Down To The Tidelands

Lots of pictures today!

I went down to the Sweetwater Marsh/National City Tidelands area to geocache.  Found nine, didn't find five.

Here are the pics!

Well, someone's love is eternal, at least until this rail is removed! Please notice how nicely ballasted the track is...



And where does it go?  Pretty much nowhere!


Dawn over the Sweetwater Marsh area.  That's the 5 freeway.



A big boat was docked.  It's a car carrier.  That ramp lowers, as we shall see, to load and unload cars.  All that orange on the ground is guys in their reflective safety vests waiting, I suppose to board and drive the cars down.



It's name is Tancred.



Here I am, taking it easy in Pepper Park, waiting for the ramp to lower.  I had to take this three times to get a good pic!



The ramp is starting to come down!



Closeup, almost down!



Wait a minute, should not this pic have been before the previous one?



Most of these shots are in order of when I took them, walking around the area.  This one is not.



I guess they need big tires and four wheel drive in Washington. All that rain, I suppose.



Oh, wait, there's no drive shaft to the front differential!!



Nice classic T Bird, early60s, with only a little rust just in front of the rear wheel well.  Well, it's always raining in Washington!



Hmmm, Washington plate on rear, California plate on the front.



OMG, it's a RAT!!



I like train tracks.  Disconnected switches, from the south.



Disconnected switches, from the north.



My favorite image from the set.  Rusty America, I call it!



This track is depressed.



More switches.  Or are they called turnouts?  I can't remember!



The marsh, looking south, from near the Best Western.  Small trestle to the center right, over which I will later walk.



No sooner said, then done!  Not as nicely ballasted as farther down the track.



Side view #1.



Side view #2.



This one is to remind me that the tie over the pilings is much wider that the rest.



Some of the ties are not in too good of shape.  Step carefully!



Obligatory birdies.  Possibly they are Avocets.  Probably not.




The End!

The Years, Oh, The Years!

Well, another anniversary has come and gone.  Forty years, can you imagine?  Our daughter send us these pretty flowers! Twice!



In the library today we had a couple of visitors... I recognize the grasshopper, but what the heck is that other thing?



I won a free car wash at the finale of the La Mesa Amazing Geocache Challenge today.  I don't know how they knew, but I really need it.  I hope it includes a wax!  I also managed to score a tee shirt!

Mileage

Hit 15,000 miles on the odometer Friday morning, on the way to work!



Ran across this quote on the 'net:

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.  ~Dinah Craik

I ran across someone using the word "gorey". It looked wrong, so I tried looking it up on the internet and in an unabridged dictionary.  I found no help  I figured it wasn't a word.  Today, I'm reading The Scarlet Pimpernel, and I see "gory".  Doh!

At the grocery store today a cashier holding up a plastic bag with a white thing in it called over to my cashier asking "What kind of carrot is this?"  She replied, "It's a turnip." "A what?" says he.

That is all!

Get Bent

I noticed this conduit this afternoon.  Looks like the connector isn't quite screwed together all the way. The should have put a little bend in the pipe, because of the kick at the edge of the roof, so the pipe would go straight into the connector.



Closeup of the connector in question, taken from the other side, just to confuse you. I guess I COULD have reversed the image...



At the wall the conduit enters this LB Condulet.  I was taught to make two little bends (an offset) to get it in line with the connector in the opening.  The word "Condulet" is a trademark of the Cooper Crouse-Hinds company. I have no idea what the generic term is! (I looked it up, it's a conduit body!) And, I have no idea if that is one of their products.  We just called the various basic types LL, LB, and LR.



That's about all for today!

Rainy Weather

Yesterday it was supposed to rain, so I drove to work.  Around one it stated raining really hard, with hail.  Everyone ran outside to dance around in the rain.  I saw a very confused-looking bee, she seemed lost in all the big drops and hail!  We are the red area in the image below.



I picked up some of these erasers at the book faire last month.  They will make great swag for geocaches, I think.  That blue thing is a plunger.  They came in a assortment of plunger colors!



Yesterday's rain was just for a few minutes, so I felt bad about not biking.  The real reason I didn't bike was because I was reading the last Harry Potter book until 6:30 AM.  I had to see Harry's victory over Valdemort.  I finished the last chapter last night.  Finally!

Today, on the other hand, it was raining so hard on the way to work that I could barely see, what with the glare and the flare from traffic lights and headlights.  Very unsafe I am!

Wooden't It Be Nice

For those in the know, this is the geocache that has brought so much merriment to others.

This is the top.



This is the bottom.



This is the mysterious hole in the side.  Cachers keep trying to get the log sheet out through the hole.  I did not put that hole there!  I think it was the one fellow who took it home thinking it was just a chunk of wood that would make a great cache container, and discovered it WAS the cache container!



This is the proper way to access the log, merely pivot the bottom piece!



What do you think of that?

Of Giant Water Bugs and Hiking In Santee

Giant white La Jolla Water Bugs are invading the bathroom at work!  Here, I have one of the students herding it for me!




And here is what happens to said bugs, when a manly-man responds to the girlish squeals of horror when they encounter any sort of multi-legged critter!



Today, I went geocaching in the hills of beautiful Santee.  Picked up ten, or maybe it was eight (it was eleven found, two not found). I forget.  I have circled my vehicle  parked below, for your convenience.



Best cache of the day was this cactus cache.  Did I get stuck? Why, yes, a little bit!



The weather was warm and sunny, with a breeze.  Having failed to put sunblock on, I believe my hands may be turning red later on.  My wonderful Tilly Hat protected my face, and I wore TWO long-sleeved shirts to ward of the sun's rays from my rather white arms.

I walked very nearly three miles, accord to Google Pedometer.  It seemed much longer!

Hot Day

How I feel about Flex Alert is...let some rich guy in La Jolla turn his air conditioning off for a couple of hours while I dry my darn clothes!

At any rate, it wasn't QUITE as hot in the library as predicted...