The Tummy Leads

Adventure Location: Mustang Island State Park, TX
Estimated Rolling Date: Feb. 12, 2012

There was a delay in the starting of the morning because the warm mattress and covers on my bed would not let me get up.  However it was known that there were important chores to accomplish.  With great effort and determination the OFM was able to finally beat back the covers at 0745 and escape to begin the day. That bed can certainly be determined some days.

After breakfast was finished, it was blog reading time.  Then the big task was taken on.  The kitchen was scrubbed down and made to be a sparkling example. Whew that was a lot of work.  The shovel and hoe was stored away next to the power washer so they will be ready the next time the kitchen needs cleaning.

Hungry time had arrived and cooking did not seem worth the bother so it was off to Mustang Island to mess around.  A chile relleno plate in Port Aransas hit the spot very well and now what to do next.  If the Team went back to the Castle it might want to put me back to work.  No Thanks.

Hmmm my legs do need to do some walking.  It is bright sun, cool and a small breeze like a good beach walking day should be.  So that became the plan for the afternoon.  The State Park readily allowed the Team in with the presentation of my annual pass.  The beach was even firm enough that the heavy front end of the Truck did not sink very much at all.

When the walking Team exited the Truck, the breeze quickly made my eyes start to leak.  My homemade side shields were retrieved from my wallet and installed on my glasses.  Man o man did that help lessen the wind effect.  Now the Team could walk in peace.

 There were very few folks on the beach.  In the two miles plus of the walk, only about eight folks total were seen.  This lady was shelling and being very selective on what she put into her bag.  From the looks of the license plate and truck she was in, they are RVers.  RVers know to not add much weight to the rig.

A walk out on the jetty where my near disastrous fall occurred last time I was here had to be made. This time I won against the rocks.  In fact the granite rocks were so over whelmed that one of them volunteered to take a picture of the OFM with the Truck in the background.  Notice that my tummy gets places at least ten minutes before I do.  This picture is named “OFM on the Rocks”.

By no means does this OFM consider himself to be an excellent photographer worthy of giving advice on how to take great pictures.  This next section is just to give an example of some of the things that can be done with a camera without much effort.

As my efforts at finding some good wind sculptures were proving fruitless, it occurred to me to mess around some with the camera.  This first shot is standing up and looking down at this area of wind sculptures.  They range from three inches to about ten inches in height.  That is a washed up old water heater in the background.

The next picture is from essentially the same camera spot, but the camera was held about four inches off the sand.  It certainly makes things look different.  Reminds me of the picture I took at Davis Mountains State Park last year of a snake’s eye view of a foot bridge.

Now let us take that photo and do some cropping of the main attraction. By taking out reference items like the grass in the back ground and the water heater it becomes much more difficult to get a perspective on the height of the wind sculptures.

Changing reference points and cropping can make pictures come out quite a bit different than they first appeared to be.  Click on the pictures to get the full effect.  Messing around with pictures is another good way of trying to have tooooo much fun.
TheOFM.

Early Sat Morning Edition

An apparently nice fellow named Steve has made a comment on the blog. Here is something of an explanation of my reasons for being so careful in responses.

There are difficulties associated with having a reasonably open blog whereby you can be tracked down by almost anyone. Here are a few examples that I have had to deal with.

A person approaches or emails me like my best friend ever.  A short friendly spiel then the sales DEMAND.  You really need  the dohicky I am selling. It will make your  etc etc.   These jerks get told where to go rather quickly and emphatically.

A person approaches or emails me telling me all about how great my blog is etc etc. And how good I am at fixing things etc etc   Usually in three or four minutes they are lining out three weeks work for me to do for free.  These jerks are informed of the nearest rv repair place I know of.

Several times a month emails come it with solicitations to let them help me make my blog much better and get out to more folks.  I no longer even answer those.  One woman even threatened me that if I did not use her service she better not ever run into me in real life.

About twice a year there are the emails that I am writing my blog wrong and have to change it to the way they want it written.  OR do a bunch of research to give them an answer that they are too lazy to research themselves. These are normally very pushy people.

We will not even consider the offers to help me mend my ways by joining their “group” with my check book of course.

There you have a few of the interesting folks that you can encounter when you start an open blog like mine, but not the whole list at all.  So Steve and others, I hope you can better understand my caution about first encounters without some background to draw on.

Over all it is a rewarding experience meeting lots of different folks.  Most are friendly and reasonable meetings.  Often it turns into a long visit with lots of laughter.  Now these encounters are wonderful and the most frequent and usually happen several times a week and are great for helping in the quest for trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM.