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.