Chicken vagina lies set straight

Below is a classic video of mine titled Chicken Vagina.





But there's something that you need to know. I lied to you. Chickens don't even have vaginas. They have cloacas. And most boy birds don't even have penises either.

This is an amazing article about fowl genitals: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Wild-Animals-705/Birds.htm

Credit: Shane and Michael

Cubing and crafting with Fig

I went to Fig's craft night at Socha. My craft was Rubik's cube. The other crafters (who were largely knitters) were skeptical, but then I wowed them. First by solving the "Dedmore H." Fig captured the fleeting moment on her phone.



Then I finished the dang thing.



If you need a tranlation:
Fig says "talk"
I say "Why talk? It shows for itself."

Obviously I was impaired by my own glory. I can't get too proud because Leggy solved hers in like 4 days and it took me almost three weeks.

Burfday - some of half number 2

On the night of my birthday I camped at Lake Mead, close to the Nevada Arizona border. I ate a can of chicken soup, drank a fancy birthday beer, made a fire and solved the first two rows of my Rubik's cube.

In the morning I drove over the Hoover Dam. Currently a bridge is being built near the dam so that not all of the traffic goes over the dam...or maybe they are going to re-route all of it. Regardless, the new bridge was crazy looking. The two ends each have several columns built but they aren't connected yet. The pictures don't really show how high it is, but its high okay.


By 9:00AM on the 17th I had AZ highway 93 ahead of me. There were four towns I wanted to see: White Hills, Chloride, Mineral Park and Cerbat.

In my search for White Hills I skidded around on dirt roads that reminded me of the moon and found things like washed up speed boats on land, more free fire wood than I ever could have wished for and an abandoned "animal sanctuary."



White Hills was interesting mostly because it has changed so much in the last 30 years. The AZ ghost town book I have showed several buildings and talked about the mine entrances littering the mountain sides leading up to town. The adits have all been bulldozed closed and some netting put down to cover the shafts, but a sleepy town has grown up around the remaining buildings...some abandoned already and some inhabited.



Chloride has about 300 people in it, most of whom were parked outside the church when I got there. There was a tourist info/convenience store and the guy inside drew me an awesome map of how to find the murals and petroglyphs up in the hills. He also told me I was free to climb around near the mine as long as I didn't "go into any holes or anything." The murals had just been repainted by their original artist to celebrate their 40 anniversary. Chloride also felt very lunar.







Mineral Park was pretty awesome. Varney mentioned (in the 30 year old book) that a modern mining company was operating next to the old site. There was one there, but a different one. There were two buildings (one with crazy old mud bricks) and multiple shafts in the hills. Unfortunatley I had to share the experience with a grandfather and grandson who were "searching for treasure" with a metal detector with an abhorrent beep. Cute...but inside I was like, 'you're not allowed to take anything even if you're bonding!!!'


Cerbat was different in that there was a sign that actually invited anyone to camp or hunt quail there provided you signed in and out. There was one private ranch house and then a mine on a hill. I parked and walked past several bullet riddled cars, saw more big kitty prints and went right back to the truck.

Birthday - first halfsies

After a lovely Denny's dinner and sleeping at a truck stop east of Barstow, I woke up early and had a delicious bacon breakfast at Mad Greek Cafe near Baker, CA which boasted the "Best Gyros in the USA." It was too early to find out if that was really true.
Across the street was a popular place that I wish I had known about the night before:
Next I headed into the Mojave to find Cima, Ivanpah, Vanderbilt, and Rose, most of which are abandoned rain stations/mining towns within the natural preserve.
Houses at Cima: Vanderbilt was basically one large foundation and a wall: Looking through a busted main frame at Rose with peeping Joshua trees: Next I went to find Ivanpah. There are actually two Ivanpahs. One is in the Mojave preserve and is an abandoned train station, and the other is off of highway 15 just outside. I followed Varney's instructions very carefully, noting my milage and everything. I ended up winding left and right down these crazy dirt roads and finally landing on a Y and not knowing which way to go. The road up ahead was impassible, so I got out and started walking. I quickly realized that I was on the wrong road because I could see the stone walls of several 100+ year old buildings on the road below. I turned around to go down and that's when I saw many gigantic kitty cat prints in the sand. I know...they might look like dog prints...but these things were massive.

A bag of gummy frogs later, and on my way to a Lake Mead camping spot (where the grocery store cashier sang happy birthday to me and a mean lady with 6 golden retrievers was camping), I found this very interesting desert structure. Funny Varney never mentioned it.

Days 3 through 5 are coming up shortly, and they are better because I am older in them.

Area man cancels birthday

I've decided to stay 27 another year. Thanks to everyone who was going to go camping with me and then received a phone call, that no, nope, camping wasn't happening. Instead I'll be heading into the Arizona desert alone with a borrowed dog.

Condolences birthday, I know you'll be back.

My little gma

For the winter holidays I went to Texas (read about insane ordeal and Chinese food airport breakfast here). As most of you might know, my grandmother has Alzheimer's. She was much quieter this year than in the last several years past. She didn't join in the conversation this year or joke as much.

My uncle Jim got my aunt Lesley a baby doll as a Christmas present this year. My grandmother held it for nearly an hour and talked about it constantly. She kept saying things like, "If anyone came in here and they didn't know this was a doll, they would think it was real." And then she would stroke it's hair or examine its hands. And a few minutes later she would say the same thing. Since I didn't know how to interact with her much this visit, just watching her with the doll was nice.

Don't mind the dogs in this video. Lefty is the big one, Annie the small one.



Also, I think I already mentioned the Brownsville Zoo, but the kangaroos and gorillas were something else.

A very special visitor