The Hounds Make History

I cannot remember the last time the hounds and I completed our morning walk before 8am but I know for a fact it has never happened in the months between November to March. Therefore I am declaring history was made today as we stepped into the field at 7:26am with the temps at 49°. Sadie was going wild tracking scent and moving faster than my camera could catch. I ended up with not one clear picture of her until we got to the first corner.

As usual, Stella stayed behind and did her own thing but Sadie made up for her being away. Her nose was to the ground almost immediately, moving in and out of the brush along the edge of the field. I thought the chances were good to see some early morning deer but it never happened.

 

I was the reason for the early morning start. It's what happens when you go to bed early, you wake up early. What a concept that must be but it will not become a habit with me. I am a late night person by nature so evidently it was time to catch up on some sleep. I tried to get back to sleep at 5am and finally gave up at 5:27am ... then headed to the coffee machine.

That did not bother the hounds though. The house was still dark as I tried to turn on the least amount of lights as possible. They slept for the next hour before they realized I was up and the day had already started. Heidi was in such shock that she had to be talked into having breakfast an hour early because she didn't want to get out of her sleeping bag.

I am enjoying this 'heat wave' we are getting here in the Midwest. I did a road trip yesterday in the Z4 and may have been able to do the trip down to my friends house with the top down but kept it up. While driving my car thermometer was saying something like 66° with the sunshine beating down on us.

I took the same freeway (interstate) that I took in September where I had plastic parts under the car destroyed. After 300 miles of driving since I repaired everything, nothing has moved and the grille that is a few inches above the ground is still attached to the bumper extremely tight.

The trip wasn't planned but after changing the oil filter yesterday combined with the warm weather I was feeling a long road trip was due. I was going to make the same trip on Friday but was sick that day. By the time I left just after noon, the hounds had been fed their two meals for the day and had two walks completed by then.

They slept most of the 7 hours I was gone. Again, Stella did not destroy anything so her separation anxiety may gone for good. She came with that issue and I was warned about it when I picked her up in August 2015.

There is one good thing about Sadie that is different than Stella ... when she falls behind during the walk I never have to call her. She will eventually come running as fast as she can to catch up with me.

That doesn't mean there isn't a scent that she has to check out, where she stops abruptly and turns around while running full speed.

I caught myself playing around with different browsers yesterday morning. Just in the past few days it has been taking a little longer to load pages. I don't know if Safari has added something new behind the scenes that protects against fake/spam websites but my download speed has decreased from 47Mbps to 33-35Mbps on a consistent basis. It did have those new features with their updated macOS a month or so ago.

When I looked at Firefox for updates, they had released their new and faster browser called Firefox Quantum. I had to try it. I looked at the same websites I normally look at so I could compare it to Safari. Safari had improved their download speed when they released the new macOS but this new Firefox browser was much faster than I currently was using ... I made it my default browser to see how the new system works.

Firefox has always seemed to use more data than Safari so I'll be able to compare data usage over the next week to see if that is the case.

Looking toward the north after Sadie had ran a large loop out in the middle of the field. Stella is nowhere in sight up ahead.

By this time I thought Stella had disappeared. I couldn't see her anywhere but Sadie led me right to her. She is hard to see when she is in the middle of the dormant hay.

With the hottest day yet predicted this afternoon I plan on washing the car by hand. I never take the Z4 through the car wash and since it's in a carport I always cover it with a car cover. It only takes a few minutes to take off and on but keeps all of the dust off the car that is carried in the air by the traffic 100' away and the fields.

I am hearing from a few friends that they have bought the new iPhone 8. One blogger has bought the iPhone X and has blogged a lot about it. If you can live with smaller screens, the iPhone 8 and the new iPhone X would be a great computer replacement. I tried downsizing one time years ago when I went from a desktop to a laptop. The Gateway laptop that was being advertised as a desktop replacement. That was over ten years ago when I was using a PC.

Still I will never downsize because I am addicted to my two 27" monitors that sit side by side. I still use my laptop, and the mini tablet plus the phone all in different ways. I had the iPhone 8 in my hands yesterday while visiting my friend and I must admit, it's an amazing piece of technology.

I have no plans to upgrade my iPhone to the new model.

Stella may take her own time or go her own way during the morning walk but by the time she hits the backyard she always seems to look satisfied that she had a great walk in her view. It's on to some inside play with Sadie and her feature this morning as been her Nylabone.

She will still fit in a nap before lunch is served.

Yesterday at noon we did our 2nd walk of the day. At that time I wasn't sure I was making the 100 mile trip south because my friend had not called me back yet to tell me if he was going to be available. So with Stella on the leash, I took the iPhone 6s with me and took some photos with that while we walked. Here are a few of them from Monday afternoon.

After downloading these photos from the phone to the computer I realized I did not have to edit any of them and in fact they looked sharper than the pictures I take with my Nikon. Tell me what you think and if you can see the difference in the 11 photos shown below.

I had to put the retractable leash down so I could hold the camera with two hands on this one. All the rest were taking with one hand while my other hand held Stella's leash.

Stella is dying to go for a ride with the top down on the Z4 but there has never been a hound inside the Z4 to ride. She was about halfway in the drivers side door when I first bought the car, thinking she would climb over into the passenger seat. How can you refuse a face like that?

I know it's a different time of day so the colors are better due to better light ... but the sharpness and clarity is much better than my larger camera. Remember I did not edit any of the last 11 photos.

