Winter Diversion

When you trust the National Weather Service to forecast accurately, you sometimes sit out a cold sunny Saturday and ride on a cold gray Sunday. This particular cold gray Sunday, the ladies and I ended up at a small nature park on the outskirts of Rockport, TX that is one of many bird watching hot spots in our
part of the world.

The area was soggy and the trail through it was partly submerged. Abundant standing water means the birds aren’t flying around looking for it so bird watching gets pretty slow. Mid-forties for temperatures probably wasn't stimulating them none, either.

Easing through the brush, following bird noises is part of the adventure, though, so ease we did. Jill got excited over some tiny bird I had never heard of and, in fact, have still never seen. Looking like a couple of misplaced urban guerrillas, she and Jo went stealthing among the brambles till they spotted the thing.

Jo found and collected the shell of a Lightening Whelk. The park's hand crafted birth bath was a handy place to clean the sand out of it.

Birds watched, shell collected, participants thoroughly chilled, we decided lunch was entirely called for. We rode back into Aransas Pass and dined at Taqueria Guadalajara before wending our way back to the warmth of our respective hearths. A cool time was had by all.

Off-bike Pursuits

About two years ago, the luckiest woman in Flour Bluff told me I'd just have to ignore what the voices were saying and, instead, pack up the big yella bike for a ride to the Davis Mountains, in West Texas.
While there, we visited the McDonald Observatory and made arrangements to attend a night program that included viewing the heavens through powerful telescopes.
Naturally, skies that had been cloudless all week, clouded, relegating the telescopes to the status of interesting gizmos.
On the ride home we camped at Sonora and took the tour of the Caverns of Sonora. We were the only visitors and were given a tour that would have been the envy of most cave groupies. If the cavern was a trade-off for the astronomy tour, we came out ahead.

Near dark, Wednesday, August 12, 2009, the luckiest woman in Flour Bluff suggested we cage out to Padre Island and do a little meteor gazing. It seems that, yearly, the earth passes trough the trail of debris left by the Swift-Tuttle comet and some of that debris burns up in our atmosphere as meteors.

No sooner said than did. We parked our little truck by the Packery Channel, not really out of town, but with an advantageous view towards a non-light-polluted area. As I swung the truck to point the tailgate toward the northeast Jill noticed the most beautiful lightning display from a far-off thunderstorm.
That's right, friends and neighbors, slow-moving clouds were easing in from the north, timed to obscure the rising of the constellation "Perseus", the area of the sky from whence come the meteors. We must have built up some kind of astronomy karma along the way. We do better in caves.

Hours later, rain fell on our parched corner of the world, the air cooled and the wind died, it was nice. Still, I'm a little regretful that we didn't see, possibly, one hundred meteors in an hour; one hundred shooting stars. I was going to wish my ass off.

A Family Portrait

Another weekend in paradise has been accomplished and Daughter’s birthday was observed along the way. Yes, she’s all growed up and ready to venture forth to the capitol where she’ll study design at the Art Institute of Austin. Since her Yamaha motorcycle is going with her, Jill and I found her a cool tail bag to put stuff in. A girl needs her stuff, you know. When asked how she’d like to celebrate she opted for a family ride and dinner.

We rode Ocean Drive, which curves around Corpus Christi Bay, down Shoreline Dr past the bay front and marina and over the dilapidated Harbor Bridge to North Beach where we patio dined at our favorite restaurant.

Of course, part of Jill’s agenda was to get some family photos before our little bird flies. You may recall from past posts that the restaurant is adjacent the USS Lexington museum. There is a breakwater that curves past her and ends close to the ship channel. It made for a nice setting for pictures, though I was voted down when it came to how far we should walk.

The sun was getting low and the wind was blowing nicely over the breakwater that is weathered and narrow, in some places, but intrepid shutterbugs get their shots. Here is my gang: Lir, Olwen the Jill, the luckiest woman in Flour Bluff.

The picture was taken at the end of the breakwater with downtown in the background. From the same spot, a little shuffling of feet and rotation puts the Harbor Bridge in the background. The bridge was built in 1959 but is no longer maintained since City Council claims we need a new one. The old lift bridge further up the harbor has already been dismantled, so if the Feds don’t come through with funds we’ll be driving 100 miles to get around 100 yards of water. If there’s not a real estate sale involved, they don’t plan very far ahead; but that’s neither here nor there.

Here’s a pretty nice shot of the breakwater and the Lex. The top of the breakwater is narrow, here, so Jill had to work for it.

On the way home we stopped for a little more mugging before the sun got too low in the sky.

We heard birthday cake calling our names so we saddled up and headed for the barn.



Olwen inspected the cake Jill baked for her, telling me, “Alright! Green and chocolate, my favorite colors!”

“Chocolate is a color?”, I asked.

“It is when you’re a girl!”

A good time was had by us. I like my kids.