some new things, some old things and some 'random' things ( as of
about Thursday, 27th February) :
One of my many many "Minion Friends" - this guy has only one
eye; I wonder what he does for stereo vision / stereopsis /
parallax viewing of things (like his fellow minions) ?
Here's just one of the 'something delicious' we had nearing the end
of our St. Petersburg trip, and you have to ask yourself, if this was
the desert, what was the dinner like, - well the dinner was pretty darned
good, also...
well - this indicates a 'coon' has been wandering-around our porch
(maybe trying to go
kiteboarding...???) - I'd been repairing / replacing kite-board-kite
bladders, and made a significant
mess with baby or talcum powder... - Apparently the talcum powder got
wet, from the overnight
dew, and Mr. (or maybe Ms.) coon walked in the wet talcum powder and
left these tracks! - pretty slick
A picture of the 'stickers' that I found (every 100 meters or so) on
the MANY (cycling (actually multi-use)) paths in/around St. Petersburg
(Florida) where I had a VERY VERY NICE TIME cycling (until I had a
flat in the RAIN!) and NONE of the 3 tubes I had with me would hold
air - don't EVEN ASK
- I eventually walked a VERY SHORT WAY to: '_Bicycle_Outfitters_'
and they helped me a LOT - in exchange for a few bucks? I was
cycling, and kiteboarding in St. Petersburg (Florida) while Ms. May
was attending a (pottery) workshop...
We've arrived back (on 17th February) in SUNNY, WARM, BRIGHT (no
RAIN!) Florida to 78F and sunny skies...
Mr. John picked-us-up at the airport in Mr. Bill's mini-van since the
snowboard bags wouldn't fit in his car...
The Vancouver to Toronto flight was extraordinarily great, and the
flight from Toronto to WPB was marred by a 'mother' sitting behind us
that was 'attempting' to 'discipline' her two children for 2 1/2
hours. Luckily I had some head-phones which didn't drown out the
entire aggravation, but definitely did some good. We have
imported several 'objects 'd art' gifted to us by Mr. Jacob.
A 'Minion' whom we decided needed to witness the Florida Sunshine,
needless to say he says he's NEVER going back to Vancouver...,
especially since he immigrated to the USA somewhat illegally (in my
snowboard bag!) ...
We found some pictures in the Toronto airport that we thought
represented the Panda World very well... We will hope to put this same
picture on
Mr.
Panda's Web-Site, also...
Well - the visit to the 'Cold Frozen North' (Vancouver) is almost at an
end... The 'visiting' has been good the snowboarding has been awesome
and the other things (mostly computer-related) have also been
awesome!...
We had some TERRIFIC Sushi with Dad...
Mr. Bill got to engage in a little 'engineering' (see this link
for the "
Whole
TRUK!"...) which was rewarding. The 'Lego' company has
introduced a 'few' LARGE SCALE models in their 'Technic' line.
The TRUCK picutred above had 'about' 1,200 parts. There are
those that have about twice that number of parts, and cost something
like $250... (
link
here) This truck-model did NOT cost that much; but we
spent, probably, 10 hours on it and it was probably half finished when
we got there...
This image was 'captured' (at 12:06 EDT on Friday, 7 February) by
a beach camera - and found by an alert Mr. Nick, he shared it with me...
Note this month (February, 2014) we are NOT about 'the beach' as the
above web-site-name-implies.... - Dawned on me that the name of the
web-site is "BeachWeb" but that the first picture, this month, was of
SNOW, and somehow that didn't 'jive' - so I thought I'd mention that,
here, to avoid all the criticism I was likely to receive...!!!
We went snowboarding for a few days, near Vancouver, BC, CANADA...- it
was a pretty good few days - even if the snow was a bit "icy" (meaning
FAST). We also went yesterday, thought it was a 'might cold' but
didn't think much about it until we saw the -13 C posted in
several places; needless to say, as Floridians, I think we know, now,
what our 'limits' are.... -
Still very icy and fast, but the lesson I got in North Carolina, sticks
in my head, "bend your knees; lean forward" - etc. etc. etc. ...
We might (shamelessly) advertise that we came across this
web-site: "
http://www.liftopia.com
" - which can save you up to about 50% on lift-tickets for some
resorts. We not only called Seymour, but e-mailed them to
inquire 'Is this Legit?' and then used the service, and it IS
Legitimate (at least near as we could tell)... - check it out to save
some bucks!
Forecast is for snow on Monday - Tuesday evening(s) - might get some
more snowboarding in next week on more 'favourable' conditions - we'll
see...
and - here's another picture with Ms. May in the foreground... - the
background is SE Vancouver's areas - including
Pitt
Meadows Fort Langley,
Maple
Ridge, and '
Abbostford'
near where I rode my tricycle to a new personal best of 52 mph (down
some lonely hill (along with some diamond frame types who were doing 67
mph)), last summer...
There's also a
new
bridge ( The "Golden Ears" bridge ) there, over the Fraser
River, which is pretty awesome, also, both to cycle-over and to
look at...
Mr. Bill spent most of his time on the (4-person) lift called
'Mystery Lake Express' (new lift (old-route (there was a 2-person
lift here 'previously'))- last year) - at the same 'resort' (
Mount
Seymour)... If you are interested you might want to
'look-up or type-in' " Mystery Lake - North Vancouver - BC
CANADA ", or if you're the 'lazy' type you can just click-here for
'
Google Maps ' ...
( or copy-paste this string: Mystery Lake, North
Vancouver, BC, Canada into your Google Earth
search-window)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Bill has been continuing to work on some 'Maker' projects,
most notably, though the one referencing (pottery) 'Kiln Temperatures'.
That 'project' has taken-on a 'life of it's own' and now has it's very
own "What is it?" web-site:
OmniTemp
- if you want more information on that project, kindly go to it's
web-site. And / Or you can go to this web-site to show you
what the people 'At the Kiln' will see - and what the 'interested
parties" will see if they access the web-site that "Mostly" goes along
with the OmniTemp web-site...
Some people requested moving that data & information out of this
'BeachWeb' site, and it was probably well overdue that I did
that...
Mr. Panda-Bear's web-page:
http://www.vikingasia.org/BeachWeb/PandaBear/PB.html
