Boski's Blogopoluza!

August.

Hey remember back a few post when I said,

Hey I spent a week on a horse - actually got back from that trip two weeks ago.
I swear I will put the Snapfish link when my wife is done. But we spent a week
in Bridgeport CA at a place called Hunewill Ranch. So now I can say I have
punched some doggies.

Well I finally broke down and scooped up the pics from our trip, we have been busy and Snapfish can go try to fornicate with itself. I still marvel that I made the trip and I did not injury myself or get eaten by wolves. I am not great in nature, or as Ma Boski succinctly put when I told her I was going to go to Yosemite with some friends over Spring Break. She said,

"Boski, we are just not an outdoor people."

It seems that the Boski clan took to domestication quite quickly when arriving from Ireland. So just think of me a house cat that blogs poorly. Any way the trip went well, I stayed on my horse the entire time. So please sit back and enjoy some nice photos (taken by the Better Half) with some questionable content (me)


Here is a shot of room. Rustic, but nice. It had a giant closet that we essentially turned into our " Tack Room".





Here is a shot of the lodging of our friends and the view we got to see everyday. Not too shabby.

Here is yours truly riding the plains. I knew all those quarters spent outside the Supermarket would pay off.

Here is another glimpse of the majestic Eastern Sierras. If you go West, but do not "Go West" since you don't want to close your eyes. (I am sorry for the bad 80's reference there, I can't help it.) Wait where was I? But if you go over the mountains you are on the backside of Yosemite.

Ah here are some doggies that we punched, okay we did not punch them, but these are a couple of bulls that my wife and some of the advanced riders got to herd.






Here is nice shot from the barn, looking out over the pastures.

Look some dork on a hay ride.

A nice dusk shot of some of the ranch land.


Here I am dragging up the rear on the breakfast ride. Even though this was day four I was still looking for the radio dial. Also embarrassingly enough I rode the whole week with my left turn signal on.



On the day five they packed some of us up and drove out to a spot called Twin Lakes. I was hoping Twin Peaks, I have always wanted to meet the Log Lady, sadly it was not. What was not sad was the ride through Toiyabe National Forest and the Hoover Wilderness .




From the lake we gained a good bit of elevation as we traversed some steep switchbacks and through the beautiful flora. Damn it was a long ride. Beautiful, but long.






It was all worth it when we reached our destination, Barney Lake.



Not too shabby huh.




Like Randy from "A Christmas Story" I laid their like a slug, it was my only defense. No it was nice being able to stretch out.



A smile to scare off any wildlife.




After lunch took a shot with my trust steed. God bless Redman, he was a trooper putting up with me. Also to answer any questions this horse was not high at all during the week.



Well it was time finally to go, here I am giving Redman a farewell carrot, after our last afternoon ride. I think it almost looked like I knew what I was doing.




Soon after the carrot and the saddle came off, he bolted for the safety of the pasture and the start of his weekend.




The only thing that really sucked about the trip was just right after this, we were enjoying the farewell dinner. About halfway through I quickly felt awful. It was like I was coming down with either Dengue Fever, dropsy or something. It ended up just being a cold, however a cold and stuffy head at altitude sucks. My wife dealt with it coming up and now here I was bring it back down the mountain. Great. Never the less I highly recommend the experience. We will definitely do it again sometime in the future.

Fifteen years ago today, I took the Better Half on our first date.

A cattle drive - Nothing says Saturday Morning like watching a cattle drive. Yes cattle was herded through the streets of our humble little municipality. (O.C. Register)









Latter that day we decided to head into the Fair to see the sites and see the latest developments in fried food technology. It is also fascinating people watching at the Fair and see the people who put effort into their outfits. I mean you could see that people put in a lot of time and effort in deciding either to go with the Raiders Jersey or the Beer Inspector T-shirt.





This week end also comprised of seeing the White Sox take 2 out of three from the Pitty Kitties. Next up the hated Twins.





Spent hours watching our new adopted kids (Tortoises) making sure they ate. As I mentioned our house was looking like a hobo camp. Thankfully it has gotten better. The yards are bare right now. So right now in the back we have the kids in an area where we can keep an eye on, since we have some plants that are not the best for them. So we are working on finding ways of Tortoise proofing those plants so they can have free reign. I would have never expected to be fascinated watching them, but I am.





Disposing of a "gift" left by this guy.



Woke up Saturday Morning and found a bird that was brought down by this Orange & White character. Me and the Better Half appreciate that he wants to provide for us, but there is not threat to our food supply, and if is going to do that, just leave it to mice. Felt bad about the bird, but could not get mad at him too much, he's a cat.


Sunday - finally had a day to loaf around and clear out stuff on the TIVO. The Better Half and I finished our peaceable weekend with dinner what we like to think is our local (Memphis) . If you ever come to Costa Mesa or Santa Ana stop on in.

So it is now back to grind.

