Sometimes, I have the knack for being in the right place at the right time with a camera. On Friday, I happened to be strolling to the post office when I spotted this:

I recognized it instantly as a speeder. (Also known as track speeder, railcar, railroad motorcar, etc.) Last year, I happened to be shooting in the graveyard when a bunch of speeders rolled into town, and it was very neat. I assumed that where one speeder went, others would not be far behind, and the car’s driver confirmed this, explaining that they would be doing a run to Fort Bragg and back over the weekend, and he was on the coast getting things squared away.

Speeders, for those not in the know, are the motorcars which used to be utilized for train maintenance. Most railroads these days use specially outfitted vans and trucks which can be driven on railroad tracks, and the old motorcars got sold off in huge lots in the 1970s and 1980s (at the same time that rail in general was declining in the US). Fortunately, a number of speeders got rescued by enthusiasts, and they take them out for spins now and then. The excursion this weekend was led by the Motorcar Operators West (MOW), an affiliate of the North American Railcar Operators Association (NARCOA).

Everyone who participates in these things seems to be universally friendly and eager to share knowledge, and I love talking to them when they come into town. I also love taking pictures of their incredibly cool railcars, which are restored and maintained with a loving hand. Following is a selection of shots, and there are many more on my Flickr set, for the train nerds among you.

Stripes! There are two railcars linked together here.

The line of railcars coming in. It was very misty/rainy, and in fact it started pouring almost immediately after everyone had gotten into the rail yard.

I love this South Coast Railroad speeder.

Everyone files into the railyard.

Here they are all lined up and ready to go in the morning. They picked a perfect time to head out: bright and sunny, with barely a cloud in the sky. 45 minutes later, it was thoroughly overcast. And there’s the Engine 66, for scale. The train headed out before the speeders.

A little hazy, but I love the Fairmont Railcar shown here.

Here they are on their way out. The grey railcar at the end had a huge bouquet of flowers in the cab, which I tried to snap, but unfortunately the photo came out extremely blurry.

I am really tired this morning, and I don’t really want to talk about politics (which I’m sure everyone is getting sick of anyway, given that this is not supposed to be a political website), so instead I’m going to show you some pictures of changing leaves. Because everybody likes fall colour. I had this ambitious plan to take a picture every day and show a series of photos documenting the change, but the foul weather got in the way of it. Alas. Maybe next year. Although there’s still some colour going on, so perhaps I can resurrect it.

Anyway, pretty leaves:

Yay leaves. I could look at changing leaves all day. I really miss the East Coast for that reason, the slow blush of colour that would start in early fall and slowly spread across the hills in every direction, and then the gradual disappearance of color as it was replaced by snow. It’s hard not to love such a changeable landscape.

The new camera arrived almost a year ago, so I thought it was probably about time to return to the Skunk Train’s back lot to see what could be seen, which included a lot of “no trespassing” signs this time, which I willfully ignored right after taking this photo:

After all, the sign is on the train, so it must mean “no trespassing in the train,” right?

The rotted-out train continues to rot out, quite spectacularly:

Here’s a shot of the inside, taken through the bars you can see in the middle of the picture:

It’s a little hard to see here, but these are genuine Reading Railroad cars. It’s a bummer they haven’t fixed them up, because a Monopoly-themed train ride would be fantastic:

The side of a train car, in detail:

Decaying train controls:

An ancient fuel gauge, and check out the cracking on the tubing!

And, finally:

From the title, you might think it’s another news post. But it’s not! I shot some photos of the more notable Halloween window displays around town, and thought that some of you might like to see them. Even if you don’t, you’re going to see them anyway, because here they are. So enjoy.

Racine’s Art Supply has a very day of the dead thing going on, with more elements being added every day. It is very cool. This is the south window.

Here’s the north window:

What’s that you think you spy?

That’s Molly the dog, who belongs to Becky the owner, sitting in the window. And a super-cool skeleton cat. Who looks kind of angry, actually.

Pippi’s Longstocking, the awesomest sock store ever, over on Laurel Street.

If the Shoe Fits. I happened to run into Hillary, the owner, as I was taking the shot, and she informed me that making window displays is one of her favourite parts of owning a store. I also really want that sweaterdress, but I feel like white is not a good color for me? What say you, gentle readers? I think that on a pale blonde, a white sweaterdress would just fade out and turn kind of blech. But it is really cute.

I was walking down the street yesterday afternoon, minding my own business, when something exciting happened. Exciting things rarely happen in Fort Bragg, so this was a cause for note. What was even more notable was that I just happened to have my camera, so I could take pictures of said exciting event.

The event was a fire at the Welcome Inn, an establishment which could charitably be called “a local bar.” There wasn’t actually a fire that I would see, and no obvious damage had taken place outside, but the fire department was sure riled up, blocking off the streets and busting out the big toys.

Trucks were stationed at Main Street to keep people from going up Redwood:

The hydrant was leaking a lot:

So much for the water restrictions, I guess. Water was pooling up all the way down to Main Street.

Spectators gathered in fascinated interest:

The Advocate photographer was right behind me when I took this. We gave each other a nod of mutual respect before moving on with our respective shots.

Fire trucks were also stationed in the lot behind the Welcome Inn, for a two-pronged approach, I presume:

Eventually, it was time to take off the heavy fire gear and pack up shop:

It’s a lucky thing the fire didn’t spread too far, because it was very windy yesterday. If the fire department and Cal Fire hadn’t been on it or the flames had spread fast, it could have taken out most of the 100 block of Redwood, which includes another bar (the Golden West) and the original Lee’s Chinese restaurant.

