BIRD!

Sometimes, I get a little uneasy around birds. Once, when I was just a boy, I was eating a delicious cinnamon pretzel in Disney World. It was the perfect food at that instant; chewy and filling, covered in a cinnamon glaze, the perfect snack after a hard day of walking around and riding Space Mountain. I had that one first divine bite, the kind of bite that overwhelms your senses, causes your eyes to roll back in your head, and all you want to do is cram that entire pretzel down your gullet as fast as you possibly can.

It was then, while I was in the rapture of this delicious pretzel, that a SWARM of seagulls descended upon me. It was a scene straight out of The Birds. They were swooping and diving with an utter disregard for me, any other humans, or their own safety. My dad knocked one out of the air, sending it crashing to the ground. In the midst of this, one of the seagulls swooped down, flew close enough by my head that I could FEEL it, and snatched the pretzel right out of my hand. In doing so, he became too heavy to fly and crashed about 10 feet in front of us. The swarm redirected their attack, and the thieving seagull was stuck in the middle of a seagull feeding-orgy. I'm not sure he even made it out alive.

So nowadays, when I see a menacing bird who has clearly had a run-in with the law before (why else would he have a numbered shackle on his leg if he wasn't a common criminal???) I get nervous. "Hey, @julielyda," I''ll say, "Hold this pretzel for me, would you?"

A delightful stroll in Afton

@julielyda and I went for a picnic in Afton state park last week. We hiked some of the southern parts of the park and broke the one cardinal rule of the state park system: No booze, you filthy hobos. Sometimes, you have to exist outside of the "law", especially when you're the proprietor of THE INTERNET'S #1 BADASS PHOTOBLOG

Upper Sioux Agency State Park

Over Labor Day weekend @julielyda and I packed up all our camping gear (a lie, as my camping gear never leaves my car. Nice for camping trips, shameful when people ask you for rides) and we made the trek out to Upper Sioux Agency state park. It was a delightful park, with a combination of prairie, wetlands and river. We snagged a nice walk-in campsite (protip for any prospective state park campers: walk-in sites are ALWAY the best site. They're beautiful, far more isolated, and in this case you are allowed to actually drive your car to it, providing that you don't park it there) and spent some time hiking about.



Turns out, you can rent a canoe from the park office for a measly ten american dollars. Turns out, the Minnesota river is a wee bit shallow this time of year to be canoeing. Turns out, when the park tells you the whole trip takes "about half a day, or 2-3 hours" it's a hell of a lot closer to "half a day" than "2-3 hours". And, as it turns out, when you spend hours upon hours on a river without food or water, dragging your canoe across sandbars, your lovely afternoon paddle down a lazy river turns into a potentially homicidal event.

@julielyda hiking

@julielyda always looks stylish while hiking, or camping, or leaving me in the woods for dead. "We're just having fun!", she'll say. "I'm going to hunt the most dangerous game!", she tells me. The joke's on her, however. Manatees are simply not native to Minnesota.

The Barn

This is the barn at my folk's place in Wisconsin. It's pretty empty these days, with only two barn cats and a flock of barn swallows, going about their merry way and pooping all over my canoes. It makes for a great photo, however.