Marksmanship practice

If you are a guy and have been to a big-city airport (like Detroit Metro) in the past 5 years you have undoubtedly seen this:

Giving the guys something to aim at reduces boredom and provides incentive to not miss.

That might be part of the problem with big cities, misplaced priorities and low ambition.

Around here you might see this:

Worked like a charm, especially when paired with the observation, "How can I take you hunting?  You have to be able to hit the heart-lung area from 70 yards if you want to hunt with me.  You are showing me you cannot even hit an entire deer from 18 inches"

And yes, the walls really are that shade of green.  That is what happens when you let kids decorate their bathroom.

A good mechanic

A good mechanic is beyond price.

I have been through a few mechanics and am back to the one that came to me as part of my wife's dowry.

I had issues with the other guys.
-One was so gifted that he did not ever need a torque wrench.   I found that out after I hit a pot-hole in Flint, Michigan at 4:00 AM and snapped the (new) ball-stud off a tie rod.  Flint is approximately 80 miles from home. 
-One who was in psychic communication with the engine and 'fixed' them by replacing parts he "knew" were either bad or about to go bad.  Needless to say it took several expensive trips to the shop to make the original problem go away.
 -The mechanics who would bust things and then charge to replace them.

The people at Holt Auto Clinic saved me a bunch of money over the years.  They even told me when to get a shade-tree mechanic to do work.  I had a part wear out on Mr Green Jeans.  They told me that they had an obligation to do things by the book which can get pretty expensive when disassembling parts held together by corroded fasteners that are run into weldnuts.  But...  Mr Shade Tree could cut through the bed of the truck to access the parts, perform the work and then cut a piece of exterior grade plywood to fit the entire top of the bed.

The lead mechanic teaches classes at the local community college and everybody who works there is extremely personable.  Auto mechanics seem to have a lot of turn-over.  It speaks well of a shop when the "new guy" has been there seven years.

Kayaking

Today is the last day that Mrs ERJ is gone.

I decided to "make a memory" with my two youngest kids.  I had been watching the weather and we had a window of perfect weather this morning.  Temps between 70 and 77 degrees.  Low humidity.  5-to-10 mph breeze.

So we went kayaking.

The plan was to go from Onondaga to Eaton Rapids starting on the river at about 9:30 AM. 

We ended up going about half that distance.

Map courtesy of Google Maps.  Turned into non-conventional orientation.  North to the left.  Start at Baldwin Park (upper right) ended at Gale Road boat launch (lower left)

My brother and I did a great deal of canoeing in our youth.  We figured one hour per road mile.  I thought the kayaks were significantly faster.  They are faster, but not THAT much faster.

Rigging:

Overview.  Faces covered to maintain privacy.

View from rear

Loop tied on one end.  It is important to use thin nylon rope.  Nylon is intrinsically stretchy.  Using thin nylon is akin to tying down your boats with rubber bands.  The bumps and bangs stretch the rubber bands and minimize the yanking on the knots.

Taut line hitch.  The ONE single best knot to learn for outdoor rigging.

Start of the trip.  You can see that we have a shortage of freeboard.  That contributed to some drama later in the trip that I may choose to share.  Needless to say, GVW goes up and freeboard goes down as the boats ship water.

News flash:  This is an Egyptian Goose.

Ground nut is blooming and smells delightful

Russian knapweed is blooming and getting worked over by the bumble bees.

After three hours on the water.  Waiting for our ride.

Lessons learned:

I learned that my cell phone gobbles up battery when it does not get a signal.  There is very little signal between Baldwin Park and the Gale Road launch.

Kayaks are very crappy platforms for shooting photos.  It is a very short jump from hand to water.  I did not have any accidents, but I was very uncomfortable taking the pictures I did take.

I learned that I need much better pick-up plans.  And I need back up plans.

I learned that we need a break every hour or ninety minutes. Soda pop with real sugar and caffeine has it place in this world. 

I  learned that I need at least one larger kayak due to my GVW/freeboard issues.

