A Local Country Drive

Some long time readers might remember this 2010 FJ that I bought in June of 2021, soon after I moved here. I traded it in for a 2019 Silver 4Runner TRD Off Road that following fall and the 4Runner was the ONLY REASON I got rid of it. It already had the rock rails and the kind of wheels I like. Well strange things happen in the world of cars/trucks online ... I found it a few weeks ago on cars.com and my brain cells went to work. LOL

Local Flooding Not To Bad

Once the hounds were fed lunch I had plans of driving the local area taking photos of what I assumed would be some major flooding in the area. I was surprised ... nothing that I saw was out of the ordinary like I thought I'd find. Yes, the highway heading north out of town was closed due to flooding as usual, but the water level was not close to the highway heading west, like I expected.

Here is some of the yard damage after all the water was absorbed by the yard. Any gardeners or landscape experts out there? Can you tell me what this is?  Yard moles or something else?

Both hounds were ready for their afternoon siestas and I was ready to take a drive.

Good to see a part of the local water system, which I do use their service living outside of town, is above water. Yet that is a good gauge of the depth of the water in the low laying field.

Even in 24° weather I rolled my car passenger side window down with hopes of getting this exact shot. I wanted a clean window and if I didn't roll down the one I had, I'd have a dirty filter for the photo. The Canon G9 X did well shooting on the move.

Here you can compare and see just how deep the water has risen during the storm that started Wednesday night and peaked at 11:30am on Thursday. This was taken on January 10th of this year. As you can see the river has risen quite a bit in a very short time.

This is just normal flooding after a good few days of storming, as I have seen it much worse in the past. The airport I blogged about on January 10th is to the left of the photo.

I admit, unlike some bloggers that take photos of their local area while driving roads they know and some areas they see everyday, I am not good at doing that. It's mainly because I really don't enjoy it that much. Even when I was much younger, before the internet was even a thought, I was never was one to explore the local area ... I'd rather spend time shooting free throws on the backyard basketball goal.

So after that group of photos from the local drive which turned out less than I had expected, I stopped for a few groceries, filled up my gas tank and headed home for a relaxing afternoon. I played a few games of Mahjong with this view from my laptop. Isn't that a nice view of my new lake? While the hounds slept I read some, then took a siesta just like them.

A little after 5:30pm it was time for our second walk of the day. The only difference besides the weather, Heidi led the charge outside wanting to spend some time exploring the yard while Stella and I walked our half mile as the sun went down. It was 24° but she was more than excited to get outside.

You can see just how far the flooding goes to the right of my house and across the highway. Most of that water will go, I don't know ... maybe a quarter mile to the north.

Walking back directly in the sun gave all the photos a much different look. Very little editing on any of these photos today.

A rare sudden burst of energy as Stella hops into a trot.

14 minutes after we stepped outside to start the walk, Heidi was in the backyard meeting Stella and I upon our return. She didn't mind the cold temperatures. Needless to say she led the way back inside.

A pretty good end to a nice day. With my new political perspective I wrote about this morning I felt stress free and enjoyed what the day brought. I didn't watch that much tv today and only saw glimpses of online news.

I barely caught this photo. I was about to publish this post when I stopped and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I caught the sun setting outside my kitchen window. I grabbed the camera, ran outside and almost missed it. To keep it real as possible I just uploaded to the blog without any editing.

Well it's another Friday night without a lot planned. I think I'll change things up a little and take DishNetwork's offer of Showtime being a free preview this weekend starting tonight. If I don't find anything I want to watch on that channel, they also have a pretty impressive list of new movies I can pay to view. I see a couple I would not mind squeezing some money out of my tight hands and pay to see a couple of them.

It was also the day of junk mail in my mailbox by the driveway. Some of it had been in there for days and survived all the hard rain. I was happy to see the "time sensitive, immediate reply requested" piece of mail survive because it has all the great deals on hearing aids .... which I do not need ... but they remind me every month ... that I might.  :)

There is one thing consistent in all the news stories about Jeff Bezos ... I have read a lot of them and in none of the articles I have read or the news about him on tv ... not once has he denied those photos are of him. He can't. From the details of each photograph that someone possesses, he took a full body shot with his face in view ... damaging ... even if he might be getting blackmailed.

No denial from him.

Oh and all of that junk mail was tossed right into my recycling container like always, hearing aids offer and all.

It was another successful day of retirement here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

A Morning Drive In The Area

It seemed like a good idea at the time, early Thursday morning. Both hounds like riding in the car but that doesn't mean they sit up the whole way, looking out the window and enjoying the scenery passing by. Stella always likes to go even if we are not going anywhere. She will check the back door of the Mini Countryman as she walks by it just in case that door pops open after she pushes her nose onto it. Heidi on the other hand, probably only rides because I want her to. I've always had the feeling she doesn't enjoy going in the car that much.  She is experienced though, with the 3,000 mile trip in June 2015 and a short turn around trip to Arkansas in September 2013.

