Stephen Skory

I’ve posted some photos from Anza Borrego Desert State Park. Melissa and I drove out to see the wildflowers and go for a hike. As you can see in the top row, right, both of my hiking boots lost their soles. I had them re-soled a few months ago and hadn’t used them since. They started falling apart only a little bit into the hike and we shorted the walk when it became clear the damage was progressing. For the last third I had to high-step it to keep the front of the soles from catching on the ground. One sole fell apart completely meters from the car. Happily, I didn’t drive in my hiking boots so I had another pair to wear the rest of the day.

We also sorta kinda saw a Big Horned Sheep on the hillside. In the photo the sheep’s body is facing you with its head turned to the left (your left). It was hard to see it in the shadow of the rock; I didn’t see it until Melissa pointed it out at home. I took the photo on blind faith that everyone wasn’t lying to me.

See the rest of the photos.

Today is especially windy, so we went out to the glider port to see what was flying. We found a bunch of model airplane gliders and one hang glider, seen above. If I wanted another expensive hobby, hang gliding looks awfully fun!

Check out all the photos.

MR and I just cleaned the keyboard I use at home. The white plastic of iMacs are stylish, but show dirt and grime. Also, if you have two black and white cats like us, their fur finds its way everywhere. It’s easy: just pop off the keys, wash them with soapy water in a gallon ziploc bag, and dry them. Wipe away the area under the keys. And then pop the keys back in. Oh - it’s a good idea to take a photo of the keyboard before you pop all the keys out!

Kind of as an exercise in embedding Google Maps I’ve posted some recent mountain bike rides above. It was actually much harder than it should have been. I can’t just drop in the code to make the map because PHP escapes the quotes which confuses Javascript. What I’ve done instead is use an IFRAME to include a HTML file with the Javascript. It seems to work fine.

All three routes are fun in their own way. Marion Bear Park is in a narrow valley and has lots of full trees (unlike much of San Diego). Peñasquitos Park feels very San Diegan: dry and rocky in open scrub land. Daley Ranch is somewhere in between, except right now it’s quite muddy and verdant.

Here are the three rides in KMZ Google Earth format if you’re into that sort of thing.