It’s been a very active month of wildlife visitors. Occasionally I get lucky enough to grab the camera and snap off some shots before they see me and scamper off.
Here are a few of the last pics:
Tag Archives: santa cruz
Coyotes in Santa Cruz
Snapped these three pics outside our home off Branciforte, at 10:45 AM.
Daytime Wildlife visitors (bobcat and coyote)
Over the last couple of days we’ve had some daytime visitors along the hillside above us.
Lynx rufus
We know there are a number of predator cats in the area. I don’t often see bobcats so it was a rare treat to get a glimpse of one outside my office window:
Canis latrans
Coyotes are much more commonly sighted around here. I often catch them on the infrared wildlife camera. Seeing them during the daytime is a little less common but it does happen, as it did this morning:
GoPro3 Timelapse Video of Sunrise in Santa Cruz Mountains
A few days ago, I posted the first test video shot using 30 second exposures with a GoPro3 camera, located at our home in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
For my next test series I set the GoPro3 Camera, to fire the photos at 10 second intervals. The number of photos captured before the battery expired was almost 1100, netting a much longer and smoother looking video.
The Latest Coyote Sightings in Santa Cruz Mountains
The wildlife camera experiment continues.
Coyote at front door
A few nights ago it captured a coyote walking right up to our front door.
The camera only fired a few times that night, and unfortunately none of the still were usable.
Camera Hood experiment
After having so many foggy photos (see blog entry) I decided to fab a quick hood out of cardboard to see if it would help in any way. It’s not pretty. I didn’t want to invest a bunch of time in something nice if this wasn’t going to work. It’s an MVP if you will… with quality to match! LOL
This is what the current camera orientation looks like during daylight hours:
Checking the camera the next morning, it seemed to have helped out quite a bit. We had some deer drop by for about an hour or so. Instead of the normally fuzzy images, these came our a lot better.
My plan is to move the camera again, maybe to a higher point and aim it downward, using the camera body to provide more cover for the lens. So far this is my most favored location, but I’m not done experimenting quite yet.
Life and Death – confronting the reality of our existence
That sounds pretty ominous, and in a lot of respects, it is.
Yesterday was a strange day indeed. While working from home during the building emergency water shut-off, we noticed Police presence next door, and not the typical type.
Here is the reason: the Coroner had arrived to remove the body of one of the people living in the unit next door. It’s a little weird to know that someone had just died next door, just a few feet away:
They are both aged, and have in-home nursing care. I guess when that is the case the Police have to very carefully investigate the death. There were 3 detectives, county Coroner technician and a patrol officer all going over the scene.
When you see detectives leaving with bags of marked evidence, you wonder if something foul had occurred.
We later spoke with the complex maintenance man (for reasons related to the water shutoff), and he confirmed that they believed it to be a simple case of death by natural causes, but they have to impound medications, equipment etc. to make sure no crime was committed. He also confirmed that it was the first death in the building. Hm.. some consolation. :/
It was a very strange day, indeed. Godspeed to our neighbor. I hope they are now in a much better place, and able to get some deserved rest…. and no longer woken up in the middle of the night by the bar patrons across the street… :/
Sprinter: Getting parts, and getting towed
Absolutely a day of ups and downs… so.. let’s start off where the day did.
Having just finished putting the truck back together again, it was time for a really good test drive. This time I picked Hwy 17. A 16 miles windy trek over the 1,814ft. Patchen Pass in the Santa Cruz Mountains (the epicenter of the 1989 World Series Earth Quake, mistakenly associated with San Francisco, 40+ miles to the North).
The old dog handled the mountain with ease. Passing slower vehicles on the steep climb was a non-event. Considering the type of vehicle, it handled the curves quite confidently.
Once in San Jose, first top was Club Auto Sport, where my trainer Isaac has his facility (Fit for Speed). Had a great workout, then headed out into the sun to start running some errands while in The Valley.
First stop was Harbor Freight to check out the finest in Chinese manufactured crap for American consumption.
The truck will need a set of wheel chocks, and these were on sale for $40 each, so I grabbed a pair. Don’t know much about them, but hopefully they are not complete crap.
