This month we had the Harvest Moon. I love full moons. I take photos of all I can and apply all sorts of filters and editing to them. I hope that doesn’t bother you.
I went for a walk last week and caught a sunset and as a bonus I got lots of long narrow tree trunk shadows.
This is the Powerline Trail on Turkey Mountain, here in Tulsa. It’s the fast route from the north end of the wilderness park to the parking lots on the south end. It’s not the easiest though, you go straight up and down a couple of big hills. But is hard to get lost on it.
Started when the sun was low which makes for long shadows. Since my knee injury a couple years ago I always walk a half mile before running.
I am being a little ambitious with my running this Fall. I have signed up for the Tulsa Run 15K and the half marathon event of the Tulsa Route 66 Marathon. I’m also thinking about doing the 25K event at a Trail Race on Turkey Mountain. And of course it is all well and good to sign up for this stuff but at you also have to train for the runs.
Tulsa is a city of trees and Up with Trees is a great organization that wants us to have even more!!
So most of my training runs have been up and down the River Trails here in Tulsa. I love the River Parks trails but you know, you need a little variety now and then. There is a park a few miles northwest of our house, Lafortune Park. It has an 18 hole golf course, and a 18 hole par three course, lots of picnic areas, tennis courts, a library, a tennis center, a lawn bowling pitch, a high school, with football and baseball fields, and best of all a 3 mile running/walking track that winds its way around all of those other things.
I ran by the offices of Crisis Pregnancy Outreach. This is a great organization that is devoted exclusively to the babies and their mothers. No time for wedge politics or anything like that. You want to do politics go somewhere else. If you are concerned about babies and mothers, this is your place.
I have run around the park many times, and Heather and I have walked around it a lot, even son Logan and I have done the three miles a bunch of times.
The closest thing to Fall Color I saw on my trek
Well I wanted to close the loop so to speak by running from the house to the park. From the house I have walked, run, and biked to the Creek Turnpike Trail. And although I have not done it all in one outing, I have walked, run, and biked about 20 miles to the east, and to the west and northwest probably 30 miles or more. So I wanted to extend my connectivity the few miles to Lafortune and get an 11 mile run at the same time. I had already done nine miles last week, so I wanted to do 11 this past weekend.
I love old signs. This sign has been there a long time even the store is long gone. It’s days are numbered though as there is some construction going on.
So off I went. It was different than running on a running path. First of all I wasn’t wearing headphones. Running on the street with headphones is a prescription for getting run over. I had a good friend who got run over and died while running on a freeway frontage road with headphones on. Second is the camber of the road. The crown. You really have to alternate what side of the road you run on otherwise you will tear up your knees or ITB band.
I passed a new restaurant going in at a busy intersection. I am a sucker for glass blocks.
But hey, it was all good. A nice brisk, sunny day.
Saint Francis Hospital.
It about wore me out. I didn’t have any time goals. I just wanted to finish and yes I walked a lot.
Probably 60% on the streets, roads, and sidewalks, the rest on park trails or vacant fields.
I know, I know, I should have been in church on Sunday morning but running had me totally in the moment and it all seemed to go by in a flash.
Next Saturday is the Tulsa Run 15K. It will be my 23rd. it is my favorite race of the year. It will be cold!!! but that is okay. I have the cold weather gear. I know how to dress for the cold weather, the hot weather, and wet weather, and dry weather. It doesn’t matter to me.
Here is the garmin video my very slow run.
Here is the much more fun “relive” version of the run. I like it much better for its 3D aspect plus it makes it appear that I ran the whole way.
My favorite go to 3 mile walking/running loop is Lafortune Park just a few miles from the house. The trail goes around a golf course, tennis courts, and a playground, and by a several ponds so there almost always moments to rest a little bit and snap a pic or two. I’m always wanting to yell “You the Man!” or “In the Hole!!” at the golfers but never have, probably never will. I used to work with a guy who when we played golf with the CEO of our employer would say, when the CEO hit the ball, “Oh my gosh, look at the ball go!!” He even said it when I hit it, or whiffed it as mostly the case. I always thought it was funny.
We were celebrating my wife’s birthday yesterday and when we got home I noticed that we had a full moon. So I dug out my trust Canon SX40 Superzoom and took a few pics of the moon. I an one of them through Topaz Textures and then uploaded onto my Ipod Touch and used DistressedFX to further process the image to bring out the features of the moon. This moon doesn’t have a cool name like some of the other moons. It is called the Long Night Moon.
From the archives last January. I love how we can see the bones of the trees after the leaves all fall off. Fall and Winter are seasons of short days but great light and the opportunity to see familiar scenes differently. Here in Oklahoma it can get cold when a front blows through but generally there is a sunny warming period for a few days afterward where we get a short respite from Winter. It makes a big difference.
Image from Tulsa’s Lafortune Park duck pond during a morning run early this week. I didn’t have my camera but my cell phone got the job done along with a little help from Topaz Adjust to bring the colors out a little bit.
We are deep into Spring here in northeast Oklahoma and we have lots of rain so one can see why this area is called “Green Country” by some. Pretty soon will come the high temps and humidity but after all these years that doesn’t bother me that much. You learn how to adapt.
Last weekend’s weather in Tulsa was downright Springlike. Warm, dry and sunny. Heather and I went hiking in shirtsleeves, meanwhile our son was on his school trip in Breckenridge negotiating lots of snow.
Son and I went on a walk around a local park in Tulsa last weekend. I liked the look of many of the trees that lost their leaves. You can see their arms now and their arms look like they are dancing.
I used Topaz Lab’s “Glow” software to emphasize the “arms” on this tree.
Son and I went on a walk around Tulsa’s Lafortune Park last week and as usual I took three cameras with me. A Nikon point and shoot, an Apple Ipod Touch, and my generic Android cell phone. I took this with my cell phone and then filtered the photo through an app on the phone with a “Noir” app that provided the ghostly reflections above.
It is kind of hard to see where photography is going, the cell phone apps are getting ever more sophisticated and both my point and shoot Nikon and my “big” Nikon have wifi capability where I can move photos from the cameras to either the Ipod or the cell phone for processing and posting. I’m really enjoying see how things are changing. I don’t know where they are going though.
So where are you on the App revolution? Do you use them or not?
I love it when the weather warms up enough to go running in the morning outside rather than the gerbil activity on a treadmill in a gym. This time of year the sun is just barely rising when I pass the ponds on one of my routes. I love how quiet and peaceful it is very early. It is like every day is born with new hope. Of course, other days I just want to sit, read the paper, and browse the blogs I follow.
