Feathers > Gold ???

You may have heard that there is this crazy feather hair extension craze sweeping the nation. I laughed a little bit when I heard that people were putting fly tying feathers in their hair, but thought nothing of it. Then I found out that saddle hackle feathers (long and thin feathers) were selling for boatloads of money on EBay. I checked it out, and yes, they were going for crazy prices.

Last weekend I listed two different saddles and one cape (different type of feathers). The auction prices were pretty meager all week - until today. One saddle (the black and white one) sold for $455, and the other (green and black) sold for over $100! I was in disbelief. I probably paid under $50 for both of those together when I originally purchased them several years ago. All total I cleared $575. I don't have any more of the coveted long feathers to sell, but prices are still pretty high on shorter ones too - so I listed four more today. Even if I can only sell them for $20 each, I will still double my money. I love this crazy fad!

It has been fun to think of what I can now buy with that $575. But after a $350 fridge repair bill last week, and also a $250 truck repair bill - it has already been spent!

Cool Pool Fun

July 15

Last Friday morning, Gavin and I met my friend Michelle at my boss' pool. (It's great to work in a place where you're treated like family.)

Michelle brought her camera and caught some really great images of Gavin having fun.

Splashing is always fun.
And the timing on this one is impressive, as was Gavin's aim to get me right in the face. I swear this looks like some sort of magic act, but it's the work of a fast shutter. It really makes me think I might need a really good camera.

Gavin loves standing on the edge and jumping in.
But, the camera doesn't lie; it isn't much of a jump before Mama's arms are out for the catch.
After all that fun in the water, Gavin spied the swing. This was his first time in a "big boy" swing instead of the baby one with the all around protection. This swing was very low to the ground, so he was able to climb right in. I was pushing him--just out of this shot.

He did really well for several minutes, until he decided he really needed to put his finger in his nose. He fell, but it was a short one. A big thanks to Michelle for being able to hang out at the last minute and for the great pictures!

Diggers and Dozers and Graders, Oh My

July 14

This month, Dean and Gavin are going to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Either Lindsey or I will take the boys and the other will pick them up. Last Thursday, when I picked them up, Dean said, "I want to go to Gavin's house." Having no agenda once we got home, I called Lindsey to ask if he could come play for a bit. Of course, in the back of my mind I'm thinking, "Really? This is starting at age 2? And, I'm playing into it?"

The boys had a great time playing with Gavin's John Deere comercial gator, grader, and front end loader moving sea shell pasta into other dump trucks and Gators. These boys are all boys. Increasingly, Gavin loves to lay on the floor to play with toys up close and personal. Dean laid right down with him to enjoy the fun.

Thankfully, I was able to get one picture of both boys laying down playing.
But soon, Gavin had to get up to get those shells securely in the front end loader's bucket.

It's so great that the boys are beginning to actually play together for brief moments.

Colorado Road Trip

I did the annual Colorado trip solo this year. Last winter I bought an aluminum canoe from a guy in Aspen. Since my friend Matt lives in Golden, I had him pick it up for me. So, this trip required a truck to pick up the canoe. The truck doesn't lend itself too well to three passengers - not to mention that Gavin probably wouldn't like riding for 14 hours each way. So, Miranda stayed home with Gavin and I drove to Colorado and back in just 3 1/2 days. This was a common view during the trip (this was actually West Texas on the way back...don't ever go there if you can help it - it's a wasteland). I headed out of DFW on Friday around 12:30 and finally got to Golden 13 hours later (875 miles) at 1:00am central time.

Axis and Tela welcomed me with open arms this time. I don't know if they remembered me, or if they were just holding onto their angst to use on Jay (Matt's cousin that was visiting).

We HAD to make a stop at the Golden City Brewing Company (the second largest brewery in Golden - haha). Their IPA is some of the best that I have ever had anywhere. I look forward to it every year....

The Avett Brothers concert and tailgating took up just about all day on Saturday. On Sunday I had hoped to do some flyfishing, but the huge amount of runoff from snowmelt combined with afternoon thunderstorms killed those plans. We all decided to take a hike instead. We were hiking the mountain/ridge that is just behind Red Rocks. It was a fun hike, and it was also just about all my knee was able to take.

Matt bikes this train fairly regularly. After seeing some of the things that you have to go up (and down), I am extremely impressed. It is much steeper in person than the pictures show. I would be dragging my bike up the hill instead of riding it.

