SC's Pseudo-Blog
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6 August 2025
Time zips by when you're keeping busy, no? At least when I was employed I got to take breaks now and then, but now that I report to no one except me (and La Conejita, of course), I seem to just go - go - go until either the job is complete, there's not enough light left to see the work, or I'm too damn tired to do whatever it is I'm trying to do.
Which these days seems to involve LC's Jeep much of the time. Who would think?
So how about an update!
SCO Logistics shop, 9 July 2025
In my last post I shared an image of a wooden cabinet that my cousin made for me, part of an on-board power system for all the cool stuff we're installing on LC's Bonnie Blue. After a lot of work, that job is finally completed, as you may see in the image above. The cabinet I shared the image of is on the left, now with a filtered air intake on the cabinet door. This is the "battery box." It contains ... obviously ... the two 100Ah 12VDC Battle Born lithium batteries that are the heart of the power system, plus the tech the control system needs to monitor state of charge and other performance parameters of the batteries.
The cabinet on the right is the control cabinet. It contains the Battery Manager, the interface box, and the control panel, visible mounted in the upper midsection of the panel. This is the RedArc Total Vehicle Management System, known by them as the TVMS Prime Redvision System. In operational capability this equipment is the twin of the system I installed some years ago in the LRB. Physically it is less obtrusive, as in Bonnie's application the equipment is spread horizontally across the deck, whereas in the LRB it is stacked vertically. What's it mean? Well, La Conejita has an unobstructed view of what's visible out the rear window, whereas in the LRB that view is about 75% obstructed by equipment.
A good portion of this installation was given over to electronic configuration. The instructions are pretty good, but even so it took some time. Once it was all done though, we can control everything from that control panel, or through a phone app. Pretty sweet!
SCO Logistics shop, 4 August 2025
The latest task, which I just finished today, involved a little undressing for Bonnie. She didn't seem to be too embarrassed by it all. She came from the factory with steel bumpers front and rear, and that became a problem when I decided to get some additional lighting on her rear end. She also came with the factory hitch receiver and electrical connections for towing a trailer, and I have also added a 50 amp connection of our own to facilitate charging the onboard power system in our trailer. All of that is mounted on or adjacent to that steel bumper.
You'll note the red reflectors in the bumper, adjacent to the depression for the spare tire. These are handy, but do nothing when you're trying to hitch or unhitch a trailer in the dark. Hence the project: replace those reflectors with a pair of Oracle Rear Bumper LED Reverse Lights supplied by my favorite off-road aftermarket provider: Quadratec. Those lights throw a flood patter of 1000 lumens of white light, exactly where you need it to illuminate the area between the back of your rig and the front of your trailer. But the installation ... ¡ai chihuahua!
It's easy if you have the stock plastic bumper and don't have all the towing gear back there. You can reach in from below and in front of the rear bumper with a 1/4 inch drive ratchet and turn a couple of screws, and those reflectors pop right out. But no ... we have the steel bumper, and it's a game changer. You can hardly see those two screws, let alone get a tool on them. So let me tell you, getting that bumper off the vehicle involved a lot of rolling around on my back underneath said bumper, removing more bolts than I bothered to count. Too many fingers ...
And once we got it removed, the real fun started. The openings for those factory reflectors, I learned, are just a bit smaller on the steel bumper than they are on the stock bumpers. And apparently Oracle designed their lights based on the stock bumper openings. The right hand light fit ... barely. But the left hand light ... <sighs> at one point I had to remind myself that swinging a hammer at an LED lamp is not good for it. Plan B, therefore was to grind off two or three millimeters of material from the left side of that left-hand lamp. A handheld rotary tool and about forty five minutes of time got me going. At close of business I had everything put back together, but did not have it wired up to the RedArc system yet.
SCO Logistics shop, 6 August 2025
This afternoon I finished pulling wire and making that connection, and then programming the RedArc TVMS to work with those lamps. Everything works perfectly!
