The new Trellis

So my weekend project the last 2 weeks has been putting in this trellis. Basically it keeps Nick from sprinting through my garden, but also will eventually look cool with the flowering vine on it. It was fun digging holes in the yard, using my circular saw, and mixing quikrete.





Note also the gravel is disappearing from the back walkway. We are getting rid of it and folks from my office are getting it bit by bit. It was a nice walk, but not real practical. Actually it was a hige pain when mowing the stupid grass. Soon to be gone and the back benches and table will be moved to another spot in the yard.





This weekend I am expanding my horizons when we go see "Rent." I'll let you know how I like the musical.

Nearly a month?

What? It has been nearly a month since the rodeo? No way. Well I guess since that was the last post. Time flies when you're bird hunting.

A lot has happened in the last month, including spending 7 days (11-17 Feb) in McAllen TX for a meeting, a lot of bird watching (lots of new species I've never seen before) and a trip to Mexico for dinner and booze (and to watch 2 international students with the conference get detained by Border Patrol for a while, they made a boo boo on their visa's, they were later released into the US). I got to see a lot of my colleagues from across the US and had to run a 4 hr meeting as I'm too involved in things. It was a fantastic meeting, great food (closer to real mexican food), and just a lot of fun. The one morning we had every room, except one, booked for our conference at the Convention Center. The other room was used by Hillary Clinton. I was birding that morning, so I missed the Secret Service and hooplah. Thank gosh. Birding, seeing illegals swim the river, and getting yelled at by Border Patrol is way more fun:)

I have a lot of bird pictures posted here: http://www.pbase.com/shoeman

Just click on McAllen Texas and click on the first bird for a larger image, then you can click next and make a slide show. Before you ask, yes I took all those pictures. I'll add more bird pictures from other places, but I haven't had time to put them up.

We then enjoyed me being home for a week, but had to give a talk to the local bird club one night. Total in attendance: 14, including me. Never a big turnout with that group. At least they pay attention and ask questions.

Recently I spent time in west Tennessee searching for that recently found woodpecker that was extinct since the 1940's. It was rediscovered in 2004 in Arkansas and so we have the duty to spend some time (not much, as I was told by my bosses) searching in TN. After being skeptical that the bird was actually refound for a couple years, I've decided in the last couple months that they survived to today (long story on why, even though we don't have a picture or actual proof). Anyway, I'm contracting with someone to do a lot of the work for me, but I went last week to scout out a small site (very unlikely to have the bird, but we had an interesting story about someone seeing the bird irregularly), and within an hour I'm pretty confident I heard one. I just don't know how else to explain what I encountered, it was unlike anything I've ever heard in the woods and is fairly diagnostic of what this species does. The next day I heard it again while with a colleague on 2 occassions. So I'm not crazy. Now some experts have been to the site and I think they believe we have the birds, so all my time now for the next month will be searching in west TN. Hence a lot of travel the next few weeks. I was planning to be home pretty much all March, but that changed quick. Many good things would come of this if we found one!

It also snowed last night. They called for 2-4 inches, but we only got a coating where we are. I was hoping for more, but alas we didn't get much. I took some Brian Athow artistic pictures for you. Enjoy.

Welp, time to clean up a plant a cat knocked over this morning, leaving a pile a dirt across one corner of the living room.

It's boots and chaps; it's cowboy hats...

And they call the thing rodeo. (My thanks to Mr. Brooks for those words.)

We went to the Toughest Cowboy rodeo on Saturday. It was Scott's first rodeo and I think he enjoyed it. It was a little different than full rodeo as it didn't have all the events. We saw the cowboys compete in bull riding and in bareback and saddle bronco riding. Very exciting stuff. The tickets we had were in the fourth row, so we were close enough to be hit by flying dirt. (The tickets came from Scott's coworker who had won them from a radio station and they were pretty awesome.) Here are some pictures; they're a little fuzzy, but you'll get the idea.

Bronc bucking the cowboy

Bronc riding

Bull riding

The bull won this round.

One of the competitors.

Barrel racing (this is a cowgirl event.)

Trick roping

My favorite cowboy...a capuchin monkey who herds goats. I have a sneaky suspicion that the dog is the power behind the throne so to speak.

Following the competition, Blue Oyster Cult took the stage. They played a good show, but I really only knew three of their songs. I did apreciate that they are good sports and embraced the old SNL joke and kept asking if we needed more cowbell.

The band watching the rodeo. It was their first time to play at a rodeo. I'm guessing they were wondering why their agent did this to them.

More cowbell!

Nothing too exciting going on right now. This week Scott will be in Texas for a birding meeting/conference. He's looking forward to seeing a bunch a birds we don't have around here. I'll be studying while he gone. I have a few tests and skills checks this week. Soon (in 2 weeks) I'll be headed to the hospital.

Freezing Rain

On Friday some 10 days ago or so, I drove back to Nashville from Vicksburg, where I "worked" for the week. I was there the week of MLK day. Anyway, on the way home on the way through the delta, I hit freezing rain for about 3 hrs. The roads were just wet, not icy, but my truck and bike got slathered in up to about 1/3 inch of ice. I stopped 4 times to de-ice my windshield and windshield wipers. It was all worth it since I stopped in Rolling Fork, MS and got the best egg and cheese biscuits in the world. I had to make the expected resulting pitstop from all the grease in Indianola, but it was totally worth it. Mmm, mmm, good.

