OutdoorType

I am declaring February as Brian’s Month of Many Things Space-y.

To date I have:

• Watched live coverage on NASA TV of STS-122 (Atlantis) blasting off into space.
• Which inspired me to purchase and watch an all time favourite movie, Space Camp.
• Which inspired me to watch The Right Stuff.
• Which indirectly lead me to a Flickr meetup and first visit to Udvar-Hazy where I saw, among other things, the original Space Shuttle Enterprise.

And today, well, today was the space hat trick in which:

• This morning the Shuttle Atlantis safely landed at the Cape, flying a final approach that was 20x higher and 7x steeper than a commercial airliner (this has been my most favourite space shuttle fact until I learned today – thanks Heather – that until like 1997 the shuttle had to end each mission by midnight, Dec 31 or else a Y2K-like bug might strike and totally cripple the mission). Anyways, I couldn’t watch the landing live this time, but as consolation I had the official landing blog to read and could chat on the Google with someone who actually likes this stuff more than me.
• Tonight the full moon was fully eclipsed by the Earth’s shadow, and turned a shade close to blood red. Most amazingly there was not a cloud in the sky and the whole show was visible. Somehow the earlier snow storm managed to blow through leaving behind only a slight dusting on the ground. I should mention that t-shirts, shorts, and sandals is not really appropriate eclipse viewing attire when you are in the northern hemisphere and it is February and there is snow on the ground.
• Finally tonight, the United States Navy shot down a man made satellite that was hanging out in low Earth orbit! We, the US of A, did this for your safety and oh by the way, if you are a foreign nation and are worried about, you know, debris and junk check this out:

The military also timed its efforts to minimize the chances that debris would hit populated areas. But the United States is “prepared to offer assistance to governments to mitigate the consequences of any satellite debris impacts on their territory,” according to a report of Rocca’s remarks on the Web site of the Geneva office of the U.N.

See how nice we are? If for some reason “debris” (read: super secret spy satellite parts) has impacted upon your territory we will happily come by and pick it up for you.

Start thinking of your favourite dark place and get your tripods ready!  As seen on Yahoo! News this morning:

Mark Wednesday, Feb. 20, on your calendar as “Lunar Eclipse Night,” for if the weather is fair you should have no difficulty observing a total eclipse of the moon.

The eclipse will be visible wherever the moon is above the horizon during the time frame that the eclipse is taking place. As it turns out, North and South America will turned toward the moon and will be in excellent position for this sky show.

The image above was grabbed off my favourite time and date website.  It has a handy Day & Night World Map that also displays the relative position of the sun and the moon for a given time and place.

• In Springfield right now it is 26°F but Feels Like 22°F.
• In my bedroom I’ve turned the ceiling fan OFF.
• And as I futz around the house today I’m wearing jeans (and not shorts) and yeah, I just put on socks too.

(at least it was sunny today. don’t think we’re going to get off so easy tomorrow)

A little before noon today a friend in DC reported via text message that it was snowing.  In slight disbelief I went to my office window and cranked open the blinds and was confronted with the sight of snow covered cars, and snow covered streets, and snow blowing sideways with fat flakes reducing visibility.  It was snowing and how!

There was only one thing to do… I gathered my camera and jacket and keys and headed for the door leaving quick word that I was “stepping out for lunch.” After a short drive I was turning onto one of the battlefield’s gravel roads and began to make my way, camera in hand, across a field…

It was really cold and the wind blew snow sideways and I was dressed only in jeans and a button down shirt covered by a thin gore-tex shell.  No gloves, no hat, no wind deflecting Buff. I had even forgotten my protective amber shades and my eyes teared up and suffered for the mistake.  I did carry my camera, the Mark III with the 70-200 IS attached, that big white lens.  The several pounds of cold, heavy metal worked to further draw heat from my extremities.  My fingers became red and painful down past the second knuckle.

Despite all this, despite the pain, and the cold, and the wind that buffeted my camera each time I lifted it from my side and the protective eddy my body formed, it was awesome. It was awesome to be out of the office if only for a few minutes, running across the snowy field, head down, hood drawn.

I would stop, force my head up, compose, shoot, put my head down, and run some more. Run, stop, compose, shoot, run, stop, maybe not so much compose, shoot, run. Repeat as necessary.

Eventually I had to get out of the wind and sought shelter in my favourite barn. I shook the snow off my pants and shoes and changed lenses. I shot some more while protected from the storm. But then it was time to go.  I ran out across the field and back to the car, and back to the office, and back to reality.