The boss says I might have earned a glass of wine this evening ... maybe if I really look haggard, I might indulge myself with a wee dram of single malt.
¡Andale!
Meanwhile, stay tuned. My other ongoing adventure with Bonnie is the full skid-plate system I ordered for her. They sent me the wrong skid for the engine / transmission, and the correct skid is on backorder. I got he skids for the transfer case and muffler installed, and have yet to get the one for the fuel tank installed. They recommend that the fuel tank be near empty so the installer (that'd be me) doesn't have to wrestle with that liquid weight while he's flat on his back. Good tip. We'll have to take a road trip to burn off all that fuel in Bonnie's full tank. Dammit! You know, I just hate it when I have to go have fun in order to get work done!
Yep ... <grins>
Friday, maybe, I'll get that fuel skid installed. Definitely before Sunday, which at 104° is going to be the first of several days of high temps for us here in Camelot. I will find something to do indoors, or maybe grab LC and head for the mountains in one (or both) of our beasts. Could be fun, right?
Coyote ... out!
10 June 2025
Noah had his Arc, and Bonnie Blue will have her RedArc ... power system, that is.
Here we see the major components of the battery portion of the RedArc power system. The cabinet (manufactured by Baker Enterprises in Phoenix, thanks Bob!) is 3/4" birch ply, and it is designed to hold only the two batteries and power cables, plus some small components that are part of how the battery management system monitors the battery performance. The plastic-wrapped items in front of the cabinet are a filtered air intake for the system. When completed, the two cabinets will each have an exhaust fan for cooling, and this is where the cooler outside air will be drawn from, providing good airflow to keep the batteries cool, especially when they are charging.
There will be a second, smaller cabinet for the termination / fuse box and the actual battery manager. I will provide images of that when it is built, it' is still under construction as I write this.
For those of you who have perused the "Rubicon" page here at The Range, this system will be electrically identical to what is in the LRB. That system is all in one cabinet, which does a great job of eliminating most of the view out the back window as seen in the inside rear view mirror. La conejita wasn't fond of that method, she wanted that view unobstructed, so this design basically splits the system in half and mounts the equipment in two smaller cabinets. Clear view out the back, dear!
We set a new record here in the Rogue Valley yesterday. It hit 104°, the highest temperature ever recorded for that date. So my work on this project may proceed slowly as I wait for less disagreeable conditions. Meanwhile, we have several other projects to keep me busy. I will post some more images as we move forward in the construction. Stay tuned, y adiós for now.
12 April 2025
So happy days, Bonnie Blue is all rigged for towing. I got the RedArc Tow Pro Elite installed, so now we can legally and safely haul around our 3500 pound overland trailer with either Bonnie or the LRB on the point. I'd have a picture of that controller, but it's all mounted nicely behind the dash except for the small control knob, which is fairly unimpressive. It was a dream of an installation, once I learned where the factory-supplied connector for the controller was located. Using an adaptor harness from RedArc, it was truly a plug-and-go system. Stand by for our first road test with it, probably sometime in May.
SCO Logistics shop, 3 April 2025
Unfortunately, Bonnie's third seat didn't last very long. It was a game of inches, and the seat lost in favor of having the Dometic refrigerator on board (you can see the compressor end of the refrigerator sitting on its slide-out tray, just beyond the edge of the door frame).
So this is what the forward end of the full Goose Gear "Stealth Sleep Package" looks like. Lots of under-deck storage, lots of open space for a pooch or two. Ultimately there will be two low cabinets between the rear-facing edges of the rear-most hatches and the Dometic refrigerator and the PackOut boxes. Those cabinets will contain the batteries and control / interface equipment for the on-board power system that will keep all the internal accessories running off grid. That system is in the early construction stages even now. And yeah ... that's the ol' LRB in the background, still waiting for the next adventure.
