Randy’s Blog

A few months ago, I watched an episode of Ancient Aliens called Space Station Moon. It talked about a theory I'd never heard before: that the moon is actually hollow! Then they detailed an even crazier theory: that the moon is a hollow artificial satellite! My favorite moment in the episode was when the guy with the hair (Giorgio Tsoukalos) said "What I want to know is... WHO BUILT THE MOON?" I don't remember if I literally laughed out loud at that line, but regardless I found it hilarious. Who indeed?

In the past week, I read the following books:

• The First Men in the Moon, by H.G. Wells, written around 1899. It features two men who travel to the moon and discover it's hollow and populated by ant people.
• The Sasquatch Message to Humanity, written around 2015, which purports to be the telepathic communication from an Elder Sasquatch. It claims, among other things, that the moon is hollow and populated by ant people.
  

I knew almost nothing about these books before reading them, so I find it very funny that I read them back to back, in the same week! (I'm not claiming to believe the hollow moon theory now, I'm just reporting what I experienced.)

This actually reminds me of something from our Colorado days. One year we visited the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado, where we heard of a Native American legend that says the sand dunes were formed long ago, when the ant people carved out a nearby mountain!

We visited the dunes before we owned a digital camera, so I figured we had some print photos of them somewhere. I dug around a bit and found them, then I used the Google PhotoScan app to turn them into digital pictures. Here's the result:

The dunes are enormous! They cover 30 square miles and are the tallest sand dunes in North America. I'd never heard of them until we moved to Colorado.

So were they made by mountain-carving ant people?

Is the moon hollow?

Does it even matter?

What will I have for a snack?

Until next time...

Wendy and I went to her parent's house last week to watch the Perseid meteor shower. This was the ideal year for Perseids because the moon wouldn't interfere; there was a new moon right when the Perseids were peaking. And Wendy's parents have a much darker sky than we do, so I was hopeful that if the weather cooperated, we'd get to see a lot of meteors. This post is a recap of what we saw.

Friday

The first night we were there was Friday. As dusk settled in, there were still a number of clouds in the sky and some haze, much to my disappointment. Wendy thought conditions would get better, though, and as usual, she was right. We sat out on the deck from 10pm to 11pm, and counted 14 meteors. A number of them were beautiful: bright and long streaks which left a trail of smoke visible a second or two after the meteor was gone. These long-trail meteors are called "earth-grazers" and are best seen in the early night as meteors skim off the Earth's atmosphere.

By 11pm we were tired from our day of traveling, so we went to bed for a few hours. We got up at 3am, since more meteors were visible in the hours before dawn. We sat on the deck for an hour and counted 30 meteors! Most of these were shorter, fainter, and not as impressive. At 4am we went back to bed.

Saturday

The skies were much clearer on Saturday night. I spent 3 and a half hours on the deck that night, lying on a comfy cot that Beth had thoughtfully brought! I saw 39 meteors, which was fewer than Friday, despite nearly twice the amount of viewing time.

Sunday

Sunday night was the predicted peak of the Perseid meteor shower, and unfortunately it was mostly cloudy. There were a few broken sections in the clouds where I could see stars, so I still sat on the deck and watched what I could. After a while, the southern sky became clear, so I just watched that. Even with the limited viewing, I still saw 16 meteors.

Monday

It was totally cloudy Monday night, so there was no viewing at all.

Tuesday

Tuesday was the last night of our visit. After some heavy showers during the day, the clouds finally moved away. The rain must have cleaned out the air, because the stars that night were spectacular! By far the best night of our stay. It was the first night where I really wished I could have brought my 8" telescope. I spotted 3 Messier objects with the naked eye:

• M7, Ptolemy's Cluster
• M8, The Lagoon Nebula
• M31, The Andromeda Galaxy, which is over 2 million light years away!

Venus and the crescent moon were low in the west, and made a beautiful sight. In addition to Venus, we also saw Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.

It was hard to tear myself away from the starry night, but when I finally did, I had seen 7 meteors.

