[sic]

Saturday morning was spent with one last wander around downtown Charleston before saying goodbye and finally getting a move on up to the Magnolia Plantation, where we spent a few hours wandering the gardens before getting ourselves over to Charleston International Airport to board a 7:17 flight to Atlanta and from there climbed onto a 9:25 jet back here where we touched down a few minutes past 11 p.m. L.A. time and were home around midnight to find all our animals safe and mostly sound.

By mostly I mean that Shadow began manifesting some odd symptoms that our pet sitter called and told us about Friday night that either could have been a stroke or an ear infection (she’s otherwise mobile and alert, but with a marked loss of equilibrium, “drunken” walk and a head tilt to one side) and they ended up taking her to our vet yesterday and keeping us posted.

The vet thinks it’s none of the above and are running blood tests because they think it might be kidney related, noting that her blood is excessively thick. We’ll know more tomorrow when the results are back from the lab.

But in the meantime she’s happy to see us, as are all the animals — even moreso us seeing them — and we’re going to work hard chilling and milling around our own little plantation today.

UPDATED (8:49 p.m.): Further regarding Shadow’s condition, Susan went searching onling and her efforts seemed to have hit a diagnosis square on the head: Canine Peripheral Vestribular Syndrome.

Agh, us faultless “entitled” humans. Practically every day I’m shown another example of how we think we do own the planet. This time it was on a rather small scale via an alert to residents of the next monthly Silver Lake Improvement Association gathering later this week.

As highlighted above, one of the items to be explored concerns “our coyote problems,” and you just have to know that kind of slanted, narrow sillytalk just chaps my coyote-loving hide enough to whip off an email to the boardmembers:

In regards to the item on the agenda of this coming Thursday’s community meeting, I may have to show up for once just so I can be one of those pro-animal hardcase voices in the wilderness that points a resenting finger at it being referred to institutionally as a “coyote problem.”

Sadly it seems I should expect members of the SLIA board to roll their eyes at anyone defending the creatures, but the fact is the coyotes’ presence isn’t their fault, it’s the fault of those of us who — be it inadvertent or not — provide them with predatory and scavenging opportunities.

And then there’s that little matter of burning down a huge section of their habitat in Griffith Park last May and forcing them to relocate. Lest we forget, that catastrophe wasn’t caused by a coyote that was careless with a cigarette, it was one of us human problems.

Will Campbell

UPDATE (3:50 p.m.): I ended up receiving a very nice reply from SLIA boardmember Lorraine Kells that demonstrated how easily I misconstrue irony when it comes to critters I heart:

Will,

I’m the guilty one.  I hurriedly made up the flyer with my typical Los Angeles tongue-in-cheek, ironic stance because the whole idea of having a wildlife specialist explain to people that the coyotes were here first and attracted by our garbage and wasteful habits is NOT their problem, but the problem of those who refuse to admit they live
in what was a wilderness scrub and home to mountain lions, bobcats, and coyotes which once thrived in balance should be obvious, but it’s not.  So, it’s our problem about ourselves, which we call our coyote problem.  Officer Randall does a great job of stating that.  You’ll enjoy him.

I don’t disagree with you, but I’m responsible for the irony which you took for intent; nevertheless there are many who view the animals as pests, so bring out your friends and fight for those critters.

Warm regards,
Lorraine Kells

To which I replied:

Thank you Lorraine. I fool myself into thinking I have an eye for irony and a sense of humor but it seems that’s never more not true when critters are involved. I’m familiar with Officer Randall and I’ll do my best to get to the meeting, but I’m also one of those fools that commutes to work (in Westchester) by bike (or even worse: carpools). Either of those crosstown scenarios might keep me from being there Thursday night, but I’m sure gonna try.

Best,
Will

You’re gonna wanna click the above
Eureka Dunes panorama thumbnail

First off props to my beloved Susan because I gotta say it takes a special woman who says “hell yeah!” when I tell her that I want to drive out to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with our two dogs and spend the following day next to a the biggest pile of sand in California and then come home the day after that.