SCO Logistics shop, 3 April 2025
Like I said, it was a game of inches. La Conejita and I spent some time struggling with left-to-right positioning of the Dometic slide-out tray versus the Milwaukee PackOut mounting plate. Eventually we made it all work, but it took a while. The cool thing is, there is another under-deck storage hatch beneath all of this stuff (see the post dated 27 March, below), and we can still use it. It is perfectly positioned to be accessible when the refrigerator is fully extended out of the tailgate area on it's slide tray. I think that was a lucky break on our part, it certainly wasn't planned, but if any of you are reading this and thinking about your own JL, remember what you saw and read here.
Those of you with good visual acuity will notice the black/red wire pair looping around the rear roll bar ... that is not permanent. It's a temporary power feed for the two way radio, a Yaesu FT-8900. It is a quad band "ham" radio (10 meters, 6 meters, 2 meters, and 70 centimeters), and along with the Diamond CR-8900A antenna on the tailgate it provides us with another way of communicating from the middle of nowhere, should the need arise. For those of you who have followed my efforts with the LRB, Bonnie's radio system is an exact duplicate of what is onboard the LRB.
Those keen eyes may also notice the cord hanging in the windshield ... that is the microphone for the same radio, and the control head it is connected to is mounted directly above the rear view mirror. That was a game of inches during installation, too!
When the RedArc power system is up and running, that cable will be removed from the roll bar and permanently connected to an output of that power system, along with the power feed for the refrigerator and several other things we have planned.
La Conejita is deep in the spring-time rush to get things planted in the ground. I am muscle and construction support for her, when I'm not wrenching on Jeeps or working on the warehousing project. We're still in the transition from winter to spring. Case in point: 45° under a heavy overcast this morning, following overnight rain, with a forecast of more rain today. High today might hit 60°. But come Monday the skies will be clear with temps in the low 80s, and the rest of the week will be pretty much the same with temps moderating into the mid 70s. Still, La Conejita swears we'll have one more snowfall before spring arrives for keeps. We shall see. Her intuition is usually pretty reliable.
Catch ya down the trail ...
March 2025
So the winter weather cleared off after a couple of weeks, and when it all melted off we discovered this down in the southeast corner of our yard. I guess we'll be trimming a lot of limbs above this split. My friend, who happens to be an arborist and a volunteer wildland fire fighter (and a fine Scotsman as well), looked at this and pronounced the tree healthy if a bit overweight. He says that a through bolt can bring that split back together, once we thin a lot of the growth protruding from those main limbs. I guess I know what'll be keeping me busy once spring gets here for real. At least I may get some good firewood out of it. Of course, I still have to build the rack / enclosure to store that in as well ...
The weather is in a transitional phase right now. Normal spring is approaching here in Camelot, as we refer to our little corner of the Rogue Valley. We're quite well protected by the Siskiyou Mountains to the south and west of us, very little of what the weather-guessers are warning us about actually passes over us. Case in point, for the past few days the predictors have been blaring and braying away about golf-ball sized hail and severe thunderstorms coming to the Pacific Northwest, including in our little piece of it. And to be clear, such things have been happening in the north end of our state, up around the lower Columbia River and even up to the Seattle area. And a lot of rain fell along the coast to the south and west of us yesterday. But here ... our driveway got wet. The lawns and planters and garden loved the light, steady rainfall we've had off and on since the snow disappeared. But no aerial rivers or massive weather events in Camelot. No sir ...
In fact, we just finished three days of very spring-like weather. Overnight our highs went from low 50s to the upper 70s, and just a couple of days ago we got into the low 80s. Our pear and plum trees are covered in blossoms now. And now we're heading back to low 50s during the day and low 30s overnight. I've learned that this is a normal thing here, this odd spring transition. And it'll go on for a few weeks.
SCO Logistics shop, 10 March 2025
And that's not a bad thing! It is useful, these intermittent days of warm, dry weather. I got a couple of major projects in Bonnie Blue finished in the warm-dry. Progress!
