Bird Hunting

 

Although I have been doing some riding my rides have been solo, short and slow and nothing to really write about. I have been doing a little more hiking as the weather has gotten colder. I have been choosing places to try and get some picture of the winter birds in our area. These include mostly seagulls, ducks, and geese but I'm hoping to get some other birds as I hike around the area.

The photo at the top is at the Manasquan inlet on a sunny morning. I was lucky that I got that many seagulls lined up on the railing in the morning light. It took me a few shots to get it aligned and in focus properly. Seagulls are fun to photograph as they are easy to find but I haven't gotten a perfect picture of one yet. 

The Saturday before Christmas I went in search of geese and ended up at Mill Pond Park in Plainsboro where there were a few flocks of geese. It was an overcast day so the light wasn't good but I managed to get a couple of good shots of the geese. I like the one below because of clear reflections off the water.

I wanted to try to get a few of them in flight but wasn't able to catch them because of the trees over head. Mill Pond Park is actually bigger than I thought. I did most of the 2.4 mile path and when I got home and looked at the map realized I could make this a 4 or 5 mile hike if I wanted to. 

Closer to home there is a lake that is only a couple of miles away that has a 4+ mile path and always seem to have large flocks of seagulls, geese and ducks. I found a pair of ducks when I went there on a sunny afternoon and manage to get some of my best bird shots yet. 

With my telephoto lens I was able to get a couple of up close shots with water dripping off the duck beak.

If you click on the individual picture you will see more detail. I'm happy with the way these photos turned out. They are sharp and have good color. I can probably make them even better with some more post processing. 

While I was at the park I worked on tracking birds in flight and got a seagull with a nut in it's mouth.

The shot came out really good as the bird is in perfect focus with a blurred background which makes the bird stand out. It takes a lot of practice and some luck to get these shots. I have had learned a lot hiking around getting some bird shots. It is something fun to do in the colder weather when I can't bike as much. It's definitely something I will do continue in the new year.

Christmas Cheer

I'm not a big fan of holidays and family gatherings in general. I get along fine with my family and don't mind seeing them from time to time but getting together for the holidays is a hassle because everybody has different requirements and schedules so its hard to decide when to meet and what to do. At this point our nieces and nephews are grown up with their own families and they usually don't join us anymore so our gatherings are very small to the point it is not really worth getting together. In fact this year we are going to skip both Christmas eve and Christmas day gatherings as my doctor has advised me to stay away from any groups of people until I finish my treatment. 

I don't mind missing these gatherings as I will just see my family some other time. So for this Christmas season the only thing we did to get into the spirit was to drive around and see some Christmas lights. There is a place near us on Brandon Blvd in Freehold township where almost the whole neighborhood puts up professional displays at there house. 

 

It obvious from the amount of lights and things on the lawn that this is not done by the home owner but some company that comes and puts the lights up for them. There is no way you could put the lights on some of these trees or houses without some type of cherry picker.

 

I would like to see the electric bill for this neighborhood for the month of December.

It was a spectacular drive around the neighborhood and was probably as good as some of the places that charge you to drive you through their display. 

This is something we will do every year and one of the few things that I enjoy about Christmas.

Hospitalization

 

I consider myself a very healthy person. I have never had any major problems with my health and rarely get sick. I do the regular check ups and preventative procedures and all my numbers up until now confirmed that I am in good health. I don't take any regular medications. I never broken any bones or had surgical procedures or spend any time in a hospital except to visit other people. 

That changed last Saturday after I got a call from my doctor. I took a routine blood test to get ready for my physical and the test turned up something that indicated I had a problem that needed to be looked at. This require me checking into the ER to have a battery of tests run. Initially I though it would just involve a day in the ER while they ran some test and then I would be sent home with instructions to follow up with my doctor. However it ended up turning into a four day hospital stay. For privacy reasons I'm not going to go into the details of what they found but would like to share my first experience with being in a hospital. It wasn't the most pleasant experience but I think I now have a better appreciation of the people that work in the hospital and what it is like to be a patient in one.

When I got the call from my doctor at 9am, just as I was about to go out for a ride, my first reaction was to get pissed off that I won't be able to go out for a ride. I thought that there had to be something wrong with the blood test as I felt fine. Once I got to the ER they took lots of blood over the course of the first couple of hours. Luckily they put in an IV needle to my arm so they could just attach a tube and take more blood as needed. I also got wheeled down to the X-Ray room to take some chest X-Rays. By late afternoon they had confirmed that the blood test that I had on Friday was correct and I needed some more tests to try and pinpoint the exact problem. It was also determined at that time that I would have to stay overnight for observation. 

