You see, The Wife and I are very casual about events, personal remembrance style events.
Our own birthdays? For the shopping run prior to you might be asked what you want to eat on 'the day' in case we need to order something different than normal. Anniversary? Now that my aunt is no longer around to faithfully send us the card which acted as a reminder we usually don't even remember until something marginally related triggers that memory in one or the other of us weeks later.
And don't even get us started on the so-called Christian church's blatent attempt to usurp yet another ancient pagan celebration (Lupercalia in this case) by declaring Feb 14 as a feast day for St. Valentine (at least three Valentines have been stainted and it's not clear which one was being targeted in this case) Especially since this happened around 500AD, a full 300 years before 'the church' started acknowledging weddings as something worthy of being blessed and a millenia before the 'wedding sacrament', which somehow was suddenly supposed to make the milenias old custom of pair-partnerships more special, was standardized (and moved from the front steps to the alter) during the Council of Trent (1563 AD). Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, we have never been inclined to participate in this both commercially and religiously driven annual sacrificing of an estimated 2 billion dollars worth of plant sex organs!
Gifts? We don't do that either, never have, because everyday should be special, not just a select few. (Awww!) - OK, OK, maybe it's part that and part because we're grown-ass adults and if we want something and can afford it there's no sense in screwing around waiting for a 'special day' that might not come untill after the metaphorical bus culls us from this existence. -
BTW, we're not complete curmudeons. We send The Daughter's half-sister's two small kids something for Christmas every year even though we have rarely seen them in person and they have no idea who we are. In fact we're already working on this year's. (I suspect the act does more for us than the kids.)
My SIL's on the otherhand, are in that segment of polite society that believe traditional gift-giving is mandatory no matter how tightly it squeezes the budget.
So when they saw this thing on the shelf, something that combines my inclination for both camping and puzzling, they just had to go in together and get it for my birthday.
Cool! But I was working on other things at the time so it got shelved
untill I had a project-opening in my schedule.
I figured I could combine this new RV
with my wooden VW Bus RV and make a quaint little camping scene out of them despite, or maybe because of, the scale and style differences.
So, once I had an opening in the schedule, I broke out the first batch of blocks and the 72 page instruction book
and
went
to work.
After a while I'm thinking 'Wow! These people must have every appliance in the Sears catalog. That's no way to camp!'. But I kept on following the instructions anyway.
Right about here, in a panic, I run up to make sure the gate is closed, run back down to the barn, lock the doors, and turn out the lights - because I finally twig to the fact that I'm not building an RV, I'm building a fucking drug lab!
To be fair, The Wife and I only watched one episode of Breaking Bad, way back well before I retired, back when my dad was still alive and Elmer was still hale-n-hardy. That was enought for us to decide it was way too violent for our tastes. We also don't find no-good-way-out scenarios entertaining or educational, just stressful. And between the two of us we've got enough anxiety without adding that crap to our evening routine!
I don't know if my SIL's realized what this actually is, or if this is what they really think of me, but now I'm accidently elbow deep into becoming a drug lord!
Once I got over the shock, and talked myself down off the they're-gona-come-and-get-me ledge I did the only sensible thing I could.
I carried on.
But at this point I deviated from the instructions, not an unusual occurrence for me.
Before putting the roof on
I installed the wheel-sets out of order so I could figure out where to drill through the floor
in order to wire the model up with lights. (Come on! You didn't really think I would skip this extracurricular step did you?)
After laying some colored lights on the floor of the RV, both inside and out,
I attached some white lights left over from previous lighting projects to the ceiling before finally installing the roof.
With that done it was time to move on to the base the RV sits on and landscaping around it.
This is where I got another gruesome shock.
This kit, for kids 14 and up, includes a couple of headless torsos!
Yep, propped up there in the sand just outside the door and right next to a casually lounging drug barron.
I suspect that this means something to those who stuck with the show, but for me it’s just creepy!
Anyway, a little more lighting and the kit is finished.
But you didn't really think I would stop there did you?!
In order to redeem my standing in the community - Oh wait, I never did have any standing in the community. OK - in order to make myself feel better, I now have to come up with
some cop-stuff so I can stage a raid on the lab.
Maybe some SWAT people since drug lords, headless people, and remote desert seems like a little much for one cop?
And, because I apparently can't help myself, I'll need to build a desert scene to showcase it all.
I don't usually pay much attention to COE facilities because they focus more on the water and not much on the trails. And the trails are my main focus.
This, passing up COE parks, was especially true when I was in one or another of the various vans and would have to pretty much break camp in order to drive to a distant trailhead.
Which explains why, even though I have driven right past it many dozens of times over the past 40 years on my way to and from family in Michigan, other than briefly dropping into the headquarters just after my 62nd birthday, ten years ago now!, to buy my $10 lifetime geezer pass, I have never stopped at Rend Lake COE Recreation area.
Untill, that is, I was heading back from the family reunion this year after noticing that the bike/hike trail they were putting in around much of the lake is now 80% complete. Still missing a couple of connectors to tie the whole thing together but the southern section of the trail, about 11 miles, is ready to go!
Jumping on my Reserve America account I discovered that they have loads of campsites spread over a half-dozen or so campgrounds wrapped around that end, the southern end, of the lake and was surprized at how many sites were available with only two day's notice.