It was sooo worth it. Five and a half hours spent Friday night rolling up the 14 to the 395 to Big Pine and then the 168 up, up, up winding roads dodging brazen jackrabbits until going down, down, down to where the pavement ran out then dodging even more jackrabbits until we found the turn off for Eureka Dunes and 10 miles later we pulled into the deserted campground, stepped outside into the blessedly still but chilly (but not as bad as we’d expected) 1:30 a.m. air under as many stars as there are grains of sand in the dunes and decided we’d save the tent pitching for daylight and sleep in the car.

Four and a half hour later we were up with the dawn and it was even colder (but still wonderfully windless and deserted), and soon the coffee was percolating on the campstove and coyotes were yipping somewhere unseen in the distance and then the sun popped up over the eastern mountains and immediately began warming things up and we had breakfast of corned beef hash, bacon and eggs and as we raised the tent we openly wondered if we’d somehow lucked into getting the entire monstrously magnificent Eureka Valley to ourselves.

A short time later we had our first lookeloo: a fella in a sedan pulled out to take a couple photos and move on and by 11:30 it was still all ours ours ours and decidedly in the low 80s and gorgeous and so Susan and Ranger and Shadow and I hit the dunes. We didn’t make it to the 700-foot top, opting instead to romp around up to about 400 feet or so before heading back for ice-cold Coronas at camp and a nap that was disturbed occasionally by the passing trains of two-wheeled and four-wheeled offroaders, the latter stopping long enough to be overheard saying “That’s some impressive freakin’ dunes” before heading off.

At sunset we had a couple visiting pairs of people who parked nearby and made quickout and back trips onto the sand before coming back to their vehicles and leaving.

We did end up with a neighboring camp, but they had the fine sense to set up about a half mile down the road. As darkness fell, we got the fire going and had a great dinner of steaks and veggies and cheap red wine bought at the Stater Bros. market in Mojave. Afterward we marveled at a couple of bats and their acrobatics through our camp picking off moths drawn to our lanterns.

I tried my hand at several five and 10-minute timelapses of the starry skies but after losing patience I joined Susan and the dogs in the tent and appropriately bundled up we were all asleep or getting there by 7:30 p.m.

Up again at 6 a.m. to another phenomenally windless and glorious day I got a morning campfire going and coffee brewing. After breakfast Ranger and I had another romp to about the dunes’ 250 foot elevation, then came back to break camp with Shadow while Susan and Ranger headed out for one last visit to the sandy stuff.

We were packed and on our way by 10 a.m. as planned, leaving us enough time for a sidetrip to the Manzanar Interment Camp off 395 outside of Lone Pine. By 4 p.m. we were home to find all the cats had been well cared for by my mom. Afer unpacking we dropped the rental SUV back at Hertz and since then he dogs have pretty much been sacked out from their fantastic journey and Susan and I have been pulling pictures taken off our cameras, including that 18-shot 180-degree view posted above of the south end of Eureka Valley and the dunes.

Without a doubt everything conspired — the weather, the lack of other people, the location, the light traffic out and back — to produce one of the best camping experiences ever. Plenty more pictures to come. Later.

First it’s back to the grind of doing dishes and sleeping in a real bed.

UPDATE (11.12): My Flickr photoset found here; Susan’s is here!

I’ve been stewing over this since reading it in yesterday’s L.A. Times. Between the latter part of November and the end of December every year the DWP’s Festival of Lights shines in Griffith Park in all its kitschy kooky glory. And every year the traffic congestion and emissions spew resulting from people clogging neighboring streets and freeways waiting for upwards of an hour or more in their idling vehicles to crawl along the mile-long exhibit of illumination drives everyone in the area crazy.

Flash backward with me a bit. Were bikes welcome for the first eight or so years? Oh hell nah: those blasted contraptions and the freaks that ride them had been categorically banned for the cyclists own safety. Never mind that Crystal Springs Drive where the fest happens is a public street with a striped bike lane that cyclists have every right to traverse, and never mind that the flow of traffic past the lights moves at a glacial pace than that of, say, Sepulveda Boulevard up through West LA where bikes and cars must also co-exist; the bastard authorities were clear in their unlawful enforcement: No Bikes Allowed!

It was finally in 2004 when some pesky cycling advocates wrote WTF letters to the DWP and the Parks & Recreation Dept. pointing out that — DUH! — prohibiting cyclists from accessing a public street is unlawful and/or fucking fascist. And then a funny thing happened: the DWP and the Park & Recs said ya know, you’re right!

