Tonight's Drinking Four Loko With Homeless People On The Tandy Hills

Sunset Tandy Hills Hikes are my new repetitive habit. Come the heat of next summer I can see where late in the evening Tandy Hills Hikes might be a really good thing.

If I am still living here.

Tonight's hill hike had one jarring moment. I was walking along, fast, when suddenly ahead of me I saw a pile of stuff that did not belong in the natural area. Because it was not natural. From a distance I thought it was some sort of construction material.

But, as I got closer I saw it was a little pathetic camp. It made me a bit nervous, as I looked around, looking for the homeless person who belonged to this abode. I saw no one. But noises in the trees startled me a couple times as I took pictures.

On the right side of the camp you can see a Dallas Cowboy blanket. Could this be the camp of that hapless Wade Phillips guy who Jerry Jones fired as Dallas Cowboy coach a few days ago? I know Jerry Jones can be a bit draconian, but would he leave that sad coach homeless? I suspect not.

Continuing on I came upon a new Four Loko can stuck on a branch. Could the Tandy Hills Homeless Person be the Four Loko drinker?

Four Loko has been banned in the repressive, conservative State of Washington. Meanwhile in free-spirited, liberal Texas, Four Loko continues to be sold.

Even to minors.

A guy was arrested a day or two ago, here in the D/FW Metroplex, for selling Four Loko to a pair of minors, 16 years old, I think, who drank the Four Lokos, stole the family SUV, in Denton, and headed for the Oklahoma border, with a 14 year old girl. The driver, drunk on Four Loko, rolled the SUV, sending the un-seat-belted girl flying to her death.

I have not detected much noise in my current location demanding a cessation of Four Loko selling. If there has been noise it may have been lost in all the noise over Fort Worth Streetcars.

Me & My Shadow On The Tandy Hills With More Four Loko

That is me and my shadow on the Tandy Hills again, on this Sunday Halloween in Texas. I tried anew to find the mysterious Witchey Tree, to no avail.

I saw no snakes today. A variety of birds was singing a pleasant cacophony of melodic tweeting. I saw no human on the hills today.

But, I did see a blimp. But not on the Tandy Hills. The blimp was hovering over the Ballpark in Arlington and the Cowboy Stadium. I could not tell if it was a Goodyear blimp. It seemed an odd thing to see, making clear how close the Ballpark/Stadium District of Arlington is to my location, and to the Tandy Hills.

I think Game 4  of the World Series starts up some time after noon. And the Dallas Cowboy's game starts up well after the World Series game starts. Today will be Arlington's biggest test of moving traffic in and out of the play zone.

Due to the extremely pleasant temperature, all my windows are open. I have heard no cheering coming from the east. I hope this does not mean that the Rangers' fans are having nothing to cheer about today.

I found another empty can of Four Loko today. This one was way to the west of the ones I found yesterday, stuck on limbs on the Tandy Highway. Today I took one of those Tandy Highway Four Loko cans, stuck a stick in it, and stuck it on the Tandy Shrine at the top of Mount Tandy.

With the Four Loko can on a stick I was able to read the ingredients. Caffeine, Taurine, Guarana and Alcohol. Hence the name. Four things to make you loco.

Who is wandering around the Tandy Hills, slurping down these potent beverages and leaving the cans behind? I think we can eliminate me, Stenotrophomonas and Don Young as suspects.

Hiking The Tandy Hills With Snakes & Four Loko

Hiking the Tandy Hills is such an educational experience for me. Often in very unanticipated ways.

Like today.

In several locations in the Tandy Hills someone has decorated a branch with an empty beverage can. It was a can unfamiliar to me.

I examined one of the cans, up close, to see the beverage was called Four Loko. 23 1/2 ounces with 12 percent alcohol mixed with Guarana and Taurine, which are stimulants. I think caffeine might also be in the mix. Which is also a stimulant.

When I was back at my computer I Googled "Four Loko" and was surprised to learn it was in the news.

Not in the news due to being overly consumed on the Tandy Hills, but for being overly consumed at two Universities on opposite sides of the country.

New Jersey's Ramapo College and Central Washington University, in Ellensburg, in my old home state.

Central Washington University is where I graduated from. It was strange to Google for info and have that college pop up. Pop up due to nine freshmen requiring hospitalization after drinking Four Loko, along with other booze.

I need to go to Wal-Mart to get milk in a bit, along with a returning of some books to the library, which, miraculously, is open. I am going to look for Four Loko at Wal-Mart.

I forgot to mention. The picture above of the Four Loko can was taken on the Tandy Highway. As soon as I stuck the camera back in my pocket, two humans popped in to view. Startling me. Human encounters are rare on the Tandy Hills.

I chatted a bit with the humans. I think I startled them too. It was a guy and a girl pair of humans. This was their first time on the Tandy Hills. And they were new to the area. I told them they were going to have a lot of fun figuring out the maze of trails and finding all of them.

Before the human encounter I had another snake encounter. I was not fast enough, again, to get a picture. This snake encounter was near the bottom of the south trail that takes you down Mount Tandy to the Tandy Highway. It was a green snake, with darker green markings, about 2 feet long.

Ironically, just yesterday, when I hiked the wild west side of the Tandy Hills, I did so because the temps were cool, thus, I erroneously thought, slowing the movement of any slithery reptilian creatures. I do not hike on the wild west side of the Tandy Hills when it's HOT.

The temperature was 70 when I left here to go hiking. So, I guess I learned today that cold-blooded snakes can move fairly fast at a lower temperature than I realized.