2022 Tulsa Veterans Day Parade

We had a big Veterans Day Parade in Tulsa today. First one I have been to in a while what with being retired and Covid and all that mess. It lasted a long time. In Tulsa we love our Vets and we show up for them. We had several color guards for instance.

The motorcycle cops did some fancy riding and looking all intimidating and such.

I guessed that these are reservists or something.

My employer sponsored the race and a bunch the employees marched.

There were dogs.

These planes did multiple flyovers.

There were vets in trailers.

And vets on trucks.

We had guys in kilts.

And high school JROTC cadets looking sharp.

Lots of vintage cars.

One guy brought his personal tank.

A couple celebrity storm trackers showed up. They got more decals than NASCAR racers.

And high school marching bands with baton twirlers showing their stuff.

And Firemen!!

It was quite a show. For the vets.

My brother was in the Navy a long time, now retired.

My Dad was in the US Army during the occupation of Japan after World War II. He’s no longer with us but I think of him every single day. He was proud of his service. Dad’s grandfather served in the Army during the Spanish American War and Dad has a brother, my uncle, who was an officer in Navy. I have a cousin who served in the Army in Korea way back when.

My brother-in-law Irvin is an Army vet. He and my sister and their kids lived all over the place during his service. That is the thing about having a family and being in the military. They serve as well. Irv has a grandson and a son-in-law currently serving.

To all our vets, we salute you and appreciate your service.

Skywatch Friday – Mid November Edition 2022

It looked like a nice sky was possible at dusk the other day so I launched the drone and captured this image. Looking west from south Tulsa.

I went and voted Tuesday morning along with millions of fellow citizens. The highlight was a lady come in to vote. She was 100 years old and very spry. She said Truman was the first President she ever voted for. I loved it. Saw this tree just off the parking lot of my polling place.

I love the trees at Tulsa’s Lafortune Park.

A view from the Ridge Trail on Turkey Mountain looking east out over the Arkansas River and south Tulsa.

A rainbow in our neighborhood.

Some fall color in my mother-in-law’s neighborhood.

And now an image generated by Artificial Intelligence based on the text string I inputted which is below the image. Go generate your images for free at freeimagegenerator.com.

AI mountain lake with fall colors — “mountain lake in the fall with trees fall colors photorealistic”

I’m still trying to decide whether I like AI images or not.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday. Come join in the fun.

Backyard Bonanza 5K, 12.5K, and 25K Trail Races.

This past Sunday a bunch of trailrunners and walkers congregated at the Herman and Kaiser YMCA on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain to run the Backyard Bonanza series of races (5K, 12.5K, and 25K). It kind of takes the place of the old Turkey n Taturs races that took place at the Y a few years ago. This race was created and operated by RunnersWorld Racing. Runners World was involved in the Turkey n Tatur Races as well. This is not the biggest race in town but it is lots of fun. I think this is the second year of the race and I think they had a 30% growth in participants from last year. It takes time to build up a race.

Just as I got there, the 12.5K and 25K contestants were were getting pre-race instructions. Pretty simple really, follow the pink ribbons, don’t cross the yellow ribbons, be nice to other people on the mountain cuz the course is still open to the public, have fun. With the Turkey n Taturs races I did the 8K a bunch of times and the 25K once. I have also cooked hamburgers maybe three times, and helped out at the aid station once or twice. This year I did the 5K event.

So stationed myself at the first turn of the race and got a video of the “peloton” of runners/walkers. And then I waited a half hour or so for the 5K to start.

I started at the back of the pack as usual and pretty much just power walked up the hills on the outward bound part of the course. We ran legacy trails on this segment, pretty hard up and downs.

And then things flattened out a little bit and I found I could trot pretty well without much difficulty. I can’t tell how long it has been since I could run.

We ran on a segment of new trail that was unfamiliar to me. I could have sworn that I have been on all the new trails except the downhill bicycle only Zingo but I was wrong. Not the first time I’ve been wrong.

