Picture_4
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
There is a fan shaped tree on the top of this hill and I notice it every single time I drive from Cobb down to Middletown. Last spring I was driving this route everyday down to Santa Rosa, and I for some reason noticed it every day and still do whenever I drive by.
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Originally uploaded by jono1515.
I wish this hawk had come out sharper, but I'm surprised it came out at all... I took this without a tripod with a 200mm lens with a shutter speed of like 1/125 of a second.
IMG_0013
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
These two b&w pictures were taken with my digital camera, I had accidentally left the ISO at 400 so they both came out really noisy. They looked absolutely terrible, but I thought they might look a little better b&w, the noise would make them look like they were taken on grainy black and white film. I boosted the contrast and think they look ok now, not great, but good enough that I didn't delete them. And it also prompted me to buy some b&w film for my other camera. I'd put more of my film pictures up, but I send the film out to get developed and it gets sent back to my house in Tahoe developed with prints and I haven't been home in 3 weeks so I'll have a bunch (hopefully!) of film photos to put up when I get off this job!
Ok, So I'm at work and bored again, what else is new...
I found this today. Its a quiz to see how much you know about where you live. It has to do with watersheds and natural processes, so I figured with my background I should do alright. Out of 30 questions I got about 11 right, maybe 4 or 5 half right and had no clue on the rest. I should add that I did the quiz with where I am right now in mind, not my home in Tahoe... Although since I've only been there for a little over half a year I probably would only do marginally better. Anyway, it really made me think about how little I know about these places. Some of the questions I got right should be a given considering the work I'm doing here, but they still made me think. It gives you an awareness for the environment and how much we can take it for granted and how easy it can be to overlook it and the consequences our lives have on it.
By the way, the cool tools website is a great place to kill some time if you're ever bored... unfortunately, I've already read pretty much everything there. But it's very interesting, as is the rest of the Kevin Kelly website outside of the cool tools section. And the cool tools are pretty damn cool.
I also did something about the logistical side of my photography and realized that I'm spending a lot of money on film and processing. In fact, I have spent enough over the past half a year to have purchased a digital SLR camera. If I had a digital SLR I would no longer pay for film or processing, just to print the pictures I think are best. And as it stands right now I end up spending extra getting decent sized prints of my favorites so that's a cost I have now anyway. Of course this is a terrible time to be thinking of spending $600 on an entry level digital SLR because I'm trying to save as much money as I can before I quit my job and go to Taiwan. Also, I have about 10 rolls of film that I haven't used yet which should last me a few months... except that I'm going to be driving across the country and doing a lot of travelling which will inspire me to burn through film like crazy. So I'm torn. And I really like my film camera, I just don't like pouring money into film. Damn it!
I am so not going to miss these long boring nights. It's 1am, I've been at work for an hour and a half right now. They finally started drilling yesterday morning so there is finally some work to be done. Or I thought there would be... we drilled like 50 feet on my shift yesterday. I got to look at 5 samples. That was the highlight of like the past week of work for me. So far tonight, I haven't done anything. They're drilling 6 feet an hour. I don't have anything to do, and I don't just mean as far as work is concerned. I really don't have anything to do right now. I have 3 books with me and I've read 2 of them, the last one is short but it's making me think too much. I've read all the news online and that's getting real old because every night it's the same depressing news. I haven't really been able to sleep much since I came back to work for this job. I'm working the night shift and haven't been able to get into the swing of sleeping during the day. I stopped trying to sleep late after the first day because it was just a waste of time, so now I get up and lift some weights because there isn't anything else to do. I've worked my way through a bunch of movies and I'm starting to ration them because it's looking like I'll be here for another two weeks. Right now two weeks seems like an eternity to me. I want to go home! I am not going to miss this job, one more month and I'll be done for good. I think one of the only reasons I lasted this long was because I wasn't here in Cobb the whole time. Mammoth was a nice place to spend the summer, and in the fall I was only here for a week tops and then got to go home. This winter I've been doing these short jobs in Cobb and it's been nice to go home in between, but if I had to go on any longer I'd go nuts. There just isn't anything to do here. There are some trails to hike on but there isn't any good scenery and honestly I just don't have time to go on long hikes. I get out of work and try to get to sleep around 2pm. That leaves me 2 hours to do anything, and I need to eat "dinner" in that time, so I try not to hike for more than an hour. You can't get far in an hour, I did 3 miles the other day but I felt like I was really hauling ass to get back to my car within an hour. And despite the nice weather it still isn't a very good hike, no rewarding view at the top or anything. Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can find a decent route over in the forest to run a 2 mile loop. I really don't like running on trails though. I miss the route I used to run up in Portland, it had a good mix of hills and flat ground. Maybe I'll move back to Portland when I get back from Taiwan. I really liked it there, I just didn't know anyone because I was hardly ever there for more than a few days. I wish it were closer to the ocean, that's about the only thing about Portland I wish were different.