More snowy photos on Flickr. 

Where You’re Going*

*unless you’re off to someplace much, much colder where snow is measured in cm.

Where I’m Going

Yes, there is some rain. And some cloudiness.  And it is all subject to change, but ~20 degrees warmer in December is not too bad. Oh and tomorrow, on the shortest daylight day of the year?… 33 minutes more daylight at Hilton Head!

First Snow, originally uploaded by outdoor_type.

Went out for a late lunch today but got distracted by the snow and the image of this boardwalk trail. It starts up near the Old Stone Bridge and passes through a section of the battlefield that I suppose must get kind of soggy at times. I’d passed by earlier in the morning and already the walkway had collected a fair amount of snow compared to the rest of the area. It was a wide white line passing through trees and I made a note to come back if I had the time.

Coming here was a tough call because I’d have loved to visit my barns. There’s always tomorrow… Hopefully the snow will stick around a bit longer, at least for another lunch time walk. Maybe I’ll get up really early and catch the sunrise… ha, yeah right!

Check out the rest of the photos over on Flickr.

Wow. Traffic sucks, originally uploaded by outdoor_type.

Even though I sacrificed and did my part for commuting-kind by staying off the roads until late morning (and um, sleeping in a little extra), traffic was still a big huge mess!

You know things are bad when you’ve been driving for about four minutes only to come to a complete stop well before any of the normal places that you might come to a complete stop.

Immediately after snapping this pic with my cameraphone I managed to sneak across a couple lanes to an exit. From there I worked my way through a series of back roads and managed to both avoid all major traffic arteries and not slide off the road (though there was one close call). I can report that the sign stating “Bridge Freezes Before Road” is very much true.

My commute took the same 40 minutes as it normal and I got to drive through some really pretty stretches of countryside. It’ so easy to think of the suburbs as tract housing interrupted by strip malls, but less than 10 minutes from my house are wide open spaces with horses. With the first layer of fallen snow it looked quite pretty and while I am already sick to death of all the many horrible commercials and bad x-mas displays, I do love the music and have to admit that more than one Christmas carol popped into my head as I drove through the woods and over streams and the dry snow blew about as if shaken in a small glass globe.

Continuing the winter weather advisory theme of the day, I bring you this, my annual reminder/endorsement for Yaktrax.

Several have scoffed at the idea of strapping rubber bands with integrated patented metal coils to their feet, but all scoffing and skepticism stops after a short trial that turns previously treacherous hillsides and parking lots into No Slip Zones.

Because they’re super easy to put on, come winter my pair of Yaktrax are always waiting for me at the front door or somewhere in my car, ready to provide traction at a moment’s notice. The difference between wearing them and not wearing them is like night and day.

So whether you’re walking short distances from home to car to office or are navigating miles of the mean streets in the Big City, Yaktrax are probably something you’ll want to purchase (and sooner rather than later… Weather.com has snow starting at 6am tomorrow).

There is no food in my house so it is merely coincidence that the forecast calls for 1 – 2 inches of snow and I have to go to the grocery store.

Update: Costco is the same as Giant, right? Because that’s where I ended up tonight. In some ways it’s a lot better than Giant or Safeway because the “impluse items” are like 42″ LCD TVs and iPods and believe it or not I actually have a dollar amount threshold preventing me from making purchases like that. Of course, there was very little in the way of a spending speed bump to stop me from walking out of the store with the biggest freakin’ snow and ice scraper you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s a bit ridiculous. But sturdy!

Anyways, trading the potentially long lines at Giant for the assured and usual long lines of Costco means I don’t know if the shelves of my local supermarkets are now barren, stripped clean of milk and bread and toilet paper. But, maybe I’ll find out tomorrow. Because even with all of it’s oversized wonderfulness, shopping for food, for one, just doesn’t work out well there (you end up eating taquitos for weeks and weeks). So it looks like I’ll be braving the snow covered streets in search of small quantity staples. Maybe I’ll even make a salad.

Self-Portrait (/alt. camera), originally uploaded by outdoor_type.

Needing a break from the many, many games of college football playing on the television today I escaped from the house and headed over to Pine Island, a recreational area that faces Port Royal Sound.

It was about an hour before sunset when I arrived and a low ceiling of clouds created a premature dusky light. Wind whipped whitecaps pushed against the beach and overhead the trees rustled and creaked. I climbed out across the large rocks dropped to hold the land in place and first photographed a gnarly tree that won’t last many more storms. The beach was mostly deserted and the only sound came from the wind and the waves.

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