I learned that we need a shorter 'shake-down' cruise before I get ambitious.  A one hour shake-down would have been ideal.

I learned that the least experienced needed some flat-water time.

I also learned that putting a tactile feature on the paddle to provide orientation feedback (like the dot on the "F" and "J" keys of my keyboard) is very helpful to the newbie.  After a while you can know without having to think about the orientation just by the feel of the paddle in the water.  Newbies cannot do that.

We had to go back to Baldwin Park because I elected to ditch some gear early in the trip to free up some range of motion and to reduce the aggravation in one of the boats with minimal freeboard.

We went to Darb's in Eaton Rapids to lick our wounds over pizza, fried cheese sticks, and for me, a tall, frosty Oberon.

To be continued...

Getting organized

Nothing turns a 20 minute job into a 6 hour job like not being able to find what you need. 

This tool box has white duct tape all around it.  It has "GRAFTING" written on all four sides.

My preferred  scenario involved different colored duct tape for each application but that quickly exceeded budget.

The box holds 2" X 250' of Parafilm M.  Two new Stanley Utility knives.  Size 33 rubber bands.  3/4 inch masking tape.  Aluminum foil.

I have two more tool boxes.  I just need to decide what to put in them.

Surviving Bachelorhood, Day 3

Not much to report.

Mrs ERJ is still in Baton Rouge.

I lovingly prepared a well balanced meal last night.  The skewered meat in the top of the picture always reminds me of the swamprat kabobs that Shrek prepared for Princess Fiona.

I went to Mass with my parents and several of my siblings this morning.  The Mass was offered in memory of my niece, Sarah.  Afterward we had coffee and donuts (the eight sacrament?) in the parish hall.  My dad, my brother and my son were all seated on one side of the table and they all share a first name, middle initial and last name.

My youngest daughter is hanging out with her best friend.

My youngest son is at a church picnic with his Godparents.  He stayed in town to hang out with them.  They have cable.

He is plowing through the TV show Psychic.  We have another two seasons to go at eleven hours per season.

Surviving bachelorhood

Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash.

Well, we survived day two.

I took my youngest son over to Total Firearms in Holt for his first installment of handgun training.  Yeah, I could do it myself, but Rick Burroughs is very safe, very good, very thorough and very patient.  There are some things when it pays to hire the best.  Brain surgery and firearms training come to mind.

They looked us over and asked, "What is his relationship to you?"

I replied, "My son."

The man-in-charged raised an eyebrow.  "That is the right answer.  In fact, that is the only answer that we can legally accept."  He continued filling out the paperwork.

After the training, we were cruising over to youngest son's summer time tutoring.  We had about 35 extra minutes to blow so we were watching for yard sales.   Fridays are very good days to look for yard sales.

We were bumping along in Mr Green Jeans at a couple of miles below the speed limit.  I had a Monte Carlo crawling up my tail pipe.  I saw a sign for a yard sale about 1 second too late.  The arrow on the sign pointed to the left, up a side street.   I eased on the brakes and pulled into the parking lot across the street to turn around.

My son informed me that a police car had pulled in behind us and had just hit the lights.

Ouch!

The police officer was Officer Matusko, a K-9 officer from Ingham County.  He informed me of Mr Green Jean's various deficiencies.  I did not argue with him.  The only scrap of paper in the glove box was the registration....no proof of insurance.  My guess is that somebody pillaged the glove box for batteries and raked out the paperwork in his/her haste.  It was a good experience for that likely "somebody" to have to sit through a traffic stop and experience the complications related to not having paperwork.

Normally, I would not name the police officer.  But Officer Matusko was the height of professionalism.  The second part of Exodus 23:19 can be interpreted as meaning that we are all compelled, at some time, to do things that cause pain to others.  Giving your children vaccinations is an example.  Exodus 23:19 suggests that God wants us to be extremely respectful of other's dignity, especially during those times.  Officer Matusko treated us with dignity and respect, even though our 'story' would seem highly improbably upon superficial examination.

