Mullet Day at Surfside Beach

I was going through some video clips from last summer looking for some kayak surfing crashes when I came across a funny.

Mullet, mullet, mullet…

Pier 30 Live Streaming Surfcam

The good folks over at Pier 30 Bait & Tackle have put up a nice, live streaming beach cam on Surfside Beach

The next time you visit Surfside be sure to stop by Pier 30 and say hello to TJ, Robbie and the rest of the gang.

Kayak touring with Ivan

Our comrades in Russia are down with kayak touring. Check out this nice clip of kayak touring the Voronezh and Bityug River

I’m not sure what the second guy with the champagne bottle is saying but it doesn’t sound like its for children. No need for a translator there really.

Speaking of translations, turn on your Russian translator and check out Sypai’s blog baida.su. The translator is a miraculous thing, but it still has a way to go. Instead of skipping over the parts you don’t understand, try to imagine that you must figure out what Sypai is saying in order to obtain crucial information needed to save the world.

Day was breaking. Otlepivshis from the pillow, I sadly looked at the alarm clock, wound-up before Friday evening. Strangely, it did not work. I woke up only by long habit – that outlined the wake of so much alarm and wake up earlier for a couple of minutes, and what sort of mechanisms ticking inside of me, I do not know (not always a useful skill, I’ll note to you). Outside, it was disgusting. In November, there was only one sunny day, but here the December and he was just as disgusting and slush. Winters are not seen.

Hastily drank tea and ate poorly heated soup, I wore my usual stuff on hikes. I had to participate in the team competition Winter trophyHeld on December 5 in Podgornoye that in two steps from Voronezh.

If you can’t save the world, you might at least get information needed to successfully navigate a multi-day river tour in a kayak.

DIY Alaska big game hunting

Scotty Lamkin, a long-time Alaskan writes a great piece about hunting Alaska on your own for the bargain price of about $3,500. He makes a compelling argument and I’ll have to put the Alaskan hunt on my bucket list.

As a former professional Alaskan hunting guide I want to give you some of the information you need to get your Alaskan hunt underway in 2010. I’m talking about information you won’t get anywhere else. Most guides want to sell you a hunt- I don’t; I want to help you do it yourself! Coming from Kentucky 30 years ago, I knew how to hunt like most of you. Same rules apply here it’s just a LARGER place to apply them. What you don’t know is the terrain, the weather, and the logistics. You’ll need some help with that.

I didn’t realize that hunting for most Alaskan big game requires a guide. Moose, Caribou, Black Bear, and Sitka Blacktail Deer are the only game that can be hunted legally without the use of a guide. If you are an experienced hunter but have never hunted Alaska, Lamkin recommends saving about $5k by booking a river hunt without a guide. The experience, he argues, is invaluable when it does come time to hire a guide for the more exotic game in Alaska.

After reading Lamkin’s article I am definitely down for some Alaskan big game hunting. You Betcha!

Before I die

I will surf a kayak down the face of a wave like this

Or maybe it will be the cause of my death. Many more pics here.

Check out this crazy mofo and see if you don’t get a few butterflies

I wonder if he survived?

Geocaching.com zeroes in on DARPA Challenge

When I was a kid I always thought the whole thing about God knowing when every sparrow falls was absurd. Then as I got older I figured out it was a metaphor. Now I’m not so sure. In another ten years we may be able to know when every sparrow falls. We are evolving into a hive society where when an event happens anywhere, everybody everywhere knows about it.

The DARPA Network Challenge is quite interesting in that the location of the red balloons is undisclosed. Ten needles in ten-thousand haystacks. Intelligence must be gathered from points spread wide and far and Geocaching.com believes they have the tools and the community to get the job done. Their viral intelligence gathering strategy is outlined in this email I received from Geocaching.com.

Fellow Geocachers, As part of the nationwide DARPA event to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet, we’re enlisting geocachers to be part of a fun social networking/GPS technology challenge. The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of 10 moored, 8-foot, red, weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States that will only be visible during tomorrow’s (12/5) daylight hours. The winner will receive $40,000.

If Groundspeak wins the challenge with your help, we will throw in another $10,000 of our own money. The full $50,000 prize will go to schools that need GPS equipment through DonorsChoose.org.

Tomorrow, December 5th, a group of Groundspeak Lackeys will meet up in the DARPA War Room at Groundspeak’s Headquarters to gather information online of the possible locations of the 10 weather balloons. We hope you will follow our attempts to win the challenge and help us along the way by gathering information both online and on the ground.

Do you want to help? Visit http://www.10balloonies.com – our official web site for Groundspeak’s team. We’ll provide up to the minute updates there and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/10balloonies. Also, if you are out geocaching, running errands or taking a morning stroll and spot one of the balloons, send us an email at darpa@groundspeak.com. The balloons will be numbered, so we need to know what number is on the balloon along with the coordinates for the location and any additional information (such as “saw from afar.” Coordinates need not be exact, (within 1 mile of actual coordinates will do) so an address will work.

Even if you aren’t in the continental US you can still help! Information will be spreading through social networks, blogs and news outlets. If you hear something helpful for us to find any of the 10 balloons, let us know! With a global community of millions of GPS enthusiasts, we believe that geocachers are ideally suited to this challenge. With our collective efforts, we can accomplish something really positive! Jeremy Irish President & Co-Founder, Geocaching.com Also one of the balloonies

According to the DARPA site the competition will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.

