[chupathingie]

Being a born and bred MassHole

I’ve not heard that word in over 20 years… was almost regular as either a slur or props. Pretty sure you fit into the latter…

[chupathingie]

Now that we have your confession, we won’t hold against you. Not until you’re wealthy enough to make it worthwhile, at any rate 😉

Bottom line is you have to eat and house yourself, so I say good for you, and try to keep your soul alive.

[chupathingie]

Well, you’re not far from the Appalachians and you’ve got lockers. If you weren’t 1500 miles away I’d invite you on a roadtrip! LOL

http://www.trailsource.com/ohv/index.asp aughtta get you moving with some scenery…

[chupathingie]

^what they said.

My problem with the jeep is keeping it out of shots. It gets me to so many places devoid of civilization that I hate to have anything in the shot that’s not landscape. What kind of jeep ya got? 2005 wrangler here, straight 6. Needs lockers and a winch. Done any roadtrips in it? No idea where in the world you are, but there has to be some dirt roads leading off somewhere near by. I go up and down each side of the Rockies each year and try to see some new stuff each year. 3000 miles allows for a lot of scenery change. Don’t hit up new trails solo, because when you get stuck or break something you’re just gonna be 10 miles farther from anybody that can help. Find some trails, though… only way to get better scenery to see and shoot is on feet or through the air.

Heh… can you tell I like getting the jeep off the pavement?

[chupathingie]

Cute little Mak! And yeah, even though the f-ratio is long on them the bang-for-the-buck is hard to pass on… spherical elements are cheap to make and Maks are very good at keeping tight stars across the field. If you’ve got passable guiding, you can make up for long FL with integration time. Good FOV for things like galaxies and most globulars, and many of the smaller nebulae out there. Yer gonna need a good Barlow for planetary stuff, or use a camera body with a small chip… a modded webcam would really shine for planetary stuff with a small Mak. Tiny chip, and at ~1 meter FL Jupiter/Saturn/Mars/etc would fill the sensor nicely…

[chupathingie]

Pull up a stool. You did bring beer, didn’t you?

[chupathingie]

I seriously wish I coulda been out there when they strung that.
hmmmm…there’s a return trip due for the other side…

[chupathingie]

Nice shot! I’ve had nothing but clouds here 🙁 Grats on all the love the pics are getting!

[chupathingie]

OK, that sounds pretty good if you add suasage… 😉 I’m STARVIN. The rollerdog I got from the corner store ain’t cuttin it.

One thing about major storms, it’s good for the wallet. I’m still at work, 5 days later, and may see 14 hrs today. Ugh.

[chupathingie]

Yugo, I too am ridiculously happy to have the Jeep. It’s no cure for stupidity, of course (as the picture illustrates), but I’ve pulled many people out of drifts and banks the past 3 days with it and cleared more than my share of tracks through some of the smaller drifts for folks to use. Seems like every time I go out lately, I wind up breaking out the tow strap to pull someone back up onto smoother parts of the road (only had to do that once today on the way in to work).

[chupathingie]

Nice catch!

[chupathingie]

I’m still trying to figure out how you had to dig the Jeep out. Were you trying to go through virgin 19″ or what?

(not my pic, BTW, but it illustrates the point)
I wasn’t stupid enough to go down this road, but I did get caught in drifts where you’re the first down the road and you *hope* it doesn’t bog you down. Both times I came to rest with snow above the tops of 31″ tires. Hard to judge how deep a drift is when it slowly slopes up to the peak.

[chupathingie]

/I have my local NWS pages as toolbar buttons in FireFox so I don’t have to go through all that every time.

I do the same thing, since it’s not just you who thinks the NWS is a navigational mess.

[chupathingie]

Yaknow, I may just have to get in on this one… pretty sure I can come up with 3 likely candidates out of the stack o’panos in the files…

Crap. does this mean I’m gonna have to pony up for some TF to be able to get an entry in in a timely manner?

+1

[chupathingie]

Very cool! I wonder if the scientists who tag them could get any important info from your pics?

I saw two tag styles, so I’m guessing they’re either from different areas or are 2 different generations… there’s gotta be a condor preservation organization or the like who’d love to see these.

Besides, they’re wicked good shots of what they’re trying to preserve.

[Author]

Posts