--- Sidebar ---
Due to reasons beyond my understanding, Mrs ERJ and I were not able to have children biologically.  We adopted all of our children.  Consequently, some of our children do not look like us.

Also, I have the deepest admiration, respect and gratitude to mothers who choose the difficult path of giving their babies up adoption.  You know who you are.  Thank-you!
--- End Sidebar ---

Citation in hand, we swung by the first sweet corn stand of the season and bought a dozen ears from Molly and Megan.

Then I dropped son off at tutoring and went to Onondaga, Michigan to kill time.

The following pictures are from Baldwin Park.

Cardinal flower.  Yes, it really is that red.

Dodder.  The entitlement class is not restricted to human beings.  Dodder is a parasitic plant that is not capable of photosynthesis.

A fine specimen of Eastern Hazelnut.  Selections like this may be critical to developing strong, horizontal resistance to Eastern Filbert Blight.

The bush the Hazelnuts came from

Horseradish, growing in ditch.   Seedling volunteer?

View looking south, up the river.  I was looking for places to put some kayaks in for a float downriver.

Silver Maple.  This tree impressed me with its tenacious grip on life.  Joke:  What is tenacity?  Tenacity is 11% better than nine-ass-city.

Not shown, mint.  Several large beds of mint.  A sprig or two may have followed me home for replanting in the Kentucky 24hcf Steelhead Mint Julep garden.

St Johns Wort.  SJW is a source of a natural selective seratonin re-uptake inhibitor.  That is, an antidepressant.

After tutoring I tilled the garden and planted kale seeds.  One way to efficiently broadcast small seeds is to dilute them with something like sand.

Dwarf (meaning less than 4 feet tall) Siberian Kale.  Seed from here at $8.99 a pound.  I love this supplier!

I also slipped some seedlings in between the pepper plants to round out the succession plan.  Peppers are exquisitely frost sensitive and I want to have the next generation established to carry the baton after the first killing frost.

Tray

Can you find the kale seedling?

We are growing Dwarf Siberian and Winterbor kale this year.

Power companies hate this device

Another transparent attempt by the recently retired Eaton Rapids Joe to gain pecuniary advantage from his blog.

Power companies hate this device.  Available for $1.88 per hundred from your nearest Big Box Store

Narrative, continued

I still hate the word "narrative".

The Ninth Commandment is traditionally listed as:

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.   Exodus 21:16 KJV

Most parents typically explain this to their children as "Don't tell lies."  but it seems like an extremely archaic, round-about way to command that.

If you look at the tail-feathers of the quote, you will see "Exodus 21:16 KJV"  The KJV stands for King James Version.   KJV is a translation that King James commissioned from a bunch of Biblical scholars to translate from Latin and Greek into English.

Literal vs dynamic translation:

A fundamental decision any interpretter must make is to choose whether they are going to make a literal or a dynamic translation.  Both types of translation have strengths and weaknesses.

An example of a literal translation is in the Greek Prometheus myth.  The gods punish Prometheus by chaining him to the top of a mountain and a vulture pecks out his liver every day. Each night his liver grows grows back and his skin is made whole.  That seems like a bizarre punishment to the modern reader until they dig a little bit deeper and learn that ancient Greeks believed that the liver was the home of courage. And that highlights one of the shortcomings of a literal translation, the author's meaning is less accessible to the casual reader.

So you might ask, "Well, why not change the story to read, '...pecks out his heart...'?"

That would be a dynamic translation.  One of the primary shortcomings of a dynamic translation is that the interpretor is making decisions for you, decisions that might unintentionally delete or alter meaning.  Dynamic translation loses nuance.  For example, there are two kinds of courage.
-There is "Take heart" courage that is the root of the word encouragement.  It is the courage of being all-in and having no equivication.  The courage of overcoming setbacks.  This kind of courage is an emotion.
-Then there is the courage of "guts".  Guts is where you may be internally divided but you proceed along the path requiring more courage in spite of your reservations of sore muscles. This kind of courage is a decision.