We ran into what I call the cloverleaf. It is kind of a mix master where you end up running in a bunch of different directions. If you scroll down you will see it on the route maps at the lower left hand (southwest corner of the maps). Still flat and I was still trotting. I ended up doing negative splits and the final mile was 15 minutes, 30 seconds which is close to my “peak” when I ran a lot.

So at the finish, they had bottle openers instead of medals. Suited me fine. Medals have taken over the races and lots of people covet them.

They also had freshly made pancakes. Sign me up for a pancake anytime. They had pumpkin butter to put on them in addition to syrup. That was delicious.

And finished off with a silver bullet on the terrace of the Lodge. The Herman and Kate Kaiser YMCA is deluxe. The powers that be had been gathering donations for some time and when they had to shut down for covid they hired some contractors and got to work and they had a brand new facility when the reopened. In fact they had a race on opening day in June, 2021 and I participated in it.

And of course the tee shirt was deluxe.

I ended up winning my age group!! So that was nice even though I was the only one in my age group.

So this race was the whole package. I’ll be back!

Facility 5 stars (out of 5)
Course 5 stars
Markings 5 stars
Food and Drink 5 stars
TShirt 5 stars
Fellow contestants 5 stars
Awards 5 stars

As you can tell I liked the race.

Gulf Coast Beach Wildlife

I’m running late on all my posts. Life has been busy lately which is a great thing!! I’m not a fan of being busy busy busy but I am a fan of enjoying life and spending time outdoors instead of glued to a computer. So these are wildlife pics from our trip to Orange Beach, Alabama a few weeks

We saw several great blue herons. This one started out on the beach in front of our condo and it slowly walked to the barrier dune in front of our condo. It looked like he was following a lizard or something. We thought he was going to dart down and grab the lizard and eat but he never did. He flew down the beach after a while. We have these herons in Oklahoma and they hardly ever move a muscle unless they are spooked off. (By the way, if I miss an ID feel free to let me know. I welcome corrections.)

This is a different heron hanging out by the beach. We encountered standing next to somebody surf fishing. One guy said that the bird was his best buddy. Waiting for a treat.

This guy/gal was hunkered down in the grass at a state park.

Even in October, there were lots of sea gulls.

I’m not sure what this one is but there were lots of them as well, and other birds.

One day we ventured off to Pensacola and walked on the pier. There was this brown pelican there. I think it is a teenager as it was kind of small and some downy feathers. It didn’t move much. A couple of nearby fishermen would toss it something every now and then.

We had a great time on the beach. We had enough warm weather for four days of laying on the beach and we found something to do the other days. We love talking walks on the beach and we did plenty of that.

I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters. Go check it out. Lots of good photobloggers link up there.

Shadowy Bleachers

I went for a little hike the other day at a local park. I noticed a little used trail and decided to see where it went. It turns out that it went to some property owned by a local private school. The property was not posted and there were no students or anybody else out and about so I explored some more and found their football field. You can tell it is not a big school. It is a school with a very good reputation. I’ve met the headmaster and he is a fellow geocacher.

Have you been exploring lately?

I’m linking up with Shadow Shot Sunday 2. Check it out, join in!!

Family Hike on the Mountain

Last week my sister, Ellen, and her husband, Irv, came down from Colorado to visit us.

https://flic.kr/p/2nVNUWX

While here we joined our brother Bob at his residence. Management was throwing an Oktoberfest, food, drink, desert, entertainment! We were all up for that.

Music was provided by a local accordion band. I didn’t even know that accordion bands were a thing. These folks were great. They all played together, you know, like they were a band! It was jam packed with residents and guests and I think everyone had a good time.

The next day I showed off Turkey Mountain. They were very polite. They live on some acreage where they have a front row seat to Pikes Peak at 14,114 feet. Turkey Mountain is 804 feet. They did not snicker, not even once!! Hey you know, we in Tulsa are proud of 804 foot tall hill. We can call it a mountain if we want.

Irv is a fellow geocacher and he found one on the moutain.

Ellen made friends with Sasquatch.

We went by Pepsi Lake. They didn’t ask why the ponds on the Turkey Mountain hill are called lakes. I don’t know!!

We ended up going about 4.5 miles or so. I was worn out.

We had a really good visit.