Above we see the completed V1.0 installation of the Goose Gear decking in La Conejita's Jeep Wrangler JL. I say version 1.0 because neither of is is sure the portion of the back seat that is still installed will remain there. More on that in a moment. This is the Stealth Sleep Package that Goose Gear makes for her model of vehicle. I have a very similar system in my 2017 Jeep JKUR, for which I removed the entire back seat. These decks provide a lot of under-surface storage, and also a base platform on which you can mount various camp kitchen and / or storage systems that Goose Gear makes, or upon which you can build your own systems. They are quite strong. (Info about what's in the 2017 JKUR can be found here.)
Bonnie will eventually have a Dometic CFX3-55IM electric refrigerator / freezer behind, or perhaps in place of, that third seat. Dimensions are pretty tight, so the final design will not be certain until the refrigerator is on its slide-out tray, free-standing on that deck. If we can get the tailgate door shut without any part of it hitting the refrigerator, the seat stays. If we can't get the tailgate door shut, that seat goes. Isn't system design fun?
SCO Logistics shop, 26 March 2025
Meanwhile, at Bonnie's front side, some electrical work has been completed. We have a small trailer that we tow when we're getting after it out in the sticks ("off grid," according to the culture now). That trailer has it's own battery-based on-board power system built in, and requires a power feed from the tow vehicle to keep those batteries charged.
A similar power system will eventually be installed on that Goose Gear deck in Bonnie's cabin. Each of these power systems is configured to take 20 amps of Bonnie's alternator output to charge their batteries, and I needed to build the infrastructure to make that happen. Above you will note a six-way (seven pole) distribution block on an aluminum plate on the firewall. This block has a 400A power-handling capability and uses MIDI/AMI fuses that bolt in place. It is Bussmann / Eaton product in the LMI series, I bought mine at Mouser Electronics. It has an operating temperature range of -40° to +185°F.
From the positive terminal of the battery all the way to the connector under the back bumper, all of the power is delivered by by 6AWG cable from Powerwerx with the appropriate crimp connectors (sized for 1/4", 5/16", or 3/8" studs as necessary). 30 amp fuses at the terminal block protect the feeds, which come over to the passenger side fender wall and connect to a couple of irhapsody 12 VDC, 120A continuous duty relays. These relays are controlled by a switched voltage source in the vehicle fuse box (beneath the terminal block mounting plate) using a Bussmann BP/HHTR-RP adapter plugged into the slot for fuse # 52 (the cigar lighter). This means that the charging circuits will not have any voltage on them unless the engine is running, which prevents the auxiliary power systems from draining the vehicle battery when the engine is not running.
Under the back bumper we have an electrical connector comprised of a Trailer Vision 50A Quick Connector housing which contains a Powerwerx / Anderson Powerpole SB-50 connector body that matches a similar connector body on our trailer. (The SB-50 body requires the SB-50/PP75 series crimp connector for 6AWG cable.) This provides quick and secure connectivity between Bonnie Blue and the trailer's power systems.
All that to say, I had a good time in the briefly war, dry weather, doing Jeep stuff. Woo-hoo!
And this morning it's raining outside ... again.
Get ready for more fun when we mount that Dometic refrigerator and a couple of other neat things on that Goose Gear deck.
Meanwhile, I have noticed a fault with some of my story files that has caused problems with the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor I use for all my web page stuff. So when the weather is not conducive to outdoor fun, I will be cleaning up that stuff off line. Readers may notice slight changes to the pages affected (mostly in Precious Cargo, as far as I can tell), Be patient with me as I figure out and correct whatever went wrong with my markup.
Stay tuned ...
3 February 2025
Well, winter is finally here for real, no more of this freezing fog stuff. Snow started falling lightly here around 0600, and it's still falling lightly now nearing 1700. In between we had some pretty real snowfall, which I (being a well-traveled desert dog) would describe as moderate. But it snowed all day, so we got about 6 inches. That's a lot for where we live, I've never seen this much snow in our yard. The Mount Ashland web page says they've had 8 inches of snow in the past 24 hours, but I don't know which 24 hour span of time that refers to. For today's snowfall I'd expect 12 to 18 inches up there at the ski resort.