I can feel a busy day is in store here today in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

2012 Mini Cooper S Countryman Passes Test

That title may not draw a many regular readers but it's purpose is actually for those in the future that will find my review at the bottom of this blog due to Google spiders indexing it.

There might be someone like me that will be looking for some owner experience in the Mini Cooper Countryman and would like to know what it does in general terms.

So for those that have arrived, maybe curious ... we are starting with the normal hound's morning walk photos. Just as many as usual with only one picture of the Cooper Countryman at the bottom of this post to show the results of my test for it today.

It was very nice to feel the temps in the 40's as we stepped outside this morning. The skies look like rain maybe but by that time I'll be sunk into my couch watching an Indiana basketball game at 12:30am, where I do not expect them to win. That will lead me to the game I really want to watch today around 3pm ... the Washington vs Alabama football game.

Once again the team that I will be cheering for probably will not win ... The Dawgs of Washington. They could but probably won't. Then we will finish the evening with the Clemson vs Ohio State game, one that I don't care who wins nor do I care about either team. Yet, they are part of the 4 team playoff for college football.

I let the hounds roam at their own pace while I walked mine this morning. I was actually more interested in the 'sky show' I was seeing with different cloud formations ever direction you turned.

The normal storm systems will travel north of me and south of me ... it seems. That does not matter if it is winter snow storms or spring tornadoes. For years I have watched them split at the Indiana/Illinois state line and then follow I-70 to the north and the Ohio River to the south. We will still get some severe storms here in 'the tropics' but not nearly as much as those 70 miles north of us.

Stella was in the mood to keep up with Sadie today. I'm not sure what her thought process was but she was interested in following Sadie.

All the pictures look the same to me, at times bore me but then after downloading them and looking at them closer I can usually see something slightly different that my eyesight did not.

One thing I did notice this morning though were both hounds moving deeper into the wooded area, the tall dormant grass and even into the top part of the gully.

They were both thrilled to be back at their 'happy hunting grounds'. I could tell from the start that neither of them were going to leave too soon and most likely I would be on my final approach to home, after making the final turn.

It wasn't so much the tower nor the turkey farms that caught my attention in this picture ... it was the sky.

In these next 7-8 pictures you can see the difference between Sadie and Stella. Notice that Sadie is looking at me and probably cannot see me clearly but they sure do look like they are looking right at you even from a far away distance.

Sadie will ALWAYS come toward me after looking at me if she knows I am pretty far away. Okay, there are those few times where she doesn't but I would say that happens less than 1% of the time.

She will run in my direction without being called.

Whereas Stella may look right at me but that does not mean she is going to come running towards me. She is just the opposite of Sadie where if she does come my direction, it is less than 1% of the time time.

She will always stare at you, then turn the opposite direction and go back to what she was doing and doesn't have a care in the world what is going on around her. I wonder at times when she does this, if she will ever come home if I were to ignore her and keep walking.

Still has no intentions of heading Sadie and my direction.

Then with an abrupt left turn she will start her gallop usually right into my leg where she can nudge me with her nose to let me know she is back or she is there.

You might think snow is on the way but it's to be in the 50's for the next few days before going back to the daytime highs in the 20's.

While Stella, Sadie and I were finishing our morning walk ... I decided I was going to take the Mini Cooper Countryman out a different road but it would be a 'true test' for what this car could do. The Edmund's review says it can do everything the FJ can do EXCEPT climb large rocks and rutted roads where you have less than 4" of ground clearance. It also has 20 cubic inches less in the cargo area. All things I knew before making the trade.

I decided to head out to my friends house, the same road the hounds and I took in the summer, out through the cornfields, gravel and hard packed dirt roads. We blogged and took pictures of that local trip.

I wanted to try out his driveway. It starts with a 60° or steeper incline with sharp left and right curves. He says if you don't have 4x4 you will not make it ... I noticed the other day his wife was driving a Toyota Rav4 so I was pretty sure 'The Countryman' could do it.

It climbed without any problem. Having the manual transmission was a plus I think in all of this testing today, especially the driveway. The first half of the road test was mostly gravel, semi loose gravel since they had just laid a single lane of new gravel in preparation for winter snow and rain. At times this same road will washout due to the small creek that runs the full border of the road.

I came to a T in the road where I decided to take a left instead of the normal right. I had a vague idea where it would end up but I had no idea what the road was like getting there. The road went up and down, sharp curves, maybe 1-1/2 lane but a lot of time just 1 lane ... all on hard packed gravel and dirt with occasional mud. It had blind corners on top or just past a steep hill, not knowing if traffic was coming from the opposite direction.

The All4 drive performed just as described, whether it was on loose gravel, hard packed dirt or spots of mud. Sometimes the lanes were worn down enough I wondered if 4" clearance was going to be enough ... but each time it was. Those gravel/dirt roads later turned into some new pavement with the same type of up and down hills, sharp curves and narrow roads.

The Countryman naturally went into it's sports car mode and handled just as good as my BMW Z4, although the Z is a smoother ride, has more power but at no time did I feel a lack of response from the Mini Cooper S 181hp engine.

Once again I feel good about the transaction and am finding out there is not much I am missing with the Toyota FJ. I definitely like the 34mpg gas mileage I am getting in all types of driving.

Well the hounds need a quick 'pre-game' break outside to dump their tanks and then I'll be on my football game marathon for the rest of the day.

I am still deciding on which direction to take on buying new tires. I have barely enough tread left on these Pirelli Run Flat tires that came with the car.

Happy New Year from 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.