IMG_0009a
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
This is Boggs Lake in the Cobb area of California. Apparently, the lake dries up in the summer. There were a lot of birds around and in it, it was really quite noisy with all the different birds around. Also a lot of bugs... I found a tick crawling on my arm as I was leaving, it hadn't bitten me though so I just blew it off.
IMG_0012
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
This light post is actually a 30ft joint of drill pipe that was somehow formed into that sort of corkscrew shape. I thought it'd make an interesting picture with the light post silhouted against the drill rig. The light is for the parking lot of the field office for the Bottlerock Power Company (which only uses geothermal steam for power generation).
The vacation is over and I'm back at work. We had a nice range of weather in Tahoe while I was back, ranging from mid to high 60's and sunny to possibly one of the biggest snow storms of the year on Easter. On Easter we tried to go skiing, but were stymied by the relentless storm and the lack of time for avalanche control at Squaw. With over 2 feet of snow, I was essentially stuck at my friends' place. My car had trouble getting up their hill when there was only 1 foot of snow and I had the tire chains on. No point in trying to get home in those conditions. It was pretty crazy to have such a huge storm halfway through April.
Back here in Cobb though is a different story. It's sunny and hot during the day and clear and cool overnight, which is the shift I'm back to working again. I got a nice sunburn the first day I was here, and I'm regretting having packed my bag with so many warm clothes that aren't really needed here anymore. It was nice driving home from work yesterday at noon with the sunroof open and all the windows down (except the one rear window that's got a dead motor).
I managed to get some work done on my car while I was back in Tahoe, the exhaust was repaired for a mere $50 weld, I got the heater blower sort of working again but I suspect if I use it much it's going to self destruct even more than it already has. And when I got to Cobb, I picked up the check valve my father mailed here for me to fix the windshield washer system.
I've been taking a lot more photos lately with my film camera in the manual mode and keeping detailed notes on the settings so that I can get better at taking pictures and not relying on the full program mode on it. I'm almost finished with the first roll this way so I'll see the results soon enough. I found a great place to mail film for developing and scanning, Clark Color Labs, it's pretty cheap and for about $8 I can mail in my film and get prints and a cd back with fairly high resolution scans.
I'm back in Tahoe after another week of work. They messed the well up pretty good that I was just working on and they gave up on it. The accidentally drilled through the casing and at this point they'd be better off just drilling a new well. That's A OK with me because I can only stand about a week of Cobb at a time. I really really can't stand that place. As I was leaving I developed a pretty nasty problem with the exhaust system on my car, the pipe attached to the catalytic converter broke just ahead of the converter. It's hanging down in a way that will jam it into the road rather than drag it, hopefully I can get a shop to weld it back together rather than have to buy the $400 part.
I've been biking around a lot rather than drive the car and risk really messing it all up. The weather is nice here in Tahoe, warm and sunny. I'm hoping to go skiing a few days this week before I have to go back to work.
I finally got a haircut and no longer have 4 inch long hair. It's so much easier to have short hair again.
Not much else is going on right now, just relaxing and enjoying some time off.
