For His Spring Break Spencer Jack Has Relocated To Arizona

Last week my mom informed me that Spencer Jack was flying his dad, who is also my favorite nephew, Jason, and his favorite girl friend, my potential favorite niece-in-law, Brittney, to Phoenix to visit Spencer Jack's great grandparental units, also known as my mom and dad.

This morning, when I woke up my computer I found photo documentation from Spencer Jack's dad, photo documenting Spencer Jack in Arizona, posing in his great grandparental unit's front yard.

As you can see, my mom and dad have a very low maintenance yard with very little grass in need of mowing.

The photo documents were not accompanied by any explanatory verbiage.  However, I think I can tell the second photo was taken in the interior of Spencer Jack's great grandparental unit's abode.

I  can identify most of the people who are looking at me in the photo. On the far left we have the aforementioned Brittney, next to Brittney is Spencer Jack's dad, then my mom and dad. I am not sure who is next to my dad, but I'm guessing it is my favorite brother-in-law, Jack. I am guessing next to Jack, in the white helmet, with no discernible chin, is Spencer Jack's very special aunt Clancy, with Spencer Jack standing next to Clancy, appearing to be taking a picture. Then coming up the other side of the table we have Spencer Jack's grandpa, also known as my little brother Jake, who is currently way bigger than me, then my favorite sister-in-law, Jill, and next to Jill, my favorite brother-in-law Jack's first wife, my sister, Jackie.

I have no idea why there are so many bottles of bottled water sitting on the table. My mom and dad have filtered tap water that I found to be quite drinkable.

Rolling My Wheels Through A Gateway Park Carpet Of Green Serenaded By A Bird Symphony

I drove my handlebars back to Gateway Park today to have myself a mighty fine time rolling my wheels on the Fort Worth Mountain Bike Association's mountain bike trail.

As you can see, via the carpet of green, spring is really starting to get sprung, although wildflowers continue to be in scarce supply at my location in North Texas.

However, yesterday I did see a few bluebonnets coloring up a little bit of the Tandy Hills. I'd intended to photo document yesterday's bluebonnet sighting, but I got distracted by the discovery of proliferating Hoodoos.

I don't know if the temperature is yet sufficiently warm enough that I need to be on the lookout for slithering reptiles, as in snakes in the grass, when I'm  stopped in a lush location like you see in the picture.

In a month or two I think my level of snake wariness will be amped up if I am still opting to roll my wheels at this location.

Today something had the bird population chirping a symphony. It was non-stop. Like Mother Nature was playing a Sounds of Nature CD featuring birds.

This morning I had either my 5th or 6th swim of the year in the no longer too cool pool. My hot tub hydrotherapy sessions have been of much shorter duration of late. In other words, I think swimming season has arrived for those of us who do not require our swimming water to be heated to an un-naturally warm temperature...

Apparently I Am Usually Of Medium Intelligence But I Actually Have Less Than Half A Brain Advertorially Speaking

A couple days ago, after reading the latest edition of Fort Worth Weekly, I mentioned that I was a bit appalled at some rather ridiculous verbiage I read in the usually reliably not ridiculous Fort Worth Weekly.

I mentioned this in a blogging titled Today I Learned Fort Worth Has Been A Model For Other Cities Its Size & Larger.

The verbiage which I thought to be rather ridiculous was...

"Fort Worth has been a model for other cities its size and larger for the last several years and coupled with the growing local food movement, Fort Worth has been ranked as the most livable city in the United States."

I think anyone who has been to both Fort Worth and any of the other cities in America, Fort Worth's size or larger, can figure out what I thought was rather ridiculous.

Well.

Someone calling him or herself Anonymous, who apparently usually thinks me to be at least of medium intelligence, thought I did not have half a brain after reading what I wrote about that which I thought to be rather ridiculous. Anonymous expressed his or her opinion in a  blog comment....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Today I Learned Fort Worth Has Been A Model For Other Cities Its Size & Larger":

Durango, you are usually as least medium in intelligence, but here you've dropped a bit. This is an ADVERTORIAL. What that means is that ALL COPY is written either by the advertisers or for them. So choose your criticism of the media better. This is meaningless fluff that media like the FW Weekly throws out there. Anyone with half a brain knows it means nothing. To criticize this ADVERTORIAL is the same as criticizing an ad for a restaurant that says they have really great food and you should come to eat there. Get it? 

