Shenandoah sunrise time lapse

Have I mentioned that I love the hell out of my new GoPro Hero 3+ camera?  While in Shenandoah National Park this past weekend, Debbie and I got up early to catch the sunrise.  As the sun came up over Upper Hawksbill Gap, we sleepily watched with amazement.  Note to self:  Watch more sunrises.

Stoked

In a couple of weeks I'll be backpacking in PA with two of Debbie's brothers.  We'll be hiking parts of the Black Forest Trail in the Tiadaghton State Park.  I'm pretty stoked!  I haven't gone backpacking in over three years.  Wow, I hate to even think about that sad fact... typing it makes me feel even worse.  But that's life; it gets busy.  While, perhaps, I haven't been doing one particular thing that I really enjoy, I sure as hell have been doing others.  But anyway, it's going to be great to be out in the woods again, trekking along, choosing my own adventure via map & compass and wearily falling asleep, in a swaying hammock with a million stars above me.  As pumped as I am to be back out there, I'm equally pumped to be connecting with Debbie's brothers a little more.  This trip is an all-around fantastic idea.

Mom & Dad's 50th wedding anniversary

This weekend, Debbie and I drove up to my hometown, of Sherrill, NY to surprise my parents with a 50th Anniversary party. All nine of us kids coordinated to pull off an excellent surprise party for them. It was epic. My mom was crying tears of joy and my dad had a smile on his face all day. It felt great to give them a nice surprise; they're a hell of a couple!

Moonflower time lapse

A couple of weeks ago a buddy at work gave me a few plants; two tropical, black-eyed susan vines and one moonflower plant.   Woahohohooooo Nelly...  Am I about to blog about plants?  Why yes; yes I am.  The moonflower plant is pretty awesome actually.  My buddy told me that this plant would produce flowers, one at a time, several times, before dying.  Last night it finally blossumed and I used my new GoPro to capture the time lapse.  The series of photos in the video were taken every 60 seconds, between 7:00pm and 9:00pm.  Pretty cool!

Riding with my brother

Just wanted to post up some video footage I took while mountainbiking with my brother Patrick a couple of weekends ago.  Debbie and I drove down to meet Pat, who's a Marine at Camp Lejeune.  He doesn't have a lot of trails down there in his part of North Carolina, but what he does have, are pretty fun!  He crashed twice, which means he was riding harder than I was!  I rode my fat bike, which I am still madly in love with.   Wish we could ride more often.

Another year older

I’m 36 years old now. My birthday was last Friday and was celebrated over a long weekend in my very favorite of all places; the Adirondacks. Debbie and I spent a few days at a cabin in Woodgate, just south of Old Forge. We spent the days hiking, swimming and relaxing (when we werent’ getting drilled by black flies). I was really excited to have received a couple of awesome gifts from Debbie. Each deserving of their own blog entry; so more on them later. I will say that she got me the latest Gopro camera, the Hero 3, Black Edition, and it is AWESOME. I cannot wait to use it more. Below is some sample footage I took from the summit of Blue Mountain.

 

We rounded the trip off with a stop at my folks place for a nice visit. We were able to spend the day with them. My father and I spent a couple of hours at the rifle range. My shoulder is still sore from his 45-70.

Excellent Junk

I had grand plans for this morning.  I was going to get up early and hit the trails, collecting footage for a short mountain bike video.  However, I didn't get out of bed too awful early this morning (Last night's White Russians put the kibosh on that plan - Damn you!  You delicious concoction!).  Still, I made it to the trails, in Union Mills, by 9:30 and had some fun collecting footage in the woods.  I don't think I got enough action to put together anything interesting but we'll see.  I had picked up a Gorillapod from Adorama, specifically for this purpose.  It worked like a charm today.  I was able to wrap it around trees and logs and get some low angle shots with my Micro four thirds camera.  So, the day was spent riding for a few minutes, stopping, looking around and then either getting off and setting up the camera, or pedaling on to repeat the process.  Its fun to collect footage.  You want to collect neat footage; pretty footage; interesting footage; sunlit nature scenery footage.  You don't want boring footage.  So it's a challenge to be creative out in the woods; a fun challenge.  

I've said this before, but I really like finding junk piles in the middle of the woods.  I usually find them when I'm hunting and will spend a while rooting around to see what there is to see.  Junk piles are just inherently interesting.  Today's pile was awesome.  I was glad I had my camera with me.  The toy gun is probably, the coolest looking item I've found in a long time.  Old telephones are always cool to find, bottles are always nice, but toys take the cake, in my book.

