Alas, My Newest Crush Is Married

Move over, Kate Beckinsale, I have a new crush. Tonight, I watched last year's Wonder Woman movie. By the end of the nearly 2-1/2 hour movie, I was and remain besotted with  Gal Gadot. Quite unfortunately, she's already taken. Otherwise, I'd like totally have a chance with her. Then again, Kate is currently unmarried now so we'll see.

Below is a rather effective final official trailer for this movie which movie I highly recommend to anybody whose not a stick in the mud.

Picture of the Day - My Final #3 Hunt

Today my bother by another mother, Ron, and his son Ethan and I got run out of Secret Field #3 in Templeton, CA. The actual owner of the property or one of them as he framed it, drove up and flagged us down to talk to us. He told us that although we had permission to be there from the lessees of the property, his out-of-town partners didn't like the legal risk of having guests on the property. Ron and I don't believe the latter part of the story and suspect he is the sole owner and wanted us out but felt bad about it so put it off on the fictitious "other" owners. Thanks a lot lawsuit-happy America! Below is my final haul from this short-lived (the last nine months or so we enjoyed it on the whole and I enjoyed part of it off and on for the past dozen years or more) biconoid and petrified whale bone locality. Photo by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

Berlin Wall Remembrance

The Berlin Wall stood as a symbol of tyranny and oppression and the division between light and darkness, freedom and slavery, for 10,316 days. It has now been, as of today, 10,316 days since it was permanently breached en route to being dismantled. Image courtesy of  Milos Vojinovic‏ @infinite_milos on Twitter (all rights reserved).

Graphic of the Day - Watersheds of the U.S.

Artist Robert Szucs is a Geographical Information System (GIS) specialist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and created this graphic (all rights reserved)

My First 2018 Rinconada Trail Hike

This afternoon I joined my brother by another mother, Mike, and his brother-in-law, for a hike up Rinconada Trail from the trailhead off of Pozo Road to the summit of the Santa Lucia Mountains. in the Santa Lucia District of the Los Padres National Forest. We took the official route up and diverged onto side-routes coming back down. This took us through the upper vestiges of the Rinconada Mine (mercury from cinnabar). Below are images I captured in the order in which I captured them.

This is a slickenslided chunk of a mineral unknown to me. There is much faulting in this area and evidence of same.

Jagged outcropped on north side of the summit.

Another jagged near-summit outcropping: they look igneous to me.

The chaparral in this area has not burned since the Las Pilitas Fire in July, 1985.

This is an unusual example of differentially-aligned slickenslide.

I had never taken today's route down the mountain so this was my first viewing of this surviving adit.

Nature is reclaiming the mining site as evidenced by this nearly-mature digger pine.

Chrysotile asbestos vein in rock boulder in mine tailings.

Pit or partially-collapsed trench?

Another example of slickenslide to be found in or near the Rinconada Mine revealing the heavily-faulted nature of this cinnabar deposit.

I wonder what are these odd-looking invasive-looking stalky plants growing in the scar of the EPA remediation of this formerly mercury-contaminated site?

The retorts used on this site were never removed and can be found in two locations in the lower tiers of this site. All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

This Is Inside Of Me

For the past few months I've been listening to this amazing trance track by Russian trance-master Arty a.k.a. Artem Stoliarov in collaboration with fellow Russian trance producer Misha Kitone a.k.a. Mikhail Kitavin. I'm making an exception to my Russia boycott when it comes to music which necessarily ought to transcend geopolitics. "Inside of Me" is a 2009 progressive trance masterpiece which will give you goosebumps if you listen to it when in the right mood, preferably nocturnally with your sound system cranked up. Over the past several months I've discovered some rather amazing trance tracks from several years ago which escaped my notice at the time as well as several new tracks from Arty in his Alpha 9 side project, the latter of which have my restored my near-term faith in the sub-genre.