This is the view that we got of Red Rocks at the top of the ridge. Awesome views were all around.

After our hike, we headed back to the house and Matt smoked some ribs and ABT's (Atomic Buffalo Turds) for dinner. The ABT's are jalapenos stuffed with a little smokie and cream cheese, then wrapped in bacon and smoked for a few hours. They were really really good.

But, all good things must come to an end. We loaded up the canoes on Sunday afternoon, and I headed out early on Monday morning. I was initially worried about the canoes moving during the drive, but they were on tight and I only had to battle a little wind and 18 wheelers off and on all day to keep them from moving around too much.

The old girls made it 1650 miles in just over three days. She did great, but I do have a new squeak (I think that it is the AC pulley) that I am going to have to get fixed. I replaced the serpentine belt last night and that didn't fix the squeak....grrr. This is a picture of me stopping for a picture just outside of Amarillo.

The Avett Brothers at Red Rocks

The main thing that I set out to do on this trip to Colorado (other than pick up the two canoes) was to see the Avett Brothers at Red Rocks. Matt bought tickets a couple months ago, and I was able to schedule the trip to coincide with the concert. I had always heard that Red Rocks was an unbelievable place to see a concert, and I wasn't disappointed.

This has to be the best tailgating location in the world. We had a 360 degree view of huge rock formations and great views of the front range and even downtown Denver.

Chef Matt made some awesome pepper dip and also had the crowds salivating with his garlic butter grilled shrimp. The food was awesome in spite of a thunderstorm that rolled through while we were tailgating.

Grace Potter opened up the show and she was really pretty good. All the tickets were general admission, so you had to get in early to get really good seats. We didn't head in real early, but were still able to get pretty close to the stage. You can see downtown Denver in the background of the picture.

At night they light up the cliffs that flank the ampitheatre and it is just and awesome sight. I can only imagine what it looks like from the stage. Incidentially, a lady fell from this cliff a couple months ago and died just before a concert was to start. They have since made them off limits. But the entire site is a state park, so it is open to everyone no matter the day or time.
The Avett Brothers were awesome in person. I have been a fan for maybe a year or so, and haven't come close to getting tired of their music. In a time when there are so many superficial and crappy digitized singers' voices out there, the Avett's are a breath of fresh air.
The next day we were going for a hike near Red Rocks, and decided to stop by to see what it looked like with no people. It turns out that the ampitheatre is a gathering place for people looking to get in some unconventional workouts. People were running stairs, doing push ups, jumping up stairs, climbing walls, just about everything you could think of.

Here are a couple videos that I took at the concert. The video isn't great, but the audio turned out pretty well.

The Hermitage

During our trip out, we wanted to see The Hermitage atop Mt. Alvernia, the highest point in The Bahamas.

A bit of history from a Bahamian website:

Father Jerome, or Monsignor John Hawkes, also contributed to Cat Island's history. Trained as an architect, with every bishop clamoring for one of his designs during his heyday, he eventually settled here in 1939 at the age of 62. He built St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, because he patterned his life after the Saint, and lived as a penitent hermit at The Hermitage, a medieval monastery carved out of the limestone cliffs atop Mount Alvernia as a place for meditation. He was the "conscience" of the Island, mediating disputes and was also benefactor to them when they were in need. He died in 1956 and is buried in the cave where he once lived.

Here's a view from where we parked.
Up a road of sorts.
Then, you turn off on this trail.
Along the path are stations of the cross. I won't show you all of them, but I did take pictures of each one.
It gets pretty steep in places.



I thought there were 12 stations of the cross; evidently, there are more. I need to do some research.
A miniature tomb, complete with a stone.
The sanctuary for one.
This is a blurry picture, but it emphasizes that it's really just for one person.
The living quarters, we presume.
A short, narrow path from the living quarters to the sanctuary.
A view from the sanctuary.

The alter.

A well pump and water storage area. The area was designed so that all water flowed to this lowest point.
The view from the back.
According to the locals, Father Jerome built this all by hand with only the assistance of a goat to bring the stones to the top. Amazing.

Tour of Cat Island

Monday, we rented a car (or rather the resort had a rental car delivered to us) for a drive of Cat Island. One of our destinations was the Hermitage, the highest point in the Bahamas. I'll do a separate post about that.

These are typical homes of the island.