We hadn't left yet and I am not sure what her look means. She might be trying to comprehend the seat warmers, noted by those two small green lights in front of her nose. It didn't take long for her to lay down and go back to sleep.

The local area is a pretty neat geography lesson. As we go south to southeast it is all hills. Either a few miles west or about 20 miles southwest like we are heading, the land is flat as far as you can see. I was hoping to get some photos of that difference in the landscape as we left Thursday morning. The plan was subject to change but I had the "42 mile loop" as the main idea.

Both of those pictures don't show the steepness of the hills we were traveling on.

By this time we have traveled five to eight miles from the last picture, driven through a very small farming community and are headed west.

Those high power towers are the same line you see on our walks through the field. They will go another 75 miles to the Ohio River.

To me this is just a drastic difference in land in such a short distance. Geography experts will know the reason or could it explain it much better than I can, but I was told once it was just how the glaciers spread throughout the state of Indiana.

We are heading north on the same highway that I use to dive the Z4 on. This is the highway where the cops would have thrown away the keys if they had ever caught me. With a nice smooth highway and plenty of room to see what was ahead of you, it was very hard not to test the specs for the highest speed

This irrigation system will be busy next summer.

After we had passed through another farming town of Newberry I decided to turn off onto a country road, thinking I'd have plenty of chances to stop the car, stand outside the door and take some pretty good pictures. The times I did that up to this point, Heidi always thought we were all getting out of the car and would step over onto the driver's seat ... my seat. Stella was stretched out in back and rarely woke up from her morning nap.

Like I said when we started, plans change and sometimes they change pretty quickly. I knew by the way this road looked it was going to have to be two hands on the steering wheel even if we were going 40 mph. It looks straight there, but within a few miles it was curvy, some hairpin turns or stop signs at the bottom of a blind hill. Just like it should as we drove east ... the closer we got to 'my area' all the flat land had disappeared, replaced by short steep hills on a rough and narrow country road.

She finally sat up in her seat instead of lowering head over the floorboard, and gave me the look "I have to get outside" ... I pulled into a dirt driveway heading to a barn and let her out on my side of the car. She had to pee .... she must have been holding it since we left home because I was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to stop. After I lifted her back onto my seat and she took her seat ... we were only a few miles from the highway to take us home. That tower you can see in the center of the picture is the same tower I take a picture of when we are in back of the field on our walks.

Two seconds after I turned the car off and opened my door, Heidi jumps out and sprints for the front yard. It looked like we made it home just in time.

It was still in the low 20's so she wasn't going to stay outside too long. Stella and I were already in the house waiting for her to come to the door. As far as Stella was concerned, this travel day was over. She went back to her spot in front of the island to sleep the rest of the morning away. Honestly, local drives with the hounds will be few and far between. I'll go out and take pictures but they don't have to go, since they would rather stay home and sleep. They liked being back home by the way their tails looked running in the house.

It was cold Thursday morning but by Saturday we are looking at 4"-6" of snow in this area.

Mood Swings Are Interesting

They come and go unexplained, the mood swings. At least now I can recognized them and hop on for the ride. They don't last long (24-36hrs) and they are not caused by the amount of sleep I get or lack of. The hounds don't upset me to start down that path. TV news isn't watched but I'd love to use that as an excuse. Food? Diet? ... maybe.

So how can one live alone, non social, active mentally and at times physically, go off the rails?

Many years ago I'd be mad the next morning after any one of my teams had lost a basketball game, a baseball game or football. Not anymore as I view it just as a game and I don't have anything to do with the outcome sitting on the couch 8' away. The players have to decide how bad they want to win and performance is key. So ballgame results are not a reason either.

I blame my mother. She was just like this. She could be Mother Theresa one minute and by the afternoon she was Bobby Knight for no apparent reason. For those that don't know who Bobby is, google his name. She fought her disease with pharmaceutical, prescribed meds, and in a way that even made things worse. Let's just say I learned my anger issues from one of the best teachers of all time.

I was never into that prescribed meds thing. Even after my car wreck in March 2010. I left the emergency room that night (6pm) with a had full of prescriptions for more meds than I ever wanted and never asked for ... I had my chance to jump on the opioid addiction train. I had all the famous names right there in my hand and didn't take one of them.

Over the years I have tried many things to combat mood swings and honestly, no matter what the 'experts' say or recommend ... they don't work. This 'thing' is buried deep in the DNA files and just going out running for 20 minutes, riding a bike for an hour or even meditating for 20 minutes twice per day ... they might take the edge off but they don't squash naturally born mood swings.