Went skiing today, seemed like a nice day to ski. We didn't get the foot of snow that was forcast, but it was still a nice day to ski. My confidence got a little shaken after I hit my second tree in the first three runs of the day. The first tree was no big deal, just a little one. Didn't think much of it until I hit the next much bigger tree. I only encountered the branches on those trees, but the second was big and kinda hurt. After those two, I had two near misses where I was lucky to have fallen just before I would've hit them. I stayed on the trails after that, and quickly got frustrated with all the people around. All in all it wasn't bad, I think I'll go again tomorrow and show those trees whose boss.
I found out I'll be heading back to work on Thursday, and not down to the Imperial Valley like I had thought. Back to my home-away-from-home, Cobb. Can't wait. The good news is that I should miss most of the rig-up work, and it's a job that gives me plenty of time to do whatever I want while I'm there like read, finally get on learning to tie flies for fishing and learn some basic Chinese for my trip to Taiwan.
Today I decided it was time to do something with the road bike I bought like 2 months ago at the thrift store for $5.50. I wasn't optimistic about the bike when I first bought it, it seemed to be held together by a lot of wire. The first thing I wanted to do was figure out if I needed 2 new tubes for the tires or just one. The front one had a really big hole in it and I decided that it was pointless to repair it. The rear one was in good shape. I went to the bike shop to get a new tube and was asked if it was a Schraeder or Presta valve on the tube. I had no clue and the guy ended up selling me a tube with a Presta valve, which is not what I had before. No big deal, I figured that at some point I'd need another new tube and I'd get a Schraeder one then. That time came a lot sooner than expected because I've already broken the Presta valve. It seems to still be holding the pressure OK so I'm not going to replace it just yet. The front brakes lack any cable at all, and the rear brakes didn't even come close to touching the rim, but an easy adjustment fixed that. So all in all, I got the thing at a point where I can ride it around. The gears seem to shift alright, but if the bike were worth anything I'd get different shifters. It's got the old school shifters that aren't indexed and I'm not a big fan of them. But for $5.50 and a new tube (another $4.75 - almost as much as the bike!) I'm not complaining. And, it's a beautiful day out. So I'm going to go out and see how long it takes before something else brakes on it!
I got back from my unexpected 2 days of work just in time for some great skiing. The storm started a little while after I got back to my place and by the next day there was 2 feet of snow at my house. On Homewood Mountain, where I ski, there was about 3 feet of fresh powder on top of ridiculous base layer of like 15 feet. The first day (while it was still snowing) was exhausting. I didn't last too long, my ski's kept burrying themselves under the 3 feet of snow and I couldn't get going again. The next day was fantastic though, it was some really great skiing and the weather was beautiful - warm and sunny.
So I get a phone call at like 2pm yesterday, It's my boss and he needs me to go back to Cobb. I ask when he needs me there and he says well you'd need to be there sometime early in the morning. I was like, that means that I basically need to leave now. And that's what I did, hung up the phone, grabbed a clean shirt, boxers, socks and my sleeping bag and made the 4 hour drive out here.
This is the sort of thing I won't miss when I'm done with this job. A little heads up would be nice, even if I had known 1 day in advance... I'd have been irritated to have such short notice, but it's better than "Hey Jon, get in your car and forget about any plans you had for the rest of the day/weekend because you have to come back to work." So I got here, ate a quick dinner and went to bed because I needed to be out here at like 4am (I think they wanted me to be out here earlier, but I really really don't care, I wanted to be back in Tahoe with my friends... you can't always get what you want.).
So my vacation was (once again) cut short. I won't be here more than 2 days, but it's just annoying.
That's enough complaining I think... I only have two and a half more months of this crap to put up with and I'll be outa here.
Stained Glass Window - Enlarged
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
Canton NY Jan '06
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
These are a few pictures I took back in January heading up to Canton.
January 2006 - Canton, NY
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
This is a photo I took up in Canton around Christmas. This was originally color but I think it looks better this way.
In other news, I got relief from my last job the other day. I am enjoying these short stretches of work, I know I couldn't do 6 weeks straight again like I did last year.
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Originally uploaded by jono1515.
After several days of not doing anything at work and not doing much after work, I got really really bored and decided it was time to go for a hike. Unfortunatly, this was exactly when the beautiful weather we'd been having ended. It had been pouring rain all night while I was at work, but when I started out it wasn't raining very hard. That changed about half way into the hike when it was just a torrential downpour. Jeans get really really heavy when they're soaked through. It was worth it though because I was getting crazy with so little to do.