Above you see the cover of the publication in question, with the words "Eats 2014 Annual Local Food Guide". Also on the cover, clearly readable in red and white, is "Fort Worth Weekly" indicating this to be a Fort Worth Weekly publication, billed as a guide to local food.

So, this really was not a guide to local food? But instead some sort of advertisement revenue generator?

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.

Though I must admit I was a bit perplexed by the part of the NOSH on THIS "advertorial" which went on about the growing local food movement. There really is not a lot of agricultural production in the local zone.

To the left is the entirety of the part of the publication which contained the verbiage I thought to be ridiculous. Note that this verbiage appears above the Fort Worth Weekly editorial publisher info that appears in, well, Fort Worth Weekly.

The paragraph which contains the ridiculous verbiage is written as if it is words coming from Fort Worth Weekly. Not some advertiser's shill.

This is not an Advertorial.

For Anonymous to suggest this verbiage is not to be taken serious, that it is no different than a restaurant ad that touts itself as having really great food, is well, I'm thinking Anonymous is sort of exhibiting less than low intelligence, representative of the thinking of someone with less than half a brain, to use the charming Anonymous type vitriol.

And would the Anonymous restaurant analogy not be more apt if Anonymous had said the Fort Worth Weekly advertorial verbiage was no different than a restaurant ad saying said restaurant was a model for other restaurants of its same size and larger and that the restaurant has been ranked as the best in America?

Wikipedia has an interesting article which may enlighten Anonymous as to what an Advertorial actually is. One paragraph from that article might be slightly instructive...

Advertorials differ from traditional advertisements in that they are designed to look like the articles that appear in the publication. Most publications will not accept advertisements that look exactly like stories from the newspaper or magazine they are appearing in. The differences may be subtle, and disclaimers—such as the word "advertisement"—may or may not appear. Sometimes terms describing the advertorial such as a "special promotional feature" or "special advertising section" are used. The tone of the advertorials is usually closer to that of a press release than of an objective news story.

So, there you go, that's the take from me, a person with half a brain, barely functioning with medium intelligence, on this serious subject....

Finding New Hoodoos On The Tandy Hills While Hearing From Betty Jo Bouvier About The Oso Landslide

I think other than on a Prairie Fest day today I saw more people on the Tandy Hills than I ever recollect seeing before.

Among those people was a pair of twin young ladies lamenting that they wish they'd arrived earlier, due to thinking it was too HOT at that point in time. I told them I was not HOT and suggested that they might be cooler if they copied me and also went topless. They said they would consider my suggestion.

Barely 70 degrees is not too HOT at this location on the planet.

A pair of guys said they were feeling sort of lost. I told them not to worry, they'd find their way back to civilization.

And then there was the mom and dad and young daughter combo I came upon in the main Tandy Hills Hoodoo zone.

The mom and daughter of the trio was having fun constructing the new Hoodoo you see above in the foreground.

That is the latest iteration of the original Tandy Hills Hoodoo you see behind the new Hoodoo, at the end of the trail at the crest of the hill.

Continuing on, on one of the trails which heads uphill from the Tandy Bamboo Tepee Grove, another new Hoodoo has sprouted. That would be the other new Hoodoo below.

I wonder how many Hoodoos now stand on the Tandy Hills? I suspect I have not discovered all of them.

Changing the subject from a potential rock slide to an actual rock slide.

I heard from Washingtonian Betty Jo Bouvier this morning. Betty Jo is one of the Wild Women Of Woolley, which indicates Betty Jo lives in the Skagit Valley in the town of Sedro Woolley. Sedro Woolley is close to the town I grew up in, Burlington, and close to the town I lived in before I moved to Texas, Mount Vernon, which also makes Sedro Woolley close to the Oso Landslide disaster.

