Iceman Cometh Blizzarding North Texas

Looking out my office window this morning I can barely see across the street to the Texas Lone Star flag, drooping, due to likely being frozen stiff, barely visible through the white blizzard currently covering almost everything in the outer world a bright white.

Two days ago, on Monday, I was in Walmart, surprised at how crowded the grocery part of the store was, with some shelves being stripped of goods.

I asked what was going on to be told people were stocking up because of the Winter Storm Warning.

And then, last night, whilst suffering through the litany of lies which currently passes for being a State of the Union address, the crawl across the bottom of the screen was informing of various closures, already scheduled for today, for the Winter Storm event which had not yet arrived.

I guess the locals know, from experience, to take these type warnings serious. And to plan ahead.

Back in my old home zone in the Puget Sound part of Washington, it was only after the snow actually arrived that we would eagerly listen to the radio, usually KBRC, to learn if school was going to be late, or cancelled.

I likely will not be leaving my abode today. I did not stock up on anything when I was in Walmart with all those emergency shoppers.

I have sufficient supplies, I think, to survive until the thaw arrives...

Texas Summer Heat Wave To Winter Blizzard In Two Days

Well, the winter version of summer has lasted two days, so far, at my North Texas location.

My phone just let me know that the National Weather Service has issued one of its Winter Storm Watch warnings.

Apparently tomorrow a cold front arrives with a rapid temperature drop, followed by extreme cold and snow on Wednesday.

If I was still at my old location in Western Washington I would be stocking up on supplies, anticipating a possible long instance of being snowbound. But, my experience with Texas weather is that the extreme cold never lasts long enough to cause a supply shortage problem.

I remember back in the mid 1990s being snowbound on my cul-de-sac hill in East Mount Vernon. At that point in time I grew so desperate for supplies, by about day five, that I slid my cross country skis down the hill and all the way to the grocery store then known as Thrifty Foods.

Now that I am typing that out I think this may be a false memory. Because that would be a long distance to Thrifty Foods. Maybe what I actually did was slide down the hill all the way to the AM/PM convenience store at the intersection of Waugh Road and College Way. That seems more likely.

Anyway, there will be no sliding to a grocery store from my current location. For multiple reasons. Not the least of which is the fact that I threw my cross country skis away years ago when I found that the Texas heat had caused them to delaminate.

Today I am going to enjoy this current last day of pseudo Texas summer by rolling my bike wheels on the Circle Trail through the Wichita Bluff Nature Area...

81 Degree 2/02/2020 Super Bowl Sunday In Texas

Til this mighty fine Sunday of 2/02/2020 it had been several days since my bike convinced me it was warm enough to enjoy a pleasant bike ride.

When last I was out in the outer world for some salubrious endorphin inducing activity, as in, yesterday, I found the outer world to be too chilly and myself underlayered with outerwear.

And now, one day later, a day like today would be considered a HOT summer day back in my old home zone of the Pacific Northwest.

Tomorrow is currently scheduled to be another HOT day. And then Tuesday winter returns with the temperature plummeting to well below freezing, along with likely snow, possibly in blizzard form.

So far this winter has seemed extremely mild, compared to my previous Texas winters.

I remember doing a lot of shivering last winter. I flew out of Texas in early March of last year. That day was extremely cold. Two weeks later I returned from being HOT in Arizona to find it was no longer long pants and coats season in Texas.

Today, on this second day of February it was also not a long pants day, bike riding in shorts and a t-shirt.

As you can see via the accidentally selfie I somehow managed to take with my phone we are currently sweltering at 81 degrees in the middle of this Sunday afternoon.

The 81 degrees has not caused me to want to turn on my abode's air conditioning.

But, this morning, whilst returning from ALDI, I did turn on my motorized motion devices A/C.

I am prepared for my Super Bowl Party. Air fried chicken wings are awaiting being re-heated, along with onion rings, and other delicacies...