I haven't taken the time yet to figure out why some electric sites (most, if not all seem to be 30/50 amp sites) are $24 a night while others, seemingly with the same amenities, are $18 a night. I just shrugged it off and snagged one of the $18 sites in the South Marcum unit for two nights. With my geezer pass I paid $9 per night.
I slow-played my way down from Michigan because at this campground check-in isn't untill 1700 (checkout is 1600), but I got hung up in a couple serious storms on the way and didn't get there untill a little after 1800. Not that it made any difference since apparently the little guard shack at the South Marcum campground is closed by 1700(?!).
So I just drove in, found my campsite, and claimed it with no post or vehicle tags, figuring I'd sort things out in the morning, but but when I tried I discovered the shack isn't open untill 1300, so that didn't happen either!
Nice enough paved campground with large, uncrowded sites, private-room style toilet/shower rooms, and water spigots scattered around, though the noise from the freeway to the east was noticable. It might not be so noticeable from the Sandusky Creek campgrounds on the west side of the lake, but verifying that will have to wait untill nect time.
I'm not a fan of lakeside campsites because of the potencial for incessant boat noise, but though site 118 looks like a lakeside site, the satellite view showed a thick band of growth between the site and the lake so it was fine.
But anyway - before continuing on at Rend Lake let's jump over to the new toy part of this post.
Towards the end of July, just in time for the family reunion in early August, I picked up this nifty little Thumb Action Camera for less than $80.
And it comes with all this stuff too!
Starting top-left going clockwise:
A shirt-pocket clip the camera snaps into
A couple of stick-on mounts and the camera-mount plate that clips into them. (Unfortunately my bike helmet doesn't have a flat spot large enough to stick one of the mounts onto it.)
A gimble-style mount
A magnetic pendant for hanging around your neck under your shirt and sticking the camera on the outside.
A nifty little USB stick SD and micro SD card reader (the camera uses a micro SD card) that will plug into a USB A or USB C connector. Important because the SD card reader on my 16 year old laptop has long since given up the ghost.
A frame to wrap around the camera when using some of the mounting options
And in the center, a water-proof case for the divers among us.
Not shown in the previous photo because it's already on my bike, the bundle also includes a handle-bar mounting system.
The knobs on it are a bit bulky, but that makes them easy to operate when adjusting the mount, although if they were a little shorter they wouldn't seem quite so vulnerable to getting knocked around.
The card reader (left, with a micro-card in it) that comes with the camera is much handier to haul around than the one I keep in the glove box of the Ranger for reading the card in my dash-cam and copying files from it to my phone,
and I have this handy little USB C to C extender cable
which lets me plug the new card reader into my phone without having to remove the phone's protective Pelican case first.
Like most everything else these days, there's an app for that.
This one lets you adjust the settings of the camera
as well as access and manipulate (delete, move, copy) the files wirelessly.
The way I have the camera configured it only has about a 2 hour battery life, but on the up-side it will continue to record while charging. Since I already carry a battery-pack for keeping my phone, which is my GPS tracker and mapping tool, topped up when hiking or biking all day, the short battery life of the camera is not really an issue for me.
So how well does the camera function in real life?
It's no Go-Pro, but concidering it's size and sub-$80 price, it works pretty damn well!
This is 3 minutes of biking the overly civilized hike/bike trail at the campground where we hold the family reunion.
In addition to the small kiosks with kid-yoga and naturalist info spaced out along this trail (new this year)
there are also
a whole bunch of
these little tchotchkes
hidden in the trees waiting for the observant to spot them.
Technically e-bikes are limited to class 1 on this park's trails and roads (no throttle, peddle assist only), which is how I have mine configured, but I suspect nobody bothers with checking unless you're doing something stupid because I saw several people tooling around on class 2 or 3 bikes using only the throttle.
Here's 3 minutes of biking the uber-civilized Rend Lake hike/bike trail. Apparently, in addition to boots, street shoes, flipflops, and roller skates, all classes of e-bike are allowed here, as well as lowspeed scooters, hoverboards, and motorized mobility devices. (Hense the uber-civilization of the trail.)
I killed off much of my one day layover here leisurely covering (I'm focusing on slowing down right now, but that's a different post) about 17 miles, out and back, on this trail.
A nice, pleasant day with the trail largely to myself, though more rigs started showing up in the campground that evening (Thursday) so it's probably a good thing I left Friday morning, timing my arrival at the Henderson Texas Walmart for just after sunset (It's hot everywhere in mid August so trying to settle down anywhere, let alone in the middle of a paved Texas parking-lot, while the sun's still up is just not good planning!).
To wrap up the camera assesment, and this post
here's 3 minutes of hiking the decidedly uncivilized trails on our property. You know, the ones that get minimal maintenance because they are mine for me alone (The Wife does not venture beyond the driveway!) and we take a dim, perhaps draconian, view of trespassers here in Texas so don't worry much about them getting hurt.
For this hike I had the magnetic pendant under my shirt and the camera stuck to it from the outside. Obviously more wobbly than when mounted on the bike, and it could have stood a little more downward view, but I think it worked reasonable well.
