Escapism

At Home in the Keys

     Is it a little early for spring fever? Us cold-blooded gimps don't take to the cold as gracefully as you "up-rights", and hence get a little bit whiney about this time of year.

     I'm not sure about how some of the other people combat the cold, but I like to do it by writing.



The Wilderness Chef in our Condo

     Writing a story about something interesting that you did is a great way to escape the winter and roam around in your own head for a few hours, and some of us have more room than others to roam around. When I'm writing, I'm battling a large fish on a Florida beach, the aqua-blue water lapping on the shore with seagulls soaring by and my reel screaming. I could be with Super-Dave in our
Wilderness Condo, enjoying a glass of red and a medium-rare steak, guns safely tucked away, pretending to be hunting while a blizzard rages outside. I may be soaring high over the prairies with a high-performance glider on a perfect blue-sky-summer-day, the atmosphere dotted by lift-giving thermals identifiable by their fluffy-cotton-ball-cap. I roll the glider into a right turn under a cotton-ball-cloud, and am rewarded by that familiar kick-in-the-pants as we're rocketed skyward in our atmospheric-elevator-shaft. See how easy it is to escape?

     I've been fortunate enough to be writing a regular column called Outdoor Tracks for New Mobility Magazine. This last week I found out that they have extended my column for at least another year, what a great thing for me to do in the winter… Write stories!

     Another great thing about writing a column on outdoor adventures, is you have to think of more outdoor adventures to go do! The last few have been on soaring, fishing, camping and kite flying. I love this hobby, escapism is amazing!

     Have a great rest of the winter, time is short so I had better get typing again, got words I haven't used yet!

Here's a link to my column:  Outdoor Tracks

My 2 Cents on $25 Worth of Birdseed

Well, Jan 20 and we're still surviving this winter stuff. It appears that the unusually deep snow has our deer friends scrounging for whatever they can find. I think maybe they're in cahoots with those darn chickadees. Now I enjoy the birds around about as much as any other old fart in a lazyboy, but the wastage ... man ... a teenager with her parents' gas card is frugal compared to this! They seem to have to move approx. 587 seeds to find that one desirable one, only to find that the point is on the wrong end, and therefore it must be deemed sub-par and discarded also. The amount of wastage by these little half-submerged-mixer-beaters is in direct proportion to the price you pay for the seed. We purchased the finest pedigreed bird-seed that you must swear on affidavit to never plant and grow yourself, and now 2 of these 1.5 ounce chickadees spill enough of it to feed 3 full-grown 200lb+ mule deer bucks and one porcupine! I mean how can they sleep at night? The picture above is one of the deer that seems fascinated with me at my computer ... standing on the deck in mid-day! I hope to claim enough of the deck from the critters this spring to park my butt outside! It's hard to work with an audience ... but it is  nice to see the wild creatures so close!