Wichita Bluff Erased Graffiti Hoodoos & Dershbags

A few days ago I mentioned Nature Communing On Wichita Bluffs With Graffiti after happening upon a big mess of graffiti covering a wall on the side of the Circle Trail at the west end of the Wichita Bluff Nature Area.

A couple days after that a return visit saw a contingent of Wichita Falls Anti-Graffiti Enforcers working to obliterate the vandalizer's graffiti.

And then yesterday I took an extremely cold walk on the bluffs and saw the result of the graffiti cleanup. One would never know vandals had vandalized.

What remains looks like the greenish patina of aged copper.

Continuing on past the former graffiti I came upon the most complex Hoodoo installation I have yet seen in all my years of finding Hoodoos on various Texas trails.

Six Hoodoos of various sizes. Can you find all six in the above photo documentation?

Changing the subject from graffiti and Hoodoos to something totally unrelated.

A day or two ago when I made mention of CBS Seeing Imaginary Signs Of Panther Island Progress I also made mention of a text message I got from one of Mrs. Caraway's old boyfriends. This particular old boyfriend is witty, wise and politically astute.

This morning Mrs. Caraway's witty, wise and politically astute old boyfriend text messaged me a new word inspired while watching Trump's Impeachment Trial. The text message...

"Unbelievable. New word...Dershbag."...

CBS Sees Imaginary Signs Of Panther Island Progress

Yesterday I got one of those ubiquitous Facebook notifications notifying me I had been mentioned in a comment.

In this particular instance it was the newlywed Mrs. Layla Caraway who simply mentioned my name as a mechanism by which to cause me to see that which she wanted me to see.

That being some bizarre Trinity River Vision propaganda.

I knew it would be propaganda because I saw via the screen cap of the associated video that the source was that infamous purveyor of misinformation and ridiculous hyperbole known as the Trinity River Vision Authority, which used to be directed by Kay Granger's eldest son, J.D., til he was fake fired to placate eons of complaints and given an imaginary new job at the same salary, this time being in charge of flood control, where there has been no flooding for well over half a century.

Probably J.D. can not manage to muck up flood control in an area which does not flood, so J.D. likely will not be able to do much damage, unlike the decade plus record of boondoggling J.D. finagled with the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision Boondoggle, with its three simple little bridges being built over dry land, stuck in slow motion construction mode for well over a half a decade, in what has become an epic attempt to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island.

So, this video which Mrs. Layla pointed us to, is a short clip of a short news blurb from the newsboys at CBS DFW. When I first saw this I opted not to watch, because I knew just from the "NEW SIGNS OF PROGRESS" title that this would contain aggravating nonsense.

And then I changed my mind and watched the short video to quickly glean my initial reaction was right on target. It is a clueless little bit of senseless puffery. Telling us if you drive north of downtown Forth Worth, on Main Street, why you will be seeing the signs of progress of what will one day be a water wonderland, and that Encore Panther Island is well underway. Why, oh my, they have even dug a little bit of canal.

No mention is made of the fact that it was several years ago now that J.D. Granger said in the coming year, I think it was gonna be 2018, we would be seeing construction underway on the imaginary island in the form of the Encore Panther Island apartment complex. Eventually, I think it was early in 2019, Encore Panther Island construction did begin.

And then quickly halted.

Because the foundation of the Encore parking garage was sinking into the imaginary Panther Island. And now all this time later the CBS DFW news bit uses that image use see above, of this Encore embarrassment, supposedly representing a sign of progress.

Like Mrs. Caraway says, this is hilarious.

I have no clue why CBS DFW would go along with being shill for what has become America's Dumbest Boondoggle.

Meanwhile on another sort of related note, about Kay Granger.

A couple days ago I got a text message from one of the aforementioned Mrs. Caraway's old boyfriends telling me the following...

Rodeo last night. In a big dollar suite. Popped up on the big monitor with lots of applause....Kay and Donald Trump Jr. I felt double violated and in need of a Silkwood shower...

Now, it is well known neither the Grangers or Trumps are picky about those with whom they form assignation entanglements.

