Here's an incredible free resource I just ran across...

Here's an incredible free resource I just ran across...  The BBC has posted over 16,000 sound effect files (in WAV format), licensed for free use under a fairly permissive (and remarkably plain-language) license.  I've not seen any collection of sound effects of this quality (or size) on any other site...

The statue is unloaded and unpacked ...

The statue is unloaded and unpacked ... and in a temporary parking position for a few months until we've finished our water feature (where it will be permanently placed).  Here are a couple views of it (as usual, click to embiggen):

We're back!

We're back!  And such a lovely little trip we had...  Our route (both ways) took us around Bear Lake, then to Evanston, Rock Springs, and finally Lander, Wyoming.  We saw far more wildlife than we expected to!  On the stretch from Bear Lake to Evanston we saw many Sandhill cranes, and a few pronghorn antelope (the latter exciting for us, as we don't see them often).  But on the stretch from Rock Springs until about 30 miles before Lander, we saw hundreds and hundreds of pronghorns.  We found out later that they migrate to this area every spring so the pregnant females can feast on emerging forbs – rich in the minerals they need at that point in their pregnancy. They sure were a feast for our eyes!  They were still there on our way home yesterday, too.

Friday we spent all day in the Lander area.  The big event was visiting Eagle Bronze – the foundry selected by the sculptress (Christine Knapp) who created our mountain lion statue.  She'd told us to expect to be there all day, though we had absolutely no idea why.  We had the very mistaken idea that sculptures were made by pouring bronze into a mold, letting them cool, then taking them home.  That turns out to be very wrong. :)

The first thing we saw when we walked in was the statue at right.  The color in the photo is accurate – that's actually what it looked like!  I thought it was clay at first, and that we'd had some enormous misunderstanding with Christine!  But then I remembered we're at a foundry, so there must be bronze involved somewhere...

We spent the next four hours enthralled by the two “patina people” – artists in their own right – transform what you see at right into the statue we took home.  They were fine with us watching and asking a million questions, something we both enjoyed very much.  The collection of photos below are those I took as they were working.  The overwhelming takeaway for me from watching them was that this process is complicated.  The photos below are in sequence, and you can see each part of the process – washing, buffing, applying chemicals, using heat, drying, polishing, lacquering, and (the last step!) waxing.  I had utterly no idea that there was so much use of color and texture in making a bronze statue!  Just a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean.  To make the eyes stand out, the orbs were carefully buffed, then polished with jeweler's rouge.  For certain areas of their pelt (tip of the tail, back of ears, etc.) the fur is darker, almost black.  In those areas, the patina people heated the metal (to open pores in the metal), gently sprayed black acrylic (some of which seeped into the heat-opened pores), then let the metal cool before buffing the acrylic off.  The result is a subtly darkened area of the metal, with a nice gradient to the areas that weren't darkened.  Watching these two work, and learning from their knowledgeable responses to our questions, was an experience I'll cherish...

We took one small break from watching them at the urging of Christine, who wanted to show us an amazing statue of a horse that would soon be leaving the foundry (after having been ten years in the making!).  That thing is 28' tall from the floor to the tip of its nose ... just look at Debbie – she doesn't quite come up to its knee!  The statue is made of bronze, with the “skin” being about 3/8" thick (roughly the same as our statue).  That's not nearly strong enough to support the weight of the statue, so the horse has a gigantic steel armature inside of it – and interesting piece of engineering all by itself, complicated in form, and with some challenges in making it strong enough to handle all possible wind loads.  Eventually this statue will end up in Singapore (where the customer is), so they won't have to worry about snow loads. :)  This same foundry makes miniatures the size of your little finger, and I'm told this horse is only the third-largest (by weight) statue they've ever made.

While in Lander, we stayed at Lander Lodging, and a very enjoyable stay that was!  Our hosts, Don and Laural, couldn't possibly have been any nicer.  In fact, they rescued us from an awkward car-charging situation by giving us a couple of rides into town, something we greatly appreciated.  Most of all, though, they were “our kind” of people: farmers, animal lovers, full of stories (especially Don!), and dispensing good cheer in all directions.  Their little spot in the Sinks Canyon is truly beautiful, with great views, lots of trees, and plenty of animals for us to meet.  We particularly enjoyed their miniature horses Star and Indy (below).  We learned from Don that the miniature horses were developed specifically to work in mines, pulling carts of ore.  I'd always thought they were more modern than that, and developed mainly as pets – not so.  These two had very sweet and curious dispositions, and both were jealous if we paid attention to the other :)...

It was a lovely trip, and now our mountain lion statue is parked on our trailer in our back yard.  On Tuesday my brother Scott will be here, and with his help we're going to move it into a temporary position until we get its permanent home on a water feature built.  Once I get it unpacked and placed, I'll take some photos of it and post them...

Ramblings...

Ramblings...  Yesterday afternoon we wandered up Blacksmith Fork Canyon again.  I spotted the first mountain wildflowers of the season (at right).  They were nestled in some exposed rocks on a talus slope, each plant no more than an inch or so high.  There was a cluster of plants about 8' in diameter.  I've no idea what they are, but the flowers look a bit like pea family flowers, and they were pouring out a sweet, strong smell.  Those thorned leaves belong to that plant, and those sure don't look like the pea family!  Oh, lovely they were...

As we got to Hardware Ranch at the end of the paved road, we took the back (dirt) road up to the visitor's center.  The scene at left is from that little drive.  That's looking just about due east, back toward Hyrum (16 miles away and out of sight).  You can see the obviously green meadows, but if you look closely you'll see that the deciduous trees are still bare.  Close up, some of them have popped-open buds and the leaves are a-coming.  In another couple of weeks, this scene will be considerably greener.  I'll try to remember to snap it again then...

