Our World – Houston

If you are in the energy biz you probably spend a lot of time in Houston. I know that I do. It is only a 75 minute flight from Tulsa so most of the time I just run down and back for the day.

Last week I spent a rare overnight trip there. I spent the night downtown. It had been years since I’ve done that. I thought I would go geocaching. I found one and then was done. It was cold, I mean freezing.

So I retreated to the tunnels. Downtown Houston has about 6.4 miles of tunnels downtown. I called it quits after a dozen blocks or so. The thing about tunnels. They all look the same. Especially after hours. During the day there is a lot going on and lots of shops and restaurants and such. After work it is all deserted and not very much fun. It is warm though!

I finally found a decent sushi place and had me some very good raw fish and a couple of malted beverages for dinner and then made the long, cold, windy, dark, deserted walk back to my hotel.

The next morning I had a meeting with a customer and then headed back to Tulsa.

Our World

Scavenger Hunt Sunday – Baskets to People Watching

I made another attempt at Ashley Sisk’s Scavenger Hunt Sundays. This week’s edition was especially challenging.

1.Basket

Basket, Basket… I had to think about this one. I finally came up with a Native American basket on display at Phoenix’s fabulous Heard Museum that I visited last April. Whew.

2.Park

For “Park” I picked Tulsa’s Owen Park. One of Tulsa’s oldest and least known park. I took this picture on film on a cold overcast day.

3.Auto

Car is easy. Here is a picture of my car. I like it, I wish the mileage were better and that I had more presets on the radio, plus black is hard to keep clean. It gets me to work and back, what else do you need?

4.Recycle

Recycle was a tough one. I refused to go the garage and shoot our recycle bin. This is Bixby, Oklahoma’s 9/11 Memorial. It is a beam from the the World Trade Center. Lets never forget.

5.People Watching

I love people watching. It is one of my favorite activities.I have a 35 mm film camera that can shoot two shots side by side on one frame. I take it to public places and shoot away. State fairs, home and garden shows, concerts, grocery stores, casinos. All are good places to people watch. These are from the Tulsa State Fair.

That’s it for this week’s edition of Scavenger Hunt Sunday. Check out the other participants as they are very good photographers and very clever in their finds.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed

“Wild” is Cheryl Strayed‘s memoir of her 1995 journey along the Pacific Coast Trail from the Mojave Desert to the Oregon-Washington border. I love travel books and this is heck of a travel book as she talks about the challenges she faced and the people she met as she spent several months walking the 1100 miles of the trail. The book is also about her personal journey from a really messed up childhood to a really messed up self destructive personal life as an adult. As she walks along the trail overcoming her challenges and enjoying her adventures she also learns a lot about herself. She appears to have gotten her act together.

The word for this book is compelling. I really got into the book and many times got so engrossed I lost the awareness of reading. What more can you ask of a book. Her description of the life that she lived before the hike is painful to read. So is her lack of preparation for the hike. She picked out her equipment and made her way to California and started hiking having never done any hiking before. Her body had to toughen up on the go. By the time she finished months later she could hike “the big miles.”

I give the book five stars out of five. It is really a great read.

I read the book on my Kindle. It is the first library book I’ve read on the Kindle. To buy the Kindle version costs over $12. Wayyyyyyy too much for a Kindle book.

Weekend Reflections – Old Building

Walking around at lunch with my Ipod. Lots of windows in this old building. Each window tells its own story.

Weekend Reflections

Bowling Sky

I just got back from Houston. I was expecting to get some photographs and find some geocaches while I was down there but I brought our cold windy Oklahoma weather down there and it was just too cold to get out and take some pictures or do much of anything. So I am using this photo that I shot from a bowling alley parking lot during a break in SuperPizzaBoy’s bowling match last week.

Skywatch Friday

Ruby Tuesday 2 – Swing Baby

SuperPizzaBoy close to his first birthday. He is still a happy kid and he still likes to swing.

Ruby Tuesday 2

Scavenger Hunt Sunday – Outsides, Backsides, and More

I’m linking up again with AshleySisk dot com’s Scavenger Hunt Sunday where she provides five scavenger hunt items to hunt for ever week. It’s tough and challenging and also a lot of fun to see how the various participants interpreted the items. There are lots of creative photographers that participate (and then there is me.)

Without further ado, lets get to work.

