Father forgive me for its been many weeks since my last confession.  And I must confess that I have ignored the needs of my poor web-page.  A blog is a kind of living thing, that continues to grow and expand over time.  When it is not fed a constant stream of silly  dribble and BS it will shrivel up and die.  So I have returned to fill it with a lot of BS about what we have been doing.  Sorry to clump it all together, but I hate to break everything out and then spam you with 4-6 separate blogs I could have placed all in one post.

My oldest video without any details in here is the “Local Gem-Onondaga County Park ,-Highland Forest”.  A place I practically grew up in on weekends from the time I was 9  or 10.  The great thing about this park is that the website is fairly accurate and up to date.  So if you haven’t been there before or in a long while, Start here   Put Highland Forest website  Link  here .    Like most of the County parks, Highland Forest often has events that can add to your visit or detract from it. Also during the spring and fall they have turkey hunting in the mornings, and in the fall they have bow hunting for deer. I do not believe they allow it on Sundays though. My biggest advice to people who go to Highland Forest the first time is to take a real GPS unit. The cell phone coverage can be fairly spotty, especially under the thick tree cover. So your cell phone map may not get you out of the woods if you get lost on a trail. However if you know how to use map and compass they do have pretty good trail maps available for free, and the main road is always reachable within our half a mile of any trail. The best way to experience the park your first or second time is either on cross-country skis or on a mountain bike. And if you’re the leader of any kind of nonprofit group, feel free to inquire about a weekend in a cabin there. They have upgraded the cabins since I was last there with my kids as Boy Scouts. We used to have to heat the cabins on cold winter nights with wood stoves that quite frequently melted clothing and nearby sleeping bags. Now most cabins have gas stoves and furnaces for winter use. And the park roads are pretty well plowed in the winter and the roads are pretty good in the summer to get into the back of the park. So I can highly recommend Highland Forest to anybody who likes to go hiking, Biking, Horseback riding, or just kicking back and enjoying nature. When Dakota was young we were there almost every weekend and we even stealth camped a few times.

I was obsessed with getting a new camera, so I did a thorough review of cameras, most of that is in the video here. But I would like to say  that I really appreciate my viewers commenting on the video about what they thought was good and bad about each of the cameras. As the person who does the video and the editing it’s pretty hard to get a real objective view of how things are. I don’t need to listen hard to the audio or the sound because I said it and I know what it is. So it doesn’t get blocked out by wind noise to me. I am learning a lot about cameras and video equipment though. I think I’ve decided that certain things like green colors, just don’t show up very well on a video. I think there is an effect similar to the “green screen” background that happens. Because I notice on other people’s videos where they’re walking through a brightly colored green forest often times it becomes just a green blur. I also think I’ve determined that at some time in the five years of owning my camera I seem to have done damage to the lens. No matter how careful I clean it, I always seems to have spots. I believe that’s from having water drops dry on the lens which leaves the mineral crust that attracts fungus that eats the glass. So a lesson to those of you who might not have known, camera lenses do degrade from fungus that actually eats the glass and water spots that affect the coating on the glass lens.

Then last weekend we ran up into the Adirondacks to review the Brookfield Power dam campgrounds.  One of my subscribers (and fellow coworker), pointed out to me that I had not actually told you where the campground was located. So here is a very small map that kinda gives you a general idea. (click on it and it will take you to the google map)  I do think I said that it was the Effley Falls Road out of Belfort New York. But the road eventually turns into the soft Maple Reservoir Road.  You can also take Highway 24 right out of Croghan which turns directly into Soft Maple Rd.  I guess most people come in from that side. But you can also get there from the Big Moose Rd out of Eagle Bay just north of Old Forge, NY.  That might be a really nice drive to take as I imagine it would take a few hours to get from there to old Forge or Eagle Bay. That is all state dirt roads, and there’s a lot of camps and properties along the road. So it’s not a bad road in most places. But a lot of these backwoods dirt roads in the Adirondacks have very large rocks that over time will poke up above the road over time. And while they look like regular everyday rocks,  they often eat mufflers.

