Try to take more pictures

I started out this morning with it firmly in my mind that I will take more pictures.  Of course, I took one, my first stop, and then forgot for the rest of the morning.  Old habits, no, forming new habits takes time.  So, here was my first stop.  I wanted to get some coffee table books to inspire for next year’s travel.

Got a book on National Parks, one on the Sierra Nevada, and a world travel atlas.  Can’t wait to open them up.

Since I blew the assignment for the rest of the day I will put up some random pictures to give the day’s entry some volume.

Here is  photo of Stinson Beach taken from West Ridgecrest Road near Mt. Tamalpais State Park.

Here’s another of Stinson Beach.

And here’s the Bolinas Lagoon.

Just to show I was really there.  I did a ride I called the Alpine Dam Loop.

The weather has turned cold, it seems like overnight, but it has taken a few days.  I am already ready to pack for Paia.  This is the apartment above the garage where we stay.

That’s it for today.  Tomorrow will be a day in the office but I need to go on a forced photography march.  I will do it and see how it turns out.  Tonight I start Italian one.  This is a language class, first year Italian.  Maybe I can talk to the instructor about private tutoring.  The problem with taking Italian is that there is no one to practice with, unlike Spanish.  We’ll see.

Trying to find the best picture size

I am going to post some photos to try and get them to display the way I would like.  So here goes…

This is the sink in the garden at the river.  I have been working on a mosaic to cover the front of the sink.  I had someone else make the tiles for the mosaic.  The project then is to come up with a good way to mount the tiles on the sink front.

What I decided to do was glue the tiles to a piece of tile backer board first and then grout them.  Then the backer board, which was cut to the same dimensions of the sink front could be glued to the sink.  The finished product was heavy so I had to mortise a bottom mount that the mosaic could rest in while the glue dried.  Here’s what the finished project looks like.

I am happy with it.  It looks much nicer than it did before.  I grouted the gap between the top of the board and the sink so water will run off.

Here’s another project.  These are for a game played with bean bags.

These three photos were taken with an i phone.  I purchased a camera so I can get better quality pictures, I hope.

This is a photo taken yesterday with the camera.  Turkeys in the backyard.  They also got into the side yard with the fig tree.  They knocked a vase off a shelf, which broke, and left scat everywhere as well as going after the figs.

That’s it for now.

More Quebec bike tour

I’ll show some more pictures of our bike tour in Quebec City.  This is a booth in the year round indoor farmer’s market in the city.  We spent an afternoon there shopping for things we could have for dinner on the deck outside our room on our final night there.  This stand is selling honey.

Here’s where we ate on the deck Friday evening.  The view across the Saint Lawrence River is Levis (pronounced lee-vee, if I remember correctly) and you can see the smoke stack of a cruise ship that was moored on our side of the river just below the our building.

This is a picture of the steep hill we climbed to get from the smaller area of the lower town by the river to the larger old town on the bluff.

An added attraction, which we knew nothing about, was that Friday afternoon was the Grande Prix de Quebec, a bike race involving the best professional riders in the world.  Here is the same street with the lead riders climbing.

Here are more pictures of the race.

Well, that’s it for this morning.

September 27, 2019, on the learn curve for posting

First post so I will use some old pictures.  These are our bike trip in Quebec City.

Here is a statue of Joan of Arc in the Parc Jeanne-D’Arc next to the Parc des Champs-de-Bataille or the Plains of Abraham.

This is the view from our room in the Hotel 71.  750 miles into the distance is the Atlantic Ocean.

This is hard to see because I am saving my pictures too small.  I will do better.  What is hard to see here is that the mural starts at the top as winter in Quebec and progresses downwards through the seasons.  Sprinkled through the mural are notable figures and events from Quebec’s history, including two young kids playing hockey.

I just tried to edit the size of the above picture and it has lost a little focus.

This is a shot of our walk to the bicycle shop to pick up our guide and bikes for the day’s tour.

Well, that’s it for this morning.  I know I need to save my pictures differently than I have.  I will work on that and put up a few more from Quebec.

The Drive to River House

Left Davis at about noon to drive to the river house.  Got to the river about 2:30 and did a tour of the property just to check everything out.  Some weeds in the olives, I will get to those tomorrow morning.  Everything else looks OK.

An animal, probably a raccoon but I am not sure, using the animal marking latrine in the bushes outside the studio door.  Hope they are not back, I will have to spread more coyote urine around.

Picked some tomatoes for dinner and looking forward to watching the country music documentary on PBS.

Dental Work

Got some dental work done after a fairly long bike ride.  Thought I was going in to have a tooth x rayed and evaluated, turned out to be a root canal.  I don’t have many virgin teeth left.  Oh well, at least I’ve got teeth.  Laying low until the novocaine wears off.

Replacing sconce lights at the front of the house in Davis.

These are supposed to last fifteen years but we have had four burn out in less than five years.  And the lights are no longer made.  There are still bulbs available though.  The manufacturer has offered to replace all of out lights at no cost to us.  I think we will take them up on it.  The new lights will have screw in bulbs, different from the LEDs in the lights we have now.  Easier to change, it is a small production to change the LED bulbs.