Adventioneering

I don’t know much about Moose and have never hiked in Moose country before. Living in New England I have only seen one as we were driving through the White Mountains region and she was big from the car. Tonight I have been looking for information on temperament, behaviors, reactions to humans, etc. to help me be prepared. You never know what situation you might find yourself in but at least from what I have read, it sounds like if Bullwinkle is walking slowly towards me, ears back, licking his lips, it’s not because he wants to give me a kiss.

Resource: What to do about aggressive Moose

Running errands today, I found myself sitting in the Maserati outside FedEx amidst some other cars. There were some people milling about, coming in and out as I was sitting there chatting with my dad on the cell and not really paying them a whole lot of attention. That’s when I noticed a man walking around the car, which isn’t unusual as we get people interested in the car all the time. However, when he got to Pininfarina on the passenger side I did notice how he was different: he had a baseball bat in his right hand.

I hung up with dad and I look over and guy is around the front of the car and walking up to the driver side window. I hadn’t really noticed at this point the mini-van with the baseball stuff and people a couple cars over so when he made the “roll down the window” gesture to ask me if it was really a Maserati I felt a pause. I cracked the window about an 1.5″ to answer his question if it really was a Maserati as I fired up the engine and prepared to put it in reverse.

I soon realized after he spoke, he was so awestruck with the car I think he had honestly forgotten about the bat. He nicely told me it was a great way to get around town and to have a good day.

Jordan swaps out his street tires for some new Super Swampers. Photos here

After OFR which was the second trip I’ve tried to use steel cable, I went ahead and ordered new synthetic line. In retrospect it was the right decision to throw the brand-new, unused steel rope away when I got my first winch, and I should have done it this time too. The steel line is a lot more difficult to deal with, and is destroying everything by burring it up, including the sides of the winch drum.

I had Master-Pull line last time, and I was happy with the product, but I wasn’t happy with the built-in hook on the end. I see now some people are running safety hooks but what I really wanted was a thumble large enough to take a shackle, because 99% of the time, that’s how I am performing the recovery. I was happy to see that Viking makes such an offering, which I’ll be sure to review once it shows up.

Just like before with the SuperWinch ep9 on the land rover, I went with 100′ at 3/8″.

We ran Old Florida Road again this weekend with a great group of folks from New York. Despite it having rained more or less for two weeks, the trail conditions weren’t much worse than the first time around. Jordan’s jeep did well on the swampers, and it wasn’t nearly the winchfest that it was last time.

Perhaps the big surprise was getting the Grand Cherokee through on street tires without any notable damage.

Photos are here and we’ll post video soon.

Completed “Into Thin Air” by Krakauer this week; mostly through “The Mammoth Book of Adventures on the Edge“.

The remainder of our trip was sprinkled with Liz shopping and lunch, Pagliacci with JP, Gwyn, Tom and Mike, beer drinking, hiking at Wallace Falls, Jaliscos, and topped off with the almighty Dick’s. It was an obese trip! We are now safely back on the east coast.

Woke up at 0700h despite having gone to bed at 0030h. Toured the MS labs and played with a Microsoft Surface which was loaded up with some interesting demos and games. It was nice to see Sun equipment represented in the labs, although that partnership seems rocky due to the Oracle merger.

No BBQ tonight as planned, so had dinner at Hales and drank Spaten at Prost until 0000h. Despite eating the famed taco salad at MSFT and tossing on lattes, gummi bears, and burgers, nothing amiss to report. I have survived.

Met Aaron for lunch and toured Monolith, which is very cool. I love Alma, she is so dreamy. Found a couple of geocaches in a super-nice Redmond-area park. I think their baseball field was the nicest I’ve seen in a long time, if ever. BBQ planned tomorrow night. Thai dinner, what could beat that?

Impreza not yet destroyed, yet this morning it issued a soothing blue coolant icon. I figured since the icon was blue and not red it was “NOTICE” not “ERROR” and everything is fine. It went away. Choosing to ignore.

Lunch at Beth’s (bold). Recommend the bagel sandwich. Rental is a 2008 4door Subaru Impreza with 18k on the clock - what a crappy car. Do not buy this car. Went to discovery point, laid on the beach for awhile. Almost sunburned. Dinner at Adrian’s, snoqualmie falls at dusk (it was weird to see the area in the light for once). Sugar provided at that burger place nearby in the form of “root beer shake”.

Photos.