But instead of opening things up to us two-wheelers there was still the smooth-brained belief that bikes and cars can’t coexist — even when the cars are relegated to traveling at sub 5 mph speeds — and so some dimrod came up with an alternative: For one night and one night only instead of bikes being banned and cars allowed, they’d reverse that order. And since that was better than nothing the first bike night was born and was at best a modest success, drawing perhaps 50 cyclists, including me.

Even if it failed to draw big numbers, it proved to be an awesome and unique way to experience the sights and sounds of the fest’s scenery. Then in 2005 and again last year bike-loving Councilman Tom LaBonge grabbed the reigns and promoted it a bit and its popularity grew. And each year at some sort of makeshift podium LaBonge and some DWP suit step up to the mic and say something blowy and showy about working hard to bring more bike nights to the festival next year! This is inevitably and enthusiastically greeted with whoops and hollers and hearty rounds of applause.

And inevitably nothing changes the next year.

Well for 2007, in response to increasing calls of bullshit in regards to the decidedly anti-green gridlock created each night by the season-long event, the DWP and LaBonge have gotten together and come up with an additional five non-car nights. Yay? Nay. See the trouble is they’re pedestrian-only nights. So while cars aren’t allowed — which is good — neither are bikes, which is crap.

Cyclists still have their single, solitary token two hours to roll through the light show — November 19, from 6-8 p.m. (and if I may add: that early date is about as holiday festive as a kick in the ass). Then it’s walkers who’ll rule from November 21-25. From then to the end of 2007 it’s carscarscarscarscarscars.

But here’s the rub see: pedestrians are allowed during bike night and every car night. Anyone wishing to do so can park in the L.A. Zoo lot to the north or down near the carousel and playground at the south end, and walk the length and back along the dirt path between the street and the golf course.

So my point is why in aaaaaaaall of LaBonge’s pro-bike positioning and alleged awareness of increasing the access bikes have to the event didn’t he think to make those five pedestrian-only nights available to cyclists, too? Because he’s first and foremost a short-attention-span pa-lee-tee-shun who’s seemingly sincere appreciation of bicycling as an alternate transit method gets buried below the shuck and jive on the surface.

Of course I sent his office an email basically taking him to task for such an oversight, but if it’s like any of the past emails I’ve sent him it’ll get routed to some sub-basement droneflack — if not his spam folder.

UPDATED (8:00 a.m.): There’s a fair number of folks who chose to boycott riding in the fest’s bike night because of the baseless discrimination the event’s administrators and our politicians continue to show cyclists. I can understand those who don’t, but I think it’s counter-productive — which is why, even though it’s an annual source of frustration for me, I make it a point to be a part of the increasing numbers of cyclists who participate each year (plus, like I said before: it’s a fun thing to do). The more the merrier and eventually the more nights will become available to us.

Not so much an emergency as a veterinary visit that was certainly due. See, our youngest cat Jiggy came in on Monday night with a wound on his flank just behind the right front leg that we couldn’t really get a good luck at because he wouldn’t let us. But three things were obvious: he was tending to it very well, it wasn’t bleeding and it wasn’t infected.

And while it clearly bothered him (especially when we picked him up) and somewhat hindered his normal agility in jumping up and down on and off things, he was eating fine and not behaving out of the ordinary. So we decided it wasn’t worth the expense of an all-night emergency vet visit and that we’d keep an eye on it.

Sure enough, his agility improved as the week progressed, but we still knew we had to get him in for some medical attention and we decided to prolong it to this morning. When the doctor at Echo Park Animal Hospital examined him it looked ultra large and nasty, but thankfully was only a supericial flesh wound requiring cleaning and stitches that the doc said was probably more the result of a slip-n-fall, not a fight.

Whew.

But anyway we’re expecting he’ll be out of surgery and ready to come home in about an hour or so. Once we get him back here, then we’ll figure out if we’re still game to go to the San Gabriel Valley for our previously scheduled visits to the Huntington and the L.A. County Arboretum, or just skip all that and get margaritas at Olvera Street.

UPDATE (12:39 p.m.): Turns out the wound was larger than the vet expected and the surgery took longer. The Jig won’t be ready to go home until 2 p.m. so looks like Olvera Street will be the extent of our travels today, if that.

