CrowGoat

Note: turn on your sound if it is not on....

I went down to the Saturday Market (in Eugene for you out-of-towners) today as usual. This is four square blocks with the large farmer's market on one square with a hundred plus booths of veges, fruits, breads, bakeries, lots of specialty items.

Two of the other square blocks were a hundred of so of small craft booths with all kinds of things...and a large foody section in the middle of one with live music.

The fourth area is much smaller as it is right on about 1/4 of the City of Eugene buildings. This has a few hipster booths with pipes, tie dyes, jewelry, and assorted flotsam and jetsam.

And, this drummer group every Saturday from 10 am to 2pm. It is always a bring a drum and join in kinda thing. This goes on constantly all morning / afternoon.

I was out in the garden today and saw one of the migrating Tiger Swallowtails come by, check one of these flowers, and take off again.

I have always wanted to get a photo of video of them, but they are always in a hurry...stop for a second or two and then move on.

But I grabbed my phone and walked over to the flower and it came back! So I shot a quick video. It really seemed to like the edge of these flowers...that I will have to look up and will post here when I find out.

This is about mile marker 23 of the 26.2 mile Eugene Marathon. That is the Willamette River on the right. Most of the course is on nice paved trails along both sides of the river.

This is one of the hydration stations with volunteers handing out cups of water and/or gel energy pacs to runners if wanted.

The fellow who won comes by right after the BMW police motorcycle. Check out the pace he has...this is at 23 miles! He won by about 2+ minutes back at the stadium.

I am not sure what was going on here. I was at the regular Saturday Market here in Eugene. This is four blocks of booths, food, gardening things, and lots of handmade items.

In one corner, there are usually a group of people playing a variety of drums, djembes, and anything really and they just set up a rhythm and everyone joins in as they like.

So I was walking past, and I think these are a group of "Dancing Grannies" or something. They all had on these psychedelic moo-moos and red wigs.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em (most there probably had already), but i was glad I was not smoking anything. :-)

Flashback!

I rode my BMW GS motorcycle down south of Palo Alto, where I lived at the time, to an old abandoned Mercury mining town: New Idria.

The entire area is abandoned, polluted, and all of the buildings had Hanta Virus warnings! It is worse than a Chernobyl area with all the pollution and there is no cure for Hanta Virus.

It is a long ride down little used country roads about 60 miles south. I put the old gopro camera on my helmet and rode though the town...and was thankful to leave! :-)

I would not like to revisit that town, but i sure miss my BMW!

A few of the Thrill the World dancers came to YPA today. They did not do their Thriller dance, but they had Saint Patricks gear on for the upcoming holiday.

Well, I haven't posted in a while and I happened to find this old video i was working on last Summer. I was just out in the garden area flying around for fun when I heard a freight train coming, so I flew over there and practiced getting shots of the train passing.

Where were you 10 years ago?

Riding my bicycle to the market yesterday, I passed by the back side of an abandoned motel. It is a popular place for graffiti as evidenced by all the previous coverups on this wall.

The male and female turkeys have been in seperate groups all Winter. Turkeys start the mating season very early (it still gets down to ~30f every night in Eugene).

Every year, the males go into display mode and start to follow the females around hoping for their brief "cloacal kiss" to get things started. They strut around in full display and just follow the females around all day.

In another few weeks, the females will disappear to build their nests and lay their eggs. Then in another month or so, sometime in April, they will immediately bring their clutch of very young birds out to spend the day grazing.

This is the once a day Amtrak Coast Starlight. It is leaving right on schedule from the Eugene station at 1715 on December 28.

Amtrak Engine 301 is a Siemens ALC-42 Charger that was painted in a special "Day One" heritage livery to commemorate Amtrak's 50th anniversary.

I see 301 regularly as it is one of the main engines for the Coast Starlight route that runs from Seattle to Los Angeles (~1,400 miles). There is one southbound a day and one northbound. I see the Northbound every day around 1500. The southbound is the only daily and it leaves Eugene at 1715.

I rode this train a few years ago when I had to go back to San Francisco to pick up a motorcycle and then ride it back to Eugene. It was not a great ride because the entire ride is overnight to San Jose and it arrives the next morning around 0700. The entire ride is in the dark! So looking out the windows in the view car all you see was indeed...Starlight.

Notes: I took the little drone out to get this video for my Brother Jim...who likes trains.

...the small building the train passes is the Eugene Station. Further back to the right...with all the bright white lights...is the Lane county jail. I imagine the inmates looking out the window seeing trains leaving constantly...if they could just get over the barbed wire fences....

Once upon a time I was driving around the Western US visiting National Parks. I had just left Monument Valley and decided to loop down to Page, Arizona and visit Antelope Canyon.

I haven't flown the drone or seen anything interesting enough to pull out the iPhone lately and post here. I was thinking back to the days when I had the best motorcycle in the world (a BMW GS) and was out riding in the desert just West of Death Valley.

Highway 190 is an amazing road that rises from the floor of the Panamint Valley to a lookout spot at the top: Father Crowley Point.

Here is one of the best motorcycle roads in the world...with one of my favorite songs in the background too.

Wingfoot 3, the Goodyear blimp, was over Eugene Saturday for the Oregon football game. I was watching on TV (well, actually streaming it to a monitor...not a "TV set") and kept seeing overhead shots.

So, I went over to the balcony on the 14th floor here and watched it circling around for a while. With a pair of binoculars, I could read the scoreboard. And man, the PA announcer was LOUD! I could hear him easily from here.

There are flight restrictions in effect for 3 miles around the stadium during games, or I would have sent the little drone up for better video.

The Thrill the World dancers showed up at the 5th Street Market festival. First time I've seen them in over a year. But they did not do the Michael Jackson Thriller...and no zombie outfits.

Here is the first time I ever saw them ... and I had never heard of them and never seen this...so I was really surprised and impressed.