So this turn of weather prompted us to do a little bit of response prep, mostly in terms of making sure devices were fully charged and that we can keep essential systems running in the event of a power failure. The utility lines in our immediate neighborhood are underground, but they connect to the feeds on aerial spans. Numerous parts of the valley are without power right now, virtually every interruption caused by snow-loaded tree branches ... or whole trees, falling onto the power lines. We could lose our power too, even though the physical interruption might be miles away. I figure better to be prepared, right?
Tomorrow we get a break from the precipitation ... maybe. The forecasts change almost hourly, because the system seems to have stalled over our corner of the state. We may get intermittent light snow, we may not. At some point, though, the overnight lows are going to get below freezing, and we could see overnight temps in the teens by next Monday. Of course the storm will be gone by then, we'll be under moderately clear skies. During the day the snow will be melting, and overnight it'll be freezing, so mornings are going to be fun whether you're walking to the corner coffee shop or hauling heavy over Siskiyou Summit.
I'm glad I'm retired, and can just watch from the sidelines.
Any of you furs following the NHL? We have been. We're a house divided, La Conejita thinks the Vegas Golden Knights are all that, while the Perro Viejo is inclined towards the Colorado Avalanche. Both teams are doing well, both are playoff contenders. Meanwhile, the 2025 Four Nations Playoffs are starting on the 12th in Montreal. It should be a bit of fun, watching guys that are professionally bitter rivals play together on the same team against their own professional team mates, just by virtue of what nation they hail from. We're looking forward to it!
Anyway, that's all the news that's fit to yap about. I hope you all are well and warm and safe this winter.
Catch ya later!
25 January 2025
I saw a post from Kel at the PF Forums this morning about the weather. Apparently it's a little chilly where he lives. It prompted me to share this with you. It's what happens when fog freezes, I guess. It was 24° when I took this shortly after sunrise, and there was some fog. I'd never seen this before.
Remember that I grew up and raised pups in soCal, where the winters were more about fires than cold weather. A cold snap down there meant 50°, or if it was really miserable 45°. Here in the Rogue Valley we're about 9° latitude farther north than where I grew up, and at a higher elevation surrounded by mountains on most sides. Our winters get below freezing. Sometimes we'll see sub-freezing temps all day, but mostly the daytime temps hover in the 30s or low 40s, and then get down into the 20s at night.
This winter has been dry. We had some "aerial rivers" push through in November and December, but except for the morning fog it's been bone dry around here so far this year. The weather-guessers (apologies to Tigermark for the slur) say we're supposed to see some snow in about a week, but I'm skeptical. The mountains are pretty and fun, but they also shield us from most of the precipitation that pushes in from the ocean to the southwest, and some of it from the northwest. The mountains get a lot of rain an snow, but not so much us. I've never shoveled a driveway here.
Anyway, todays image with a bit of verbosity to go with it. Carry on, catch ya later!
15 January 2025
Hey guys. You can thank Tigermark for this update. He sent me a message the other day, asking how my family was dealing with the massive fires that are still, as I write this, active in southern California. I'm not going to dive into that subject, at least not now. This is all about the gentle nudge Tiger's message gave me a gentle nudge towards attempting ... again ... to reconnect with the furry genre and community. Now I admit, my presence in the community over the years has been confined mostly to the Planet Furry Forums. As far as I know, it is the only place where I have maintained and contributed to a presence, never mind how sporadic and sketchy that presence has become lately. So I will do two things:
I will start blogging again. Nothing serious, just a way of catching up with folks who might be interested in what I'm doing these days. I'm not very good at keeping up with individuals these days. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I'm not very good at initiating the process of keeping up. My bad, but at least blogging is a first step towards resuming regular dialog with folks I miss.
