Day 19 Mar 21

Sunday March 21 Day 19

The weather is great but with clear, sunny days the air just gets dirtier and dirtier and the haze is almost impenetrable. There has only been rain on my second night here so the air has not been cleaned. It is clear blue overhead but when looking out over the plains, there might as well not be anything there. Looking out the other way at the high mountains is much the same. The spring flowers are coming out and today was the first time I heard cowbells. That is a sound appreciated by most people who come to the mountains. Each cow has a bell so that they can be found when it is time to come home. I need to get my video camera out and record that sound for background on the video.

Supper last night was actual tasty. I was able to eat enough and did not have low blood sugars at 4:30 am. It appears that 4:30 is the time for me to wake up as I have for the last several days. That gives me abut 6 hours of sleep and I have been running on that amount for the last 20 odd years (some years are odder than others). I tested my blood sugars at 7 am and though lower than in the US, they were not too low.

I have declared today as a “day of rest” (I got that thought from somewhere, though I cannot remember where exactly, yeah right!). The past three days my body has been hurting in the evening and I should give it a break to recover (not too much, of course). I will not do a down the hillside and back up again trek today, just a little on the “level”. I am going out near noon today to catch some different light on the flock rhoddies (Seattle speak for rhododendron) on the nearby hillside. I have morning light on them and need some overhead light on tape. One never knows just how the light at different times of the day will illuminate the colors. I cannot tape these rhoddies in the afternoon as they will then be in shadow and the reds will not stand out from the background.

My day of rest has been successful so far. One of my projects was to balance up the Glidecam equipment. Yesterday there were some problems and so I checked it out this afternoon. It is perfectly balanced, perhaps the best I have ever done. So the problems must have been operator error. That will necessitate me working harder on the basics of operating a Glidecam. I have made it work before and I will practice starting tomorrow. I shall let you know of the progress.