Epilogue

Here's the final tally:

• Friday: 44
• Saturday: 39
• Sunday: 16
• Monday: 0
• Tuesday: 7

We saw just over 100 meteors during our stay! I would call that a huge success. Also, from our experience, the peak was clearly Friday night. A few other notes:

• Not all of the meteors we saw were Perseids. In fact, I was surprised at how many weren't. I later learned there were several other minor meteor showers at the same time, which explained it.
• On a couple of nights, there was some haze (possibly from wildfires in Canada), and as a result when a plane flew overhead we could see the light in front of the plane from its headlamps!
• From our experience, the meteors early in the night were much more impressive than those before dawn. If I could do it again, I'd spend more time watching early in the night and not bother with the 3am wake-ups.
• I brought along a couple of items that were very useful. One was a red flashlight that Wendy got me as a birthday present. It provided light without ruining our night vision. The other was a pitch counter, which I used to keep track of how many meteors we saw. It was much easier to click the counter than to keep a running tally in my head.

A nice bonus to our visit is we got to see our nieces and nephew. It was fun to hang out with them. The only downside to our visit is that I caught a cold. Overall, though, it was a fun trip. I can still picture some of the meteors we saw; they were absolutely beautiful.

Two Saturdays ago I went on my first trail ride of the season. This was remarkably late in the year for my first ride. I'd gone on a few rides around the neighborhood earlier this spring, but not on any trails. Part of the reason for the lateness is that we've had a really wet spring, which has caused our grass to grow like crazy. For the whole month of May and for part of June, I was mowing the yard twice a week. I grew weary of so much mowing! Finally, though, things have settled down.

Before I headed out for my first trail ride, Wendy said "Remember the lesson of past inaugural rides: Don't go too far!" For the most part, I listened to this advice; I rode a total of 8 miles. 

Temps were in the mid-60s with partly cloudy skies. I started at the Prairie Trail and rode north.

At one point along the ride, I got to see first hand just how much rain we've gotten. As I crossed the bridge over Nippersink Creek, I discovered more of a Nippersink flood plain:

Later, I looked through my old photos and found pictures of what it normally looks like. Here it is from 2016:

Quite a difference!

It was a good first ride to start the season.

Yesterday I went on my second trail ride, along the same section of the Prairie Trail. This time, before I left, Wendy said "You do know that it's 86 degrees, feels like 98, with 78% humidity, right?" I did know, and I was looking forward to it! I put on sunscreen, filled my CamelBak full of water, and rode a total of 12 miles in very hot and humid weather. By the time I got home, the heat index had risen to 108! This is very unusual for this area of the country, and had prompted an Excessive Heat Warning for all of northern Illinois.

After these two rides, my season total for all bike riding is 37.08 miles.

This is a collection of photos I've taken over the past month, in chronological order.

Here's a full moon over the lake by our house, taken during an evening walk:

This is a giant turtle spotted in our yard. We used to see it every year during the spring, but it's been a few years since last we spotted it. I'm glad it's doing well.

Mr. Gordon staring intently at the potted herbs on our deck:

During a hike at Moraine Hills State Park, Wendy spotted a black squirrel in a tree:

For the past month, whenever we go on an evening walk around the lake, we see a duck caring for her ducklings, and two geese caring for their goslings. The adult geese always hiss at us as we walk by. One evening all the ducklings were bundled up together in a little pile. (This photo was auto-enhanced by Google Photos.)

As I was leaving the Volo Bog one evening, I took this picture of Venus near a crescent moon:

And finally, last week we spotted a blue heron during an evening walk:

On Sunday, Wendy and I went to the Starlight Festival, held at Yerkes Observatory in Lake Geneva, WI. 

We'd been to see Yerkes once before, but it was over a decade ago. It's a really old observatory, built in 1897, and was the leading observatory in the world during its peak. It still houses the world's largest refracting telescope, at a diameter of 40 inches.