I am still sleepy from this weekend. This weekend was not wild and crazy, but still tiring.

Here are the highlights:


Friday


- The Better Half's Mom showed up to take us to the airport. As we prepared to ventured out, we nearly had a home invasion by this fellow.




At first he just sauntered up to hang with the Better Half and her mom, as they were opening up the car. All was fine until the Better Half came back to the house and opened the door. As soon as the wife opened the door. He bolted to it and made his attempt. It was an orange and white streak to the door. He nearly made it in, but was stopped, this time.

Damn him and his adorableness.


- Land at Sky Harbor and we saw NFL Hall of Famer the Minister of Defense himself, Deacon Jones. We made a halfass effort to say hello, but he seemed out of it and he still may be a little bummed with the passing of one of his fellow Fearsome Foursome.

- Got picked up by our friends and traveled to that bustling metropolis Tuscon and made it to Tuscon Electrical Ballpark for that all important White Sox/Diamondback Spring Training Battle.

- The White Sox came out and established their dominance. A dominance that lasted till half way through the bottom of the first.

- Even though the Sox, Offense, Defense and pitching looked listless it was still a great time.

- I got my first bit of sunburn of the season. That along with windburn. Man it was cold.

- Friday was the start of using and overusing the phrase for anything that did not go as planned, "well it is spring training for (insert proper noun here) them as well". It was used for the concession stand, the parking attendants, the umps, the organ player, the hotel workers and so on and so on.


- It is hard to have a bad day after a day at the yard.

- The hotel we stayed at was the home for the Colorado Rockies minor league players. I know that these were not in the big clubs camp. I don't think Todd Helton is camping at this hotel for spring. Now this place was not horrible, but not worth what was paid.

- It seems to be law that to be in the Rockies farm system that you have to walk around with your luggage or your shaving kits. I don't know why they were doing this. It was driving us all crazy, we wanted to know what was up. My guess was that they were using the shaving kit bags and suitcases to hoard food or hotel towels. Probably not, but I going to believe it.


- Attention Future Rockies, or at this point Pebbles, if you want to make the bigs, shag more grounders and spend less time on your myspace pages/looking at porn. It seemed like the players were in the "Visitor Business Center" (A small room with a computer in it) the whole time. I was tempted to bang on the door and yell "hand check", but my Spanish is lousy.


- I think Mexican food is catching on in Tuscon.


Saturday

- Another glorious day, but thankfully with less wind.


- Team Boski got Joe Crede's autograph, which was nice, but I also think it lead to him committing an error when the ball got into his jersey.

- Gavin Floyd made a bid for the fifth spot in the rotation with a couple of solid innings, but Gavin, I need to ask are you part Werewolf because there is something going on with your neck?



- Along with the good pitching it was good to see the Sox move runners, get some key hits and play better defense, especially Juan "Don't Touch My Jeep" Uribe. Who snuffed out many a D-Back rally. Which helped the White Sox finally get their first win of the Spring, even though the White Sox did a great Bad News Bears impression as they let the D-Back get back into the game, thankfully the Sox prevented an embarrassing let down with a collision at home plate resulting in the final out.


- Have I mentioned I like baseball?


- If you have not done it, and you love baseball, then you do need to go to Spring Training. You get good seats without paying an arm and a leg.


- My only complaint with the Tuscon stadium, other than no media guides, is that please tell the Air Force base not to have planes doing tricks during the games. I was got distracted multiple times watching a couple of F-4's, some F-16's and others doing some fancy turns. I just had visions of getting domed by a foul ball when I am looking at the sky.


Sunday

- I know Tuscon is not a large city, and I know a lot of things are closed on Sunday, but it was so quiet. Almost to the point of eerie.


- How did Clint Eastwood not win an Oscar for "Any Which Way You Can? The finest illegal street fighter with an Orangutan sequel ever made.


- We had not planned to see the Sox on Sunday, but wished we had as they beat the Cubs like the filthy curr's they are. But I did enjoy looking at the dejected faces of Cub fans at the airport.


- Sadly we had to say goodbye to our friends who joined us on this journey. They are great people and it was great they had time to see us and go down to Tuscon. We also enjoyed seeing their daughter who got to see her first baseball game. Out of this weekend we might have been able to talk them into coming out to see the Dodgers this August. If we don't see them


- Sky Harbor not too bad of a place to kill time.


- Saw NBA Analyst and former NBAer Mark Jackson walking through the Airport, but too scared to say anything.


So it finally came time to get on our plane and end our weekend, but Boski was able to spot one more former Athlete. Our flight had current NBA ref, former NBAer, a 1984 Gold medal winner, and a former Cal State Fullerton Titan, Leon Wood. I know, but I find it exciting. Well he is very nice guys who took time to talk to me from the plane to luggage claim. I have a VHS tape somewhere with me doing an "interview" with him when I was at a broadcasting camp back in 1996.

Okay this nonsense will cease, must get back to napping at work.