Wichita Falls Pharmacy Visit With Bloody Sideshow

I had myself some police action excitement today. I was taking an elderly man to his pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions. 

Franklin Pharmacy, on Brook Avenue, to be precise. Upon seeing the Franklin Pharmacy parking lot, from a distance, I could see the parking lot was busy. Getting closer I saw that the parking lot was busy due to there being six Wichita Falls Police cars helter skelter on the parking lot.

Upon driving onto the Franklin Pharmacy parking lot I saw a man with a bloodied head, sitting on the parking lot, handcuffed.

I found a space to park next to the police car you see photo documented. The elderly man then went inside the pharmacy to get his meds.

After sitting for about a minute I was suddenly totally startled to find the handcuffed bloodied man outside my window, looking at me and screaming "Take me to the hospital." As a policeman grabbed the bloodied man from behind the bloodied man hollered at me "You're dead!"

A couple policemen then struggled to get the bloodied man into the backseat of the police car.

The bloodied man continued yelling, things like I don't fit in here. The policeman kindly told the bloodied man to just lie down.

After about another minute the policeman opened the door and, I think, removed the handcuffs due to the bloodied man yelling they hurt him.

Eventually the police cars began to leave, and the elderly man returned to the vehicle. I asked if he'd found out what this was about. He was told the bloodied man had been inside the pharmacy, making a scene, when he refused to leave the police were called.

No clue how the man ended up bloodied. To my eyes the police were all acting totally calm, reasonable and professional, like they were well-trained to deal with these type incidents.

Wichita Falls To Be Almost Totally Eclipsed On April 8

This morning's Wichita Falls Times-Record-New has an article about the upcoming, April 8, eclipse.

The article had an interactive feature where you enter your zip code to be shown how close to the total eclipse you are located.

My location is that orange spot you see on the map.

Apparently in Wichita Falls we will experience 95% of the total eclipse. 

The eclipse begins during the afternoon of April 8. I do not know at what time that afternoon I can expect darkness to arrive for a few minutes.

Third Day Of Spring Thunderous Storm Arrives In Wichita Falls As Predicted

Arriving right on time, as scheduled by the National Weather Service. An epic thunderstorm, dropping a downpour of rain, hail and lightning strikes. With a lot of loud booming.

The view you see here is what I saw upon opening my front door. Impossible to get to ground level without getting drenched and pummeled with hail pellets.

Right now the storm seems to be abating as quickly as it arrived. 

If I make it to ground level I don't know if currently a moat is making it difficult to get to my means of motorized motion.

I shall soon see. Maybe...

Remembering Driving Chandler Boulevard In Arizona

Melancholy Microsoft OneDrive Memories from the Day, in my email this morning. This memory is from March. I do not remember what day in March. But, I do remember the year.

2019.

So much has happened since March of 2019. Covid. Becoming an orphan, Sister Jackie, who is driving mom's vehicle, with me in the backseat, and mom riding shotgun, is now a grandma, heading north, on Chandler Boulevard (I think) in the bustling Arizona town of Chandler.

Grandma Jackie's grandson Cade, is the newest member of the family.

Baby Cade is now around a half year old, I think.

From July of 2017 and July of 2019 I visited Arizona multiple times. Usually for a month. Doing a lot of driving, on Arizona's excellent smooth roads.

Every time I'd return to Texas, and get back in my Texas driver's seat, I was jarred, thinking something was wrong with the vehicle, due to the ultra-bumpy ride. Then I remember, I am back in Texas, where the roads are in bad shape in places. Such as the entry to the freeway one comes to when leaving the Wichita Falls airport.

I have found most Texas highways of the state highway sort, to be roads in real good condition. The roads in some Texas towns, such as Fort Worth and Wichita Falls, not so much.

Wichita Falls still has some city streets which are made of brick. Driving over a brick road is extremely bumpy...

Perplexing Survey Experience With Walmart

Perplexing email this morning from Walmart. The email asks that I confirm I visited the Greenbriar Road Walmart on March 12, 2024 to begin a survey about my Walmart shopping experience to get a chance to win a $1,000 gift card.

I never win anything, ever, that I can remember, so I clicked to Begin Survey.

After answering several questions that seemed totally easy to answer, the survey suddenly took a perplexing turn which I can not figure out.

The survey mentioned several items I bought that day and asked me to rank them.

How does Walmart know what I bought that day and thus able to link that information to my email address?

The only identifying element is I do use a debit card. And that debit card does have my name on it. 

But how could that debit card lead Walmart to my email address?

If this survey was from Amazon it would not be at all perplexing. Amazon knows my email address, as it is linked to my Amazon account.

I have no Walmart account. 

Even if I did have a Walmart account that still would not explain how Walmart linked my purchases that day, to me, and my email address.

There likely is a simple explanation which I am too simple to figure out...

Last Week Of Winter Wichita Bluff Nature Area Nature Communing

On this third Monday of the 2024 version of March, it was back to the Wichita Bluff Nature Area I ventured today, for some hilly nature communing.

As you can see the sky is a bright clear blue, except some white exhaust spewed from a Sheppard Air Force Base jet.

The temperature was in the mid 50s zone, not quite back to chilly winter-like, but nowhere near being in the HOT summer-like zone of the past couple weeks.

Spring is scheduled to arrive later this week.