I heard about the Starlight Festival through the local astronomy group. I was especially intrigued because, as part of the festivities, the observatory was selling tickets to look through the 40-inch telescope at night! They also planned to have astronomy lectures by various scientists.

Lake Geneva is only 45 minutes from our house, so we drove up first thing Sunday morning, because the telescope tickets were first-come, first-serve, and I really wanted to make sure we got them! After buying our tickets, we attended a lecture by Dr. Linda Spilker about "The Secrets of Saturn". She works at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and worked on the Cassini mission almost from the start. She is basically a pioneer of solar system exploration, and it was really inspiring to hear her talk.

After that, we went on a tour of the observatory, and heard all about its history and architecture.

This is the world's largest refracting telescope:

When the tour was over, we walked around a bit, and got to look through a solar telescope, where we observed several sun spots. They looked like tiny dots on the surface of the sun, but were really as big as the Earth. Crazy.

Then we watched some model rocket launches. They weren't the most amazing rockets ever, but it was still cool.

Then we decided it was time for ice cream. It was unseasonably hot last weekend, with highs in the mid-90's, so the ice cream was most welcome and most delicious. The night-time telescope-viewing tickets we purchased were for 9:30pm, and at this point it was past noon. We decided to head home, spend the afternoon in the cool comfort of our basement, and come back just before it got dark.

When we arrived later that evening, the sky was almost completely clear. Venus was shining bright in the west, and we could just make out the moon and Jupiter in the east through a grove of pine trees.

There were 30 or so people there for the 9:30pm viewing. It was scheduled for an hour, with other viewings starting at 10:30pm and 11:30pm. I was really excited as we filed into the observatory and sat down in front of the telescope. The slit in the dome was already open, so that the air temperature inside the dome would equalize with the outside air. When I sat down, I could just see the moon peeking through the slit:

There was one employee there who did all the work. He explained that we'd be looking at Jupiter and we'd each get a chance to look at it twice. The moon was not a good candidate that night, because it was almost full. A full moon means fewer shadows, and thus less detail when looking through a telescope.

Because Jupiter was low in the sky that night, he didn't have time to set up the telescope beforehand (we were in the first viewing that night). So as he explained everything, he went about setting it up. At first I was really annoyed by that, because it meant we'd have less time to look through the telescope. But my annoyance gradually turned to awe as he set things up.

For starters, the entire floor of the observatory was an elevator! He pressed a button and the whole floor started to raise up, closer to the telescope. This made sense, because the eyepiece at the bottom of the telescope would change height, depending on whether you were looking at object high in the sky, or low in the horizon.

Once the floor reached its highest position, he started to set up the telescope, and this is where my mind was really blown. I expected him to punch in coordinates into a computer, and the scope to gradually move to that position. Instead, he walks over, grabs a metal ring around the bottom of the scope, and manually swings the telescope around to point at the dome's open slit! I should mention that the telescope is over 60-feet long and weighs several tons! Watching him swivel the huge scope around all by himself was an incredible sight.

Here you can see him grabbing the metal ring to move the telescope:

And here it is, positioned at Jupiter:

You can also see the small finder telescope, which is attached to the big telescope, just below the metal ring. It's a 6-inch telescope he used to fine-tune the position of the big scope.

Whatever annoyance I had earlier was completely gone now. It was amazing watching him set everything up. I expected fancy, computerized gizmos, but, as he pointed out, it's all done using 1897 technology. Everyone who has ever used it since it was built has gone through the same process to set it up. Wow!

Once it was in position, we all got the chance to look at Jupiter. What struck me most was just how big Jupiter looked! Through the 6-inch finder telescope, it looked like a big dot. Through the 40-inch scope, it was a huge orange circle! I could just make out a hint of cloud bands in Jupiter, but not by much. Even though it was clear, the air wasn't great for viewing, but it was decent, he said. On a better night, we could have observed more detail. Still, it was an amazing sight.

