I love doing these.
They’re long. 13:41 and 9:44. Enjoy
Last weekend’s trip, taking off from Burbank.
A hazy, late afternoon descent from Central Kansas into MCI in Kansas City. The river at the very beginning is the Missouri, right near Wyandotte County Lake, which means it’s very near where I grew up in my grade school years.
I heard the thump, all the way from the kitchen to where I was still in bed down the hall at the other end of the house. I expected to find another dead mourning dove. But there was no carcass, and at first I didn’t even see a mark on the window.
Until almost sunset, when the sunlight coming directly in the front door backlit the door.
The detail in the feathers on the body is remarkable.
From the right view, you can even see its head, even the eye socket detail. I’m amazed.
This has happened before, which is why I’ve taken steps to try to mitigate the problem.
The butterfly clings seem to have helped lower the incidence of collisions.
In the human flying world, this is referred to as “controlled flight into terrain.” My first NASA social at Edwards Air Force Base many years ago was about some of the amazing work being done to prevent F-16s from doing it. I’m not sure how we get that software downloaded into mourning doves.
Filed under Birds, Photography
I went out to get the mail and spooked the teeny tiniest little lizard that I’ve ever seen.
See him out there? Off on the corner?
Maybe an inch for the body and an inch for the tail. Maybe.
He was already out there doing push ups, a territorial show of dominance. I admire that sort of attitude from someone who’s two days old and two inches long!
Filed under Critters, Photography
Home now, just a quick out-on-Saturday, go to the game on Sunday, back-on-Monday trip.
It was also my first trip through Kansas City’s new airport. It’s wonderful and gorgeous!
The previous airport was built pre-9/11 and was very artsy and avante garde architecturally, but the need to put in security & TSA stations made it nearly impossible to actually function.
Many, many years and many billions of dollars later, the new airport opened up a year or so ago.
Tall ceilings, a ton of glass and natural light, plus artwork and sculptures everywhere, it’s highly functional, easy to get around, has a ton of space for now and for expansion.
Fancy, techno art.
Hanging, colorful, bubble-like art.
Lots and lots of gates – today I was at B66, which is waaaaay down there at the far end in the distance.
Lots of restaurants and shops, many of them selling Chiefs souveniers and gear, one or two selling Diet Coke instead of Pepsi. That’s the way to stick it to The Man!
There are so many excellent reasons to visit KC – pick one and go see the airport as well!
Filed under Photography, Travel
Game Day!
I flew in, my son drove, bringing along his fabulous tailgaiting gear and flags.
Several hours of pre-game at Arrowhead Stadium is referred to as “The World’s Greatest Tailgate Party” and it’s a reputation that’s well earned.
There’s a picture posted on here from December, 2018 taken at almost this exact same spot, on a MUCH chillier day. Mid to high 80’s today, well below freezing that day.
Our flyover came from the US Army who sent a selection of helicopters.
The view was great, but there were a LOT of steps to climb to get here.
I was having a really great time. Many of the 76,000+ friends are seen.
We won, 26-25, and are now 2-0 to start the season. Our stupid mistakes made it a much closer game than it should have been.
Uhhh…duh? It’s Arrowhead Stadium, one of the loudest crowds in the world. Of course it was loud!
Filed under KC Chiefs, Photography, Travel
When we set this up three or four months ago, I knew there was a tight window at work to fit it in. If I had known then what I know now, specifically the unexpected things that have happened and made that window soooooooo much tighter, I never would have made plans. But that was then, this is now, and here I was on a plane.
I’ll admit, I spent a good deal of time in the last week thinking about cancelling the trip. And much as with the April trip to Texas to see the eclipse, I’m travelling with my work laptop and a stack of paperwork and files on memory sticks and I’ll be spending way, way more time coding and doing data entry from my hotel room than I might otherwise spend at the WWI Museum, or the Atkins art museum, or at the Negro Leagues Baseball museum, or trolling BBQ places. C’est le vie!
Over Palmdale Airport and the Antelope Valley, looking south toward the mountains and the LA Basin, there’s an unbelievable amount of smoke from multiple huge brush fires that have been burning for days.
Can you see the cargo 747 at the bottom, flying a few thousand feet below us?
Lake Havasu and the Colorado River are an easy landmark to spot.
My office in the sky. I lucked out and our flight was only about 1/3 full, so there was plenty of room to stretch out, get the laptop fired up, and get two hours of work in.