Also needed was some rubber flooring for the back. The original plan (as you might have seen in the previous post) was to carpet all 14′ of the van. After some discussion with some other track junkies I know, a change of specification to rubber flooring was made. This stuff was not very expensive, so I picked up 4 rolls (enough to cover 6′ x 8′) of the stuff on the left ($38 total).
Next up are some ramps. These on the left are 8′ long and rated at 500 lb each. Nothing I own weighs more than that, and made in steel, they seemed stout enough for my purposes. A pair is $72, and that fits the budget nicely.
Ramps, rubber and sundries loaded up and ready for the next stop. However I spent so much time in Harbor Frieght, I needed to get rolling back home to complete some software projects. So.. heading to the dealer for a spare key and the RV shop to look for lighting, will have to wait.
And waiting I would be doing. A lot of it as a matter of fact. Not far out of Los Gatos I began to lose power, followed quickly by a batter light and a vivid reminder of my breakdown on Hwy 1. Recalling how suddenly, and with little warning it died last time, I found the first decent turnoff on the little mountain highway I could find, shut it down and… just felt pretty damn deflated.
Having just a few days before upgraded my insurance policy on the van to something called “Full Roadside Coverage” I ran up my insurance company and for the first time in my 50 years of life, tried out Road Side Assistance.
Very long day/story short.. they dispatched a flat bed heavy-duty tow rig from Santa Cruz, and said that the distance to back to town (about 22 miles) was ALL COVERED. I asked the operator if I could get it towed to my personal shop, and she said I’m covered for up to 26 miles, the distance to the nearest Mercedes Dealership that can service the rig. Excellent (considering I’m getting towed).
The tow truck driver was a nice enough guy. We talked cars and trucks all the way back through the hellish commute traffic (It was 3:00PM by the time we started rolling up the hill). As stated, they transported me all the way to my West Side garage, we unloaded and I put the van way for the next round of repairs.. :/
Unloaded all my stuff from the back….
Then unpacked the ramps to give check out the length and angle.
The deck height on the sprinter is 2′ 3″… which.. is pretty darn low for a vehicle capable of carrying 5000 lb. of cargo. I might have liked to have 10′ ramps, I’m not 100% sure I’m strong enough to reliably get the bike into the truck solo… (perhaps a winch is in my future?). But I’m going to go with these for now. The ramps also have holes in the sides and top that I could use to bring them together and make a nice solid platform for getting two bikes up into the truck, walking along side them.
There is a lot more experimentation to do, but for now.. I have to do some research and figure out WHY this things seems to be eating alternators like a kid loose in a candy shop after hours. Something just aint Right.
Photos from Winter storm in Santa Cruz, December 2014
Posting a couple of photos taken on 11-DEC-2014 at of Walton Light, Santa Cruz Harbor, California.
Extreme wind and surf hit the West Coast of California for nearly 3 straight days, making for some amazing photographic opportunities.
Riding the California Coast – Pacific Coast Highway (17-NOV-2013)
If you ride a motorcycle, and have never been to California, you are truly missing out on one of the best places in the United States to ride a motorcycle. PERIOD.
Here a few photos from various places along a ride I took yesterday from Santa Cruz, CA, to Lucia,CA:
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Being an MC ride, there are few opportunities along the way to take photos, but amongst the group we did mange to snap off a few.
We first gathered here at Lighthouse Harbor Grille in Moss Landing:
We met up with the remainder of the group in Carmel.
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We gassed up the bikes and prepared ourselves (with more caffeine of course) for what was about to transpire. Rich (on the 916) took the time to model his man-sack for us. I hear it’s last word in manly riding apparel for the Central Coast.
From here on our, it was Ride like the Wind all the way to Lucia. We did stop once to regroup, turn on the video cameras and discuss the awesomeness so far:
The first of many great surprises on this ride, was our lunch destination in Lucia. Ah.. what a view! What a great place to relax after a spirited ride up Hwy 1.
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Return ride Video:
Next stop. Nepenthe in Big Sur. Despite a hair raising incident with an inattentive tourist in a rental car, we made it there without obvious injury. Despite the fact that the highway was the destination and the star of the day, this pulled off a pretty convincing 2nd place.:
What a fantastic ride today. Perfectly organized (or properly disorganized?) group. It’s always a blast to right with these guys and gals. Looking forward to our next epic excursion!!
PS. Video will be added to the blog as soon as I can clear 132 GB of space on a computer, somewhere.