Day: June 28, 2009

What Are They Thinking?

At Culvers today I was thinking it was nearing the end of the month and I was way behind on my posts.  I actually have plenty of content queued up, but have been having a hard time to sparing the time to get it written up.  The trip out to Yellowstone energized me to start cleaning up my forest acreage and getting the trails cut in.  This has a tendency to drain me especially when I have to end the day with my 7-8 mile Bix7 training runs.  I was jarred back into the moment at hand when a young woman approached the counter with her friend.  She was holding a wrapped hamburger which begged my attention.  Correctly guessing, it was a messed up order.  Two statements made me stand and wonder what was going on in their head.  First, while explaining what the problem was, the young girl states “I threw the onions out the window because that’s what everyone did”  For one of the few times I can’t think of any context where an observed action makes any sense.  Was there a big pile of onions on the side of the road she was simply adding to?  Did she see a whole like of people ahead of her in the drive through whipping their condiments out the window?  I have nothing here folks other than the possibility she was savvy enough to know they come from the ground so returning it seemed like the appropriate action. The other interesting statement was from the cashier.  For some reason she was not stunned at all about the onion comment, but after listening to the issue she responded with “Would you like that made again right now?”  I had at least 4 clever responses in the time that took her to respond with the boring “Yes”.  Possibly a clever cashier followup would have been to simply grab the sandwich and scrape the undesired condiments off on the edge of the counter and handed it back.  It probably would have been job ending, but I probably would have shook her hand after redeeming herself from a stupid question.

Anyway, I decided to get this post on a couple of vacation scenes that made as much sense as this encounter.  First a quiz.  Does anyone out there think Bison are tame?  Does anyone believe that wild animals don’t care about their young?  And lastly, are wild animals entirely predictable?  If you answered affirmative to any of those questions you need to stay out of our National Parks and stick to safer destinations like zoos.  I can’t tell you how many times we saw people chasing out after wildlife to get the perfect shot.  Note, this can all be remedied by purchasing higher powered glass, which is significantly cheaper than getting a horn removed from your rear.

This lady decided that the numerous stay away from wildlife warning signs didn’t apply to her.

Dumb Human

We had already taken a number of pictures from the walkway (with the 200 glass) and was able to get various angles in complete safety.  What this lady didn’t know is there is a calf (guess that is what you call it) on the other side.  I kept my finger on the trigger for funniest home gold.  In case you questioned, the answer is I have little sympathy for stupid people but luckily for her the subject didn’t decide to test her speed.

Then there was this guy.

Dumb Human

The elk are probably a little more tame than Bison, but this guy essentially stalked this elk for 15 minutes.  He was trying to be clever and stay out of view, but checking the angle of the elk tells you how successful that was.  Every time the guy took a few steps forward, the elk would head a little further up the hill.  I joked to my wife that he was being led closer to the tree line so his friends could roll him.  Yes, I kept my camera ready for any violence that might have been initiated.  I ended up 0-2 for content on the my series When Good Animals Go Bad.  Admit it, you would watch it – and you can’t tell me it would be any worse than watching the wife of our removed and soon to be put on trial ex-governor Blowjobovich trying to replace her cuss filled tirade wiretap image with a PR stunt in the woods.  But the funny thing about this is there was another elk (with a similar rack) sitting under a tree not 30 feet from the trail.  The whole time that elk kept a close eye on the guy.  Made me wonder if it was not the humans who were on display.  I wish I could tell what that elk was thinking at that moment.  Maybe it was this.

The Food Chain

A Special Load

 Convoy Ahead

Last year we headed out to South Dakota a week later than this year.  While we were there, the army was carrying out their training exercises in Custer State Park.  Since we were out a week earlier, we came up on a number of military convoys heading out to the park.  One particular grouping of trucks turned out pretty comical.  As w approached one of the semi trucks, something looked odd about the payload.

Military Convoy

Slowly the picture became a little clearer.

Truck Convoy

I have to admit, we did not have the camera out when we passed this convoy the first time.  We laughed so hard we doubled back to take a few photos.  It is amazing the lengths you will go to get a blog entry.  As we passed the truck for the second time, took the payload shot.

Truck Convoy Payload

I think it is our newest secret weapon developed for special urban assaults.  There are probably rocket mounts in the dump bucket and special hummer inflating tires to allow it to traverse any rubble it encounters.  We definitely appreciate the job they do to keep us safe and our Democracy intact.  Good luck boys an girls and in the words of Maximus “unleash hell”.

Eat Dust

Salute the Troops!

The Return of Dinos

First off, I would like to declare for the record that this Blog is written by a MALE.  My brother (who I am sure was snickering the entire time) sent me a link that analyzes the gender of a webpage.  Apparently I am not using the appropriate amount of stereotypical male words in my post.  Here is my attempt to fix that:

Boobs, Beer, Football, Baseball, Rugby, UFC, Boxing, Spitting, Scratching, Jockstrap, Whiskey, Engineering, Monster Trucks, NASCAR, Drag Racing, Urinals, Spike TV and  LAN Gaming… would welcome any additional words if you can think of them …  it is actually harder than I imagined.

Okay, this post is about reemergence of Dinos.  I thought it odd that there were no less than three occurrences of said extinct animal during our vacation.

Sinclair Dino

Obviously you know where this was taken.  That is, if you happen to be someone that also wasted valuable time actually stopping at Wall Drug in South Dakota.  There is actually a large animated T-Rex there sticking with the theme.  I found this picture a tad ironic.  Can any identify why I think that?  I wonder if the Exxon marketing people were savvy enough to purposely put their sign in that position to cause an association with their gas to the Sinclair filling stations?  I assumed you have traveled enough to know that this green and white icon is the trademark of Sinclair.  They usually have smaller ones in front of their station, however, this one was pretty big.

I had my wife snap this one as we drove by at 75 miles an hour.  I can’t believe it came out as well as it did, but she was zoomed in a little too much to capture the human skeleton that was holding on to the leash.

Dino Skeleton

I honestly have no idea what the purpose for it was – possibly for an exhibit that was up the road.   The pending storm actually makes the image look a little ominous.  The last shot was taken while stuck in a traffic jam in Yellowstone National Park.  We were heading back to our lodge on the road that connects the north and south loops when the traffic came to a dead stop.    There were also very few cars coming from the other way which meant an animal was near the road and some idiot was stopping traffic to gawk at it.  I’m all for stopping and admiring the wildlife, but find an appropriate place to pull off, don’t just stop the rented recreational vehicle in the middle of the road for 35 minutes.  Finally the park ranger showed up and made everyone start moving again.  Turns out it was a sleeping bear about 75ft off of the road.  Linda just about blew a bladder because of it.  Anyway, at least I got something for the blog, so it was not a complete waste.

Dino Evolution

Anyone want to guess what city this car was from?  As a side note, based on the scaling relationship that is one large Jesus Fish.

In my best manly Tool Time grunt, I’ll sign off for now.  I’ll have to recheck the analyzer after this post and see if there are any changes to the previously wrong assessment.