Raining Saturday, Finally

I haven't done anything much today. Except finish two books.  Now I don't have anything to read!  I need to go for a walk, but it JUST started raining, for real, after threatening and teasing for the last nearly 24 hours.

I planted rosemary and other cuttings in some cups, using that root stuff I bought the other day.

And now, with FLASH!  And there's the bottle of root stuff.

A historic pic from many years, and many pounds (about 70), ago. I'm guessing Mr. S. and I have the same birthdays?  Don't remember, the weight of those many years are upon me.

More recently, like yesterday, way way down there is the east wall of the library that faced, unfortunately with no window, the fish pond.  Well, the fish pond is gone, replaced by the HVAC machinery, and some rather nice landscaping.

Some out of focus flowers on a tree by the parking lot.

I got a letter saying the utility company is going to replace the pole in the front yard.  I'd like to see that, but I'll be at work.

It stopped raining, maybe I'll make a run for the Post Office and the ATM.  Late!

It's Saturday!

Yikes, I went for a bike ride today!  And I have actually posted content on the bike blog!  You may want to check it out!


I tried using those overly hyped and kinda expensive wall hooks by Command to hold up this wall handing.  They do not hold well on a latex-painted surface, in my experience.  I removed the hooks and, using the very same sticky-strips hung it on the wood door.  And it is still up there!  Looks dumb, though.

I was gonna tell you the company that made the hanging but the label seems to have fallen off.  Well, it's from Scandinavia (quite possibly Denmark) and it's made with wool, I remember that much!

And that is all for today, I think!  Now I have to go back and finish the bike blog entry!

Following Yesterday's Trail

I went back to Poway this morning, before dawn this time.  I found a bunch of caches.  Then I decided to head down into Beeler Canyon.  That little hike is where all these pictures were taken.

Up in the power tower there was a raptor nest.

Continuing to the bottom of the canyon I came across misc. junk.  But what about this lawn mower?  I maybe could USE a lawn mower for my 10 x 10 square foot of lawn.  Well, it WOULD be lawn if I watered it. 

Near by was this engine block, but no head.

There was a lawn chair, a chaise lounge I believe they are called, that looked in good condition.  I did not take a picture of it.

And that is about all I got for today. Mere words couldn't describe, you just had to be there.

Up In Poway

Off to the North County this morning.  Well, it's north of ME!

I solved a short multi-cache and so made the hike up a ridge to make the find, which I eventually did.  A nice view to be seen, too.  That would be Mt. Woodson up there, I guess.

(Warning: File size: 969KB)

I am normally a very law-abiding citizen, but there was no one around to pat me on the back so I sneaked an illegally parking spot for a few minutes to find my second cache.

Another change of parking, this time in a lot, and off to follow the service road up a steep hill to a water tower, almost.  The view was even better than the ridge, it is OF the ridge I was on earlier!

Someone had been placing cute little figures in the caches, I noticed.  When I pulled the log sheet out of my fourth find something dark came popping out, I thought it was a bug or a spider. Yikes!  No, it was just this little guy. 

Certain area of Poway have these solar-powered blinking stop signs, a very eye-catching device.  This one seems unnecessary, because, as you can see, the road is completely blocked off to traffic, the other end being a cul-de-sac.

I am completely impressed with myself for having caught the LEDs lit in my first image (of five!).

After walking around quite a bit more I walked back to the vehicle and drove to Costco, where I had lunch, consisting of a hot dog (with a diet soda), and a chicken bake.  Either of which would have been a meal, I'm sure.  I'm a bit afraid to check the carb count on that bake!

I intended to go for more caches in and around the Costco area, but it was just tol busy and I was getting tired.  Carb overload?  So I drove home.  But Poway is in the position of being right in the middle of the top of a big block of no roads south, so I had the choice of going via Miramar or Lakeside.  I chose Lakeside.  A little less freeway to deal with.

Which I used to visit Slaughterhouse Canyon Road, with its one cache.  Which I found, after reading the hint.  As it turned out I had already handled the item and discounted it as being the cache. This sounds oddly familiar... Anyway, I wonder where the street name came from?*

I found eleven caches and walked 4.3 miles today.