We all got to look through the telescope 2 or 3 times. When the viewing was over, he lowered the floor back down so we could exit. You can see in this photo how much further down I was when taking the picture:

The telescope was still pointing at Jupiter when we left. I realized that the later groups wouldn't get to see him set up the telescope, which made me glad we got to.

At 10:30pm, it was all over. We made our way back to our car and drove home to Illinois.

What a fun experience!

In the past few weeks, I've gone down the DeMatteis rabbit hole (see last post). I've been reading a number of his graphic novels, which include:

• Brooklyn Dreams, his autobiography of growing up in Brooklyn
• Some of his children's works: Abadazad books 1 and 2, and The Stardust Kid (which was excellent)
  
• Re-reading Moonshadow (I found a used copy on ebay for only $15! This was a minor miracle, considering it's out of print, and most copies on ebay and Amazon go for $90-$100!)
  
• Doctor Strange: Into Shamballa
  
• Reading several of his recent interviews
  

One of the surprising things I learned from all of this is his love for the works of author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This is mentioned once or twice in Brooklyn Dreams, a couple of times in Moonshadow, and once in a recent interview. This struck me as unusual; you don't normally hear Russian writers mentioned as someone's favorite author.

Strangely, this brought to mind another event from the 9th grade, just like in my last post. And it even involves the same teacher. This time, though, it wasn't from English class, but instead from when I was on the academic team (aka quiz bowl; basically it was a team-based trivia competition).

One day, after school, I was at an academic team practice. We were divided into two teams, and the teacher was asking us questions, just like in a real competition. There was one question that stuck out. I think it went something like this:

What Russian author created the characters Dmitri, Ivan, and Aleksey Fyodorovich in his novel The Brothers Karamazov?

The outburst was interrupted when I calmly and boldly buzzed in. Suddenly everyone got silent. The teacher, looking at me with wide, surprised eyes, called my name (rules stipulated you had to wait until your name was called).

"Fyodor Dostoyevsky," I answered.

Incredulous, the teacher replied: "That is right!"

What followed was chaos. There were gasps of astonishment as jaws hit the floor. The laughter and scoffs from a few seconds prior turned to shock and amazement. I wouldn't be surprised if someone fell out of their chair.

When the teacher restored order, she asked "How on earth did you know that?"

I answered honestly: "That's one of the clues in the video game Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?"

"Well, it pays to play video games!" said the teacher.

Carmen Sandiego was a series of educational video games that were popular at the time. You had to follow clues to catch Carmen and prevent her from stealing treasure. There were other versions like Where in the USA... and Where in the World... but Where in Time... was the only one I played. The game came with a desk encyclopedia to use when researching clues! I distinctly remember looking up Dostoyevsky's entry and reading about The Brothers Karamazov to solve part of the game.

With all of the above in mind, last week I started giving serious thought to actually reading a Dostoyevsky book. Then I wondered: with all of the company book sales Wendy and I have gone to over the years, was there any chance we'd picked up anything written by him? So I went to librarything.com, which is a website I use to catalog all of our books, and ran a search. It turns out in 2010 we bought a copy of The Brothers Karamazov at one of those company book sales! After a bit of hunting, I found the book, on the shelves right behind my computer desk.

I was surprised to see it's a huge book! Here it is next to the Arthur C. Clarke mega-book I recently read:

As I learned from reading the Clarke book, there's no time like the present. So now I've begun reading yet another 1,000 page tome, this time by a Russian author, and it's all thanks to comic books and video games.

Last year, in my possibly-too-long post about Darkhawk, I mentioned the Marvel Unlimited service. I hadn't read many comics through Marvel Unlimited since that post, which made me wonder if I should just cancel my subscription. Around the middle of February, though, I opened the weekly email they send out about newly-added comics, and noticed that one of the additions that week was a 4-issue Iceman mini-series originally published in 1984.