Nobody especially someone who feels healthy wants to stay in a hospital but staying was the best way to quickly get the tests I needed and to apply any treatment if a problem was found. It is funny being wheeled around in a stretcher. It reminded me of all those medical shows where they show the patients view as he is being wheeled through the halls. You see the persons feet and then the hall passing by and the doors automatically opening as you approach them. The elevators in this hospital have mirror's on the ceiling so I got to see myself in draped in a fashionable hospital gown lying on a stretcher. Not a pretty site. 

Saturday night I was moved from the ER to a private room so I got out of the ER before most of the drunks and bar fight victims started rolling in. I ended up on a geriatric floor and was definitely one of the youngest and healthiest person there. It is strange feeling healthy and being in the hospital with nurses coming in asking you how your feeling or asking what they can do to make you feed better. 

Five months ago my wife had an outpatient procedure at this hospital and even though the hospital is old and small the staff is really good. They are all very friendly and efficient and keep you informed about what they are doing and what they plan to do. From working with doctors and nurses when my parents were in the hospital I know the quality of care is directly related to how good the nursing staff is and how much they like you. Even though I didn't like being in the hospital I tried make the best of it. I hadn't expected to be checked in the hospital so my wife had to go get a few things so I could be comfortable. 

Over next couple of days I gave more blood and went for a couple of CT scans and a biopsy to help diagnose the problem. The hospital system had a reasonable good app that allowed me to see the results of all the tests they were ordering and also track the tests they were planning. The app is pretty well tied into the hospital and the doctors because I usually got notified of tests and scans at the same time the nurses did. 

Of course being in a hospital is like being a lab rat. They come in every 4 hours to check your vitals and then come in to draw blood at least once a day if not more depending on if your going for some type of procedure. I usually got stuck with a needle a few times a day but the nurses were able to easily find a vein and get what they needed quickly so it didn't hurt that much. The only problem is because they have to keep checking on you it is hard to get a full nights sleep. I usually got woken up at midnight for a vitals check and then 4 or 5 am to give some blood. 

The highlight of each day was the visit from the doctor as they are the one that can help you make sense of the tests and give you and idea of what the plan is to fix the problem. The hard part to being in the hospital is not knowing how long it is going to last or when they are going to come up with a final diagnoses.

On Saturday they told me what they suspected it was but needed all the tests they did on Sunday and Monday to confirm it and zero in on a precise diagnoses. Most people want quick answers but I see now after talking to the doctor and seeing the test they run how the process works. Unless you have an obvious injury it is hard to get quick answer because when you check into a hospital with a problem there are hundreds of things it could be. Each test eliminates or confirms a certain condition. Each test can also take a few hours to a week to be processed and inspected by some medical professional. Although a lot of tests are automated there is a still a lot of manual lab work involved so its hard to get a quick answer. Besides you want to make sure the people evaluating the tests take the time to get it right. 

By Tuesday they had run all the tests they need. I was still waiting for results and was not sure how much longer I would need to stay in the hospital. My doctor said it would depend on what they found and how soon they would need to treat me. By that time I was pretty well setup in the hospital and was able to work. The food wasn't too bad and I got used to giving blood and getting my vitals check. I still didn't enjoy sitting around in pajama pants and a hospital gown. I also could not stray far from my room so my exercise options were limited. 

Luckily late Tuesday afternoon the doctor came by and said that although I still had a condition that needed to be treated it wasn't something that needed to done immediately. I was checked out about an hour later and am home now. I will visit the doctor this week and he will tell me what the treatment plan will be. It may be some outpatient treatment or require a hospital stay. Either way I'm glad this problem was caught early before I had any symptoms. The US health system definitely has some problems that need to be addressed. These problems have more to do with the administration of the benefits than the health care itself. After spending some time in the hospital I have a lot of faith in the people in health system and trust they will help fix any problem I have and continue to keep me as healthy as possible as I age.

From Tree to Desktop

 

Most of the wood I use on the furniture I build comes from some mill and is already smooth, straight, square and ready to use. Last January however I got some walnut slabs that some one had got from a tree they cut down. Basically after they cut down the tree they cut the trunk up into slabs of wood which is very raw and rough. Back in March I turned a couple of the slabs into a plant stand. After that project I still have four more slabs to use and decided to use a couple of them for a new desktop for my desk. 

It takes a lot of work to turn the raw wood into a finished desktop especially with the limited tools I have. This is what the raw wood looks like.

It has a lot of marks from the rough saw cuts used to cut it into slabs and the slabs themselves are not straight or flat. Most of them are a little warped so making them into a flat desktop is not easy. Ideally I would use a planner to slowly shave off the top and bottle surface of the wood until they were perfectly flat. However I don't have an industrial planner and sending the slabs out to wood shop, to plane, would be expensive. 

