December 26, 2024
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG: What you see is what you get. Which in my case is less than before, but still enough. That works for me.
There might still be some improvements coming in my sight, but it’s feeling like I must be about there - and fortunately it’s at a place that looks fine, a space wide and clear enough to still leave room for a full and rewarding life. I feel confident that I’ll be back on the bike soon - starting with the Friday, but I have faith that Roddy will ride again too in due time.
So enough of all that. Let’s quit wallowing in all of that health crisis crap and get on with life. We’re moving on, and we have a plan for it that we’re working up to. You’ll be among the first to know once it actionable.
Today though is more of the same - waiting around in our cubbyhole studio apartment, listening to the rain come down and wondering how to make the best use of the day. We talk it through as we’re lying in bed together slowly waking up, and settle on a plan: we’ll walk over to Living Room Theater this afternoon to watch a film: A Real Pain. The new Bob Dylan film just opened too, but we’ll wait on that one until the initial audience rush has passed on. After that we’ll stop for dinner at The Star, a new local pizzeria that opened recently. Maybe we’ll split a pie and take home leftovers, and I’ll get a chance to try out one of those non-alcoholic Athletic IPA’s I’ve heard is worth a taste.
That plan gets set aside though when I check the weather and find that there’s an unexpected dry three or four hour window predicted for this afternoon. Seize the day! we’ll take walks, and the film can wait for a rainy afternoon.
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Over breakfast I make my plan for the day. My first thought is to take one more walk along the river - maybe the scaups or scoters will finally make an appearance. What I’d really like though is another crack at Oaks Bottom, if I could get there. Rachael made Uber look so easy yesterday though that I thought even I could do it. When I’m back at the ranch she gives me a crash course on using the Uber app she’s already got installed on my new phone, and a half hour later I’m on my way to Sellwood.
Uber is an interesting experience for me, one I have some thoughts on; but let’s defer sharing them for a rainy day and save today for the walk. It shouldn’t be a long wait.
There really aren’t that many birds out today for some reason (as verified by the checklists posted on eBird today - they were all pretty short) but it’s still a successful outing and a better one than the first time. Lighting conditions are a little better, my vision is a little better, my control of the new camera is a little better. It all adds up, and I come back with some images I’m really pretty pleased with this time - clearer, more in focus, more interesting.
And I see the screech owl! She’s in the same knothole she was peeking out of when I saw her a year ago - and like then, it took another birder to help me find her. I think I’ve got it now though and could spot her on my own next time. I was barking up the right tree but staring at the wrong knothole. “No, not there. You’re too low. Follow the trunk up to the first major split, follow the right split further up, to the short snag that branches off to the right. There, it looks like you’ve got it now.” Aah!
I end up claiming three new birds for the year: the owl, a flicker, and a black capped chickadee that briefly alights in front of me and then flies off too quickly for a shot. I’m pleased to count him though - he’s now the smallest bird I’ve been able to identify since my vision loss. I still might be able to pick out those bushtits and wrens and kinglets yet.
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11 hours ago
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My plan for the walk was similar to when Rachael and I came down: walk through the refuge and then head up to town on the bike path. I wasn’t sure what I’d do this time though - maybe even just keep walking, cross over the Hawthorne Bridge, and then continue on all the way home. Surprisingly, my left knee has been doing really well and it felt like a reasonable goal. I think all the walking I’ve been doing lately has really made a difference.
When I come to the bike path though I change my mind and decide I’ll do a bit more birding before leaving the area. I walk south on the bike path and look across Oaks Bottom from the river side this time, a look that is often rewarding. It’s common to see many birds here as we bike past, including a dozen or more herons. We’ve seen deer here in the past, a pair of coyotes once, and an occasional bald eagle. There’s always something. Not today though. I see exactly one merganser and that’s it, except for a respectably sized shoveler circle.
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And then I just keep walking south, away from town. I cross to the river through the empty amusement park and continue south to the Sellwood Bridge, thinking if I’m really lucky the peregrine falcon I saw there last winter will be out again. After that I plan to cross the bridge, take a shot toward town up the river, and then walk north along the other bank of the river, maybe through Willamette Park and up to the southernmost stop on the streetcar circuit.
And then it finally occurs to me that I have a brand new phone in my pocket - the Samsung S24 SE that Rachael got for me as a late birthday present because there wasn’t much celebrating going on three weeks ago. So I take a few shots to test out the camera and am thrilled by the results. For general photography it’s significantly better than either of the other two I rely on. I’m pretty sure the phone for most photography and the new Canon for birds and such will bring back nearly all my shots in the future. I’ll still carry the Lumix in my back pocket when biking for the occasional unusual birding shot that happens along, but I don’t really expect it to get much use.
Even that walk plan quickly goes by the wayside though when there’s a freak, funny/not funny accident. I take a fall when I’m tripped up by a candy cane - one of the ones lining the edge of a path through the amusement park that had fallen over flat across the path. My foot gets caught up in it and i end up sliding down in the mud, making a mess of myself - muddy pants, muddy coat, muddy shoes, and scariest of all, muddy camera.
Fortunately though the new, too spendy to replace after just a week’s use Canon is perfectly fine. Showing more common sense than is common for me, I was walking with it strapped to my neck and powered down with the lens cap on. It’s just external mud, which I clean off as best I can for now with the only wipe at hand - a Covid mask still stuck in my rucksack from the flight home.
That’s enough though. I continue on to the Sellwood Bridge to look for the bird who isn’t there, and then turn back to the old church and hail a ride home.
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Rachael’s not back from her walk yet when I’m back at the apartment. i give her a call to let her know I’m back, I’m a mess, and to ask her where the laundry soap is; but she says she’ll be home soon and will manage it herself after stopping off at Trader Joe’s to pick me up some more bananas because I’m supposed to be getting more potassium in my diet.
She walks in a half hour later, a little damp because the rains just began but pleased with herself for completing the most strenuous hike she’s taken since we returned from California - later she’ll complain about how stiff and achy she is. And she came back without a single photo to show for it, because she wanted to get all the miles in she could before the window closed on her.
She’s only been back about a half hour when she calls time and we head over to the Star for dinner, where she has a salad and I have a deep dish pizza along with a Run Wild nonalcoholic IPA, one of the two Athletic NA brews the restaurant has on the menu.
The deep dish pizza was the wrong idea though. I haven’t had one for a long time and I forgot how much longer they take to prepare. Poor Rachael had to wait a half an hour for our food to finally arrive, and by then she’s ready to gnaw off my right arm. In the meantime I polish off my Run Wild with the other arm and order the other option, the Free Wave hazy IPA that Bob Distelberg recommended so I could make a comparison. For the record, I think I favor the Run Wild, but maybe that’s just because I had it first. It’s pretty hard to compare beers when you can’t tase or smell.
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12 hours ago
The one I have is a used, refurbished one though, one I bought from a London Camera Exchnge outlet in in England last summer when my other one started failing. It was the only one in the country they had in inventory, so I was lucky and bought it sight unseen. So at least some of those defects are sometimes repairable. I’m planning on taking all three of them down to Rucsom when we finally make it down there and see if any of their camera repair shops can bring one or more back to life. I’ll let you know how it goes.
11 hours ago
1 hour ago