If by chance one looks to the right and sees the two tiny webcam image thumbnails there, one might wonder with absolute validity why oh why are we contributing to the clogging the internest with an image of some hardwood floor and a rug.

Well, the situation is this. Our beloved Ranger has returned to her old anxious and stressed-out ways of getting bored during her long time alone at home and subsequently filling that time by finding things to chew up and destroy. Last week it was some magazines we had left on the coffee table (that we knew we should’ve moved out of reach but didn’t, so our fault). She ripped those up all around the livingroom and even took one into the backyard and tore that one up out there. On Saturday morning while we were away for barely an hour rescuing that bench from its uncertain future, she was shredding that day’s newspaper. And then Monday night when I got home ahead of Susan I found a woven basket — a gift for herbrought back by a coworker from Africa — entirely unwoven and destroyed pretty much in the space pictured above.

She’s done the same thing in the same place to pillows, towels, socks, shoes. And the most contradictory thing of all is that she knows she’s gonna be in trouble for it, but she does it anyway. Because she’s a dawg. When I got home and discover the descimation, she’s either at the backdoor all “My bad!” or in the backyard to uptight to come in. Of course, I don’t hit her. Sure, I may throw at her whatever it is she’s chewed up but the worst I’ll do is yell “bad dog” or hold her nose to the destruction and sternly tell her “no!”

And then there are the glorious nights like last night when I got home to find Ranger hadn’t ventured to the dark side this once. I praise her like she’s just about the bestest dawg in the whole world -which she just about is.

But I still haven’t answered your question: why point a camera at the scene of so many crimes? And the answer is in the hopes of perhaps nipping the next time in the bud. And the way we’re proposing to do that is totally hit-and-miss with a little goofy and lame and some ineffective thrown in as well. See, if we chance upon an image that shows her in the midst of mangling something what I plan to do is call home and through the answering machine speaker basically call her name and tell her to stop.

Will it work? If I had a Magic 8-Ball I’m pretty sure the answer that would come up is “My Sources Say No,” but I’m still willing to give it a try. Or two.

UPDATED (9.27): As you can see today we’ve panned around the corner and we’re spotlighting Buster our Russian tortoise on the BusterCam. Faaaaaaaascinating. Yes she’s real. Yes she’s not dead. Yes her name is Buster because I thought she was a he when me mom found her in her backyard back in October 2001 — no doubt an escapee from some unknown neighbor. For years I’ve been wanting to rename her the Russian word for “miracle” (for entirely valid reasons to be looked up in and linked to from the archives later) but pleas for someone to phonetically sound it out so I know how to pronounce it have fallen on silent keyboards.

Hey there. It’s your friendly neighborhood mad scientist/engineer/documentationalist/timelapsologist again, coming to you live from the tippity top of roof of our Silver Lake abode, where I got the bug to install my laptop and digicam in an attempt to capture what hopefully will be the building of another day’s “thunderhat” above and beyond the Verdugo Mountains centered out there in the distance as seen below:

As you can see there’s nothing much happening but a lotta blue sky right now but I’m hopeful that as the hours march so will the cumulo-nimbussessess way out over the Antelope Valley as they have rather spectacularly the last few days. If the clouds come back and it all works out (meaning that the heat/direct sunlight doesn’t melt the camera, the tripod, the cabling, and the laptop — which it very well might, despite the rudimentary shading I erected) I should be able to post a timelapse movie compiled from images made every 30 seconds that will be a treat to watch as it slowly unfolds. Fingers crossed!

UPDATE (12:36 p.m.): I must’ve been reading my friend Frazgo’s mind because upon our return from grocery shopping I immediately went up top with an umbrella and rigged up some of the very shade he recommended in the comment that I just found when I came back down to upload pics of the set-up still fully functional, perhaps made a little more so by the extra sunscreen (after the jump):

(more…)

The thermometer on the shelf beside me tells me it’s 90 degrees in the library as I write this at 9:06 p.m. About nine hours earlier when it was even hotter outside I said to Susan “Howsabout we camp out in the backyard tonight?” And she said “Oh hell yeah!” And so I went down into the basement and first extracted and assembled my oldest 6′ x 8′ tent, but there was no way that was going to accommodate her and me and the two dogs.

