Tag Archives: Shadow Shot Sunday

Shadowy Running – 20 years ago

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So I used to be a runner. Not much of a runner but still I entered races. My big race of the year was the Tulsa Run 15K. I loved it, 9.3 miles from downtown Tulsa through midtown and then back in late October, Tulsa’s best season. It was like a meditation to me. I ran along and just took it all in, the sun and wind in my face, the beautiful fall foliage, the other runners, the bystanders and all the bands. It was a big event in Tulsa, thousands of runners, lots of spectators. Beer and candy bars at the finish. I think I ran something like 20 or more in a row. I was a very slow runner. I always finished in the slowest 10 or 20% of the field. My goal was to just enjoy it and finish. So this is a brief story of my blazing finish at the 2004 version of the race.

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I was running along, enjoying myself, zoning out and like I said before just enjoying the sun and wind on my face. I was going along at a pretty good pace for me and I was getting close to the finish and there were these two women in front running together but I wasn’t paying attention to them. Now oftentimes at the finish, there is the finish line and just before is another line with a sensor that makes your name pop up and you can get your name called out. Well I was focused on the finish line but the two women stopped running hard at the line before the finish line and I didn’t notice that so I ran in between them almost knocking them over. They were good sports and everything and no boyfriend came over and punched me in the nose or anything but it wasn’t really a good look for me.

But, you will notice that I beat both of them by a toe! So maybe it was worth it. Instead of finishing 9,373rd in the race, I finished 9,371st. (I’m making those numbers up.)

The other thing is that may be the only running photo of me with at least one foot in the air. This is one of the thousands of photos I have recently found that I thought were lost forever.

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Shadow Shot Sunday – From the Dog to the Beach

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Here’s Kodi the ornery Pomeranian hiding in the shadows of a tomato plant.

At the gym, a Kia Soul with eye lashes.

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From twenty years ago, with family in Ventura, California celebrating my brother Bob’s retirement from the Navy. Looks like me and my lovely, and kind of ornery, niece Dana were having a photo shootout on the beach.

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And my sister Ellen, Dana’s mom, joining in the fun. Ellen has a ornery side also.

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And brother Bob with niece Dana to the our right.

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As you can tell, it was an impromptu beach visit, and too cold in December for swimming suit anyway.

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Shadow Shot Sunday – Wilbur from Long Ago

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Meet Wilbur, a Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pig. We ran into him at Bear World, near Rigby, Idaho in 2004 when we were visiting my father in Idaho Falls. We loved Wilbur.

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Son Logan loved him the most. Wilbur just had one spot of shade under the hot sun.

I thought these photos were lost but I found an old tower PC that we had. I pulled out the hard drive and ordered an enclosure for it on Amazon. When that came I plugged the hard drive in and connected to my laptop and voila. Thousands of photos that I had thought were lost and are now found!! I’m so happy.

Shadow Shot Sunday

Shadow Shot Sunday – Vigas and Canales

Shadows of the Vigas and Canales at the St. Francis de Asis Catholic Church in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico.

Vigas are the wooden beams poking through the adobe wall. They are used for supporting the roof. Canales are the roof drains. You can tell that they have been extended for some reason. I’ll have photos of the whole church later.

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Shadowy Gold Panning in the Mountains

R to L, my wife Heather, Me, and son Logan. Photo by tour guide with my phone.

I have been AWOL from blogging for the last week or so. Sorry about that, we went on vacation to the mountains of northern New Mexico. One day we went on a jeep tour that included a stop at a played out gold mine and went into the mine a little bit as the guide explained the multilayered history of mining in the area starting with the Native Americans to the conquering Spaniards, to the depression era when white collar types would try their hand at it. Then he handed out mining pans and a shovel and we tried our hand at it. Talk about dreary work for nothing much. Turns out if there are kids on the outing the guide salts the tailings with gold painted pebbles. We were too old for that. But it was fun to find out how the work was done.

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Here is the old mine, sitting about maybe ten feet above the road and the opening is tall enough to stand in. We climbed in and went in maybe fifteen feet. The guide went further in and showed us the other shafts that took off. Most of them collapsed but a few still open. Some of them were only big enough for a person to crawl through on their belly. (That thought chills me.) He said they tied ropes to the miner’s feet so they could pull them out at the end of their shift.

As my late grandmother told me once. “You can have the good old days, there was nothing good about them.”

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