I went out to the desert near Joshua Tree National Monument this last weekend with some friends.I own a 4X4 truck and I love to drive down dirt roads.  This is a photo out the window of my truck as I was driving back down a mountain. Note the angle fo the window and the horizon. It wasn't that steep, but it was interesting. I was driving back down to that road you see a the middle of the photo.

We sat around and talked a whole lot. It was very relaxing. I really enjoy the desert and the sunshine and sitting in the shade. It was like being back home again. I'll go to the desert for any reason, any time, just to be there.

They were there because is was opening day of quail season, so they were up at 5am to go shoot innocent little birds. Now, I don't find hunting morally incorrect, but I'm not a fan. I like to shoot guns, but not at animals. I own guns, but for self defense in my home, so I guess you could say that I own guns to kill people, not animals.

I didn't take a lot of photos this trip, because I was too relaxed. There was a nice sunset, so I did take these next few. They're just nice photos from the cabin that we were staying at.  

After the sun went down, I used the flash to take a couple more. I like these shots. Yes, it was a full moon, or really close to it.

 

We stayed at a friend's cabin/shack that his grandfather built when he homesteaded the 40 acres back in the 1930's or so. The area is being built up all around his lot. More and more newer houses going in.  It's a pretty old cabin, so it doesn't have running water. It does have electricity and propane, so we can turn on the lights and cook food and use the refrigerator, but when it comes to using the bathroom, this is what we get to use, an outhouse.  It's pretty scenery that you get to look at while you use it, since the door is not really there any more.

 

 

This is the reason that none of our wives come with us on the trip. 

 

Of course, I drove into to town and used the bathroom at WalMart...

I woke up yesterday when my wife had to leave to be somewhere by a certain time. I saw that it was 20 minutes til, so I had to get ready for work, which I did. She left and I was running a few minutes late. I ran into a bunch of traffic on the way to work, much more than normal. I'm going to be 20 minutes late for work. Very strange. I pull into the parking lot and instead of the usual 10 cars where I park, there were none. Is it a holiday or something? It slowly dawns on me. I'm an hour early.

This means that I can leave an hour early then also. Wemmick tells me as I'm leaving that there's some airplane thing happening at the airport. I live on the south side of LAX and I work on the north side. As I drive towards the airport on my way home, two police cars pass with lights and sirens. The radio says that an airplane, Jet Blue Flight 292 is burning off fuel in order to land with a broken landing gear. Cool. I know that this is a totally survivable landing, so it'll be fun to watch.

I drive along a road just on the north edge of LAX. Here's a photo of a police car going by with lights and siren. It's like watching a car chase on TV, but in person. There is no parking on this street. Note the people parked in the photo that I took while I was parked.

 

The radio says that the airplane is on final approach and will land in 10 minutes. 5 minutes. I stop the truck, jump up in the back and take these amazing photos.

 

At this point, I realize that this is not Flight 292, but some completely unrelated airplane.

Cool photos though...

I drive a little farther and stop where there's a bunch more people. The radio sounds very bizarre all of a sudden as I realize that everyone has theirs tuned to the same station. It's everywhere. It's like TV in the round.

Then it's over. I missed it all. I didn't see it land. I saw nothing. I'm on the North side of the airport and they landed on the South runway.

Well, I can't let that happen. I drive around to my house on the south side, then over towards the airport. All the main streets are closed. I park on a grassy knoll, overlooking the airport. TV vans are there. I take these photos of the plane as passengers deplane. I got to see the plane after it was on the ground. It was directly North of my house, less distance from my house than it took to land from the East.

There were helicopters overhead. I could count 7 of them from my house. Here is a shot of one.

I went home and watched it on TV. Very impressive landing. The pilot was amazing.

Later that night, the new season of Lost was on TV. It's about an airplane that crashes and these people survive.

 
Was it all just a TV promotion? Hhhhmmm....

We own our house and there are two small houses on the back of the lot that we rent out. Here is the front of our house from across the street and then closer up. I really like our house a lot. It was built in 1916 and is a classic "Arts and Crafts Bungalow". Yes, we have cactus on our porch.

These are our back two houses. They were built in 1918. Small, but cute.

We are remodeling one of them for my 88 year old Mother In Law to move into. This will make it easier for us to take care of her. My wife knows what she wants and is very good at interior design, so I'm letting her handle the contrator and making decisions about what to do back there.

She talked to Dar, our contractor on Tuesday last week. She told him what she wanted to do and he said he'd start demolishing it on Weds. In two days, it looked like this. This was the bathroom and a closet. It's down to studs and no ceiling.

The houses were built with Lath and Plaster and none of this cheap dry wall stuff you get today. This was built when men were men and houses were...um...harder to build.

I think we might be getting some dry wall after all.

This is "Post and Tube" electrical. It's not quite up to code these days. They used ceramic tubes to go through the wood and posts to hold the wire away from the wood. These are the wires in the bathroom, above the old sink.

This was the kitchen sink with a tile counter. Now it's a hole.

The claw foot tub is now in our backyard, along with the pedistal sink and the toilet. .

My wife was talking to Dar and Dana, our electrician. Dana also works at Home Deport, where he saw a bunch of supplies being bought by some TV production people and asked them what show they were doing. Then he told my my wife that... (continued below)

I’m driving home from work today and when I get to the corner of Vista Del Mar and Grand Ave. , where I usually turn away from the beach and up the hill to go home, there is a tank sitting at the light. Running. Not moving.

So, of course

I had to go look, so I turned around, drove back down towards the beach and shot a couple photos of it sitting there. I crossed the street, went into the beach parking lot and came back up, where I took a couple more photos.

Then I pull up next to it and I’m planning to just drive straight through the intersection and up the hill to go home. I pull up to it’s left, sitting right next to it. I’d be right where that pole is sticking up and where the arrow is painted in this photo.

The light turns green and I’m ready to drive away when I hear this “Vroom, Vrooom, Vroooooooooommmmm” and this thing starts moving forward, which I thought was backwards, but forwards is the way I’m pointed and he’s driving across the intersection where I was going. Somewhere in there is a windshield.

Now, I’ve raced a lot of things in my time, but I’ve never raced a tank and I certainly didn’t want to lose a race with a tank. I could see the police report. “He cut off a tank while racing across the intersection, so the tank ran over his truck. No body was found.” You can see the shadow of my truck in this photo and imagin how close I was to him when he took off.

No one turned left in front of him. They all let him go first.

He proceeded to drive up Grand Ave. and on to his waiting trailer. I waited for the next green light and humbly drove by him and went home. This isn’t how my day usually ends.