This was the view we had as we drove around. The road didn't parallel the coast; I suppose it's expensive to maintain sea walls. Plus there is only one road that runs the length of the island. There are some small dirt roads, but even then, not many. Most of the small dirt roads are really long driveways.
There were also a good many abandoned buildings.
And, we saw a few displays like this one. I guess it's items washed ashore.
We found The Bat Cave.
Islanders sometimes seek shelter here in case of a hurricane.
It looked pretty creepy to me; I didn't venture very far in. (Plus we stirred up a rat on the outside; who knows what's inside.) Dave went a bit further and said it smelled unpleasant.
This was looking across the road from the Bat Cave. You'd think you'd search for something a bit farther from the ocean in case of hurricane.

Our rental car. A Nissan.
The nice antenna. We later noticed several of these on cars on the island and in Nassau.

A cool colored boat. With a little Photoshop help to take out the powerlines, this could be a neat picture. A word about power. The island is powered by diesel generators. You'd think someone could come up with a hydroelectric means of generating power from the ocean.

The credit union on the island.
A bit of road near a sea wall.
There are two airports on Cat Island; this is the waiting area of the larger on in New Bight.
It's larger because Customs is here.
Dave had to cool off and wash his feet after hiking to the Hermitage. It's interesting to see pine trees at the sea shore.
The island day care.

We had lunch at the Coconut Bar and Restaurant. It was not a great lunch. The conch and fries were too greasy--the oil was not hot enough. The locals attribute it to the lady who runs it being from Jamaica. She was known for her jerk chicken, but it wasn't ready. I really didn't want conch and fries, but that's what she said she had. I hated to walk out. So, we had not-great conch and fries. I suppose it's even worse because Saturday night in Arthur's Town we had excellent conch.

Beautiful trees with bright orange blossoms. Can't remember the name. Seems like it started with a "p".

Then, there's "The Little Dirt Road." The owners of the resort had a great map of the island with points of interest marked. The Little Dirt Road was one; it goes to the beach on the Atlantic coast and the opportunity to find shells and sea glass was supposed to be greater due to it's remoteness. So, we turned onto The Little Dirt Road. (There was a painted plywood sign marking it. I hate that we didn't take a picture. It started out as a dirt road like this.

Then it got more and more narrow. There were steep, rocky inclines that were washed out a bit due to recent rains.
There was this spooky place along the way. The travel notes said to go past this area that looks like it has been cleared for farming. I don't know what you'd farm with the dead trees. I'm not sure what the story is with the white trash bags tied in the trees. I began to think we'd stumble upon some illegal or voodoo activity and be kidnapped or something. You could tell we were only car to travel the little dirt road since the rains. I considered asking Dave to turn back a few times, but where would we turn around? Finally after 20 minutes, we arrived at the beach.It was littered with seaweed, conch shells, washed up trash, and lots and lots of shells.

I guess this pile of conch shells is from folks who catch the conch and sell it on the island.
After walking around for a while, we headed back. I checked the odometer to see how far we traveled. Four km in 20 minutes. Damn that metric stuff. Our speedometer was metric, too. But the speed limits were posted in miles per hour. Really? How am I supposed to do those conversions? I think that Dave's 100K race was about 62 miles, so I used that as my point of reference. And, we decided that there probably wasn't a radar gun on the island to be used to issue a speeding ticket. Plus, we weren't driving that fast because we were soaking in the sights.

This is a picture of the town square in Arthur's Town.
And, this is the police station.
We stopped and paid $6.25 a gallon to fill the car back to halfway. We put 4 gallons in it; again, I wish I made a picture of the "filling station." There are lots of little things that I really would liked to have made a picture of, but I was trying to be respectful. I'm sure the islanders might not take kindly to me snapping pictures of every little thing. Anyway, the gas station was one pump between the road and the ocean. A lady unlocked it for us and might have made change from her bra. I wasn't paying super close attention (and at press time, Dave is unavailable for consultation).

I dropped Dave off at Orange Creek and had my hand at driving on the left side of the dirt road for 2 miles back to the resort. I didn't meet a soul. Prior to this, I neglected to mention, we had to drive on the left side of the road. Thankfully, despite the metric speedometer and odometer, the car had the steering wheel on the "American side." You know, the gas gauge was standard for America with 1/2 marked versus .5; you'd think there would be some continuity. But I guess fractions are universal--especially 1/2. But the hash marks were in 1/4's and 1/8's. Oh well. Dave did a great job driving on the left. I only had to remind him once, when we emerged from the little dirt road to "keep left."

We had a great time driving around the island. A few hours was really all we needed.