Somewhere over the Oklahoma panhandle or so, some small town was getting pounded. We saw several big thunderhead cells, but this was by far the biggest.
Today was International Observe the Moon Day – DONE! There it is!
I think of windmills for power generation as being more of a Western states thing, more of a mountain pass thing, but there sure were a lot of them out in eastern Colorado and western Kansas! I don’t know if they still call the wind “Mariah,” but they sure call it “Kilowatt!”
Filed under KC Chiefs, Photography, Travel
After the small flock of mourning doves was seen at last year’s nest under the eaves of our front porch in early August, there’s been a single bird there almost 24/7 ever since.
I assumed that meant that there were egs in the nest, but I never bothered to get a ladder and get nosy or invasive to see.
Now I see that the one, larger mourning dove has been joined by two smaller ones, seen here. Just an assumption on my part, but I’m thinking two eggs hatched.
A couple of times I’ve gone out (they’re right outside the front door) and looked up and if Mom’s not there, these two will open their mouths wide. Um, yeah… Good luck with that. I have my limitations. (Don’t worry, Mom hasn’t abandoned them, she’s there most of the time, I just caught these pictures when she was out hunting down lunch for everyone.)
Filed under Birds, Photography
It’s a total bitch to set, it’s wildly inaccurate, goes off whenever it wants to, and in general is about 99.99999% useless.
But boy, let me tell you… When it DOES decide to go off, it’s effective as all get out.
This morning’s epicenter was only about 13 miles from our house, so we got a pretty good jolt.
What’s really bizarre is that I heard it coming before I felt it and before the alarms went off on the phone and Apple watches. (Being so close to the epicenter, the emergency alert and the shaking arrived pretty much simultaneously, leading to the inevitable “NO SHIT, SHERLOCK!” screams of terror.) It sounded to me a lot like a very low flying helicopter. We get helicopters screaminging over all the time (we’re at the very top of a decent-sized hill) and it sounded like a police or fire/rescue helicopter going like a bat out of Hell. A local brush fire starting up and there’s a water drop incoming? Someone fall and break their leg (again?!) over on Castle Peak? Another police chase on the freeway and the news helicopters are racing to intercept?
Nope. About three seconds later the first jolt hit, the windows rattled, the dresser drawers threatened to dump their content, and the local electronics started wailing their warnings.
That’s okay, I wasn’t going to sleep in later anyway.
Filed under Disasters, Los Angeles, Paul
It’s a pigeon. An absolutely commonplace, standard issue, run-of-the-mill pigeon.
Even here in SoCal, pigeons are almost everywhere. Go to any shopping mall or apartment complex or school or office building where there are outdoor trash bins, and you’ll find a flock of pigeons. (And probably raccoons, but that’s a different post for a different day.)
“Pigeons are almost everywhere.” “Almost” is the key word. One place I’ve NEVER seen them is in the feeding grounds of our back yard.
You can go back through these posts for the six years and change we’ve lived here and you’ll find LOTS of birds. Especially tons of sparrows, juncos, and most especially, mourning doves. Which is what I though this was at first.
But it was much too big. Probably 25% bigger than the adult mourning doves. At first glance, at the other side of the yard, I thought it might be a juvenile turkey or something else equally exotic. But then it moved over right next to the kitchen and it was crystal clear what it was.
What wasn’t clear is why it’s here. Did they clean up the garbage cans and loading docks down at the local 7-11? Any port in a storm, even if it’s stealing bird seed and sunflowers from mourning doves and house finches, instead of leftover doughnuts?
Welcome, I guess?
Filed under Birds, Critters, Photography
Back in December 2018 and January 2019 we had a fantastic trip to Seattle to see the Chiefs play the Seahawks and then to Kansas City to see the Chiefs play the Raiders.
While we were in Seattle we made a point to visit the Chihuly Museum.
I think that I first saw some of the Chihuly glass artwork covering the ceiling in the lobby of the Bellagio Las Vegas.
The museum, right next to the Space Needle, has hundreds of artworks, each more spectacular than the previous one.
Outside there’s a garden with eerie, alien-like pieces.
They also have glass blowing demonstrations which are fascinating.
I made one post with one image back then and said that I would follow up later with more.
It’s “later.”
We all need art and beauty in our lives. Some days more than others, and this might have been one of those days. Wallow in the art, slather yourself in beauty.
Life’s too short to drink cheap wine. Or live a life without art & beauty.
Filed under Art, Photography, Travel
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