On the way home I was listening to a public radio show where a woman was talking about her trouble finding "the one", someone she wanted to marry.  And, that wanted to marry her.  It made me think how lucky I was to have TWO women in my short dating career that loved me very much, unfortunately at the same time, and so I was ordered to make a decision.  I made the decision and, while it could have gone either way at the time, I've not regretted it.

And I think that is it for this St. Valentine's Day.


*The Lakeside Historical Society newsletter for July 2000 has an article that mentions where the street name came from.  The article also mentions the Denlinger dairy in El Monte Valley.

Some President's Day

I drove out to Sycamore Park Drive this morning.  There were geocaches to be found!  It's off the 67, and if you have to turn left in heavy traffic it could be seriously bad. You probably should go up the road a mile and make a u-turn.  I was lucky that traffic was light today.

I parked at the Sycamore Canyon Preserve Highway 67 Staging Area and walked back to the 67, about a mile and change, finding all nine geocaches along the way.  And then walking all the way back. 

And I took these pictures on the way back, too!

This is the end of the paved road.  Good thing I had a sturdy vehicle!  Earlier I saw an SUV stop here and turn around.  Too rough, I guess!  You can just see something, to the left of center in the distance, that is the top of the vehicle.  Cowles Mt. is to the immediate right of the tower of power.

A little bit further down the road we are looking down into Sycamore Canyon.

Ain't that some electricity pylon?  I could not resist taking its picture.

Two pictures of dried mud.  Which one do you like best?

I like this one more.  When did it last rain?

I forget what these are, AGAIN, but they are in bloom, and pretty!

I really couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this couch/hide-a-bed dumped here.  The bushes are keeping it suspended.

Officer, I think they may have had a cat.

Big deal, a bird.  Yea, but this RAPTOR burst up from a bush near by me and flew up into the air. After a while he caught a thermal, and after circling for a while he dived down and disappeared into the canyon.

Three pictures of this hole in a rock.

Closer (zoomed in)

Closest!!

At the parking lot.  I'm the only one here.  Besides that SUV I mentioned, I only saw one other person. He was running along the road and asked if that was the way to the 67.  I said yes.  Fifteen minutes later he running back the other way, and that was the last I saw of him.

A view of Sycamore Canyon from the parking lot.

It was very sunny, a bit warm (80s), and very very windy at times.

And now for something completely different...

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I did some gas calculations and finally figured out (after ten years!) that the truck has a range of AROUND 214 miles before the light comes on,  and it gets about 17.12 mpg.

On Reaching My Goal For The Year--Early

Today I found the last two caches I needed to achieve my goal of completing the MTRP Hall Of Fame this year.

This is where all the smileys are.  You will notice two that do not have the smiley.  They are archived or disabled caches that are not findable but are still on the list.  There are 443 caches on "the list".

I had a lot of help from other cachers, partial-cachers, and  non-cachers, especially with the puzzle caches.  Some of them were pretty devious and I needed a LOT of hand-holding!  Right off hand I remember Levon did the baseball scorekeeper one, and Matt did the algebra and bowling score ones. I am quite proud that I managed to do the Minesweeper puzzle myself, using my mad internet researching skills.  Searching and re-searching!

Well, now I need a new goal!

High Again, Twice In As Many Days

A hiking expedition was planned for Sunday at Iron Mountain.  I felt kinda cruddy during the night, but after eating oatmeal at five A.M. I felt better so I decided to go.  I THOUGHT I had washed my Official Hiking Clothes after yesterday's adventure, but I was wrong.  So I had to wear something else, something clean.

I got there a bit early and used the time to find three geocaches.  When the rest of the party arrived, all two of them (one a bit later, they got lost) we headed off on the trail to the peak.

And now we're there!  Here we have a view of the trailhead/parking area WAY down there.  The elevation at the peak is reported to be 2,696 feet, with an elevation gain of around a thousand feet over the hike.  All the web sites I checked said the length of the trail is 6.63 miles round trip, but it didn't seem THAT long.

A picture of my hiking companions.

Another view from the peak looking to towards Cowles Mountain in the middle-left.

