Putting up more videos; Check them out

So yeah obviously the drought was short-lived. There’s certain things that I simply MUST post. I will get to those in a minute. In the meantime, I wanted to say that I think I’m going to go in a slightly different direction with some of the things on my website here. I think – for instance – that I’m going to post more videos. I’d been working for a while on how I was going to set them all up, and I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to do it, but after fiddling for a few weeks, I decided on a way and made it stick. It took quite a bit of trying, let me tell you: I had to modify a few things inside my damn program to get what I wanted, and even then it’s not quite what I wanted. But it’s close enough dammit, and as the cool fellas say, “it’s good enough for the girls I go out with.”

Before it was kinda thrown together and not all that sweet-looking; I didn’t want to navigate it, kinda hard to ask you to. Anyway, that’s done with; now it’s just a matter of getting you over there to check out some cool stuff. Head on over to the movies page then, eh?

The thing that really got me started on it was the video with the truck. About a week ago, we went on a nice little hike in a town about 30 miles south of here. It was a nice hike and we finished it off with a decent lunch at a local restaurant (we had coupons! Yay!). But on the way there, I spied a hidden-ish path along a bridge that lead down to the Eel River, and dammit I wanted to get me some of that on the way back.

So I did.

One of the walls was freakin’ hellish-looking, y’all. I came upon it from the topside looking down, and promptly found another way to the bottom; there was no way I was taking my lil’ Tacoma down that. We had fun, splashed, ran away from the dogs for good measure (it’s becoming “our thing;” hopefully the dogs don’t develop a complex). Then on the way back, I spied that hill again. I had my navigator get the hell out of the truck and stand atop the slope, so as to make sure my clearances never actually got too close for comfort, and I gave it a go.

Lo-and-behold, the truck scaled it like it wasn’t even there. It was a pretty decent climb, folks. Take a look at the video. And hey, understand that the video doesn’t do it justice. The slope was close-to-if-not 45º, no lie. Add in that it was deeply pocked the whole way up, and the fact that I started slow and maintained that speed all the way throughout, and you know what you got? A new nickname for the truck, dammit: “The Lil’ Tacoma that Could.” Or maybe “The Mighty Tacoma.” or “The Invincible Tacoma.” Maybe “The Amazing Tacoma.”

We’re still working on it, dammit.

Anyway, it got me thinking: I really should throw up more videos that show off certain things that just don’t come across well in photo. One in particular that I can think of, is the local trees. Words don’t do them justice. Pictures don’t do them justice. But today, I thought to take a panning video of them, and by-golly, it did better to show the scale than I’ve previously managed erstwhile. That video is as well on the movies page, so hey – take a look, see if you’re impressed. It does a decent job showing the height, but it’s still a bit flaky about showing how truly massive they are around the base, too.

You still have to see them in person to believe it.

And boy do I have a story of frustration to go along with the videos of those trees, dammit. Just you wait; just you wait...