A dynamic translation deprives the reader of having to think about the story and make choices.  Does the "liver" mean "heart" or "guts" or perhaps both?

The King James Version is a literal translation.  There are several reasons for that.  Fidelity to author (as in authority) was highly valued.  Today, singers add extra warbles and whoop-tee-dos to solemn songs like the National Anthem to "make it their own."  Back then, that would have been seen as presumptuous and ignorant...a bit like spray painting your name on the original Declaration of Independence.  Also, the translaters were devout men.  There are many injunctions in the Bible that "Woe betide..." any who delete or add to God's word.

Link

The upshot is that we can be pretty sure that the stone tablets the Jewish people were hauling around the desert to the south and east of modern day Israel listed the literal equivalent of "Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor." and not "Don't tell lies."

Gossip:

What is gossip?  Gossip is the volunteering of speculation, assumptions and stereotypes as fact.

Picture the Jewish nation wandering the desert for 40 years.  It may have been as small as 12 family groups of roughly 10 people each for a rousing total of 120 people.  It was a desert of food and water, and it was a desert of entertainment.  There was no cable TV.  There were no friendly interactions with the natives.   There was little change of scenery.

The forty years in the desert was like forty years in a lifeboat.  Among other things, it was an extreme-sport shake-down cruise of the rules for interpersonal relationships that God gave his people.  

Photo by Jeff Lynch, Sugar Land, Tx  Link

While the temptation to gossip for the purpose of entertainment was huge it could not be allowed. The corrosive effects would be fatal in a passive sense because unstinting cooperation was mandatory due to the hostile environment.  Gossip could also be fatal in the active sense.  There were undoubtedly significant tensions within the group.  Leadership was questioned.  People grumbled about the food, the water.  There was no option to move to a different dorm room, a different suburb or a different state.  Given those underlying tensions, gossip it could easily incite fights that would escalate into blood feuds that would be fatal to the participants and to the larger culture, thus destroying the Israel Nation.

Narrative:

What is narrative?  Narrative is the volunteering of speculation, assumptions and stereotypes as fact.  Prefacing clot of words with the word "narrative" is the teller's way of acknowledging they are about to share something other than fact.  That is, they know that they are about to be a "false witness", a gossip.

You might be a relativistic kind of guy.  You  might diminish "false witness" by observing that it was number nine.  "Heck," you might think, "it was just a couple of commandments away from being bumped off the end of the bench.  It cannot be that big of a deal."

It is a big deal.  It is a big deal because we now have social media that enables us to inform 859 'friends' about some salacious or corrosive or divisive bit of gossip.  Incidentally, 859 is not a random number.  I just looked up my 16 year old daughter's Facebook page and that is how many 'friends' she has.  This is a social media that will chase you.  Changing your dorm room or zip code to leave your problems is no longer a very robust solution.

It is a big deal because the economy is shrinking.  Just like the Jews leaving the security and 3 hots and a cot of Egypt for the thorn bush and adders (snakes, not accountants) of the desert, we appear to be heading for a long, hard slog.

It is a big deal because the potential exists for extended blood feuds to erupt and consume us all.  There are already vast swaths of the inner cities and areas along the southern border that are ceded to gangs and drug violence.  The nuclii are there.

I hate the word "Narrative" because it has the stench of the sly wink-and-a-nod.  It acknowledges that the transmitter of the message knows that it is not true, that they know it is gossip and that they are transmitting it solely for entertainment purposes.  They think they are sly and clever because they believe that they are insulated from any of the negative consequences.

I hate the word "Narrative" because it creates the illusion of distance between the gossip and the bloated bodies, blood stained pavement and flies so gorged on human flesh they cannot fly but only buzz.

I hate the word "Narrative" because that distance will close and the violence will consume us all, both as individuals and as a culture.  In many ways we are more fragile than the 12 nations of Israel wandering the desert. 

I hate the word modern usage of the word "Narrative"?