And one with everyone facing the camera.  Or phone, in this case.

I picked up another couple of geocaches along the trail, but there are still some out there I didn't have time for.  I'll be back!


On the drive home I saw this "RV" with the word OSSA on the side.  Ossa was a Spanish motorcycle manufacturer back in the day.  They went out of business for a while, in 1982-ish, but in 2010 the trademark was purchased by a new company and now motorcycles are being built again emblazoned with the clover leaf emblem. And real purty ones, too!

So I got off the freeway and backtracked to take the pic.  I was trying to research who the vehicle had belonged to when I looked at the enlarged image and notice, very faintly, the words "Tripes Racing" to the right of the side door in the blue.  Tripes?  Must be Marty Tripes, an extremely talented motocross rider back in the day.  And it turns out his business is down the street and on the other side of the freeway from the big field where this sits.  Maybe his?

I also located a picture of what must be the same vehicle, but in somewhat better condition.  Don't know if it's from back in the day (the 70s, if you must know!) or more recent.  Click this LINK to visit the PicsPage on ossaplanet.com to check it out.  Scroll down a bit you must.


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And now for something something completely different...

This is the signs and placards on one of the electrical boxes that were installed a few weeks ago right outside my door at work.

You will note that the red sign says SERVICE VOLTAGE 12KV. 600A. That's 12,000 volts at 600 amps.  How many amps it will supply at 120 volts?  I'm calculating about 60,000 amps. That's a lot of amps!  Am I doing this right?  And what about those three phases, there, the "3Ø" on that red sign. Is the 60,000 amps split between them?  I can't remember!

Thanks for reading, have a good week!

Up On Fortuna

I got up not as early as I wanted and headed over to Tierrasanta to find me some geocaches.  The first one I found was at Serra High School.  Someone had replaced the missing cache so I popped in there and got it.  First find of the day!

I parked on Playa de Catalina 'cause it's an excellent place to start from.  I parked near a cache there that I had never looked for before.  I didn't find it, either.

On that note I headed over to Fortuna Mountain.  I been there a couple of times before so I knew the route. Mostly.  I passed a group of ten cyclists who were waiting for a couple of their group (to make a dozen?) to catch up.  The trail was up and down, but mostly up. After a time I fired up the phone app and zeroed in on the first cache.  Whoops, actually the second cache, I passed the first cache back there where the cyclists were.  Have to get that one on the way back!  Made the find here quickly, though, then headed on up the trail.

Quite a few people were on the trail this morning, but nothing like Cowles!  Once you get to the North Fortuna Mountain Summit Trail the trail is more interesting.  The third cache I needed was on the ridge, near what I call "false peak".  Named that because it SEEMS like you are at the highest spot, but are not.  I saw a couple of guys turn around and go back down thinking they had found the peak.  Nope!  The real peak is 48 feet higher, I calculate.

The obligatory selfie that I posted on The FB/

And a panorama from the same spot.

WELL, after the peak excitement I headed back down, down to the cache I missed because of all those bicyclists.  Made the find there, then headed west down a side trail.

Made the find, easily, at the next cache.  Here I am with the sword Excalibur, with a "lake".

And here we are at the last regular cache I needed.  Do YOU see the cache?  Neither did I, not for a LONG time.  The phone app was totally pointing me in a different location.  I even checked under the bridge!

When I got back to the vehicle I looked again for that nearby cache, and THIS time I found it!  So today's total is seven caches found.

There are 433 caches in the Mission Trails Hall Of Fame list.  There are four caches on the list I have not found.  Two of them are archived, and so  un-findable.  That leaves two caches, both of which are puzzle types.  I've solved one of them, but am unable to find the physical cache.  The last cache is very very very hard.  I've been begging and whining for hints.  It's an awful sight to see.  I got a hint, but it hasn't helped yet!

Oh, and I walked 4.6 miles today.  It seemed like it was all up hill.

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Last week at work I noticed this piece of coaxial cable left over from the old system that we haven't used for at least fifteen years.  It just keeps getting repainted.  Lot's of good copper shielding in there!

And THAT is all for today!