I will not harbor any illusions about getting back to my stories. I have chattered here and there about them, about making myself sit down and creating more content. But that's the problem, I'd have to make myself do it. In the past my creative writing ... story-telling, was spontaneous. Call it having an active muse. I'd get an idea that would lodge between my ears, and I'd retain that intelligence long enough to spend an evening or two writing it down. That muse has been gone for years ... a dozen or more. I know what caused my muse to disappear, and I can't recreate the conditions which might lure it back. So it is what it is. Except for brief flashes, briefly illuminated scenes of momentary clarity regarding characters or situations they are in, there's just not that much there. I blame that in part on my memory, which is deteriorating due to a head cluttered with un-necessary stuff from a writer's standpoint. I also blame my stubborn resistance to using any kind of tech, easily to paw, to record the content of these flashes. I have a phone in my pocket that could easily lend itself to that task, but ... as I said, it is what it is.
What I will chat about, well, you'll just have to stay and check it out. As a member of the gear-head, mech tech, gun-dog calling (as I have been told), I suspect you'll find a lot of stuff about off road vehicles (particularly Jeeps), overlanding, travel in general, aviation, railroading, history, photography, edged and ballistic weaponry, two way radio systems (I was a telecomm tech for a few decades), and anything else that wanders into my head on the spur of a moment.
So ... let's catch up.
As I alluded to, we (my wife Brigid and I) spend a lot of time in Jeeps. We own three of them. We also enjoy doing this:
OVERLANDING
14 September 2024, near the Owens River Gorge, northwest of Bishop, California.
This is what many refer to as "overlanding." It is basically living off grid ... any amenities or infrastructure you require to be safe and comfortable, you need to bring them with you, and you need to bring enough of it so that you can be off grid for several days ... or weeks, or months, as you desire and your equipment is capable of. We like to get "out in the sticks" for a few days to enjoy our natural surroundings. But after no more than four or five days, we need to get back to civilization long enough to refuel, restock, and clean up. Then we go back out for more. We do this primarily in the western US, but we have ambitions that include the greener side of our country, and Canada and Alaska as well. We'll see how that goes.
Overlanding can be as simple as throwing a tent and a couple of sleeping bags in your trunk with some type of stove to cook on (unless you plan to find, cut, and burn firewood once you're in camp), clothing, cooking utensils, food and water. We're kind of at the other extreme, I suppose, as we have a small trailer that allows us to have a lot of things at our disposal that most folks may not consider "necessary." Like a refrigerator, a hot water heater (with a shower attachment), a 40 gallon water tank, dual propane tanks, and lots of storage space. Oh, and did I mention the queen-size bed in the tent on top? Our rig also has a lot of other stuff. For details, look here.
22 July 2024 somewhere northeast of Lucin, Utah. It's 105°F in mid-afternoon.
We are near where the original First Transcontinental Railroad route branched away from the current mainline at a small railroad station called Lucin.
That old railroad grade is known as the "Promontory Route."
Also near Lucin, still 105°F.
Our Jeep, long known as the Little Red Beast, is also well loaded, as you can see. It's a 2017 Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon, Hard Rock edition. I'll say this for the motorheads: Dual Dana 44s, 4:10 gears, factory e-lockers and swaybar disconnect, part time 4:1 transfer case, six speed manual, LT255/75-R17 BFG All Terrains. There is a long laundry list of other things I've done to this rig, if you're interested click here. Suffice to say that loaded for the trail as you see it, it weighs about 6400 pounds. Jeep people are wincing at that, at least the ones who have bothered to learn what the GVWR of these vehicles is.
8 October 2024, on top of Frazier Mountain west of Gorman, California.
We are here supporting the removal of a two-way radio system from a vault. You can see one of the several towers on this mountain in the background.
Livin' large on the Los Padres National Forest!
Somewhere in the eastern Sierra, 22 May 2024.
