The neighbors trees across the street from my daughter's house always changes quickly in the Fall.

My son-in-law tested negative for the Bat flu this morning, but unfortunately, my test was still positive, and so was my daughter's. Other than a bit of a cough, I don't feel sick, and neither does my daughter, the difference is she prefers to get back to work, and I've never wanted to return to work a day in my life, so she didn't inherit that trait from me.

So it looks like I'll wait another day or two before I take another test. It's no big deal to me since I don't have any plans anyway; I'm not feeling sick, so I could be doing anything I want to do except coming in contact with other people, and since the weather's been beautiful, this is a great time to be doing stuff to the Lance to get it ready to head South sometime in October.

I need a flu shot, which I will get as soon as I test negative for the Bat flu. I feel fortunate that I haven't caught the flu in a long, long time, and I'm assuming that being a boondocker and not coming in contact with very many people is at least partially responsible for that. And since winter is the prime flu season, that's when I'm around the fewest people.

Theboondork

Red Rose. Its looking a little long in the tooth, but so is all the other flowers around here

Another beautiful Fall day in Denver, mid-70s in the daytime, 50s at night, low humidity, the perfect time to be in Colorado. Unfortunately, it doesn't last long, and the great weather is just a warning that snow and cold are on the way.

But there are a few people that look forward to weather like that. The skiers and the snowboarder's Colorado dream is to have many ski resorts open by Thanksgiving, which they often are. So they can drive through dangerous mountain passes covered in snow and ice hopefully before the next avalanche wipes it off the face of the earth, so they can suffer frostbite while enjoying a semi-controlled fall down a mountain of snow with a board or two tied to their feet, Dodging trees at 50 miles an hour.... In nature, it's known as Natural Selection.

I dabbled in skiing briefly when I moved to Colorado but quickly determined that due to my decades of living in Miami, Florida, I had lost whatever abilities I ever had to deal with below-zero temperatures and more snow than it takes to make a snow cone. And over time, that morphed into me never wanting to see snow again in any form, including snow cones and spending my winters far enough south that snow is an oddity that you have to run outside and take a quick picture of before it melts.

So spare me the black diamond ski runs, the dreams of a white Christmas, and Jack Frost nipping at my nose. Instead, put me boondocking at the base of a desert mountain, a few Saguaro's scattered about, a humidity of zero percent, and I'm in Heaven.

Theboondork

In an effort to find out why I'm still coughing I determined there's a tickle in my throat, so I looked in the mirror, opened my mouth and took a picture of my throat... And I think I can see what could be causing my cough!

Having survived  many hurricanes in my decades of living in Miami, Florida, my prayers go out to those living in the Port Charlotte, Fort Myers, area, which I'm very familiar with seeing as how my sister lived there for many years, because it looks like they're going to get the eye of the hurricane

My experience is most Floridians do not like to evacuate and will stay with their homes no matter what. Some will hunker down, and others will have a hurricane party with all the neighbors. I was mostly a "hunker downer," but a lot of times, I had to work, hurricane or no hurricane, especially when working as a civilian at Homestead Air Force Base.

A couple of dozen of us were considered "mission essential," and we would have to stay and try to keep the base from being washed away during a storm. All the airplanes capable of flying would have already been flown out to other bases, and the only planes left would be a handful that needed repair, couldn't fly, and would be left in hangers for protection.

South Florida has canals all over the place that drain water from the land, mostly the Everglades, into the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean. Most of these canals have large gates that can be opened and closed electrically near where the canal will empty into the ocean, preventing the saltwater from entering the freshwater canal.

And as a way of preventing hurricane storm surge from building up on Homestead Air Force Base, the little canals on the base all fed into one big canal that emptied into Biscayne Bay, and this canal not only had large gates that could be opened and closed there was also a really big pumping station that would pump the water in that canal out into Biscayne Bay which would keep the flightline and runways from going underwater.

I had a regular job at the base that didn't involve pumping canals, but the military likes for folks to have more than one skill so my secondary skill that was put to use during a hurricane was to keep those huge pumps running so Homestead Air Force Base wouldn't be flooded, and that worked really well for many years.... Until it didn't !

Theboondork