If I was going to get back into reading Marvel Unlimited, a nice and short series seemed like a good place to start. So one evening, after all my chores were done, I started reading Iceman. And to my surprise, I really enjoyed it! I thought it had more depth than the typical comic book story. It was written by Marc DeMatteis, so I looked up what else he had written that was also available through Marvel Unlimited, and I found nothing. Bummer! How could there be nothing else from him among the 17,000+ comics that were available?

I turned to Wikipedia instead, and there I discovered that Marc DeMatteis is really John Marc DeMatteis, who is better known as J.M. DeMatteis, who is a well-known comic book writer. In fact, when I originally saw that Marc wrote Iceman, I briefly wondered if he was J.M.'s brother. Turns out they are the same person.

There were many comics written by J.M. in Marvel Unlimited, so I had lots of options of what to read next. Over the next several days I read a few annuals he wrote. They were decent. Then, one night right before bed, I read Defenders #110.

It left me shocked and stunned at how fantastic it was! The story centered on some guy named Devil-Slayer, who I'd never heard of before. Was he a super-hero? A super-villain? Just some guy with a magic cape? I didn't know. All I knew is that he was on the brink of suicide, consumed with guilt because his actions caused the death of an innocent man. As he struggled with his guilt, he kept trying to annihilate himself in the depths of outer space, but kept teleporting to safety at the last second. The ending was very touching, as he found salvation of a sort, with the help of his estranged wife. It was one of the best comics I'd ever read!

I did a quick internet search and found that #110 was right in the middle of the issues J.M. wrote for Defenders. Marvel Unlimited did not have anything earlier than #110, but all of J.M.'s issues up to that point were collected in a graphic novel, which Amazon had for $25. I almost ordered it on impulse right then, but decided to wait.

Over the next few days I did more research and found that J.M. had written a lot of comics. As I scrolled through the long list of them, I did a double-take when I saw he wrote Moonshadow:

I read Moonshadow years ago, probably during our Colorado days. I must have checked it out of the library. I don't remember much about it, but the experience of reading it has haunted me ever since. After all these years, I still think about it from time to time, and marvel at how strange it was. I think I liked it, but to be honest I'm not totally sure. I vaguely recall not knowing what to think about it. Regardless, reading it was quite an experience. When I learned that J.M. wrote Moonshadow, it felt like all the pieces of a puzzle finally fell into place, but it was a puzzle I didn't realize I was trying to solve!

A few days later, out of the blue, I received a $25 Amazon gift card. After a couple of microseconds of consideration, I immediately ordered the Defenders graphic novel that collected issues #92 through #109. I started reading it as soon as it arrived, and as if I needed any further validation that I enjoy J.M.'s writing, the very first issue he wrote, #92, is titled:

ETERNITY... HUMANITY... OBLIVION!

Great minds think alike?

I'm almost done reading the Defenders graphic novel, and it has not disappointed. I've found parts of it to be remarkably sophisticated.

With more internet research, I learned that J.M. is also a long-time blogger. In one blog post, he ranked some of the comics he's written, and he listed his Iceman mini-series as one of his worst! He says it started out promising but, by the end, had "shattered into a thousand pathetic pieces." I find it funny, and telling, that one of his worst stories was good enough to get me hooked on his writing! Many of his other works look fascinating, and I'm excited at the thought of reading them.

And finally, perhaps needless to say, I'm not cancelling my Marvel Unlimited subscription!

These are the John Bellairs books I've owned since I was a kid:

These are all the John Bellairs books I've collected as an adult:

This is a picture of me a few years ago, from our trip to Marshall, Michigan. I'm standing in front of the house that inspired John Bellairs to write his most famous book, The House with a Clock in its Walls:

This is the just-released trailer for the movie version of The House with a Clock in its Walls:

Here's a direct link, if you'd like to watch a bigger version.

The release date is September 21. I really hope it's good! I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Last week I finished reading my mega-book of Arthur C. Clarke short stories, which I wrote about recently. It took me over 3 months to finish the 1,000 pages, so it feels like a monumental achievement! The stories appeared chronologically: the first was published in 1937 and the last in 1999. I thought the writing was much better, and more powerful, in the second half of the book. However, I think I liked the ideas in the first half better. They seemed more creative. Regardless, there were many great stories throughout. 