We've had a busy day today, scrambling to handle a few last-second chores before we set off on another three-day trip.  This time we're headed to Lander, Wyoming to pick up a mountain lion sculpture that we commissioned a few months ago.  Hopefully by the end of this summer that sculpture will be sitting atop a water feature in our back yard, just off our deck.  I will of course post photos after we pick it up on Friday.

One of our chores today was to visit Rudy's Greenhouses in Logan to collect eight hanging basket of color.  A few weeks ago, we bought “tickets” to get these baskets – Rudy's works with the local Boy Scouts each year to help them raise money.  Everybody wins: the Boy Scouts get some cash, Rudy's raises their volume and gets more people to know them, and the ticket buyers get some gorgeous baskets at a discounted price – in our case, eight of them to go around our deck (at right).  We drove in right at opening time to get the best selection, but we needn't have worried – there were vast quantities of those hanging baskets to choose from: over 3,000 of them according to one of the workers.  The staff there were ludicrously helpful – they wouldn't let me load my car by myself, and one of them suggested plastic sleeves (they offer them for free) to avoid messing up the car.  We chose our baskets in just a few minutes, and were getting ready to load 'em up when we spotted a friend driving in: Michelle H., and Lizzy and Lilly were tagging along.  After some happy, friendly chat, we set off for home and I got all the baskets hung up.  Lots of smiles from Debbie and I each time we see them.

Shortly after that, Debbie gestured to me to follow her into our bedroom, to look through the door of our sun room at the scene of feline luxury within (at left).  There were eight cats in there, all absorbing the sun and occasionally waking up long enough to chatter at a robin hunting worms on the lawn outside.  The robins seem to completely ignore the cats – they've apparently figured out that the cats can't get to them.

This afternoon I hooked up the trailer to our Model X as practice, and to test the lights.  Our trip starting tomorrow will be the first time we've used the trailer in earnest – the mountain lion sculpture will come home riding on it.  We're taking a path that's mostly off the Interstate, though we'll be on one for a short while in order to rendezvous with a couple of superchargers (one in Evanston, Wyoming, and another in Rock Springs, Wyoming).

As usual, blogging on the trip will be light-to-nonexistent.  This time we don't even know if our lodging has an Internet connection!

New project arrived...

New project arrived...  Well, the essential ingredients for one, anyway.  A while back we ordered a built-in grill from Solaire – and yesterday, it arrived.  That's it, sitting on the sawhorses on our deck at right.  The big unit on the right is the grill itself, with a rotisserie attachment (that's the little motor sitting on the grill).  The smaller unit at left is a two-burner stove.  These arrived via freight, in six boxes shrink-wrapped onto a pallet.  The pallet weighed just over 300 pounds, but the actual components at right are just under 150 pounds – so there was over 150 pounds of packing material.  That will give you some idea just how well packed these things were.  There wasn't a ding or a scratch on anything at all.  The workmanship on the grill is superb, nothing like any of the grills we've owned before.  Debbie's gonna go a little crazy cooking on this thing, methinks. :) 

The rest of the project is to build a cabinet for these to sit in, on our deck.  The tentative plan is for a 9 foot long cabinet, 30" deep, with the grill sitting right in the middle and 3' of granite counter top on each side.  The cabinet underneath will have big, deep drawers in it; not sure how many yet until I get the dimensions all settled down.  It will be redwood-sided (2x6s mounted to plywood) to match the deck.  It will be quite the cabinet-making project for me!

I also caught the dogs enjoying the sunshine.  These are the three young field spaniels.  Clockwise from the lower left: Ipo, Cabo, and Mako (looking at me).  They are loving springtime!

About a month ago...

About a month ago ... I bought a trailer to tow big, heavy things behind our Tesla Model X.  I bought some accessories for it, and yesterday I finally got around to installing them.  We're leaving on Thursday for a three-day trip to Lander, Wyoming, where we're going to pick up a bronze sculpture that we commissioned last year.  We're going to the foundry where they're pouring and finishing it – should be great fun!

The photos below show the additions I made to the trailer (as always, click on the little pictures to embiggen them).  The first photo shows the spare tire mounted, with a cover on it.  The second photo shows the mount I had to install.  The mount was quite easy to install – the hard parts were getting that cover on it, and getting the right stainless steel hardware to mount it (stainless steel because I don't want rust on the aluminum trailer).  The third and fourth photos show the box I mounted on the trailer's tongue.  There are six bolts and fender washers holding it to three frame members.  The tricky part for this thing was getting all those holes precisely drilled, so that all six bolts could be simultaneously inserted.  The six holes in the frame members needed to be in the centers of those members, and then I had to drill six perfectly matching holes in the bottom of the tongue box.  Another tricky bit was finding the right stainless steel hardware – I did a lot of bin-searching at Ridley's.  Finally, I installed a trailer lock – the red gadget showing on the tip of the tongue in the third photo.  This is an ingenious device that inserts into the trailer ball socket and locks around it, preventing anyone from attaching the trailer to their vehicle and towing it away.  Simple, but effective.  I'm completely unworried about trailer theft around home (we have nearly zero crime in Paradise), but when we travel to other places things may be a bit different.

By the time I finished with the trailer stuff, I was wiped out.  I went back into the house, and discovered that Debbie was feeling puny, too.  We both took our temperatures and found that we had matching 102°F fevers.  No wonder we felt awful!

It's a glorious morning this morning.  As I was taking the trailer photos above, our three young field spaniels were cavorting in the fenced yard, begging me to join them.  They love this nice weather!  The first photo below shows how nicely things are starting to green up, and the willow is starting to come into leaf.