Vaya con Dios

Well, it is a sad-sweet day.  My oldest child is off to Baton Rouge to her new job/career.

Mrs ERJ went with her.  They took two vehicles filled with tubs, clothes, a mattress and the odds-and-ends needed to survive until the first pay check and the next cargo drop from home.

I am holding down the fort with the two young-uns.  We will be eating pizza, fried chicken, potato salad, sweet corn and tums.

We send her, a solid Christian, a great planner and filled with energy and optimism.  I hope the lads in Louisiana treat her as one of their own.

If you run into a gal that looks like this, invite her to a glass of sweet tea and some craw-dads.  Tell her Joe sent you.

Oldest daughter holding "Milk Snake", Remington 870 20 gauge.

Narrative

I hate the word "Narrative".

Sane people live in the world of "is" and objective, observable fact.

Beach marks on a fractured bolt indicating where failure originated.

People who are un-tethered from sanity live in a world of "should", a world where my narrative (my set of lies) is as more valid than any other story.

Somewhere we lost the sense that reality exists.  We became a nation of victims living in an existential, metaphysical world.

There was a time when the news media made an effort to discern news rather than story.  They attempted to ferret out facts to the extent they were able.

Now, the media parrots "narratives".  Most of the blog-o-sphere churns along in separate swill buckets of opinion.  Fact was discarded because it cannot accommodate "my narrative", it cannot accomodate anybody's narrative.

From here

There is a mental health therapy with the unfortunate name of Dialectic Behavioral Therapy.  It is unfortunately named because it sounds as if it were a tribute to Lenin, Marx and Hegel.  In fact, it was cooked up by a woman named Marsha Linehan to treat people with Borderline Personality Disorder.

Contrary to what you might assume from the name of the disorder, people with Borderline Personality Disorder are not "just a little bit disordered".  Rather, they live in a construct-universe where they are the hub of a ring of people conspiring to victimize them and their only defense is to use a rescuer/enabler as a human shield.  They continuously test their rescuer/enabler to ensure their loyalty.  Once that human shield is used up (exhausted from the testing), they move on to another rescuer/enabler.

One of the things I really like about DBT is that DBT is skills based.  Skills can developed and strengthened via repetition until the use of those skills becomes the default mode of response.  The development of those skills is tracked with diary cards.

About half the skills involve re-tethering the user's "narrative" to reality.  Skills like:
-Temper your emotional mind state with rational thought (Wise mind in DBTese)
-Observe.  Don't assume or speculate.  Just focus on the observable facts.
-Describe.  This is a test that can help winnow the chaff of assumption and speculation from observable fact.
-Be non-judgemental.  That means remove yourself from the "narrative" (i.e., you cannot be the hub of the universe) and evaluate the situation from a fly-on-wall perspective.
-Stay focused.
-Do what works!  Play by the rules (because they mostly work).  Let go of anger and revenge (because they do not work in the long run).  Let go of pinning blame because that usually moves you away from your larger goal.  It is not effective.
-Abandon Black-White thinking.  The reality is that good people sometimes do boneheaded things and bad people are capable of actions that help you out.  Reality will not conform to your construct-universe just because it makes it easier for you to keep score.

Society's wholehearted embrace of "narrative" became an endorsement of Borderline Personality Disorder.  BPD is the new normal.

I hate the word "narrative" because we have massive problems and they will get worse if let ourselves be trapped in 317 million conflicting construct-universes.

Drive-by-farming

I picked up my oldest daughter at Detroit Metro Airport today.  She came back home after a week of job interviews, looking for housing and so on.

She is a great sport.  She played navigator while we bushwhacked west from Detroit Metro airport to Eaton Rapids.

Fifteen miles west of the airport on Textile Road we ran across these entrepreneurs selling lemonade.

Here is the bunch of them.  This is serious farm country.  Great looking corn and soybeans.  The kids are well groomed, athletic and happy looking as well.