24 October 2024, Brigid (AKA "La Conejita") and her birthday present in Oakhurst, California.
The Little Red Beast is maybe getting a bit long in the tooth. He turned 8 years old a month ago, and has 135,000 miles on the clock. Still going strong, still lots of life left, but that damn stick shift ...
So meet Bonnie Blue, Brigid's 2024 Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon. It was built on the same template as the LRB was, the only major difference is that Bonnie has an eight-speed automatic transmission and came from the factory on 35" tires (which included some augmented suspension system components). It also has a factory mounted (and warranted) Warn winch hiding behind the front bumper. Oh ... it also has this funny glass thing in the dash that lights up and shows pretty pictures, maps, plays music and videos, links to her phone, etc. The LRB was fancy with a AM/FM/CD player with an auxiliary input. Brigid is definitely in the 21st century with this rig!
It took us six years to discuss and save up for this rig, but the wait was worth it! It's exactly what she wanted.
We are slowly upfitting Bonnie with systems and equipment that will allow her to become our front line tow vehicle. She is stronger than the LRB ever was because she has <motorhead lingo> a full floating rear axle </motorhead lingo> rated to tow 5000 pounds, compared to the 3500 pounds the LRB can tow. As our overnight temps are dipping well below freezing these days, our upfitting activities have tapered off somewhat. But I have materials to knock off at least three major projects with her as soon as the driveway gets warm enough to work on (warmer than 50°F, at least). Until then ... well, bonus blogging time!
PHOTOGRAPHY
Brigid and I both carry digital camera systems with us when we travel. She's at least as big a photography nut as I am, but we tend to point our cameras at different things. And that's cool. Here's a couple of my recent efforts:
15 March 2024, a pooch having fun on the beach near the north end of Lincoln City, Oregon.
I was about 125 yards away from him and maybe 50 or 60 feet above him. My Canon 5D with the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM Lens, ISO 320, f/10 @ 1/500th.
Yosemite Mountain Sugarpine Railroad engine # 10, taken at the end-of-track loop 26 October 2024. She is seen here "decked out" for Hallowe'en.
# 10 is a 1928 product of the Lima Locomotive Works, is a 3-truck Shay C-3 70 ton class geared locomotive.
The 81.6 ton oil-burner is reputed to be the largest Shay Locomotive ever built.
Taken with my Samsung A53 phone, ISO 50, 5mm focal length, f/1.8 @ 1/60th.
This image actually indulges three of my passions at once; photography, railroading, and history.
Taken in the cupola of the caboose at the end of the train hauled by the locomotive above. My son Mike and his younger daughter Lennon, enjoying the ride.
Brigid loves taking selfies, and I'm glad. 15 March 2024 near Oceanside, Oregon.
Turning 65. Another one of Brigid's photographic efforts.
Don't ask me to explain why three candles. This was at my cousin's house, she made the cake, and I asked no questions.
It was delicious.
So yeah, we've been knocking around in the sticks some, spending a lot of time with family, working on our home, watching a few hockey games, and just enjoying being alive and reasonably healthy. The previous year was absolutely lost as far as my blogs here at The Range are concerned, hence this little bit of catching up. Moving forward I will try and put something up here, just as soon as something interesting happens.
... did I just mention hockey?
4 December 2024, the Jack Daniels Club on the 300 level of the Honda Center in Anaheim, California.
The Ducks hosted the Vegas Golden knights, Brigid's favorite team.
She is wearing one of Mark Stone's "away jerseys", while I am wearing Lubomir Visnovsky's "home jersey."
The night was a birthday gift from Brigid, front row seats at center ice, next to the home team's penalty box.
The Ducks lost 4-1, but it was a great, high-energy battle down to the last horn. We had a blast.
Don't laugh, back in the day Lubo was a hell of a defenseman who played both ends of the ice. His shot from the point was like a cannon.
Anyway, this will do for now. We'll get after it again soon. Catch ya later!
Don't care to communicate via the PF Forums? Email me!