Betty Jo mentioned the Oso Landslide disaster in a way both personal and interesting. I will copy, in part, what Betty Jo had to say.......

"I am sure you read about the huge slide in Oso. That is beyond horrible. Did you happen to read about the little girl spear heading a cause to support the families and workers??? She is my former neighbor, a 10 year old girl. The whole family is behind the cause. They have 5 kids and home school. They were all down at Walmart yesterday collecting donations and $$. I brought them all hot cocoa. When I went to buy it at Starbucks, the lady started to ring it up (over $30) and then she said,..."it is on me."  How nice!!! (that is after she knew I was taking it to the people at Walmart)..."

Betty Jo Bouvier, one of the kindest, sweetest, funniest people I have ever known.

A Near Head-On Collision In Gateway Park Before Going To Town Talk

What with today being Saturday and what with none of the predicted rain falling in anywhere near copious amounts, at my location, I opted to have myself a mighty fine time mountain biking on the Gateway Park mountain bike trails today, prior to my regularly scheduled Saturday treasure hunt at Town Talk.

A large number of others also thought today was a fine day to roll their wheels in Gateway Park, with one of those rollers rolling the wrong way, causing a near crash, as I hit the brakes.

Methinks it would behoove the Gateway Park trail makers to install some directional arrows pointing the correct way for bikes to travel on the one-way, single track Gateway Park trails.

In the past couple weeks Fort Worth park maintenance people have been cutting back a lot of brush. At the location where my handlebars are, pre-brush cut, to the right was a solid wall of brush, blocking the view of the road and paved trail.  Now at this location both sides of the trail have been de-nuded of brush, thus making a  more thrilling ride as one rolls on the trail near the edge of the cliff which terminates in the Trinity River.

A lot of brush has been cut, but not removed. Instead the brush has been piled up in big piles, covering long sections of the paved trail at the brush cut location. Maybe the brush piles are in preparation for a big multi-bonfire event.

For a month now Saturday's at Town Talk have been a busy zoo. But, not today. I don't know what accounts for the difference. Weather related? Town Talker opting to enjoy the nice weather rather than going treasure hunting?

Today the most unusual thing I got at Town Talk was a rabbit food product, as in the biggest, most deep orange colored carrots I've ever seen. Also got other rabbit food in the form of broccoli and lettuce. Plus 5 pounds of shrimp, flatbread, jalapeno bacon, bleu cheese and other stuff I am forgetting right now.

And speaking of right now, right now I am off to Fry's to see if I can find a PA-1750-04 a/c adapter. It has been a long time since I've been to Fry's. I hope I have myself a mighty fine time there....

Enjoying The Emerald Fosdick Isle Of Fort Worth Texas

That emerald green you see carpeting the ground is yet one more sign that the long cold Texas winter is finally fading into history.

At the top of the mass of emerald green, in the middle, you can see one man walking.

What is that one man walking on?

Fosdick Dam.

That being the feat of engineering that holds back Fosdick Creek creating the Fosdick Lake Reservoir in Fort Worth's Oakland Lake Park.

I do not know why big trees sprout from this earthen dam. I do know that standing beneath this dam is a bit less scary than standing beneath Hoover Dam.

The warm cloudy final Wednesday of March had a lot of people walking and playing in Oakland Lake Park today.

Currently, a couple hours after walking around Fosdick Lake, the clouds have grown thicker and are dropping a few drops. Thunderstorming is on the menu. I will believe Mother Nature is serving up a Thunderstorm today when I hear the booming.

In the meantime, I am on the hunt for a replacement A/C adapter for a Toshiba Satellite Laptop.  It is proving to be a difficult hunt.

Today I Learned Fort Worth Has Been A Model For Other Cities Its Size & Larger

I got around to getting this week's Fort Worth Weekly this morning.

I was not long into thumbing through this week's Weekly when I came upon some verbiage which seemed to me to be totally Fort Worth Weekly un-worthy, as in something I would more expect to see in the propagandizing, Chamber of Commerce-ish, hyperbolizing Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

In this week's Fort Worth Weekly "Eats Annual Food Guide" the guide starts up with the intro you see photo-snatched here, with the intro titled "NOSH on THIS..."