The Ironman 70.3 Triathlon   In 1992 I took a job in Plattsburgh New York. That same year my brothers and I all got ham radio licenses. Cell phones were not out yet and ham radios were a great way to communicate around the Adirondack Mountains. We could literally talk from one end of the Adirondacks to the other without any real issues. Two-way radio conversation unfortunately is what’s called simplex, meaning only one person can talk at a time. So there are some special techniques to learn with that form of communication. But it’s not too hard to learn and I had already gotten the technique pretty well down from being a pilot. But as a result, when they decided to have an Ironman race around the Adirondacks, starting and finishing at Lake Placid, the only reliable communication means for emergencies and tracking the race was ham radios. So the organizers of the Lake Placid Ironman race quickly asked for assistance from the local ham radio emergency services groups and we all raised our hands to help out. So for nine years I volunteered for Ironman Lake Placid I worked as an emergency radio operator riding in an ambulance and picking up people who had over done or crashed during the race. For three or four of the years my sons participated and eventually also got their ham radio licenses. Getting your ham radio license back then was no easy feat. Though you could get a technician’s license by just taking 2 multiple choice tests, and the FCC actually gave you all the test questions and answers to study from. But it was a lot of electronic and radio theory that you had to understand at least a little about to get through the test. So I was pretty proud of both of my boys (human boys) when they got their licenses. I think it was one of those moments in their lives where they felt pretty proud to have accomplished something none of their friends had any idea about.

But for me, being part of the Ironman experience is like being in a very ceremonial religious experience. The people you see attempting the Ironman is just an incredible sight. And typically I was positioned at a water/ rest stop at the top of a very long hill at the 50 mile mark of the bike ride. So the participants had already done that 2 mile swim and either 50 miles or 100 miles of the bicycle riding, because the course was a big 56 mile loop. And our rest stop had food and water and a bathroom, and athletes would stop refuel, use the bathroom, and take a minute to rest and recover. I met all sorts of people including: a 260 pound 50-year-old man who is getting his life back together, a 70-year-old man who wasn’t going to give up just because of age, and a 67-year-old nun who had a 10 speed bicycle from the 60s that was not as good as I had when I was 12. And each and every one of these people made the 112 mile bike and the subsequent 26 mile run,  all after that 2 1/2 mile swim. I don’t know if it’s the overall energy of the whole race that just grabs a hold of your spirit, or if it’s sleep deprivation due to the fact that you get up at 4:30am to start your volunteer shift and don’t end until 1:30am in the middle of the night. I highly recommend that anybody who wants to get out and see what the human spirit can accomplish, volunteer for any of the Ironman series races. Whether a full  112.2 mile Ironman, or an Ironman 70.3, or the Irongirl. They will all introduce you to a world of incredible people.

And now lastly to catch up the blog to my videos through June, let’s talk about the Syracuse-Jamesville Balloon Fest. I have not been to any other balloon fests. So that takes away any qualifications I should have about discussing the goods and bad’s about the Syracuse-Jamesville balloon Fest.  But I have seen many YouTube videos about the Albuquerque, New Mexico balloon fests. I have seen other balloon fests from a far in the Adirondacks and the Finger Lakes of New York. But the only actual one that I have experienced as a paying participant from inside is the Syracuse balloon Fest. And its just my personal opinion, but I would never go to the actual festival. The over all activities at the balloon Fest is concerts and carnival. It’s an incredible traffic jam. If the weather isn’t the best then it can be a big mud sling.  In fact a few years back they had so many vendors vehicles get stuck in mud they carved out a patch 200ft by 300ft and dumped 100tons of large sized gravel to try to stabilize the mud.  So now the area in front of the stage and the stage area is all gravel.  Not nice little pea gravel,  but big rocks 3-4 inches across and with edges that make it hard to walk on.  Also, the food and activities are over priced like any carnival. And they will never actually tell you if there is any chance the balloons will take off or not.

BUT !!  As you see in the video, if you get up at 4am, and the weather is good (no wind and very high or no clouds), the chances are they will take off in the morning.  The other good thing about morning launches is that they don’t usually charge a fee or “Herd” you into distant parking areas because there just aren’t that many people crazy enough to get up that early. That may not be true of the really big balloon festivals, but it is around New York, it seems to be the case.  Otherwise figure out the direction of the wind, get down wind of the festival with a blanket and a bottle of wine, and wait for the balloons to come soaring overhead !!  Remember, it is tradition and practice that when they land, they give the landowner a bottle of champagne and all helpers and watchers a glass or same !!

So stay safe, and enjoy the summer !!

Rick, Caesar, and Dakota !