I hiked to the highest point on the bluffs, looking east at the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Wichita Falls on the horizon.

It has been several months since I went hiking the bluffs. It was quite invigorating. The distance to the Wichita Bluff Nature Area, from my abode, is the furthest distance of any of my local hiking destinations.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, methinks I shall be back at Sikes Lake. I was there yesterday. Several goose spooking coyotes have been installed around the lake...

Microsoft OneDrive Memory Remembering Biking Lover's Leap In Waco

Another Microsoft OneDrive Memory from this Day that I remember, sort of.

I know that is me looking at the lens of my antique, long gone, Casio digital camera, with its taking a selfie feature, well before such became a common thing.

And that is my long gone Schwinn Moab mountain bike behind me. That bike died five bikes ago, with the aluminum frame braking whilst I was having a fine time on the Horseshoe Trail in Grapevine.

I am fairly certain, in this photo, my bike and I are in Cameron Park in Waco. That park has some of the best mountain trails I have pedaled on. The trails have names and markers indicating their difficulty level. If I remember correctly, and sometimes I do, one diamond meant easy trail, two diamonds meant less easy, on up to five diamonds, which indicated difficult, for expert riders only.

I remember finding the one and two diamond trails treacherous enough for me. I did not attempt any of the three, four or five diamond trails.

There is a cliff in Cameron Park, called Lover's Leap. The leap is into the Brazos River, far below. If I remember correctly one of the five diamond trails took off from Lover's Leap...

Lovely Linda Lou Takes Us To Daffodils & Mount Rainier

 A couple days ago I posted a blog post titled Seeing Real Islands From Summit Of Washington's Mount Erie in which I made mention of the fact that a time or two I had been surprised to see Mount Rainier, to the south, from the Skagit Flats.

And then yesterday, the Skagit Valley's lovely Linda Lou, text messaged me the photo you see above.

The Skagit Flats ablaze with the yellow of thousands of daffodils, with the Mount Rainier volcano hovering in the distance.

I surely do miss living in a zone of multiple scenic wonders...

Seeing Mount Baker Takes Me To Fir Island & Fort Worth's Imaginary Panther Island

I never tire of seeing photos from my old home zone, especially photos of Mount Baker, a volcano I used to be able to see from my living room windows in Mount Vernon.

I saw the instance you see here, this morning, on Facebook. The view is either from some location on the Skagit Flats, or from Fir Island.

Fir Island is a real island, not an imaginary island, such as one day the town of Fort Worth, Texas hopes to see.

Fort Worth's imaginary island will be claiming to be such after a cement lined ditch is dug, with Trinity River water diverted into that ditch.

Ironically, Fir Island also is created by being surrounded by river water. At Fir Island the Skagit River splits into two forks, the North and South Forks of the Skagit River.

Wikipedia has an article about Fir Island. The article makes mention of the worst natural disaster I have witnessed up close. In the early 1990s a Pineapple Express brought extreme flooding to Western Washington.

The flooding was so extreme that the flood level was predicted to inundate downtown Mount Vernon. So, hundreds of people helped build a sandbag wall to try and hold back the flood. I was watching the 11 o'clock news when it went live to Mount Vernon, showing the feverish activity, filling sandbags, including sailors from the Navy base on Whidbey Island.

By midnight I was in downtown Mount Vernon, helping to build the sandbag wall. The wall was complete around 3 in the morning.

The flood crest was expected to hit Mount Vernon around 11 in the morning. At that point of time I joined the huge crowd, waiting on high ground for the crest to happen. You could see the river was about to go over the sandbag wall, when, suddenly, the river level dropped a couple feet.

No one knew what had happened. Soon, there were sirens blaring. At one point I remember seeing a helicopter with a cow strapped in below it. I do not remember how long it was til we learned the dike at Fir Island had failed, flooding the island.

There is currently no Wikipedia about Fort Worth's imaginary Panther Island. I doubt there ever will be...

Hiking The Lucy Park Jungle With Nephew Jason In Hawaii

With the National Weather Service issuing a dire warning about possible extreme downpours, flash flooding, strong wind, hail, thunderstorms and possible tornadoes it was to Lucy Park I ventured today, under a semi-cloudy sky, for some high-speed endorphin acquisition, hiking the Lucy Park backwoods jungle.

You can see via the photo documentation that the Lucy Park backwoods jungle is in jungle restoration mode, with the ground solidly green, and with leaves slowly returning to the trees.

Hot today, in the 80s, but saw no slithering reptiles. Not even a lizard.

Meanwhile, in tropical Hawaii.

Email from my Favorite Nephew Jason, this morning, currently way closer to the equator than his regular location in Washington

I do not believe Spencer Jack is with his dad, this time, in Honolulu. Spencer Jack's dad confirmed what Spencer Jack's grandma told me a couple days ago, that being that Spencer Jack turned 17 about a week ago.

Seems like only yesterday I met Spencer Jack for the first time. In August of 2008, at Bay View State Park, in Skagit County, in Washington. Spencer was around two years old at that point in time.

I next saw Spencer Jack in March of 2012, in Arizona. Spencer was around six years old at that point in time.

My most recent Spencer Jack sighting was in August of 2017, at Birch Bay, slightly south of the border with Canada. Spencer was around 12 at that point in time.

The older I get the faster times seems to fly by. I do not like it, not at all...