I've been pretty bad lately about posting any updates on here. So, here we go.
The biggest thing to have happend since the last post is that I've decided to quit my job and go teach English in Taiwan this summer. I've been thinking about it for quite some time now, and I've finally decided it's time. I am really looking forward to being done with the job I've had for the past year, and really looking forward to going to Taiwan. It's going to be an awesome experience. I'm not sure how long I'm going for, I think I'll sign a short 3 or 4 month contract at first and see how it goes, but I'll probably in the end stay for like 8 months. No plans yet for when I get back, I'll be looking for another job, I'm not going back to mud logging. I may look into working in the mining industry. Not sure right now.
Aside from that, I've been working a lot this month. There's a company up in the Geysers looking to get a bunch of their old wells back into production so I've been living up in Cobb and "working" on them. They aren't drilling anything new really, all we're doing is cleaning out the old wells and testing them. All I have to do is test the steam to see how much Hydrogen Sulfide there is and pump chemicals to knock it out of the steam. Pretty much the easiest work you could imagine. One test a shift (only when there is actually steam coming out of the well) and making sure the pumps are set at the right rate. It's hardly work at all. And the well I'm on right now, we haven't had to do any of that yet and we've been here for like 5 or 6 days. We were just about to get through a plug in the well yesterday and they got stuck in the well, and are still stuck today. So it's another slow and boring night.
On the few days off I've had in between these relatively short wells I've been doing as much skiing as I can fit in. One day was by far the best skiing I've gotten in in the longest time. Deep powder, it was snowing like crazy while we were there. I had a great time. I'm starting to think I could use a lesson or two in this deep powder, I'm really not used to it having skied in NY so much. Sometimes I fall skiing out in the woods where no one would see me, and it can take a while to get up sometimes. I fell once and tried to stick my pole in the snow to get back up and it just disappeared into the deep powder. It's so much fun though being in such deep powder. I can't wait to get off of this job and back to some more skiing!
I have a ton of pictures to get up here, but I left my scanner back home in Kings Beach so it could be a while before any of them show up on here.
That's about it for now, not much happens up here in Cobb.
View from Homewood Mtn
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
You can see a rainbow in between the two trees on the left.
It's been a while since I've put any updates on here, so here's what's been going on.
I left the Imperial Valley job a week before Christmas. The last 2 days down there we didn't really work, so one day I went offroading with a co-worker in his old Jeep and the next day we went down to Mexico. Mexico was interesting, we walked across from Calexico on the US side to Mexicali on the Mexican side. Mexicali is the capital of the Mexican state Baja California. It's a decent sized city but feels very poor. I learned just how little Spanish I know after 4 years in high school and a year of advanced coversational Spanish in university. I'm definitly going to go back down there and hopefully I'll be able to spend more time and actually communicate with people.
I was in Saratoga for just about 3 full weeks. I had a really good time, it was so good to see my family and friends back in New York. I ended up staying a few days longer than I had planned because there were so many things I wanted to do before coming back to California.
I got back to California last Saturday and as soon as I got to San Diego, I retrieved my car from my friend's place and drove about 6 of the 11 hours back to Tahoe. Coming into Tahoe, going over the mountains, was spectacular. The snow banks at the highest elevations were like 15ft high on the sides of the roads. It was intimidating driving past them considering they were also on like 30degree slopes and there were all sorts of avalanche warnings. I got here though and down at lake level it had rained the week before and there was only about 2 inches of snow on the ground. That's all changing right now because it's snowed about 6 inches this afternoon. I ended up not doing anything today aside from buying some stools for my bar and an old road bike from the thrift shop around the corner from my house. They have tire chain requirement on the roads right now so I'm just waiting it out.
I go back to work sometime this week, up in the Geysers living in my favorite place - Cobb. It will be good to be back to work since it'll have been over a month, but the Geysers are my least favorite place to work.
I'm still planning on heading to Taiwan to teach English this summer. I've been talking with my friend over there and I'm starting to get excited about it. It should be a lot of fun.