Most of the slabs were flat enough that some quality time with a belt sander removed most of the saw marks and got them flat enough. It was however very dusty work. Because I was going to use epoxy to cover the wood they didn't have to be perfectly flat since the epoxy would level the surface out. 

The slabs I had were around 12 inches wide so I needed two of them to make my 24 inch wide desk. The boards are not straight or square so there would be gaps between the boards. This is normal with live edge wood and the solution to fill in the gaps is to create what is called a river table where you fill in the gaps with colored epoxy. 

I chose a black metallic color and mixed in a little white to give it a swirled marble look. It worked really well with the dark walnut. 

You can see from the side view how the slabs are arranged and the gaps filled in with the epoxy. After filling in gaps I had to put a couple of coats of epoxy to level the top. Between fitting the slabs together and putting the trim it took a few weeks to get it ready for epoxy. Then a couple more weeks to pour the epoxy as I wanted to be careful. 

I'm happy with the way it turned out. I still have more to learn about using epoxy. Getting it perfectly smooth takes a lot of prep and even then you usually need to do some touch up and polishing to get it to look good.

Putting epoxy on the walnut really brought out the grain and all the beauty of the wood.

I just enjoy staring at the different patterns of the grain so plan to keep new desktop clear of  clutter. That way I can appreciate all the work it took to get it from a tree to a desktop.

It's Always an Adventure

 

For a lot of the rides I lead I always try to do something unexpected along the way. The weather has turned colder so most of the rest of my rides this year will be shorter and flatter. There were no good rides listed this week so I decided to lead a ride out of MCP to Bordentown using this route. I scheduled it for 10am to let it warm up a little.

It was upper 40s and sunny when we started and I took a slightly unusual route across 130 just to add a few miles and of course to put an unexpected ride on a sidewalk just to keep them guessing. (Ricky accidentally went down someones driveway instead of the sidewalk)

It was a relatively easy ride to Bordentown. I somehow hurt my left leg a week ago so couldn't even push it up the small hills. I was probably at 80% of normal speed. 

Once we got to Bordentown I took another detour through the hilltop park and then we paid a visit to Thomas Paine

It just seem like the right thing to do on Veterans Day.

After our normal stop in Bordentown we worked our way back. Laura was not with us as she was attending one of her last glassblowing classes of this semester and maybe forever. I tried to find the best place to send her the normal picture and found a spider still out from Halloween and thought it would make a good group photo for her.

 

The wind picked up a little as we made our way back. I was doing okay until we got to Windsor Road and got stuck straight into the head wind. My leg started to burn and I had to really slow down. At the next turn I took a few minutes to stretch it out and we continued on.

I added another surprise at the end not heading straight back Windsor Road but instead crossing 130 on Voelbel Rd. The route has us turning down Main Street but I decided to take a quick look at the BAPS Hindu temple which is the largest Hindu temple in the United States. It was really crowded as I forgot it was Diwali. We did make our way around the parking lot and got some glimpses of the temple. The grounds are large and beautiful. Glen got a picture as we rode by which is at the top of this post. Friends of mine in the community actually went inside for a tour and said the inside was amazing.

I think I will try to get more information on a tour and do a non bike trip there with the insane posse. It is probably as interesting and beautiful as any other church or temple in the world and worth the time to go see it. 

 

 

The Last Day of Summer

I know that we are halfway through the fall but when the weather is sunny and the temperature is over 80 it feels more like a summer day. Luckily this weather fell on this past Saturday which somewhat makes up for it raining for the last 7 weekends. 

I thought about a couple of ways of taking advantage of the weather and decided to do a one way ride to the shore to meet my wife on the beach. I didn't have to ride alone because the many times postponed Don Sprague century to Belmar was starting from Cranbury with Laura and Ricky and a few other people I know so I decided to meet them at a rest stop in Jackson on the way. 

The timing worked out as I couldn't leave until after 9am. I was at the rest stop about 15 mins before the large group of riders pulled in. It looked like at least 20 people were on the ride. The actual ride leader had to bail at the last minute because of a family issues so Laura had to lead one of the groups. Although Laura knows the usual route to Belmar this route was quite different and not like any ride Don ever did to Belmar. It came into Sea Girt a slightly different way on a bike trail and then went all the way up the coast to Sea Bright before heading back east. 