I dig the old Tropicana bottle.  And what the hell is Upper 10?  I had to Google it.  Wikipedia tells me that it first debuted in 1933.  Its similar to 7UP/Sierra Mist etc and it's still sold outside of the US.  Weird name.

Several items (shoes, cans, bottles) had moss growing inside of them, among other things.  Spiders seem to like bottles; they make excellent homes.  Several bottles I picked up, held spiders inside them.  And this creepy puppy also caught my eye.  I love the enthusiastic look on his decaying face.

Catching up

Rather than try to catch up on all that's happened in the last month, I'm simply going to dump some images from my phone, onto the ol' bloggy blog here.  I can't believe I blogged only one time during the month of May.  But, life has been busy.  Busy with camping, home improvement, business travle, trips to the rifle range, mountain biking, and enjoying my new truck. 

 

Camping with some of the fellas from work. I took my hammock for a three night stint in the middle of PA. We cooked some amazing meals over the fire place, and on the flat "cooking rocks" in it's perimeter wall. It was epic.

While camping we skewered six chickens with birch limbs. We stuffed a half a stick of butter and a handfull of onion chunks inside each bird and let them cook for a few hours. The onions came out tasting like root beer (from the birch limbs). It was amazing.

Ribs! Yes, we also cooked ribs. We used a screwgun to screw them to the birch limbs, then wrapped them in place with lengths of safetywire. This kept them from spinning off the limbs when we turned them. Man Cooking.

New truck. Yes, I bought a new truck. It's a 2014 Chevy Silverado with a Rocky Ridge package installed. 20" rims, 35" Mickey Thompsons, a 6" ProComp suspension lift kit, custom grill and fender flares. It's got an 8 cylinder 355 horse power engine under the hood and it's a blast to drive. No, I'm not really concerned about my MPG. My work commute is only 7.5 miles.

The fat bike rules. I've gotten a few more good rides in on the Trek Farley. I plan on riding this bike all summer. I just don't see myself having as much fun riding, on my other bikes at this point in time. It's just too cool.

Debbie and I spent a weekend in Gettysburg at a sweet Bed & Breakfast (The Brafferton Inn) which I highly recommend to anyone looking for a great, historic, place to stay in Gettysburg.  We took a horseback tour of Cemetery Ridge and traversed a few battlefields.  Lots of fun and enlightening. 

Spring has sprung

The weather has been amazing lately.  The trees in our yard have finally blossomed, the tulips have burst out of the ground, and I'm seeing rabbits every morning and evening as they feast on the dandelions that make up the majority of our yard.  With the springtime beauty and wonderment comes the pollen and my sneezing & itchy eyes, but I'll take it.  I'm glad the warmer weather is here and I'm enjoying the metamorphosis unfolding before my eyes.  The other day I cam home from work and grabbed my camera to snap some pictures of how pretty things are looking.  I captured a chickadee (My favorite little bird) building a nest in the tree out front. In the side yard I stalked and captured shots of a young rabbit who looks like he had a tussle with a neighborhood cat.  Poor guy.  

Range Report: Mig 22

A bunch of guys from work invited me to go on their annual "company camping trip". They're all hunters and from what I've heard, the trip is basically a weekend in the woods, shooting skeet, pistols, and bow & arrow during the day, and roasting chickens over a spit & drinking at night. Sounds good to me! I'm going to bring my Rock Island Armory Mig 22 for this trip. With the amount of shooting I expect we'll do, I figured this was the most fun and economical route to take. But, I have recently removed the scope, so I needed to zero it again. I took it down to Hap Baker Firearms Facility yesterday morning and shot about 300 rounds through it. I have it zeroed for 25 yards, where it will hold a dime-sized group. I really love this rifle. Its a work of art and functions great, BUT, it has a serious Achilles heal. The barrel comes loose on my rifle after about 20 rounds. I have to unscrew the barrel shroud enough to access the small set screw and tighten it back down.  This set screw passes through a forward portion of the receiver and into a detent in the breach end of the barrel.  This screw is removed when you want to remove the barrel, consequently, it loosens during use and suddenly your shots are landing way off the mark.  Very frustrating.  I've used two different grades of loktite to rememdy the problem; both failed as fixes.  I now keep an allen key with this gun, when I carry it.  I hope someone at Rock Island Armory is reading this.  

Despite the frustration of having to keep my rifle from falling apart at the range... it still holds excellent groups.  Above are my results at 25 & 50 yards.