Well.

Let me just copy the first sentence, with that first sentence being the one that contains the odd propaganda....

"Fort Worth has been a model for other cities its size and larger for the last several years and coupled with the growing local food movement, Fort Worth has been ranked as the most livable city in the United States."

You reading this in other cities in America must be sitting there in wonderment.

First off, what are these other cities Fort Worth's size and larger which have used anything in Fort Worth as a model for their own towns?

I hear crickets chirping.

There are several cities in Texas larger than Fort Worth, as in Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. Any of those towns using Fort Worth as model for anything? Is San Antonio now having Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Floats in the San Antonio River? Is Dallas abusing eminent domain to take dozens of property owner's property for a public works project the public has never voted on?

How about outside of Texas? What town the size of Fort Worth or bigger has modeled anything in their town after anything in Fort Worth? Well, Chicago does dye a river green every St. Patrick's Day. But I think Chicago was doing that well before Fort Worth's goofy former mayor, Mike Moncrief, tried to dye the Trinity River purple.

Fort Worth has been ranked as the most livable city in the United States? That has happened one time, one time only, and it was not ranked the most livable, it was ranked in the top ten of the most livable cities in America, ranked by a Washington, D.C. lobbying group which was interested in promoting the urban village concept, with Fort Worth being the only one of the ten towns named which took the "award" serious, holding a city wide celebration for the bogus award.

I really do not understand why Fort Worth media, as in the Star-Telegram or Fort Worth Weekly, feels the need to propagandize in this manner with such blatantly foolish puffery.

I have lived in a town which was named best in the nation by a legit entity. That town did not go into a spasm of self congratulation, even though CNN showed up to show the rest of the world the Best Small Town in America.

A few weeks ago another bogus entity, something called something like Livability, ranked Fort Worth's downtown as being the best in America, causing an awful lot of perplexed head scratching. The other towns on the list were equally puzzling. Fort Worth Weekly's take on this "award" was more grounded in reality than this week's embarrassing puffery, with Fort Worth Weekly's article saying something like it was like being named Best in an Ugly Baby Contest.

Anyway, I certainly am not suggesting that Fort Worth is not a perfectly fine town, a fine town with many fine attributes. But best at anything? That is just ridiculous. Where does this need to self-aggrandize come from? Some have suggested it comes from a massive civic inferiority complex caused in part by being paired with Dallas.

I do not know what the explanation is for this type propaganda spewage. What I do know is it is embarrassing and really needs to stop.....

Having Myself A Mighty Fine Time Stuck Behind A Fort Worth Truck Blockade

I opted not to go biking or hiking anywhere today, unless one counts wandering the aisles of Target as constituting a hike.

I don't think I wandered the Target aisles at a high enough speed to reach any level of aerobic benefit, because I did not perceive any endorphins being generated.

I opted out of going to any of my regular hiking biking locations because the weather is being a bit inclement.

That and I had myself a mighty fine time during my morning hot tub hydrotherapy session and multiple semi-cool pool dips.

In the picture above the sky does not look to be stormy. That is the view through my windshield. The view via the rear view mirror was looking stormy.

At the location above I found myself stuck in an unwanted roadblock. You are looking west on John T. White Road, where it crosses I-820. The truck and trailer combo was having a hard time making a turn, driving up on the median.

And then a Fort Worth cop showed up.

It took two green light cycles before the truck driver was able to get his truck to go where he wanted it to. Where he wanted to go turned out to need a U-Turn, heading back east on John T. White Road.

I thought a U-Turn was a no-no at this location.

But, apparently, blocking traffic, driving up on a median and making a U-Turn where U-Turns are a no-no is not a ticket worthy offense, like, for instance, driving too slow, in a traffic-free neighborhood, without clicking ones seat belt.

The Fort Worth cop simply continued heading west, ignoring the traffic blocking truck driver who was heading east.

Eventually I successfully made it past the stoplight....

