Jay’s Life

Last day of riding, and we totaled 500 km over the 3 days. We rode up to the Church Key Brewery and got a couple of jugs of beer each. Then headed on down to the Black Oak Savannah where my Mom is doing her surveys and conservation work. It’s pretty amazing how many different types of grass and plants can live in a single square meter. Equally amazing is the 80 plus species of birds that call the area home. I’m pretty sure I need to buy my own bike now, maybe a Suzuki Bandit. We’ll see.

Today was a bright clear day, no clouds 20 degrees, perfect riding weather. We had to go pick up my Dad’s shoe inserts to stop his pain while standing all day. Ended up running all the way down into Port Hope and back up and around to Havelock again. All told another 200+ km. I’m actually put on half the kms on my Mom’s bike now, and it’s almost due for it’s 1,000 km tuning. Which is good, because it backfires A LOT. Although it is fun, I’m glad I’m not in town where people would be ducking for cover.

I’m up at my folks part of this week as my week off from work. I’m borrowing my Mom’s Suzuki to go riding with my Dad. My license expires in November and since I have not yet bought a bike, and probably won’t before then I might as well get some time on a bike. We rode twice today, stopped at home to let the rain pass. All told got in over 130 km of riding done. Lots of fun, it’s a nice day. Only bad thing that happed, was I managed to melt the inside of my new riding pants to the exhaust pipe. Nice hole about the side of a credit card. They are still good protection, but it’s crappy that I had to damage them so soon.

Oh, dear! What on earth is that dog doing?

He’s got his head down a chipmunk hole he’s ‘expanded’ for himself. I wish we got a picture of the chipmunk leaving through the other end of the tunnel. He’s very sorry about the lawn.

Whatcha watching, Hap?

Just his turkey friends heading towards the pond. “Heck! Those are HUGE budgies!” After circling each other a couple of times Happie and the male turkey developed a mutual respect for each others ability to kill the other, they get along quite peacefully now. Happie follows them around as long as their don’t extend their wings, then the dog is out of there.

On the way to the pond following the turkeys we met up with Happie’s other unexpected new friend! Their initial meeting had everyone pretty worried but Happie never got too close and as you can see the porcupine doesn’t even have his quills up. Their respect for each other was quite the relief, it would have been a traumatic week if Happie had learned the hard way about leaving wild animals alone.



Squishy! He’s actually blind in this eye, hence my being able to get so close. His blindness is also the reason we think he didn’t run away from Happie initially. The dog curiosity and the porcupines realization the dog wasn’t going to eat him was the beginning of their friendship.



Once he saw me he quickly decided I wasn’t a friend and the quills came up.



That is one quality dog.

Today I got the opportunity to get one last look at my baby mourning doves before saying “goodbye”. They left the nest on Saturday and moved to the ground with their parents. I didn’t see them together Sunday or yesterday but this morning they were out there together sitting on the ground. When I approached too close they flew away. Success! They both made it and they can fly!

Bye bye baby birds!

….now to take away all my planter boxes so they or their mother doesn’t build another nest out there. They drove the cats and Happie CRAZY.

Its finally nice outside so today, Silkie let her babies out from under her! They are getting big and doing well!

Congrats Silkie and Contract!!! A couple of weeks ago this very stupid mourning dove took up nesting in one of my herb planter (the purple sage actually). I named her Silkie and her half-ass male, Contract.
Mouring dove eggs usually hatch after 12-16 days. Ours have been sitting on these eggs for 22 days, leading me to have believed that they were not going to hatch. But this morning between making coffee and noon they did hatch! They have two hideously ugly babies! Baby birds have got to be the ugliest baby animals but I’m happy to have them all the same!
I need names for my newest bird family members. I’m not planning on interfereing with them, just watching them from my kitchen window. Got any ideas?

Ta da!

I’m in Tokyo now. Looks like I can pass the time on my layovers with World of Warcraft. I already played in Chicago for a while. I’m getting really tired, it was weird flying all this way and following the sun. Also made it really difficult to sleep. That coupled with being stuck in the middle row and not having much legroom.

Part way through my flight, as I was fiddling with my remote for my video, the chinese woman next to me took my remote. She then started changing the channels and making me miss my movie. She then called over a flight attendant. I realized at this point that from her angle she couldn’t see that my monitor was on, and she was trying to help me turn it on so that I could watch something. The flight attendant cleared it up and many apologies where given by the helpful old lady.

So I’m getting ready to go on my trip, and all great trips need a great camera. Enter my new Nikon D80. Here are a few of my first shots, I need to read the manual on this thing. These are converted to JPEG, the originals are in RAW, at 3888×2600 pixels (10.2 Megapixels).