This guy noticed that the wind was blowing the signage making it unreadable.  So he stepped up, or down, to fix the problem.  People who are willing to make extra effort to solve problems are rare and valuable.

We had one near-brush with the law.

We passed one of the sweetest, neatest, apple-pie perfect small farming operations I have ever been blessed to drive by.  I stopped the car and asked my daughter to take some pictures.  We started having battery malfunctions.  "Dang, Dad.  It shut down."  So I would start to drive forward.  Then, "Dad, it is back.  Back up.  I can get that picture!"  The third time that happened, we saw a young lady strolling down the driveway with a dog (Beagle X Blue Heeler) that looked just like the beagle in the movie I am Number Four.

As we explained ourselves, she suggested we pull off the road.  Apparently, entirely by coincidence I am sure,  the local sheriff's car was approaching from the other direction.  She waved the patrol car on past.

Only one of the pictures turned out.

Chickens near closest corner of garage/barn.

 More pictures here.  Although I must tell you that the pictures fail to catch the overall sense of organization and industry that radiates from this place.

The young lady turned out to be the lady of the house.  She explained that several houses on the road had been broken into.  She said the neighbors tend to look out for each other.

She also shared that the number of break-ins had dropped off after one of the houses was broken into during broad daylight.  The burglar was not aware that the gentleman of the house, who had been in the military, was still home.  It was a case of an amateur meeting a highly motivated professional.  The police collected the burglar who was very glad to see them.

The lady of the house gave me a new term, Drive-by-farming.  Sort of a derivative of drive-by-shooting.  Hence the title of today's entry.

-Joe

The non-expendable man

"Prologue:  Reading the Rooflines of Europe

The roofs of Europe, the old roofs, at least, have some interesting things to say to travelers.  The rooflines of a region can serve as a prologue to reading the local landscape.  The offer a record of how men have come to terms with rain and wind and heat and cold and, of course, other men.  Roof materials may point to local quarries or clay pits or forests or reed-fringed swamps.  Roof forms, their structure, their pitch, the overhang of their eaves, their chimneys, their very mosses add further comments, until the environment is so dependably indicated that a confirmed roof-reader may even be equipped to predict the quality of the native oak leaf: big, small, leathery, harsh, prickly, silky, thin or thick.  He may also be able to guess certain qualities of the local humans as well, including a thing or two about their gods, and their gardens.

...in Paris roofs are as divorced from the environment as city life itself.   Mansard roofs belong to the realm of style, and to the realm of the supreme stylist, Louis XIV."

From Reading the Landscape of Europe by May Theilgaard Watts

The liberal male belongs to the realm of style.  He is kept, much like a fashionable breed of dog, as an indicator of social status.  The breed of the kept dog tells much of the values of the decision maker.  A Pekingese or a Pitbull?  An Airedale or a Golden Retriever?  A Pug or Great Pyrenees?  They project image and attitude like the exterior color of the dwelling and the choice of perennials in the yard.  And the dog, and the color, the perennials, and the liberal male are all expendable.  They are all ballast to be jettisoned when the balloon appears to be at risk of not clearing the power wires.

The liberal male knows this.  He has seen it happen to others.  He is bitter and impotent.  And he madly dances the rain-dance to prevent the ping-pong ball with his number on it from coming up.  He is a true believer in the metaphysics of conversion:  Perhaps the gods of chance will spare him if he cleaves to the true, liberal line and proselytizes like a mo-fo. Maybe the gods will be kind.  After all, some turkeys survive Thanksgiving.  Right?

The non-expendable male believes in Occam's razor.  Truth is not always simple, but it is still a good bet.  Many problems can be talked to death, but not all of them.  Three syllable words bounce off of and enrage that class of problems.  The only thing those problems respect is the ability to apply rapid and accurate packages of kinetic energy.

Picture from www.ar15.com

 One of American's successes during WWII was the war in the South Pacific.  We did not buy into our opponent's definition of the battlefield.  We buy-passed and sliced, like a wolf cutting the Achilles tendon of a moose.  Like the wolf, we did not fight the battle as defined as the moose.  Like the wolf, we were successful.

