m having fun.

I can’t wait for the next class!!

Skywatch Friday – Weather Deliverance!!

The weather finally broke and the sun came out and the sky was almost springlike. After our extended cold spell I never realized how warm 36 degrees could feel so warm.

Before hand we had day after day of this, and this is at the end of the day!! Ever hear of Lake Effect Snow? One morning we had “Refinery Effect Snow” the condensation from the cooling towers caused snow on the west side of downtown.

We are finally getting some clouds, the days are getting longer. We are a long ways from Spring but I am getting hopeful.

What is going on where you live?

I am linking with Skywatch Friday.

Our World – Thoughts on a Turkey Mountain Ramble

I have run by this a bunch of times and never noticed it. A big trunk with several wraps of barbed wire. Turkey Mountain used to have farms on it and was an active oilfield back in the day.

Sunday morning I went for a walk on Turkey Mountain here in Tulsa. There was a running group that was leaving at 8 am but I didn’t join them. I have not run since I injured myself during the Route 66 Half Marathon in November. Since then I have been walking, cycling, rowing, walking, elliptical machining and a lot of resistance training. I still don’t feel like I should be running. My knees are popping a lot and I don’t know if I will ever run again. (sniff??)

This was a wire fence, almost decorative starting from the tree in the first pic. In fact, if you go back and look at the first pic you will see that it is this fence that is imprinted in the tree trunk! It makes me wonder if there was a house here at one time. Turkey Mountain has a history, and a lot of ghosts. I can sense the ghosts when I run here at twilight. Again something I never saw before. Maybe walking and hiking will give me a new perspective on things?

So I have been thinking about why I started running in the first place. I started running a little late in life. I am not a natural athlete. I was 37 years old and had found out that my cholesterol was sky high and my cholesterol ratio was terrible. The exercise guy I consulted said that running was the most bang for the buck. So I started running and really never stopped. I entered races and eventually ran a couple of marathons and a whole bunch of half marathon and 15 to 25k races and countless 5 to 10K’s. I loved the hopeless feeling of being 5 miles from the finish and exhausted and then somehow making it to the finish. I didn’t care that I finished 57th out of 62 in my age group. Finishing was the goal, and I always finished, one way or the other.

A base for an oil well pumpjack from way back. There was a geocache here that I never could find and it is no longer active.

So that was then, and this is now. I can see me hiking instead of running the trails. I can see my biking a lot more. If you can’t do what you want, do what you can. So my doctor says “… your tread is running a little thin.” So I am going to save my tread for hiking and maybe the occasional trotting 5K. I’ll be on my bicycle a lot more and in the gym a lot more. Taking care of my tread.

I collect trees. Here is one on Turkey Mountain. It seems a little here and there and perhaps unstable? Do you know unstable trees? Do they make you nervous? This one makes me nervous.

I can deal with it. Circumstances change, you have to change with them. My goal is to be as active as I can for as long as I can, however I can.

Turkey Mountain is an urban wilderness and is maintained mainly by volunteer labor. It is not groomed like a city park. The trails are kept clear. Many of them by people showing up with their hand saws and power saws and cleaning things up on their own initiative. The cuttings are tossed to the side. They are not hauled off. So the woods show the cumulative effect of windstorms, ice storms, and tornadoes. We vounteers pick up the trash but leave the organic material to rot on its own. It works. No way could anybody afford to come clean everything up. The people who love Turkey Mountain don’t want them to do so. I’ve had friends say, “It is so icky up there, why don’t they clean it up.” And I would never tell them but my thought is, “Turkey Mountain is not for you maybe?”

The ironic thing is that all this running didn’t do crap for my cholesterol levels. It lowered it by about 10%. Now drugs, drugs knocked my LDL’s in the butt. At $7.50 for a month’s worth, I am sticking with that. Of course, with statin drugs, deaths from heart attacks are cut but total mortality doesn’t change!! Huh!! Yep, true fact. I am going to continue taking them anyway. In the long term, the mortality rate is 100%!! You can’t argue with that.

What about you? Are you having any changes lately?

I’m linking with Our World Tuesday

Shadow Shot Sunday – Winter Sunlight

Winter of course is here and when the sky clears off the sun comes in really bright and the shadows are very sharp. Above is a shadowy phone booth at Tulsa’s Utica Square. I don’t think there is actually a phone in it. I guess you could take your cell phone in there and talk if wished. I do know that if you are professional photographer doing a shoot and you pose somebody in there, Utica Square security will magically appear and courteously but firmly tell you to leave. It happened to an acquaintance of mine.

Tulsa has lots of construction going on downtown. Lots and lots of new hotels going in. I don’t know who is going to stay in them. Anyways, here are a couple of trackhoes. Komatsu instead of Caterpillar. Everybody knows that Caterpillar makes the best construction equipment. Next time you are in a hotel and are not happy with it and don’t know why. I bet you that it is because they used offbrands like Komatsu instead of a premium brand like Caterpillar. I always ask about that when I make a hotel reservation. It only costs a little more to go first class.

The weather broke here and we had a couple of non freezing days so I did a little lunchtime geocaching. I ended up on this long straight trail, with a few shadows.

I’m linking with Shadow Shot Sunday

Tulsa’s HollyFrontier Refinery

I’ve always loved oil refineries. As a young kid, it seemed like big important things were going on with big towers and huge tanks and all sorts of pipes and lots of electric power lines. Ironically, I have a chemical engineering degree and have only spent a few hours inside a refinery. Oh well, I’ve done other things.

This is one of two refineries that HollyFrontier operates in Tulsa. I used Topaz Glow to add a little drama to the scene.

The refineries are located on the west side of Tulsa along with a power plant, a trash to energy steam plant, a bunch of trucking outfits, and oilfield manufacturing companies. All this industrial stuff is the original financing of the all the nice part of Tulsa. The art deco office towers, museums, and all the rest. I’ve always found the dichotomy fascinating.

Skywatch Friday – Scenes of Winter

I kind of collect trees. I don’t dig them up or anything like that but I do take pictures of them. These two are my latest acquistion. I can’t tell if they like each other but you can tell they have lived with other a long time.

Here is a winter sky from a clearing not far away. I love winters. Yes it is kind of cold but it has its own kind of beauty.

Photo courtesy of Cheri Lou Gastineau

We have had a spell of cold weather here in Oklahoma that is uncomfortably long. Ranchers have to go out and break the ice so their livestock can drink water.

Wordless Wednesday – A Winding Trail Through the Ancient Oaks

YogisDen.us

Welcome to my world