Here are some of the interesting things I learned in the second half:

Venture to the Moon was one of my favorite stories. It was published in 1956. Clarke said the London Evening Standard proposed a commission for him to write six independent but related stories about what mankind's first trip to the moon would look like. He turned it down, saying it was impossible to write 1,500-word stories for the general reader about a totally alien landscape. But the more he thought about it, the more he thought it would be an interesting challenge, so he accepted. The stories were great, and made me wish that humans could have had a months-long stay on the moon like he described. The series was so successful that he was asked to write a sequel.

The Man Who Ploughed the Sea (1957) is about a scientist who creates a device that attaches to a ship and extracts uranium from sea water. Decades later, Clarke read in a scientific journal about a ship-borne device that did the same thing. He sent a copy of his story to the inventors and apologized for invalidating their patent!

Songs of Distant Earth (1958) was just a beautiful story that he later turned into a novel. Interestingly, he said it was his favorite of his novels.

I Remember Babylon (1960) is a mostly true story about Clarke's predictions of commercial satellites. At one point he says that long ago he learned not to argue with the Flat-Earthers. This was a revelation to me! There have been stories in the media the past few months/years about people who still believe the Earth is flat. Apparently it's nothing new; it seems people have believed it for at least 60 years.

Trouble With Time (1960) is about an ancient sculpture of a human head found on Mars. Clarke says it's a little eerie, considering the infamous "Face on Mars" that was discovered a few decades later.

The Dog Star (1962) is about the bond between an astronomer and his dog. Clarke said he could no longer bear to read it after his own dog passed away.

The Shining Ones (1962) is about problems at a Russian underwater power plant. He said that in 1962 it was quite daring to suggest  Russians were decent people!

Summertime on Icarus (1964) is about a scientific expedition to an asteroid closer to the sun than Mercury. Several decades later, Clarke had an asteroid named after him by the International Astronomical Union. It was asteroid 4923. According to Wikipedia, Clarke later jokingly said he was disappointed he didn't get asteroid 2001, which was named after Einstein.

The Cruel Sky (1967) features a scientist confined to a wheelchair. Clarke wonders if it was a premonition; he was confined to a wheelchair late in his life due to Post-Polio Syndrome.

Quarantine (1977) is a very, very short story. An editor he knew came up with the idea of sci-fi authors writing a story short enough to fit on a postcard, along with a stamp-sized picture of the author. He was convinced they would be a huge hit. Clarke said it was "damned hard work" coming up with a complete story in 180 words. He sent the story to the editor, and "that was the last I ever heard of his scheme."

Finally, I can't finish this post without mentioning some of my favorite stories from the second half. I mentioned Venture to the Moon and Songs of Distant Earth already. In addition:

• Death and the Senator (1961) and Transit of Earth (1971) were two of the most powerful stories in the book.
• Saturn Rising (1961) was magnificent.
  
• A Meeting with Medusa (1971) made me feel like I've been to Jupiter.
  

One of the blogs I read is about fitness technology, and the writer often posts about 5 fun things he did during the weekend. I decided to do the same, since Wendy and I just had a fun and busy 3-day weekend.

1. Back to the Field Musuem

On Friday we went back to the Field Museum in Chicago to see all the things we didn't have time for during our last visit. We saw some exhibits I'd forgotten all about, and some that I'm pretty sure we had never seen before. I was a little disappointed the Galapagos 3-D movie was no longer playing, as I was hoping to see it. But there were plenty of other things that kept us busy for a solid 4 hours, at which point we called it a day.

There were two exhibits that I found really interesting. One was the Pacific Spirits, which had really weird and interesting masks:

And really interesting slit drums:

The slit drums were surprisingly tall. There was a quote from an anthropologist who described the drums as having a "mathematical beauty" and went on to say:

A remarkable feature of the music is the way it ends. A passage is abruptly severed in the middle, producing the effect of sudden flight and unreality, as if the music had not finished but had been spirited away and would suddenly return.

