Blood on the Ice

Attended a small town hockey game here in McCall, Idaho.  What an awesome slice of America.

Cleaning the blood off of the ice

Kitchen Window

Saw this guy and his buddy playing outside of the kitchen window yesterday so I was ready with the Nikon V1 when he showed up again today.

Washtucna

On the road to McCall, Idaho and stopped in Washtucna, WA for some photo ops.

Curing TMCS

I’m reluctant to buy the Garmin GPS bike computer because I already have a GPS on my fancy Windows 8 smart phone.  However, there are two problems with using a smart phone as a bike computer: one phones are not weatherproof so you can’t mount them in a visible location (i.e. to your handlebars) and two the phone (at least my phone) goes into sleep mode when inactive for sixty seconds – so I’d have to touch my phone every minute to keep my stats visible - not possible while wearing gloves.  It seems that these smart dudes at WahooFitness have come up with a solution.

This appears to be a sweet set-up.  You get your HR data from a chest strap, you get the cadence from a bike mounted sensor and you get all the other GPS type stuff from your smart phone.  What a great solution for TMCS (Too Much Crap Syndrome).  Only problem is that it isn’t available for the Windows Phone.  Screwed again

The Crap We Cherish

Yesterday my son and I stopped by an estate sale on our way home from a morning of skiing at Alpental.  I guess I’ve never actually been to an estate sale before, and I must say I found it a bit depressing: you simply walk into a home where everything looks kind of normal – albeit with small stuff scattered all around – the only real difference being the small price tags attached to everything.  It was easy to see that the folks had lived in the house for quite some time and that they were fairly affluent, but honestly most of the stuff was junk: a dusty sewing machine, an old typewriter (my son didn’t even know what it was), and random glasswear.  I suppose that maybe there had been some descent furniture at one time, but anything of value had either already been sold or carted away for sale at a higher price.

All of this stuff had been purchased, used and held onto by the former owners of the house, but in the blink of an eye it all went from cherished possessions to nearly worthless junk that was being sold for a nickel or a dime.  It was a wakeup call for me as to determining what is important and what isn’t.  Family, friends and a few things that are actually worth owning (like a good bicycle) that’s what’s important, the other stuff, well someday that’s all going to be garbage.

Pick your crap wisely.