Stella Sees A Coyote

Saturday morning we woke up to the best sunrise I have seen since I moved here June 13 and that is saying a lot because it seems almost every day there is one that ranks at the top of the list of sunsets. I am ecstatic that I live in this area. That is looking towards Bisbee and the Mule Mountains to the left ... the mountain on the right resides across the border in Mexico. It was a chilly 42° Saturday morning but Stella and I got our walk in while Heidi stayed home in a deep sleep after her breakfast.

The only plans for Saturday were "Football Saturday" and I was going to change the handlebar tape on two of my bicycles because I did not like the color that came with two of the 'used' bikes that I have recently bought. The hounds would sleep, I would sit on the couch watching games with me standing up to stretch during commercials and walking outside in the backyard during halftimes.

It might be fall and each morning is on the cool side but by mid-afternoon it's up in the high 70's making it perfect weather. Some that know me have been sending me photos of 4" of snow in their backyard or screen shots of their weather from the Midwest. I do NOT miss Southern Indiana weather !!!

When I bought the 'used' 1994 LeMond Zurich a few days before my bike wreck and surgery, I never liked the black tape but that seems to be "today's" color in the bike world. I am not sure how I pick which color I want but I know for this bike it wasn't going to be black.

Looking through my 'downsized' storage I find a brand new box, never opened, handlebar tape in the exact color I want ... White. This bike will now look just like the Romic.

Before I even knew this bike was for sale, I knew if I had owned this Specialized Diverge Comp I would have taken off the lowest water bottle cage and I would change the handlebar tape to black. To me, this bike was meant to show those orange highlights just as they are on the frame, not to add to them. I found out later from the owner that the lowered cage wasn't for a water bottle but a small tool kit and spare inner tube in addition to what was under the seat ... for his 100 mile rides.

Water bottle cage removed and black tape. If the seat didn't cost so much I would buy the same model of seat in black.

With Heidi in her bed in back for most of the night sleeping, that meant Stella would get all the rest of the Greek God's Honey Vanilla yogurt and would eventually clean out the container like nothing was ever there.

Again this week I found out the long hours of sitting down, even with the short breaks of standing up and walking around, probably make my hip area sorer than anything else I do. I get up three or four times while putting a blog post together but the hip is getting more flexible with those side kicks out to the side. NOT hard kicks, NOT kicks at all but just lifting my straight right leg out to the side and upward a little.

This morning skies were entirely different. Every morning is different with most of the afternoons the same. I like the variety. At least I don't glance outside and see snow flurries passing the window and temps in the single digits. :)

Little did we know that we would see a very very curious coyote on our morning walk this morning. We had made the turn around the vet building and as soon as we got on the sidewalk Stella pulled out that 25' of retractable leash like she never did before.  Just like that it zipped out 25' and I had to hang on unless I wanted to be part of the sprint. It stopped her and when I looked ahead there was a coyote standing in the nice mowed grass of the vet building staring right at Stella.

It would trot away then stop and look back at us while Stella and I did a very slow walk. By the end of the street the coyote took off running in the brush when Stella got there I wanted to see what she would do. She tracked the ground, went the right direction then when I stopped her, she raised her nose to the air and sniffed the scent of the coyote that was there just minutes before.

That is now three coyotes we have seen in two different occasions in the last 4 months. They were howling/crying in the vacant land behind my house an hour or two before sunrise this morning.

The skies were darker than the iPhone camera captured ... That is Hwy 92 where the lights are.

When the hounds think they are minutes away from being fed morning breakfast ... here is a pretty normal sequence, minus the howls and barking.

By 9am I was headed for Montezuma Pass again for the third time since moving here. I was just there last week with the truck and now I wanted to see what the new RAV4 TRD Off Road (new model) would do in comparison.

Every picture you see of a road like this, it turns left or right and climbs 7° or more right after the turn.

At the top ... the RAV did fantastic and it's only All-Four drive. I never had to go to low S1-S3 to climb. It may have handled this drive to the top better than the 4Runner and Tacoma TRD Pro.

That road doesn't go all the way to the ground level, it will veer back into the mountains for almost 16 miles of climbing and heavy rock surface.

The past few posts I have mixed and matched photos from the iPhone and the new Nikon D3500. I have really liked using the 18-55mm lens the Nikon came with although I bought it for the 70-300mm. The iPhone Pro 11 Max takes the best photos I have ever seen for crisp sharpness and little to no editing.

Besides changing the handlebar tape on two bicycles I changed the blog "About" page and updated my "Bicycles" page this morning early. I cut the size of the About page drastically and still covered 8 years of blogging.

Just like the doctor told me on October 22nd, "every day from here on out your hip is going to feel better. There will be some bad days but not from anything you do or have done, it's just a normal process of healing." The hip joint takes 2 to 3 months to heal and I will pass the 2 month mark on the 8th of November. Some of the exercises hurt just a little but I know they are helping a lot.

A great day here in the 'Wild West' today.

Freezing Cold Temperature Energizes Stella

If you look closely at the post title again you will see the name "Heidi" is not found anywhere close to the word "energized". There is a reason for that and long time blog readers recognize that Heidi as officially declared Winter 2018-2019 has arrived in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana. She did go outside in the dark and freezing cold while I poured their breakfast but one second after finishing she sprinted for the dog bed with a sleeping bag and Mexican blankets.