Has Don Jr. ended his relationship with that woman many thought to be a drag queen? Is Kay Granger what is known a a really old cougar? Is Pudgy Putnam upset that Don Jr. is seeing Pudgy's rival?

Inquiring minds really want to know. If Kay would ever hold a town hall maybe someone could ask her some of these probing questions...

Wichita County Medical Alliance Hamilton Park WCMA Installation

Today when my bike wheels rolled off the Circle Trail into Hamilton Park I saw that which you see above, installed since last I was at this location.

Upon first glance I thought the letters YMCA were what I was seeing, with the song associated with those four letters popping into internal play.

When I got close to the towering sign I saw that each big letter explained what word was being represented by the letter.

Wichita County Medical Alliance

Now I was aware that this particular alliance was responsible for the building of the imaginative playground installation you see behind the sign.

But, methinks whoever was given the job of designing this sign did so on a computer, chose a big font size, not realizing how BIG the scaled full size version would be. The order then was sent from the designing computer to whoever built the sign, who built it without inquiring if whoever was paying for it really wanted the sign to be so BIG.

Long before last summer arrived I remember reading that the Wichita County Medical Alliance was planning on building a water playground adjacent to the installation behind the big sign. But, so far there has been no sign of that water playground...

Fighting Harstine Island Tide With Ruby & Theo

Yesterday Ruby and Theo used their remote selfie stick to take a couple pictures, then email the pictures to their favorite uncle in Texas, with the explanatory text saying...

Fighting the Tide, Harstine Island Style.

It appears that the Harstine Island beach sand is a bit more coarse than the sand Ruby and Theo fought the tide with way back in August of 2017, when we built a massive sand castle fort at Birch Bay.

Since that last time I built sand castles with Ruby and Theo, with some help from big brother, David, the Tacoma Trio has had some professional sand castle construction training at an institution dedicated to that type training at a location on the Pacific Ocean near San Diego.

A closer look at Ruby and Theo's miniature sand castle fort, holding some sort of barrier in a likely futile attempt to thwart the incoming tide.

In about six months I should be up north, where the islands are real, and no one goes floating on inner tubes in polluted river water whilst drinking beer and listening to loud music at an imaginary pavilion on an imaginary island.

We are currently booked to stay at the same location at Birch Bay we stayed at the last time. The tides during that upcoming stay's time frame are going to be low, meaning there will be a lot of sand to work with.

And, if there are no clouds above, that sand should be heated up enough to warm the incoming tide to the temperature of lukewarm bath water.

I am looking forward to having a mighty fine time up in the Pacific Northwest version of modern America...

Lake Wichita Boardwalk Bridges Over Water While Fort Worth Bridges Flounder Over Dry Land

My bike took my on an early Friday morning ride this 4th Friday of the new 2020 year.

After a couple miles of rolling on the Circle Trail my bike had me on the floating dock on Lake Wichita, looking at the new boardwalk under construction, with multiple cement piers already installed.

I do not know why Wichita Falls did not use the Fort Worth method of building bridge type structures over dry land.

Those Fort Worth hapless bridges, three pitiful little structures, have been stuck in slow motion construction mode ever since the bridge building began with a big TNT exploding ceremony back in October of 2014, with an, at the time, astonishing four year bridge building project timeline.

Four years to build three simple little bridges over dry land, to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island. And now the year is 2020, with those three bridges still not built, still over dry land.

And back in the news again, due to funds having been found to pay the bridge builder money owed due to construction delays which have not been the fault of the builder, but have been the fault of the ineptness of those responsible for the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle mess.

And so, supposedly, if we can believe what we read, the bridge building contractor now has workers working on all three bridges, non-stop, all 7 days of the week.

The bridge building fiasco part of what has become America's Dumbest Boondoggle has been going on so long I don't remember when first it was realized something was dire wrong.

Maybe it was the bizarre, frequently repeated claim, that these three bridges were being built over dry land in order to save time and money.

That claim repeatedly made when the fact of the matter has always been that there will be no water under those bridges until a ditch is dug under them, with the Trinity River diverted into that ditch.

