When I realized what day it is, I was tempted to write ‘Whensday’ as a little rebellion against the Germanic god, Wodanaz. Just sayin’….
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Another alarm-setting day as I had to be up to
Zoom into a Bible study group. It started at 10:30 a.m. Michigan time, so that
meant 7:30 a.m. Arizona time. I’m usually up by that time but needed the alarm
to make sure. Plus, I needed to have time to arrange my hair in case it was
standing on end and I had to figure out the Zoom thing on my end. Hair required
only a quick fluff with my fingers and Zoom was a matter of opening a link and
waiting.
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After my meeting, I sorted pictures to send
to the grandkiddos. With 11 WonderKids
and 3 great-grands, it’s become necessary to make lists of what pictures are
sent to each child. Don’t want to send the same picture three times to the same
kid. Plus, it was time to send some
coded messages, which are somewhat time consuming because of the process I’ve
come up with to avoid mistakes. And still,
there’s always a chance of a mistake making it through, and the kids will let
me know. Also, painted a rock while I did the workbook for my class. It was
kind of a low-key morning.
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Decided to take a bike ride to Oracle for lunch
at DeMarco’s Pizzeria. Oracle is about an hour’s drive from here and is
snuggled into the foothills of the Catalina Mountains, which means there is a
change in elevation from here to there.
An almost 2,000 feet rise in elevation.
In the mid-70s when we left, in the mid-60s in Oracle. Those 10 degrees
make a difference when out in the open.
When we reached AZ 77 and the air was
getting cooler, the sky was partly cloudy and boy, was I glad when the sun peeked
out from behind a cloud. The science
community estimates that the sun will burn out in 5 billion years; glad that I
won’t be around to see it because I rather enjoy the warmth it provides.
As we rode along, I saw 4
or 5 small tumbleweeds up ahead lift off the ground and dance around overhead. It
was fascinating to watch. One of them acted
like a boomerang; it flew to the right and then reversed to come back toward
the road just as I was approaching. As I
wondered whether I was going to get tangled up with a tumbleweed, I was
surprised by a strong crosswind. Thing is, it shouldn’t have been a surprise because
something was responsible for the tumbleweeds lifting and dancing around; the
obvious culprit would be a big wind. But
I got so caught up in watching what the weeds were doing that I didn’t even
consider what made it happen…until it tried to push me sideways. It was
short-lived but it sure got my attention.
Thankfully, the voltage gauge on Kim’s bike
didn’t present any problems. His hip got angry, but the bike behaved.
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We made another stab at stabilizing the
camper. We didn’t quite get it right last time. Kim determined that the
stability problem was front-to-back not side-to-side. The wheel chocks were delivered today, so
after our ride we had a job to do: lift the stabilizer legs, pull the camper
forward, remove the leveling blocks from under the tires and install the
chocks. It all went smoothly, and the camper is currently jiggle-free. Oh, and
the Regal Horned Lizard showed up by the tires again.
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Kim is imaging the Cigar Galaxy tonight; the
telescope was programmed to do a meridian flip at 10:30. A meridian flip is described
like this: The most common amateur imaging
mount type, the German equatorial mount, is generally held up by a tripod or
pier. In certain positions, if the telescope were to track something from the
east to west indefinitely, the telescope would strike the pier. To keep this
from happening, when a target is directly overhead, or at the meridian, the
telescope flips to the other side of the pier before it continues to track the
object. This keeps the telescope above the pier as it continues tracking west,
and so there is no worry of damage. It was interesting to watch…the scope flipped, the
guiding camera found its target to guide from and the camera started taking
pictures again. The technology available
today makes the process so much easier than doing it manually.
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