I don’t know how the voting works or whether they’ll use you email address for nefarious purposes but there’s all kinds of camera equipment to be won. A few votes would not hurt my chances from amongst the 5000+ entries…
Please click on over to the LA Times and “Vote as Best”…
If you want to enter your photogenic mutt, you can enter too… Details here.
We’re off to SCruz for the night and I just left Atticus at the boarding kennel place. They reckoned he might have American Eskimo in him, and they might just be on to something. Here’re a couple of American Eskimos:
CC photos by Mendrakis and Rocker’s Generation
Atticus would, for obvious reasons, be rubbish at hiding in the Alaskan permafrost.
It’s about 15 blocks away and I noticed that although ‘Cus travels forward in a straight line, he’s at an angle of about 15 degrees as he moves. I think it’s time to get his legs realigned. He’s certainly done a fair bit of mileage in the last 6 months or so.
Only 200 pesos to returf the lawn apparently…
NB: Americans: First familiar”ize” yourselves with classic British kids TV programmes here… the first 30 seconds should be enough, then have an eyeful of Atticus´s latest landscape gardening attempt…
As visitors to our house may already know this is a regular occurrence whenever anyone drives away from young ‘Cus.
It’s very tricky to photograph jet black dogs in very sunny conditions, especially when they never look at the camera… Sita and Monica photograph well though. And they pampered Mr. Cus to bits yesterday afternoon with special Barbie-Princess-themed “Champú para perros”. He enjoyed it more than the photos appear to show…
After all that fun, Jose came round and made his trademark dish: Bocado de Cielo. It’s billed as a lasagne with tortillas instead of pasta and jumbo prawns instead of meat. But actually, every lasagne ingredient goes out the window and is replaced with chilis or manchego cheese and other stuff, and what you end up with really has nothing to do with lasagne. But is delicious. Jana and Victor came round too and showed us some of their photos from Ecuador. A good night…
obviously he’s missing his other family in L.A., but just to show how he’s adapting to life south of the tropic of Cancer, here he is refreshing himself with chilled mineral water on Sunday’s Via Recreativa:
and here’s the famous “Daily Doggy Dinner Dance” along with feeding instructions:
He’s a great one for cheering us up.
If you’ve ever wondered, as I have, what would happen if we let Atticus keep digging and didn’t try and didn’t dissuade him with a blast from the hose pipe? This site has the answer. If he was in Guadalajara (which looks increasingly unlikely given his ability to charm his ‘grandparents’ in Downey, CA) he’d end up flooding the garden when he reached the middle of the Indian Ocean. Jed would end up just off the coast of New Zealand so Stu’n’Anne could look after him for a bit- they’ve just arrived there and already bought some wheels. Don’t know what it is about Taunton that makes people want to travel as far away as humanly possible from it…
Great weekend at Pahrump and Las Vegas, Nevada, for more pix, click away. Aunt Minnie’s house seems desert proof enough and I’ve found a strain of slot machines that I can lose money on very slowly. Sita’s more into the roulette, which means ‘I will bankrupt you’ in French.
Finally got round to booking the car hire for Geneva and beyond, watch out for a speeding Seat Ibiza confused as to which side of the autoroute to drive on in early Sept…
And last, and by most means, least, Atticus’s web debut on GwynUnlimited is here. He also got seamlessly pasted into our wedding photo here. Vive la revisionisme historique!
UPDATE- And this week’s fantastic Onion headline from the future (2056): Democratic Middle Eastern Union votes to declare war on U.S.
MECCA—The 14 democratic member nations of the Middle Eastern Union unanimously voted to declare war on the U.S. Monday, calling the North American country a “dangerous rogue state that must be contained.”
A bientot, gwyn
Please note ironic use of Papyrus font… Photos are from the coast north of Wilder Ranch, but south of Davenport… I have a new photography techinique which involves tying a dog to your arm and having him pull at you erratically while you try and frame your shots. If you like the collage (above) pic, it was made with Picasa 2, free from Google. Thoroughly recommended little app, that one.