The liberal male has a highly stylized definition of the battlefield.  It includes an extended Kabuki theater of threat and escalation.  It includes certified, return-receipt letters.  It includes his attorney calling  the other attorney.

Did I mention that a human can bleed to death in 40 seconds?

The liberal male model works great until one person does not buy into the game.  And why would a barbarian with a weapon buy into a game that he cannot win.  He cannot place.  He cannot show....not if he buys into the liberal man's rules.  But he can take first, second and third place if he follows his own rules.  And he can win in 40 seconds.

I once had a conversation with an enormous, leather-tough Sicilian named Carmelo Scopazzo.  Carmelo had been a Sergeant in Vietnam. He loved to bust my chops.

I told him that I was not sure that I could ever pull the trigger on a human being.

He asked me, "Have you ever killed a deer."

I said, "Yes.  Many."

He asked, "Did you follow the blood trail?  Did you slit its belly?  Did you pull the guts out?  Did you reach up, grab the wind-pipe and tear it out by force?"

From wikipedia

I said, "Yes, you know I have.  We have talked about this."

He asked, "Did you need the meat?  Was your family going to go hungry if you did not bring home meat?"

I said, "No.  I did not need the meat I have a job.  I hunt because I like to hunt."

He said, "Joe, I have no doubt that when some animal is about to hurt your wife, your daughter or your son that you will have NO HESITATION about doing what you need to do."

Barbarians and arsonists

That was one of the kindest things anybody ever said to me.  It affirmed that I was a man.  No qualifiers or adjectives like 'liberal'.  Just "man".

A liberal man is expendable.  A man is not.

"Gentle people sleep peacefully at night because rough men stand in the dark, ready to do violence on their behalf."    -George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm....books that are still well worth reading.

The non-expendable man can play the Kabuki theater because he must.  But he knows that not all is theater.  A part of him waits, a predator, a protector stationed at ambush.  He is keenly attuned to the fraction of a second when the rules dissolve and cease to exist.  He is ready to escalate beyond the game-changer. He is ready to become the wolf.  The wolf does not play games.  The wolf and his pack WILL survive.

Oh I'm back in the saddle again, out where a friend is a friend...

Yippy!  I am back up and running.  Literally.

The PT plan morphed.  Most of our family members get off to a better start when we have a three mile walk in the cool of the morning.  So that is a Monday-through-Friday gig for those who are not injured.  The plan is to still run an additional 5 miles every other day.

Two days ago I ran 3 miles to see how I survived the two week idle period.  No problems.

Today I ran another 6.5 + half mile cool down.  Again, no problems.  Temperature was 80 by the thermometer on the swing set.  The daughter's smart phone thought our zipcode was 88 degrees.

Pictures are a mix of today's run and one from a few weeks ago.  This is the Seven Mile run:

This is what 80 acres of radishes looks like. 

Close-up of seedlings.  80 acres is a boat load of radishes.

Hollyhocks growing at old home site.  Home site along left side of the overview photo.  Last year there was an older, Hispanic gentleman living there.  He had a German Shepherd that he was very fond of.  The house was bulldozed and burned this spring.  I don't know what the story is.  But I might liberate some of these hollyhocks to honor the Hispanic gentleman's memory.

"Common" daylilies.  These are sterile triploids and all "common" daylilies are pretty much the same, indestructible clone.

Indestructible but beautiful.  Did I mention that the flower buds are edible and taste like a sweet green bean with a tender, lettuce-like texture?

Pastor Sam rescued me with a couple of bottles of water last summer after I had stupidly started out without enough liquid.  Assembly of Yehweh has some similarities to Seventh Day Adventist.  They worship on Saturday and have "camp".  The rumor on the street is that Pastor Sam is a wickedly good pheasant hunter.

Columbia Wooden Boat Works.  The yard has an awesome stand of cone flowers or Echinacea.

See ya tomorrow.