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday. Come join in the fun!!

2022 National Arabian Horse Show

My sister and her husband were in town recently to visit and attend the National Arabian Horse Show here in Tulsa. She and he were heavily involved in youth horse judging community in Colorado Springs and attended the horse show regularly for several years.

Heather and I attended the final night of the show with them and the show was amazing. Beautiful Arabian horses being ridden by people that know what they are doing. They had several different classes or style of riding.

The horses are gorgeous, groomed beautifully. The riders are dressed very well also. They ride their horses around the ring in various trots, walks, canters and hand gallops all the while scrutinized by a team of judges.

The audience is raucous during the competition cheering their favorites on loudly during the competition and judging. They also cheered the winners loudly. Great sportsmanship, not a boo heard the entire evening.

The horses have a distinctive gait. I’m told that they have to be trained to do it as it doesn’t come naturally.

Hopefully we can attend next year. It had been 2013 and 2014 when we last made the show.

Links to the 2013 and 2014 shows

Skywatch Friday – Autumn Beach Vacation

Bridge across the Mississippi on the very long drive to the beach, 13 hours or so.

Mississippi State Forestry Service fire tower. I don’t think they use it any longer.

At Orange Beach, we found this treasure dredging sand at Perdido Pass and making more beach by pumping the dredged material ashore. This is as close as they let us go. Isn’t it beauty. I used to use similar barges laying pipelines in south Louisiana.

Isn’t she a beauty?

I got a few decent beach skies.

Lots of pelicans skimming the waves.

We had several decent days on the beach. The water was way too cold for me. My feet got toasted good in the sun. I promise, no more feet pics. At least for a while.

I got up early one fridged morning and got a decent sunrise. Yes, I used a filter if you must know.

We saw a catamaran out on the water one late afternoon. Nothing better than photographs of sailing vessels I think.

We drove to nearby Pensacola and checked out Pensacola Beach. Gorgeous beach and water. We got out on the pier and saw fisherman catch fish. We saw a sea turtle surface briefly and sharks lurking about. Lots of manta rays. I didn’t have the right camera to capture any of that.

Back at Perdido Pass. We have learned that dolphin cruises and fine and good but the fisherman on the beach will tell you where to go see dolphins. We got to the pass late afternoon and there were tons of dolphins going back and forth. Didn’t have to pay a thing and nobody presented us with a tip jar.

I’m fascinated by Artifical Intelligence generated photos. I got on my goto site for that kind of foolishness, freeimagegenerator.com, and entered: “most colorful orange beach alabama skywatch photo hdr realistic detailed concept art ” on the text prompt and a few seconds later it gave me this image. Strangely enough it looks like about half the shirts for sale in the state. The whole concept is freaky to me. Try the link and let me know what you think. You want to try something really disturbing, enter your name and home address in the text prompt.

That’s about all the foolishness for this week. I’m linking to Skywatch Friday.

AI Generated Images – The New Frontier?

AI Pumpkins — Ghostly Pumpkins – AI Generated

AI warship — Warships headed to sea AI Generated

I was reading a short article in Wired magazine about Artificial Intelligence generated images. There are programs out there that have learned gazillions of photographs and their captions and will take text prompts to generate images. This has caused lots of anger among digital artists. So of course I had to try it.

It looks like almost all of these image generators are very robust and won’t run on a laptop. So being cheap I found a website “FreeImageGenerator.Com” that will do the job for you. You enter a prompt and it generates an image that you can use however you like. It will even polish your text prompt for you to make it better. It generates png images and you are limited to 15 per hour or something like that.

So I tried various things and got various results. The two images above were the ones I liked the best. I have to say that I find the technology absolutely fascinating. I have no idea about it’s affect on the art world. But you know you cannot put toothpaste back in the tube. I suspect that artists will be fine. They will end up using such tools that leave the rest of us way behind.

Have you ever heard of AI generated Art? Have you tried it out? What do you think.

Bicycling in the Shadows

https://flic.kr/p/2nU94vU

Son, Logan, exploring the shadowy trails of Gulf State Park in Orange Beach, Alabama.

Shadow Shot Sunday

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