This is so cool. A mere ten years ago several military divisions with advanced communications networks would be required to pinpoint the location of 10 objects dispersed in unknown locations across the US.

I wonder how long it will take to find all the balloons? If this can be done in a single day, the implications are significant. If it only takes a few hours… wow!

UPDATE: MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team Wins!

USPA National Skydiving Championship

Went out Saturday to the USPA National Skydiving Championship held at Skydive Spaceland in Rosharon Tx. It was a beautiful day, blue skies, mild temps, and a vibrant crowd.  The size and scope of this event, held in little ole Rosharon, was astounding. Even more surprising than the size of  the competition was the sheer number of first time jumpers that were constantly going up and coming down. It’s great to see an adventure business right in our own back yard doing such a good job.

Here are a few pics from the Saturday afternoon activities:

Brazoria County Fair & Parade

The Brazoria County Fair kicks off today with the Fair Parade, which has been an annual event for me for the past many years with the kids. The kids are old enough now that they are more likely to skip it than go, but I still like to mosey on out to practice my photography. You can get a lot of interesting photos at festivals and such.

According to sattelite the cool front that blew through yesterday is just about to edge past us and the weather should be clear and cool for the parade and certainly by this evening if you are one of those who like to hit the fair on the first day. Better take a jacket if you plan on being out after sunset.

The Fair Association’s website seems to be down, but if you are interested in seeing this year’s schedule the cached page is here.

Surfside Surf Report

There has been a couple of low pressure systems hovering around Texas and with all the rain we have been having over the past few days it was a nice break yesterday to have some mostly sunny conditions. I was out visiting a friend at Bastrop Bayou where I store my kayaks and decided it was a good idea to throw a yak into the back of the truck and shoot down to the shore. I keep a close eye on the surf charts and I knew there had been enough surf  to make the ride out to Follets Beach worth it. I have been jonesing for several weeks as all we’ve had is flat surf conditions. Typical summer conditions, I know, but come on. Where are all the tropical systems caused by global warming when you need them? I was really counting on surfing some tropical waves this summer.

Coming over the Surfside bridge I could see the water was beautiful; blue and green with tiny flecks of white caps interspersed as far as the eye could see–a result of the stiff SW breeze blowing at15-20 knots. Yes there were several kiteboarders out too.

I was in the water by about 2:30 and surfed for about an hour and fifteen minutes before tiring out. With such a stiff breeze you have to paddle constantly or you will quickly be a few miles from your truck.  It’s best to have someone follow you in a vehicle so you can expend your energy on surfing and not so much on fighting the wind and current to stay in the vicinity of your ride.  I can usually paddle for quite a bit longer but the lack of any surf over the past 8 weeks has  me out of ocean kayaking shape.

There were some rideable waves ; nothing too big but past the 3rd sandbar on the  outer sand banks you could catch a nice wave if you were patient and got lucky. There was  almost enough punch in the waves to get you to the reform, but  not quite. If you can get on a wave on the outer banks and stay on it to the 3rd sandbar, stay upright through the breakers and  catch a reform on the 2nd sandbar… let’s just say you will be out of breath, literally and figuratively. It’s a lot of work, but it’s a hell of a ride.

Wait for your wave and get on it!

Buc-ees and TDECU join for huge gas/checking promo

If you are like me, then the price of gas can have a large dampening effect on your outdoor activities. It takes a not insignificant amount of gas to fuel my outdoor excursions and when gas is $4.00 a gallon I simply can’t take 30 mile round trips to the refuge or 40 mile trips to the beach everyday, or even several times a week. Even at $2.50 I have to cut back more than I like.

Well, if you’ve been feeling the pinch of rising gasoline prices over the past couple of months, take note:

I’m tellin’ ya, times are hard and thirty cents a gallon is not chump change. I don’t know how many people will rush out and get a checking card from TDECU — a lot I bet — but with just the current TDECU card holders flocking for cheap gas you are not going to be able to get into a Bucees during the month of October.

I’m predicting this promotion will be a great success for TDECU and Bucees.

UPDATE: The response to this post has been incredible. People really care about the price of gasoline. Watching all the traffic flow in has led me to thinking about the size of this promotion which leads an inquisitive mind like mine to thinking about the cost of the promotion.

Using a couple of different estimations, I think it is safe to say the promotion has a price tag of at least 1 Million Dollars; if not much more, depending on how much gas Beaver sells during October. I think Beaver will be able to sell as much gasoline as he can get his hands on, which I hope doesn’t turn out to be a problem.

I don’t know how much, if any, of that money will actually come out of someone’s pocket or if it is taken as lost profit, but that is not the point. The point is that whatever the cost of the promotion, it is the equivalent of money being injected back into the local economy. Money that would normally go in Beaver’s pocket is being left in the customer’s pocket. Many people taking advantage of the savings will be small business owners who have three or four vehicles they have to fill up a couple of times a week. Like I said before, the savings on this promotion are significant. This is real economic stimulus they way it should be practiced.

For the average person who can take advantage of this promotion, the economic stimulus received from buying your gas from Buc-ees during the month of October will dwarf any stimulus you will ever receive from the government.

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