Looking back at 12 years of blog posts, photographs and tech articles, today I’m pulling up some of my favorite photos from years past.
Photo descriptions include a link to the story where it originally appeared.
Following up on Friday’s shenanigans above The Horseshoe, we were at it again, this time we started at the River House and headed downstream on the Guadalupe River.
Weather was even nicer than Friday, with good temps and plenty of sunshine. What a great way to keep up the weekend rocking.
Heading into The Horseshoe is a nice easy paddle, providing plenty of time to get warmed up, acclimated and ready for the Class II+ challenges ahead. Piece of cake in a raft, but a bit of a challenge for someone that’s not been kayaking rivers for more than a few months (aka. me).
Even with the leaves mostly gone now, it’s still a great river to run. The terrain changes quite a bit along the river.. with some low-bank sections with homes and others lined with trees.
The banks get a little steeper and the river a little quicker as it narrows up, providing some nice warmup sections before hitting the remains of several dams paddle wheels along the river.
On the left side, are some campsites that are part of the Whitewater Amphitheater, which is right on the river. Check the schedule, the summer season kicks off with Wille Nelson shows.
There are some fun little rapids where the river splits through a small grove of trees.
There are 6 places the roads cross the river, they have a numbering conventions, starting from the edge of New Braunfels (crossing #1 is right as you get into town). This here is crossing #4 and due to a minor mishap on the river, was the takeout point for our trip.
It was a fantastic day. As is the tradition, we cap off the day with a fire.
I’m going to look at some ways to take some better pictures, and probably some video next time out. I just hope the weather holds and the Army Corps of Engineers don’t cut the flow back too much more; having to drag boats and portage around exposed dams is a little less than idea.
Between storms, the waves really picked up at Steamers Lane, Santa Cruz, CA.
Steamer’s Lane has a rich surfing history. It is just off a point on the side of cliffs in the West Cliff residential area near downtown Santa Cruz, providing a good opportunity to view the surfing. The Santa Cruz Surfing Museum is in the lighthouse there. “Steamer Lane” is the preferred form of the name used by the locals. It was at Steamer Jack O’Neil invented the modern surfing wetsuit, “Just because he wanted to surf longer”.
I went out to capture some of the Saturday action:
Granted, it’s been a couple of weeks since the pros packed up and headed off to Pipeline for the last event on their years tour. I’m not always the quickest to get photos uploaded, with clients to service, mouths to feed, cars and bikes to work on and in there somewhere I try to have a little fun for myself.
So this morning I’m pulling up some pics from a few weeks ago that I’ve wanted to post up. One of these days I’ll get my watermarking done, but for now.. I’ll just have to trust that nobody finds these compelling enough to steal (here’s hoping).
Tiger Woods Press Conference.
Played my 2nd round of golf (ever) at Elk Run Golf Club yesterday. Joel, a really good golfer and co-oworker sponsored my play yesterday. Thanks Joel!
Elk Run is a very interesting course. Not a lot of long holes, but there were a number of technical aspects to the course! One of which was the fact it winds through a housing development. Not a ‘Golf and Country Club’ but.. it’s more like a standard residential neighborhood with a golf course running where some of the blocks would be. Made for some serious out of bounds issues. I lost 8 balls on the front 9. My drive from the tee box is.. ‘variable’.
I’m really enjoying this game. It can be frustrating, but also rewarding when you hit a really nice shot. The 5th hole I drive straight down the fairway and within chip-distance of the green. I was in a great possition to PAR the hole, but my putting game (if you can call it a game) completely disintigrated. The upside of playing with a couple of good players, were a number of really helpful tips all day long, and by the end of the day I was making a some pretty decent puts.
On the way out to play, I picked up 3 ‘new’ 6-irons of various shaft stiffness and manufacture. I shot with the 6 instead of the 7 and 8 in a number of places (my game is not consitant enough for singular club selection to make that much of a difference) and Cleavland CG4 seems to be the one that’s going to work best for me. At $10 per club.. it was an easy investment in learning more about what clubs work well for me. I’ll sell off the others once I get my preference dailed in.
So, off to have brunch with my kids today, then to the driving range to work 100 balls with just the 6 irons. Need to work in my consistancy of swing. Received some great tips there as well, yesterday.
Golf.. frustrating and fun. I plan to play this game for a long time!