You probably could tell something was wrong after you read the last two or three posts I had written or through the comment section where I replied. Internally I had declared war on everybody, everything and even the electronics that only sit here. I was on the out of control train and no way to stop it.

No, self talk does not help either.

I had solid sleep last night, the normal 5-6 hours worth. By the time I had made coffee this morning I could tell the 'mental war' was over. I felt great and already knew what my plans were for the day.

In a few minutes, Stella and I will take our daily morning walk in 19° weather. Then something different after that. Instead of downloading photos, editing them and putting a blog post together, the hounds and I are climbing in the Mini for a tour around the local area with cameras (Canon & Nikon) in hand. We are going for a ride and will hopefully grab some nice pictures to blog about later.

Sorry for the lack of pictures tucked in neatly between paragraphs but I thought this type of post should be only words that were quick and easy to read. I'm only adding a feature image so the columns on my blog front page line up right.

Believe me, it's much better this morning in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Hounds Take A Ride

As much as I like to have a spotless car most of the time, if not all the time, I thought while the temps were cool on Saturday afternoon that it was time for the hounds to have their first ride in the FJ. They were very familiar with the vehicle so all three of them assumed their normal seating. I lifted Heidi up to the drivers seat and she climbed over the console to take her co-pilot position. Sadie and Stella have no problem sharing the back with the back seats folded down.

I don't take them everywhere I go, especially now during the hottest time of year. These rides are non-stop flights from the house and back to the house. The windows are down most of the time and in the FJ only the front windows roll down. All windows in the back do not, the tailgate window does open up but I cannot give Stella a 1/2" of space where she thinks she can get out.

Even with the early summer floods a lot of the fields have recovered, some were replanted. Combined with all the sunny days, the soybeans and corn all looked very good. You will notice a standing 'house' in this picture. That is a water pump for the local water company. In 2008 the flooded field had water up to the bottom of that house looking structure ... but no damage.

I am getting a little better at taking photos while driving, just by holding the camera up pointed out the passenger window. I keep my eyes on the road and when I hear the beep that it is focused I press the shutter. So I never know if I have captured the picture like I intended.

I have mentioned I live in an area of hilly terrain. Only 5 miles west of me, the land is flat as far as you can see. It's quite a contrast being so close.

I saw in the online paper last night that a larger grain silo of this type exploded as they were loading trucks. Something in the metal, heat and all of that corn was the cause. I don't know that much about it. No one was hurt. It said that the farmer's son posted the picture on Facebook and had over a million views. I am surprised this picture turned out as good as it did since I was 'shooting blind'. Still too blurry.

No, Sadie is not in distress. She always likes to sit in the very back so she can look out those small corner windows. She does not wear a collar so a leash is not attached. That red bungee cord is stored that way and is used to hold the 32gl container when I take the recycling material to the local center. Yes ... there will be hound nose smudges on all windows except the driver's window ... that is just the way it is with hounds that like to ride.

I took this picture while holding my camera facing the rear, lining up the camera's picture in my rear view mirror.

I have a reader that may recognize these. He was in the area a few years ago and was taking pictures along this train track in a nearby town.

Heidi doesn't say much when she rides. She never whines, never barks but just sits with her nose resting on the edge of the window so the air fills her nose with scents. I always wonder what she really does smell when I am going 55mph or how it feels to her.

This is a typical country highway in this area. Some parts of this highway flood over depending on how much rain there is as far north as Indianapolis.

More great looking soybeans.

I take this road sometimes in the Z4 but I never take my camera. When I am in that car I just enjoy the drive and am not really interested in taking pictures. There are times in that car I need both hands on the steering wheel.

If  you have a weak stomach you would not be able to drive on this road. In this short stretch there are three steep hills going up and down within a short distance. One of those short steep hills are hidden in this photo. You almost feel like the wheels of your car are off the ground as you crest a couple of these hilltops.

We returned home with no problems. Before we were close to home all three hounds were laying down and sound to sleep. Winston use to fall asleep within minutes after starting the drives. He did that when I brought him home as a 8 week old basset hound puppy and slept most of the 5 hour drive.

I wasn't able to get a clear picture of Stella riding. To give you some idea, she will move around the back pressing her nose against each window to see if one will open. She does the same thing with her nose when trying to open the door to get inside. Due to her excitement riding, she will drool a lot. All I will say about that is, I have a rag I take and try to wipe the bottom of her mouth off before she leaves it inside the FJ.

That's hard to do when she is out of reach. The drool is comparable to Gorilla Glue, one of the benefits of owning a bloodhound. Not all hounds drool but those that do keep me on my toes and aware at all times ... especially when they shake their head from side to side.

As you can tell from some of the photos I still need practice keeping my hand steady as I hold the Nikon D3200 with one hand and steer the FJ with the other.

It's beautiful country here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.