Not one for you dialluppers… It takes a good 30 seconds to download even on broadband.
Jesus… he’s not getting on with the grandparents. Can’t stand much more of this barking & aggression… Mayday. Mayday.
Miserable weather here in SC, rain, wind, it’s just like Taunton… anyroad, at least I wasn’t getting neutered today which is more than I can say for the latest arrival to Bellevue St.. Sita was going to pick Atticus up from the shelter, but she had an exam to envigilate/proctor so I went meself. Atticus was carried out to me, cos he was still sleepy from his op, and handed over with all his medical records and suchlike. We had a painless journey to the house. I walked him round the garden for 20 mins or so, as per my instructions, in the dark. I then let him into the kitchen, let go of his lead and he darted off into the living room to crap slap bang in the middle of the carpet. I told him my feelings on this, said I was dissappointed rather than angry… I wasn’t sure whether to get dog shit clearing up equipment or my digital camera… I plumped for the former and we went on a 30 min walk round the block. We encountered 1 cat on the way which reared up and Atticus tried to hide, then I called round Tanya’s who provided me with vittals and good cheer and is coming round later to make veggie lasagna. Atticus is in the kitchen now. I am in me office. I’m about to download an mp3 of Talking Heads “Once in a lifetime”.
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful Wife
And you may ask yourself-well…how did I get here?
And you may ask yourself, what’s that scratching sound on the kitchen door?
Sita seems happy. He’s a very dark dog, might have to wait for daylight for decent pix.
This attempt at running from the top of the Grand Canyon’s North Rim to the South and back had been on the cards for the best part of a year and all my runs over the last year or three have kind of been leading up to this. Having to say goodbye to the best dog in the world, Atticus the day before almost made me cancel but you don’t get opportunities like this very often… Derek, Jon and I headed down from SLC around 3pm on Friday afternoon and set up our tents in the forest about 7 hours later just outside the National Park. Temperatures fell that night to 13F ( -10°C ) and none of us slept particularly well, we were up by 5am and drove to the Kaibob trailhead and changed into shorts and shirts and headlamps and started the descent in the cold and dark as the sun slowly rose. Starting a trailrun downhill is very different to the usual hard uphill and though I should probably have saved my energy, we got to the bottom in under 3 hours and it might be the best trail I’ve ever run, the going was soft and mostly wide enough to pass people okay, the views were magnificent and ever changing with the light and elevation, and the temperature was perfect and shaded all the way down. Any new trail is fun but I’d never been into the actual Grand Canyon before and the scale of everything is just ridiculous for a country lad like me. As good as it gets really.
After crossing the Colorado river and waiting for the mule train to go past delivering luggage and supplies to the folks staying at Phantom Ranch, Derek and I began the ascent, by this point it was getting hot. After getting about halfway up to the rim I wasn’t doing great and the temperature (it hit around 85F (30C)) and incline was only going to get worse. There was also the small matter of getting back the 18 odd miles to the North Rim, so I decided to give up on the R2R2R goal and just make sure I got back okay. Derek, who is made of sturdier stuff and has done this madness before, carried on and made it to the top (South Kaibob trailhead) while I waited down at Phantom Ranch and then we did the long ascent back to the car together. By the end of it I was pretty beaten up and limped over the finish line about half an hour after the sun had fully set and we made it to the Saloon in North Rim in time for Bright Angel IPAs before heading back to the tents. Maybe this time next year I can try again now I know better what is involved. A warmer sleeping bag is first on the list and more training on ascents in full sun/ heat. The full R2R2R that Derek did is 20,000 feet of ascent, 46 miles and I managed about 14,500 over 37 miles or so. It’s by far the furthest I’ve done in a day Map of the GPS recording (10 KM further that the 50K a fortnight ago) but I’m still a disappointed I didn’t do the full thing. Maybe next year. I should have a better phone by then too… these photos could have come out better, with such different light levels and the massive scale of everything it was hard to take decent shots but these give an idea. Photos of me courtesy of Derek. Decided not to include the one of me looking very pale post puke on the way up…
Unforgettable.