Talking About The Oso Landslide I Learned My Mom's Washington Memory Is Better Than Mine

A couple days ago my mom called, apparently erroneously thinking I'd not called in a sufficiently recent time frame.

During the course of talking to my mom the subject of the Oso Landslide in our old home state of Washington came up.

At the point in time where my mom and I were talking about the Oso Landslide it was only a couple days old and at the point in time the fatality numbers had not reached the dozen point, nor had the projected number of fatalities reached the current projected number of well over 100.

When I first learned of the Oso Landslide, the day it happened, I thought the name sounded familiar and thought it was one of the small towns one drives through on Highway 2 when one heads over Stevens Pass to Eastern Washington. I was erroneous.

Mom told me she thought Oso was on the Stillaguamish River, upriver from Arlington. I said to mom, isn't the Stillaguamish the river that runs beside Highway 2 on the west side of Stevens Pass? Mom told me she thought that was the Skykomish River. That then had me confused as to whence the Snoqualmie River flows from and to.

I lamented with mom that after 15 years of being away from Washington,  I am losing memory of places and routes and, apparently, rivers. Mom told me it gets worse when one gets older.

After I got off the phone I opened up my Microsoft Map program to quickly learn my mom was right regarding river locations. So, even though mom claims the memory woes get worse as one gets older, mom remembered better than me the river locations in question.

I was more than a little surprised to see where Oso is actually located, as in how close it is to my old abode in Mount Vernon, as in only about 22 miles distant, as you can see via the screen cap above, with the thick black line drawing the route from my house to Oso.

I think the last time I took this particular route was with nephew Joey. We had gone mountain biking at a location the name of which I can not remember, then drove east to Lake Cavanaugh, then over the logging road mountain pass that eventually drops down into the Stillaguamish River Valley and the little town of Oso.

This Oso Landslide is by far the worst natural disaster to hit the Pacific Northwest since Mount St. Helens erupted over 30 years ago. If the worst case scenario turns out to be accurate, the Oso Landslide will result in more fatalities, by far, than the Mount St. Helens eruption.

I need to use Google Earth to do some virtual driving in Washington. I am totally drawing a blank as to the route I would have taken, multiple times, to Granite Falls and the Mountain Loop Highway, with that loop being looped a lot of times, hiking, mountain biking and cross country skiing. And yet I can not remember the route from I-5 to Granite Falls. If I remember right the Mountain Loop Highway loop goes from Darrington back to Arlington via Highway 530, passing Oso a short distance from Darrington.

I need to spend a month in Washington doing some road tripping.....

Visiting Arlington's Village Creek Indian Ghosts Before Biking Through A Forest Of Tires

I am guessing no one can guess where my handlebars are in the picture on the left.

Well, if you guessed Texas, that would be correct. The Dallas/Fort Worth zone, as a guess, would also be correct. Arlington would also be a correct guess.

But, I don't think anyone could guess the actual specific location of my handlebars because I am not actually certain where they are.

Except I know the handlebars are in the Texas town of Arlington. When I began rolling my wheels today I started from the western parking lot of the Village Creek Natural Historical Area, which the whole world knows is in Arlington, Texas.

I had not attired myself adequately to prevent the wind chill from chilling me once I began rolling my wheels at high speed. So, when I got to the area of the Village Creek Blue Bayou I opted to pedal south, over the big open grassy area which is sometimes used a  soccer field. This leads to an area which is wooded on both sides of the trail, eventually coming to the scene you see below.

Above you are looking at only a fraction of the tires which have taken up residence at this location. Why do so  many Texas city parks serve as refuges for used tires?

I pedaled on past the Forest of Tires, eventually coming to the big open field you see above, in the photo at the top. In that photo I had reached Division Street, turned my bike around to face north, to take the photo of the big open field.

Is this big open field and the Forest of Tires part of the Village Creek Natural Historical Area? I have no idea. I do know as I pedaled south I saw no sign telling me I was leaving the Natural Area and entering the Forest of Tires Area.

I also no longer felt the presence of the Village Creek Indian ghosts.....