And it does not take a construction engineer's expertise to intuit that the most sensible way to build three bridges spanning a cement lined ditch would be to dig the ditch at the same time the bridges are being built.

Digging the ditch under the bridges, after they are in place, seems fraught with complication possibilities.

But, those complications likely will not reveal themselves for a long long time.

If the bridges are ever finished, money has to be found for the unfunded project in order to dig the ditch.

We have already seen one construction on the imaginary island sink due to a faulty foundation. It is not difficult to imagine a similar fate befalling those three hapless pitiful bridges.

Meanwhile the new boardwalk bridge over Lake Wichita is slated to be finished in a couple months...

Nature Communing On Wichita Bluffs With Graffiti

It had been a few days since last I communed with nature.

So, on this 2020 version of Martin Luther King Day I did some nature communing at the Wichita Bluff Nature Area, along with multiple other communing nature lovers.

Today I was in walk mode, thought it to be too cold to be in bike mode. I thought wrong. Was perfect conditions for bike wheel rolling.

In the photo you are seeing my shadow appearing to adjust my headgear, whilst taking a photo of one of the lookouts which look out over the Wichita River valley below.

I do not know if a statistic exists of such, but I would not be surprised if Wichita Falls has the world's highest per capita number of swinging park benches. Two of which you see not swinging above.

I had barely begun my communing with nature when I came upon something disgusting.

An idiot, or collection of idiots, had sprayed graffiti on the retaining wall one walks by early on upon leaving the parking lot at the west entry to the Wichita Bluff Nature Area.

The above photo shows only a small amount of the total mess.

Rather brazen to do this in such a visible location, or so it seems to me.

Years ago I painted a building in Tacoma. The day after I finished painting I return to see that one entire wall had had graffiti sprayed on it. I was told this was known as 'tagging' and that gangs of hoodlums did this when they saw something newly painted.

I do not know if Wichita Falls has gangs of tagging hoodlums on the loose. I do not recollect seeing any graffiti before. At least not on the scale that I found today.

Wichita Falls has about as many abandoned commercial buildings in a sad state of eyesore as the town has actual functioning commercial buildings.

Those abandoned buildings would seem to be a great target for tagging by gangs of hoodlums. It might help lessen their eyesore aspect...

You Know You Are From Washington When You Know Linda Lou

This morning when I checked the incoming email I saw among the email notifications from Facebook was one telling me the important notification that Linda Lou had tagged me in a post. That tagging is what you are seeing here, above and below...

YOU KNOW YOU ARE FROM WASHINGTON STATE WHEN:

• You know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Sammamish, Enumclaw and Issaquah.
• You avoid driving through Seattle at all costs.
• You know what a Geoduck is.
• You consider swimming an indoor sport.
• You see a person carrying an umbrella and instantly think tourist.
• Your lawn is mostly moss and you don't really care.
• Honking your car horn is for absolute emergencies.
• You're EXTREMELY picky about your coffee.
• “The mountain is out today", isn't a strange statement.
• While out of state you just tell people you're from Seattle since that's the only known city in Washington according to the rest of the world.
• You remember Almost Live.
• You've eaten in the Space Needle, and while it was delicious, you're never paying $50 for a meal in the sky again.
• You rarely wash your car because it's just going to get washed by the rain tomorrow.
• You're used to the phrase "No, not DC" when telling out of staters where you're from.
• Northface is always in fashion.
• You take a warm coat and a hat with you for a day at the beach.
• You have mastered the art of doing everything in the rain, because, well, Washington.
• You play the "no you go" at four-way stop.
• You have had both the thought of how beautiful Mount Rainier is, while simultaneously accepting that it will probably kill you someday.
• You get a little twitchy if it's been more than a week since it last rained.
• You believe Twilight ruined Forks.
• You can say Humptulips, Lilliwap and Dosewallips without giggling.

REPOST IF YOU ARE PROUD TO BE FROM WASHINGTON