Most rides to Belmar don't spend that much time riding by the beach because the road aren't as nice and there can be a lot of traffic especially on a warm and sunny Saturday. The group made a few wrong turns as we went from Jackson to Belmar. I didn't actually have the century route on my GPS but had looked it over in detail and knew the general directions so when the group made a wrong turn I helped Laura get back on track. 

When we got to Belmar we spend an extended time at the picnic tables by the usual pizzeria. It was very crowded by the beach. There were a lot of people on the beach and a lot of cars driving around looking for a parking spot. It was a little chaotic. 

For some reason one of the rides decided to try to do some body surfing in the water before we set off from Belmar. We left him behind to catch up. I continued up with the group through Ocean Grove and Asbury. It was not a lot of fun riding along the beach as we made a number of wrong turns and had to keep watching out for all the traffic around us.

I turned around at Asbury and headed back to Avon for a shower and then to the beach to relax for a hour or two before heading out to dinner. 

It was a beautiful day for a ride so was glad I got out and saw some of the fall foliage on the way to the beach. We are going to be below freezing a couple of nights this week so I think the summer weather may be done for the year. In fact it might be time to break out the winter gear.

Annular Solar Eclipse 2023

One of the main reasons we went to the southwest when we did was to see an annular solar eclipse. I admit to being and eclipse nerd and will try to see a solar or lunar eclipse if it isn't too hard to get to. We planned our vacation so we would be in Albuquerque by Oct 14th when the eclipse would occur. The eclipse would be partly visible in most of the US but Albuquerque was on the center line when meant you would get to see the ring of fire not just a partial eclipse. The solar eclipse was a annular eclipse when meant that the moon would not fully cover the sun but would cover only 95% of it and create a ring when it was directly between the sun and the earth.

We decided to view the eclipse in the Rio Grande Nature park in the south end of Albuquerque near our hotel. The Albuquerque Astronomy Society (TAAS) had events all around the city and this park was one of the places they would be. The eclipse would start at 9:13 am so we got to the park about 8:30am. There were already a few people there and by the start of the eclipse there were probably around 100 people there.

It was a good place to view the eclipse as it had a clear view of the southeast as the sun rose higher in the sky. My set up to capture the eclipse was my new Canon R10 with a 400mm lens. This worked well. Since I didn't want the hassle of bringing my telescope and drive motor through the airport I made what is called a Barn Door Tracker which when lined up properly allows you to roughly track the sun, moon and stars. It meant I wouldn't have to constantly adjust the tripod as the sun moved all I would have to do is to manually twist a screw to keep the sun in the center of the picture.

This worked well and allowed me to concentrate on just getting good photos as the moon started to cover the sun.

We are in a time of high sunspot activity. The week before the eclipse I did some test shots and saw 5 or 6 large sunspots but on the day of the eclipse there was only a few small ones.

I kept taking pictures as the moon covered more of the sun.

The temperature which was in the 60s actually dropped about 5 degrees as the eclipse progressed. This was different than the last annular eclipse we saw in 2012 where we didn't notice a temperature drop or change in the light. The difference was that eclipse was at the end of the day close to sun down where as this was at the beginning of the day.

As we got close to the ring of fire the light got a little softer and felt a little like twilight. 

Finally at 10:34 am local time we reached the maximum eclipse and saw the ring of fire.

I managed to get some really good pictures with my set up. I know it just looks like a black circle over the sun, but what makes it cool is understanding what is actually happening. This is a picture of the moon in front of the sun perfectly center over the sun. The fact that the sun is 400 time bigger than the moon but the moon is 400 time close than the earth make this possible. This makes the apparent size of the sun and moon the same from our point of view on the earth which is a strange coincidence. Predicting these eclipse was an obsession for ancient astronomer and helped advance our mathematics and understanding of the solar system.

One other cool things that happens during and eclipse is as it gets closer to maximum you can use a pinhole through a piece of paper to project the actual eclipse on the ground or other flat surface. 

I learned at the total eclipse in 2017 that I could cross the fingers of my two hand in a # pattern and get the same pinhole affect. I was able to do this to project the shadow of the eclipse on the ground. During the maximum eclipse I project a couple shadows of the eclipse on some ones pants and came up with shadow puppet I call the ring of fire monster.

After the ring of fire was over I continued taking pictures until the end of the eclipse. The composite at the top of this post shows the full sequence. I also put together an animation of it which I need to process a little more to get it to look better.

Solar eclipses that are easy for me to get to don't happen that often so I really am glad I made the effort to see this eclipse. They are all a little different and interesting in their own way. The next solar eclipse in the US will be a total eclipse on April 8th 2024. This may be the last one I will be able to see as after that most of them will be on another continent. I'm already working on plans to see that one and hope it will be a fun to see as this one was.