The bike doesn't like ice.

Well a bunch of days later, we went to Huntsville for the day for John's second birthday. We had a good time seeing Brian and the outlaw, Jay and preggers, Pete and Carol, and more of Bob and Susan (they spent Fri night with us). John was thrilled with cake and singing happy birthday.

The train cake.

This boy is SOOOO excited!

Brain being Brian.

Juice box, yummm.

I slept through the cake portion of the party. I was zonked! I'm lame.

Racing? Heck no!

The low was in the teens last night and it never got above 28 today. Very glad I slept in rather then race. I ended up 9th of 15 yesterday. Not too shabby.

Bec and I went to an Open House for a house up the street that is for sale. The realtor is the lady that sold our house for her mom. After a brief tour of the house and some social banter, some other folks came in. All was fine, however the other folks were the family we bought our house from, including the old lady. Awkward. They were nice and we chatted it up a bit, but yuck.

In any event the house was nice but had a different layout then ours. They fixed a lot of stuff up, but left a few details undone and/or dirty. I nitpick I guess.

Ice Race

It's another cyclocross race weekend in Columbia, TN. Same location as 2 weeks ago, but different courses from before. Saturday's race was brutal.

Start temperature was about 31 degrees, felt like 25 or so, probably felt colder (at 3:30 the weather said it was 27, felt like 21). It was awful.

There was a "puddle" on the course that was frozen. I rode through it on prinicipal. I chalked up the race as experience and to say I raced in freezing temps back when I was "young."

I got a better start then before, well I had several racers behind me going into the first corner rather then being too cautious and being dead last. Anyway, the course was completely on grass, back and forth in long straightaways. No mud, nothing technical, except a couple corners. Nothing bad. There was one spot were we rode uphill for 30m, had to jump off and cross those barriers they like to set up, and go uphill another 30m. After crossing the barriers and running 10m or so to a "flat" spot, I could get on the bike and grind up the hill. Then the fun began by riding around a curve and up a long hill. I didn't need to get off the bike and run up the hill, but it would have been faster I think. I was going about walking speed, like grandma walking speed.

I finished somewhere in the middle of the group, but was the highest placed rider in the race from my team (of 3 or 4). Results were posted at the site but they were wrong. The guy they had coming in second wasn't even there!! Anyway, we split up on the course pretty quick and for the last half of the race I had no one I could catch in front of me and no one behind me that could catch me unless I crashed or something. So no real motivation to go faster, but I couldn't go faster anyway. Scott = sloth.

After the race, I hacked up a lung and couldn't breathe for a minute or two. It was painful. Then we all got in our respective cars/trucks and cranked the heat for 10-15 min. After thawing out, we changed and swapped stories.

Upon getting home, I "washed" the bike. This of course involves of the use of water. I sprayed off the bike and was "drying" it and realized it had frozen!!! My chain was all icy. So I said "oh well" and took it inside and showered.

Bec took a lot of great picts today and Nick enjoyed the cyclists as always.


I'm in the orange long sleeve jersey in the middle, if you couldn't figure that out. The guy in front of me is wearing the usual Cumberland Transit jersey. I'm wearing a cycling vest (with old CT pattern) over my heavy warm gear rather than wear my short sleeve jersey with arm warmers, which is no where near warm enough for me. I wasn't too cold racing, so I chose my clothes appropriately. I was actually afraid I'd be too hot. I generate a lot of heat when racing.


Barriers

Bec and the wife of a teammate screamed "smile," so I mustered a weak grin.

Hating life.


Glad it was over. Yes, that is a flaming Bass Pro hat. All I could find at the moment that was warm and dry.

There's a race Sunday, but I think I might stay home as I'm driving to Vicksburg Monday. I might be too wiped out to drive safely, so I may just sleep and stay warm.

I'm crazy. It is however a lot of fun, contrary to the faces I make.

"Rest" weekend

Well I have been feeling a little under the weather the last few days, so I decided to sit around, read, sleep in (until 9:30 Saturday morning!!), and not do much. I didn't even work out Saturday! You know there's something wrong with me if I don't workout on a weekend day.

Bec and I went to the botanical gardens on Saturday afternoon and wandered around in the cold and saw some boring Faberge collection that they had. Anyway, I've attached some pictures from the gardens which would likely be a lot prettier when things are blooming. Maybe this is why admission is only $1 in Januray.

Instead of racing cyclocross this weekend since I was feeling like I got hit by a truck, we went and watched the state championship race on Sunday. Glad I didn't race since it was very muddy, incl lots of sharp turns in mud and a "mud hole" that was a waterfilled hole. Doesn't sound like much fun to me and of course I've never even practiced riding in that stuff. I took a lot of pictures of teammates suffering and here's a few.

Next weekend is planned races, but currently they are calling for snow showers Satuday with a high of 25 and Sunday morning the low will be 12 with a high of 35. Humm....maybe I'll stay inside instead. We'll see.

Random dude, not on my team, but a good shot.

Same random dude.

Very fast teammate.

He likes this racing stuff.