From a drone flight in early June. Usually June is boring blue but we are getting lots of clouds this month.
And another flight a few days later. It looks like a giant hammer is fixing to pound Tulsa.
And from my first post-surgery bike ride. I had a knee replacement back in mid-February and have done a lot of Physical Therapy and exercise on my own as well. Earlier this month I went on my first ride. Six miles. The first two of which were ouch, ouch, ouch, on every pedal rotation until I got warmed up. So it is just a small ride. Earlier this week I did another of eight miles and it went well also.
It rained here a few days later and so for my hiking I went a park that has paved trails. Less erosion that way and I am all about Leave No Trace principles. (Hit the link to find out about the Seven Principles of Leave No Trace.)
Last week, my wife and I went to a free concert at Jenks Riverwalk. It’s a nice shopping/eating center right on the Arkansas River. I took a little break from the music to take some photos.
I fired the drone up over the backyard last week toward the end of the day.
It had been raining and I wanted to go hiking so I went to Broken Arrow’s Ray Harral Nature Center. A beautiful place with many paved hiking trails so one can go hiking while adhering to Leave No Trace guidelines. The end of the hike I found this composition with flowers, trees, and a sky. Nothing earth shattering, just kind of pleasant.
I launched the drone the other day. It wasn’t sunset time but there were clouds and light so off I went. This is 40 meters over my backyard in Tulsa, Oklahoma, looking west.
And then I turned the drone 180 degrees to the east and pointed the camera closer to the ground.
And, as you can tell, I played with the photos a little bit. I used a program called Dynamic Auto Painter and used one of their watercolor presets.
My wife and I had coffee yesterday at place that has this nice outdoor space which always has a breeze. I love the sails that they use for shade. They actually allow some light through. I’ve been thinking about something like that for our back patio which is nice but doesn’t really have much shaded area. Here in Oklahoma with our high winds I think it would be imprudent to do this as a do it yourself project. The wind loads on the sails and supporting post would be considerable. Fortunately I have a friend who is a mechanical engineer and knows how to do those kinds of calculations.
I fired up the drone yesterday to get a few photos of the midday sky. I also pointed the camera straight down to our backyard. You can see our patio with no shade. The orange object in the middle of the yard is the drone landing pad and just to the left of it is me, piloting the aircraft. This is at about 40 meters above ground level.
And I lowered it to about 20 meters and took another photo.
And this is what I was taking photos of while the camera was pointed out. Check out my Skywatch Friday post next week for more.
So, should I see what would it entail to get some shade sails over our back patio?
I fired up the drone again and flew over the backyard in between rain storms. This is looking to the west. You can see everything is very green in Tulsa right now with all the rain we are getting.
A stopped in traffic, crepuscular ray shot one afternoon.
And another shot from almost the same spot yesterday.
The City of Broken Arrow has a Veteran’s Park with all sorts of monuments in honor of veterans. This is the “War at Home” Memorial. It honors veterans who came home from war but committed suicide later. It’s a huge issue. War is hard on people mentally and emotionally and we need to make sure they are cared for when they come home even though their wounds are not physical.
And I went on a short hike at our Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness Area. The John and Kate Kaiser YMCA tucked to the very northwest corner of the Wilderness Area. I am a Y member so I just check in at the office and take off. I hardly ever see anyone else on the trails there. It’s pretty remote from the rest of Turkey Mountain.
I hope that everyone had a great New Year’s. 2024 was a year of blessings and also trials and tribulation for us and we got through it. Back when I started blogging, there was a friend of mine who also started and quit because she said people only put the positive parts of their life online so it was dishonest. So I guess I am dishonest. Sorry about that and I don’t feel bad about it all. I’m a blessed man, what can I say. I have this irritating trait that no matter what the situation, I think things will be okay. I couple that with a sense of realism about what okay looks like.
I have always loved New Year’s. It’s like a fresh start every year. We didn’t do much, stayed home, had a nice dinner, watched some television.
In late December after weeks of monotonous gray skies I saw that things were shaping up for maybe a good sunset so I got my drone in the air and captured a bunch of images. I put them in a video and here it is. It is only twenty seconds long so do not panic!