Stella also sleeps next to her during her short nap after breakfast. It does not matter to her that she wakes me up in the middle of the night it seems, at 6:15am ... to go outside. As I open my eyes I hear whining and sometimes a wet bloodhound nose nudging my hand. But that signal is not that she needs to go outside ... she wants breakfast. So she will go outside with Heidi first thing in the morning but stands at the door looking inside while I am in the other room pouring out her kibble.

It's the first part of the walk where she relieves herself, in the field. I could tell a few steps into the field that she was energized this morning. The frozen leaves under my hiking boots were crackling with each step, that only hit wet soggy very soft ground underneath them. No wind makes a big difference when it "feels like" 29°.

She spent most of the walk out in front of me. Glancing on each side of the path in the heavy grass I could see fresh prints from either deer or bear ... I wasn't sure which yet.

When she trotted ahead of me I had a sneaky suspension that she might get away from me today or at least try. She didn't have time to stop and eat deer scat ... she was tracking scent and it seemed the freezing overnight temperatures brought out every deer in the local area.

We change time tonight at 2am ... officially Sunday morning but as I will just wrap up my last football game on tv (Pac12) a little before that, it will still be night to me. I've never been a fan of Daylight Savings time but I understand the reasons for it. For many years Indiana was one of the few states that did not change time ... then someone with enough power got stupid and their idea was passed as law.

Stella did a lot of trotting through the field today. I was late on quite a few shots trying to catch her running. I didn't think you would want to see blurred photos that were too hard for me to see after I downloaded them. Is the Cosequin working? She has almost completed her 3rd bottle.

This time tomorrow it will be 7:37am when the sun is rising to this point. I will guarantee you I will not be taking this type of photo of the sun rising until next spring. Maybe not.

Whenever Stella stops suddenly, perks her long ears up and stands as still as possible, I prepare to run as fast as I can. I am not in shape to do that but you never know. Could she be feeling that good that she would sprint from me like she use to? I don't think she is in shape to sprint either but running might be an option. If she ran I still would not be able to catch her.

She had almost taken off for the far right corner of the field as she turned the corner but made an abrupt left turn while hopping in the air to turn and headed away from me. I was too far behind her to do much but zoom the lens a little further to see her. She started running with her nose to the ground parallel to the back edge of the field.

I thought she was gone .....

When I saw this through my camera view finder I KNEW she was gone.

She was headed either to the field behind us or straight ahead to the north woods on the other side of the field. Sadie took off after her last year deep into that woods and found her. I was so far behind that I was not a factor in the rescue mission.

As she trotted/ran away from the 200mm zoom lens setting I relaxed, picked up my walking pace but did not run, knowing she was headed north to those trees ahead. There is a big vehicle path in that woods so it would be easy to find her ... but I thought I would give it one last desperate yell to see if she might feel sorry for me and stop ....

She stopped on a dime, turned and looked at me (blurred photo) and then went back to the ground to track scent. I was happy that she stopped and evidently my breathing didn't keep my hands still enough for the camera to catch her staring back at me.

The sudden adrenaline rush was over, my cardio work out was finished even without jogging ... as she stayed near the path investigating other deer tracks. There were markings all round us that deer had been in the area.

It's a strange pattern but when I leaned over and looked into those 'holes' there were fresh deer hoof prints deep in the grass.

You can barely see them here but by the way they were I am guess a group of them were heading in that direction toward the gully and the corner where Stella had turned earlier.

Her running was over for this morning. She kept her nose pressed to the ground the rest of the way home.

A different angle of those north woods and a slight touch of editing.

I might think the morning walks are over when I walk into the yard but I don't decide that. Stella had plenty of things to check out before she came to the house. I guess I need to splurge and buy a camera or two to mount somewhere outside so I can see what kind of animals are moving around the area at night.

The after walk routine for her when she comes back into the house goes like this. She will lay by my desk chair as I download the photos and lick her feet and legs dry after the walk through wet grass. Then she will curl up as close as possible to my chair and sleep for a few hours whether I get up and leave or not. Sometimes she is so close I don't have room to roll the chair back to get up away from the desk.

The leaves are going to need another day or two of drying out before I can do anything with them. The problem is there is rain in Monday's forecast. I will be using the mowing technique that I did a few weeks ago where I mowed in the same direction back and forth, blowing all of the cut leaves toward the field. That final path along the edge of the field and yard mulched all the leaves that were left.

I had a brain flash yesterday about how to backup my photos on the external hard drive. After I had backed up the large file I remembered that if I left the drive connected all the time, each day I could move my photos to that drive just like I moved them to Flickr. This morning proved that was a good idea. It worked perfect.

Therefore I decided not to wait to see if the Flicker CEO would change his mind as he participated on the Flickr forum answering questions. His tone of answers were like any good politician and I could tell any changes people were asking for were only a dream.

I had already deleted my Flickr account late last night along with the Yahoo email address I had to have to log into Flickr.

Today is one of those times I wish I lived in the city like those commercials I will see today while I watch college football.

Why???

I am almost out of food and between the time I post this on the blog and the start of the first kickoff at 12 noon for my college football marathon, I don't have time to grocery shop on a Saturday where the place will be packed and the cashiers will be slow.

If I lived in the city I could buy my groceries online and have them delivered within hours !!!!

I guess you can't have everything when you live in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.