1.Outside

I’m happiest outside, headed down a trail. In the woods during Autumn is wonderful but not necessary. The beach, a praire, a city park, downtown, I’m not picky. I love to walk and check things out.

2.Backside

I’m fascinated by alleys, the backsides of building. The front side is where the money is spent and customers come and go. The back is where the electricity and gas connections are, deliveries sent and received, and where the dumpsters are. The alleys are generally a lot more interesting than the front.

3.Little Things

I’m a geocacher. A high tech treasure hunt where “caches” are hidden and the GPS coordinates of the cache are posted on geocaching dot com. The finders download the coordinates and go find them. Usually they are tupperware type containers. Sometimes they are like the cache above which was hidden by the geocaching owner of a high rise in downtown New Orleans. He has the building engineer escort you up to the elevator penthouse for the search. Talk about the mother lode.

The other extreme are these tiny pill containers just a fraction of an inch long. They are extremely hard to find but some of them look like Christmas ornaments.

And some geocaches are hidden deep in the woods inside the homes of elves.

4.A Cup of…

You know I still like it when I order a latte and the barrista takes the time to make a design.

5.Reflect

Son and I went to Natural Falls State Park here in northeast Oklahoma last week. It is a beautiful and serene place with water falls and a nice lake set in a deep canyon. Much of the 1974 film “Where the Red Fern Grows” was filmed in the park.

Scavenger Hunt Sunday

Geocaching 101

Our World – Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area Cleanup Day

Saturday morning almost a hundred people showed up at Turkey Mountain for a cleanup day.

It was organized by the Tulsa River Parks Authority and sponsored by Hammerhead Bicycles and Tatur Racing. Anytime you can get the mountain bikers and the trail runners working together it has to be important.

Lots of trash was picked up along with old worn out grills, a camo recliner and couch, and several mattresses. Four meth labs were found.

An extremely rare photo of Yogi actually doing anything. I stole this photo from Trail Zombie’s facebook page. If he sues me, I’m going to depend on you to contribute to my legal defense fund. Sweetie is going to think this was photoshopped. Trail Zombie reported on the cleanup on his blog.

Several of us went to an active campsite to dismantle it and haul it off. In addition to the tent, tarp, sleeping bags, and other stuff, we filled up two or three contractor size garbage bags with the garbage strewn in all directions around the site. By the time we left there was no trace that anybody had ever been there. Before you start crying tears over the lost home of whoever I’ll just say the contents of the tent might have indicated that he was up to nothing good.

We loaded it all up on a wagon we had and hauled it off.

There is still a lot of work left for the next clean up day. This is a non active homeless camp with garbage spread in all directions.

Our World Tuesday

Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike

Sweetie and I went to see “Jack Reacher” today the new movie based on the Lee Child‘s book series starring the ultra-tough 6’5″ ex American Army Military Policeman Jack Reacher. Jack Reacher is totally off the grid. He has lots of money but no home, no car, no drivers’ license, no cell phone, no email address, no luggage, shoot he doesn’t even have a facebook account. He deals in cash only and buys brand new clothes every few days and stays on the road constantly hitchhiking and riding the bus.

I could tell you a synopsis of this movie but all you need to know is that some real bad guys are doing some really bad things and Jack Reacher shows up and straightens everything out. In the meantime we get to see some great chase scenes involving a souped up Chevelle, some darn good fighting scenes, some bad guys doing some mean things and Jack Reacher spitting out one-liners left and right. If you have read the books you know what I’m talking about. Jack Reacher taunts bad guys with some rally good one liners. They lead some of the bad guys to make some really bad decisions.

Rosamund Pike plays Helen, a young attorney defending some young veteran who may or may not be guilty of something. Jack Reacher ends up working with her as her investigator. She tries her best to get Jack Reacher to notice her. As the movie goes along she shows more and more cleavage and her push up undergarment keep pushing up higher and higher. I’m not going to spoil this for you either.

The movie is pretty darn good. I almost forgot that Jack Reacher is supposed to be 6′ 5″ while Tom Cruise checks in at about a foot shorter. He plays a very tough Jack Reacher and manages to keep his Tom Cruiseness in check. Sweetie even liked it. Said that it wasn’t bad for a guy flick.

Go see it, its good. Get a baby sitter for the kids. Lots of fighting and killing going on.