Why so many occupants? Well, not only had we decided to backyard camp just for the noveltyof it and the slightly cooler outdoor temps, but also as a warm-up for the Death Valley trip we’re planning in November — with the dogs. So what better way to get Ranger and Shadow acclimated to the tent then to try a test run on the premises.

click to quadruplify

So down I went back into the basement and finally found the Eureka Tetragon 1210 10′ x 12′ foot monster tent that I bought for our first Death Valley trip back in 2005, and broke down the first one. It may not be clear from the picture above but fully assembled the Eureka is a McMansion in the realm of tents. But ya know, being 6′2″ it is so nice being able to stand straight up inside. And that 120 square feet will make the interior a little more habitable for me, my wife, and the two animals.

So off we go into the wilds of the backyard for what promises to be an interesting night for all concerned.

UPDATED (09.02): The night outside was uneventful, quiet and cool… or at least cooler than indoors, and it was awesome to occasionally stir and see through the tent’s roof mesh the moon shining through the fig leaves overhead. We opted not to go with the inflatable mattress and in hindsight with the dogs that wasn’t a bad idea, but some padding beyond just the opened sleeping bags could have made things a bit more comfortable against the hard ground. On the awesome side, Ranger and Shadow were beautifully well behaved and settled in to the confines of the closed tent quite easily.

About to amscray for another edition of Thugsday night bike riding, this time first to MacArthur Park to check out a free concert and then south to see the two places west of USC that Jackie Robinson called home during his 1947 rookie season with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Pictures will follow.

UPDATE (08.10): I spoke too soon about the pix. While on the way to the meeting point I did stop and snap a reclusive stash of Caché’s superchickens dating back to 2004, and also took some requisite shots of the free concert after we arrived at the spiffed-up and freshly unfenced-off Levitt Pavilion at MacArthur Park…

… any opportunity for images of the 1947 L.A. residences of Jackie Robinson at 1588 W. 36th Place and 1283 W. 35th Street were limited by the lack of illumination. Plus they weren’t really worth the pixels. While the first home looks as if it might have been the same structure as was there 60 years ago (albeit with some serious modifications to the siding) the heavy stucco covering the second property — a duplex –  has erased most indicators of its past. Only the garage visible at the back is perhaps still in its original state.

So the DSL modem went into what turned out to be its death throes last night, its panel of three LEDs raging in a blinky fluttering show of red and orange and green desperation.

I unplugged the thing and let it sit a bit before reconnecting it, but that didn’t help things. Then I pulled out all the ethernet and phone cables and let it sit some more but it seemed the hardware had come to its end at the sad young age of 2.

Too soon. Waaaaaay too soon.

This morning. Nothing. Not even the faintest blip of light emitting diode flashed and so I called AT&T’s tech support and after getting connected to “Jeff” in Banganila and dutifully redoing the steps I’d already done he declared the 2Wire 1701HG Gateway deceased, and without even so much as giving me a chance to grieve over its corpse offered to send me a new and improved 2Wire 2701HG “free” if I upgraded my account… which meant a price bump of about five bucks a month.

No thanks, bastards.

I’m pretty sure they killed it with some sort of self-destruct code sent from an underground bunker in Bangor. Or maybe Bangalore. Damn them.

But I’m not getting suckered into their scheme. Instead I hauled out the old lapper and plugged in a phone line and did the old dial-up thing, the 56K-speed connection screech brrrrp sound bringing back memories of the early ’90s. Then I promptly (meaning “glacially” in terms of surfing speed) found a bigbox store nearby that has the new 2Wire 2701HG unit and I’ll be picking that up today on my way back from a job fair down in Anaheim.

UPDATED (9:33 a.m.): Wow, I actually resurrected the 6-year-old Apple Airport base station that’s apparently too old and obsolete to be effected by AT&T’s Biennial Gateway Decimatrix Pulse. I’m still cruising the internuts at 56K, but at least the lapper ain’t tethered to a phone cord.

UPDATED (3:58 p.m.): New wireless router/modem installed. Ahhhh. Much better.

UPDATED (7:00 p.m.): Might I add that my term “Biennial Gateway Decimatrix Pulse” is my new favorite invention ever. I might even get it put on a shirt.