New Year’s Day morning I went with Heather to a class she is starting at a nearby YMCA. It is cardio drumming and twenty people showed up to take it. Not bad for a brand new class. She is already teaching it weekly at another YMCA here in town and monthly at our “home gym.” It is lots of fun, you have drumsticks and you drum on an exercise ball in time to music. She leads the different moves. It is lots of fun, she loves upbeat music and so do her students. She also teaches Zumba at two different gyms, and a couple water classes, aquazumba and aquastrength. I take both of those classes. She stays pretty busy. She has been teaching for years and is very good at “reading the room” providing alternative moves for those who need them.
Afterwards, I took off and found a geocache and hiked a short distance. If you are a geocacher, New Year’s Day is an important day to find one and if you are a hiker you should go on a First Day’s Hike. So I did both. Yeah me, hah!
And then we went home and had our New Year’s Day meal featuring chicken quarters and baby back ribs that I smoked on the day before New Year’s Eve. That red stuff on the meat is a very spicy rub use. It brings the heat.
Meanwhile, I did another jigsaw puzzle on my ipad. Great way to stay busy while we watch our streaming shows. The one I am working on now is a Canyonlands scene with lots of tan colored desert and skies. Very challenging.
Again, I wish everyone a Happy, Heathy, and Prosperous 2025!
Somebody published a geocache within walking distance of the house. Well, i’ve walked over there twice and can’t find it. It’s in a tree just to left of this scene. I didn’t find the cache but I’ve got two walks over to look for it and a not bad photo.
A full moon in October. Not the greatest I’ve done but here it is.
And a better rendition of a half moon, also in August.
I got a new action camera recently. It’s a GoPro clone at literally one tenth the cost. About seventy percent as good as a GoPro, so I’m ahead the way I figure it. I attach it to my bike’s handlebars and set it to take a photo every ten seconds. Most of the photos are of nothing memorable so I delete them. I love vintage power plants and this is Public Service Company of Oklahoma’s Tulsa Power Station. It hardly ever runs but it still on the rate base making money for PSO whether it runs or not. I used to work for a sister company to PSO that supplied the gas to all the power plants. We had a systems that would show us graphically all the gas the power company was burning to make electricity. It was cool watching the load go up during extremely hot or cold weather. Lots of people worked hard to make sure the lights stayed on.
Here is another action camera shot of this person riding an escooter on the RiverParks trails.
And somebody else walking their dog and a guy in an electric wheelchair crossing the river on the new pedestrian bridge. A big variety of people use Tulsa’s RiverParks. I’m always amazed.
A sunset drone shot from 50 meters above my back yard.
And a stormy weather drone shot about 30 meters above my back yard. Stormy means windy and my little microdrone doesn’t like wind.
That’s sall this week folks. Sorry I don’t have a theme besides skies.
In my previous post I wrote about my new action camera and tested it on our pets. A day or two later I put it on my bike and went for a ride. I set it to take a photo every ten seconds so I end up deleting almost all of the images. Here I am at a stop, off my bike. You can see the action camera mounted on the bike and me. If the weather is good I carry along my superzoom camera.
Here is another rest stop with a shadow and my fingers.
This is a phone shot at a local park. I love all the various shadow patterns.
One day I loaded up my drone and took it the Thomas Gilcrease House here in Tulsa. A one time oil baron who bequeathed the Gilcrease Museum to the City of Tulsa. His house has formal garden with a fountain so you can see the shadow of the fountain.
Recently I posted some sunset photos from my drone. I had forgotten that I made a 360 video of the same thing. A video from my drone at 150 meters over my backyard.
It’s only 35 seconds long.
I start out looking straight west and then go to the right. Not often you get color everywhere one looks at sunset.
The other day the sky looked promising for a decent sunset. It seems the best conditions are high thin clouds. If they are too thick they kind of smother the sun and you get no color. And the thing is the colors don’t last so you have to be ready to go or the opportunity is gone. So I was home, my drone batteries were charged up so I launched it from the back yard.
If you are lucky, and I was that day, you get opposite sunsets which is where you get colors in any direction. So this is looking north.
And this is looking south.
And this was the west, the day before.
And this is looking down. You can see my orange landing pad. I do think that is my new roof. We color matched it to the old roof so there it looks the same. I do only periscope flights. I go straight up from the backyard and look around and then come back down. I don’t fly the drone over other people’s property or anywhere where I can’t just legally walk over and pick it up if something goes wrong. That’s just me though.