We also saw a poster describing changes coming to the Field Museum this year:

• SUE the T. rex will be de-installed (this had already happened since our last visit).
• A new dinosaur, Patagotitan mayorum, will replace SUE in the main hall.
• A hanging hydroponic garden will be suspended above the main hall.
• A special exhibit, Antarctic Dinosaurs!, will open in June.

All of that sounds really cool! We may be going back yet again later this year.

2. Word Search Puzzles

The morning of our trip to the Field Musuem, I had some time to kill before we left the house to catch the train. So I pulled out my big book of word search puzzles, which I've written about before, and looked for a puzzle to solve. I found a section devoted to major cities, which included an entire puzzle based on Chicago landmarks. How appropriate! So I worked on it for a few minutes. Unfortunately "Field Museum" was not among the words to find, but I managed to find all the words by the time we had to leave, with the exception of the 8-letter mystery word.

On the train ride there and on the way back I kept trying to think of 8-letter Chicago-related words, but I didn't come up with any good ones. When we got home Wendy took a look at the puzzle and within a few minutes had found the mystery word: Illinois. Ugh, how obvious!

We then worked on the St. Louis word search puzzle together, but this time I was the one to figure out and find the 9-letter mystery word: Cardinals.

3. Festival of the Sugar Maples

On Saturday we went to the Festival of the Sugar Maples, which is an annual event run by the county's conservation district. We've talked about going to it for years, but never actually did, until now. It's held in a forest of oak and sugar maple trees, where you go on a tour to see how maple syrup has been made over the years, from Native American tribes up to modern methods. It was really interesting to see.

The basic method was to drill a hole in a tree, insert a spigot, and hang a bucket to collect the sap. The conservation district had a more advanced system in place as well, where 12 trees were tapped and connected via plastic tubing, which ran to a big tub lower down the hill that collected the sap. Then they had a big hose they put in the tub to pump the sap up to a building at the top of the hill and into a holding tank. The sap is 97% water at that point, though. A big boiler in the building boils the sap for 8 hours, until it reaches just the right consistency of syrup that will have a long shelf life.

We got to taste a sample of syrup they made a couple of years ago during the festival, and of course it was delicious! We bought a jar of syrup produced in Wisconsin, and a couple of maple cookies, which were also delicious. I'm glad we went; it was an interesting and tasty tour.

4. First Attempt at Astrophotography

Thursday evening, as I was driving home from work, I saw an enormous full moon low on the horizon as it broke through some stray clouds. I realized that in a few hours, the moon would probably be at the perfect height to view with a telescope from our deck. And a couple of years ago I got a moon filter for my telescope that I'd never used; it allows only 13% of light to pass through, so the moon isn't so blinding.

After dinner I set up the telescope, put on the moon filter, and spent a while gazing at the moon. It was cool to see. The next day I realized I should have tried to take pictures of the moon by holding my phone's camera up to the eyepiece. I've heard you can get some surprisingly decent photos that way. Friday evening turned out to be another clear night, so I set up the telescope again, and tried to take my first ever astrophotography pics. Here's how they turned out:

I am rather pleased and shocked at how well they turned out. It was hard to keep my hand steady at just the right spot, which is why some of the pics show only part of the moon. I'm glad I took the pictures on the second night, as there were more shadows since the moon wasn't totally full, which made craters along the edge more visible.

5. Bike Ride

A few weeks ago I took our bikes into the shop for tune-ups. I picked them up on Saturday, and today we went on the first ride of the season! It was a short 2.71 mile ride around the neighborhood. The temp was in the mid-40s, so it wasn't exactly warm, but it was a sunny and clear day, with just a hint of spring in the air. And today was the ideal day, because the forecast says we might get up to 3 inches of snow tomorrow!