This Photo Friday is inspired by the long-running “How Much is Inside?” series on cockeyed.com, a generally excellent website. It came about on Saturday morning, when I was preparing to strain some yogurt, and I thought “hey, I’ll bet strained yogurt is interesting to other people, too.” Maybe I’m wrong. I guess we shall find out.

I really like strained yogurt. I grew up eating it, and I still eat it pretty much every morning. Now, I actually have a yogurt maker, but the problem with making your own yogurt when you don’t have a car is that you have to haul several large jugs of milk home every week to make enough yogurt for the week (assuming you eat a lot of yogurt, like me). So, I usually buy yogurt at the store. But, storebought strained yogurt is extremely expensive. So, I’ve starting buying Nancy’s, my favourite non-strained yogurt brand, and straining it to turn it into strained yogurt.

When you strain yogurt, you, uhm, stick it in a strainer and allow the whey to drain off. This allows the yogurt to thicken to a delicious texture, while retaining the familiar tangy awesomeness. Seriously, if you haven’t tried strained yogurt, you should. If you let yogurt strain long enough, you end up with labneh, aka “yogurt cheese,” a very dense spread which tastes awesome when you mix it with herbs.

But I didn’t make labneh, I made strained yogurt. And, when you strain yogurt, it loses a lot of its volume, as you might expect, so, without further ado, How Much is Inside a Container of Yogurt?

Straining yogurt starts with emptying a full container of yogurt:

Into a strainer lined with cheesecloth:

It needs to sit for a couple of hours, after which point the formerly towering mound of yogurt looks like this:

(If you’re some kind of food safety fanatic or it is really hot, you should probably refrigerate your yogurt for the Great Straining, but otherwise it doesn’t really matter. Dairy is pretty hardy stuff, especially yogurt, which is highly acidic, and therefore not very friendly to bacteria.)

Here’s all the whey, around one cup, (which can be turned into ricotta):

And here’s the finished product:

Side by side with a full container of yogurt:

So, now you know. Straining yogurt to the thickness I like reduces it by around 3/8 of its volume. And, incidentally, straining your yogurt at home is still cheaper than buying Fage, the only commercially-produced strained yogurt Harvest carries, since a container of Fage is around $5.00, and Nancy’s hovers around $3.00, and when it’s done straining, the Nancy’s is about equal to a container of Fage. (I would illustrate this visually, except I didn’t have an empty Fage containers lying around, so you’re just going to have to believe me on this one.)

For this Photo Friday, I am bringing back the slideshow, because there are just too many images to enjoy, and I encourage you to sit through it. Those of you who have trouble seeing the sideshow for some reason can check out the photos in my Flickr account; the photos from Paul Bunyan Days are here.

The morning of the parade dawned sunny and clear, with barely a breath of wind in the sky; a nice change from the blustery day we had on Sunday. I ambled parade-wards, running into friends along the way, and we ended up camping out in front of City Hall, where we caught the parade pretty much as it started. It’s always better to view a parade from the beginning of the route, before everyone gets all tuckered out.

Some of the highlights of this year’s parade included the Marching Lumberjacks, the best marching band ever. I love the Marching Lumberjacks with a passion. I also really enjoyed the Mexican trick riders, because they are always amazing, and the polite Obama/Biden supporters (with coordinated chants) were a breath of fresh air after the nasty ones from Mendo. You may also note that Obama made it to our parade! And the one nod to organized labor was in the Obama contingent, which was nice (although the shouts about universal healthcare were somewhat misleading since, uhm, Obama doesn’t have single payer healthcare in his platform).

I think this parade was actually better than Mendo’s this year. It was really diverse, with everything from the Pro-Meat float, which always makes me laugh, to people marching with a giant peace sign. I even got a citation from the Keystone Kops (for taking photographs without a license, and “just because”). People seemed to be having fun, both as observers and participants, and it was a general all-round good time.

This, my friends, is why I love parades.

Get ready for a blockbuster Photo Friday, kids!

I admit, I have been slacking on the Photo Friday material, and I apologize, my friends. I just haven’t felt up to adventures lately, which made it hard to take pictures of anything new and exciting. I’ve also been feeling tremendously lazy. Fortunately, last weekend, Baxt and I felt up for adventure, and adventure we did, right on into an abandoned house in an undisclosed location. After which we adventured on over to Second Saturday, but that is a story for another day.

We zoomed along to the undisclosed location, battled some underbrush, and came across this:

The house had been abandoned due to storm damage some time ago. The storm damage, incidentally, took the form of a tree falling through the middle of the house:

The middle of the house was basically crunched into a pancake, with the walls and roof on either side tilting inwards.

On the South side of the house, however, several rooms remained intact, although things were looking a little perilous inside. We were obviously not the first to explore the house, as some previous adventurers had left their own marks:

Some were more whimsical:

Much of the furniture had been left in the house, according to Baxt, and over time it had slowly disintegrated or been relocated, as often happens in these situations. This bedframe ended up in the living room:

Blue walls or blue primer, I’m not sure.

And I’ll leave you with my favourite shot of the day. As I was taking this picture, Baxt cried out “I have that exact same picture!” I’ll have to see if she can track hers down so we can have a compare and contrast.

If you’d like to see more photos from our weekend adventure, you can check out my Abandoned House set on Flickr.

So there I was, minding my own business, chatting with Baxt, when she said that she got epic hail at her house. And I was all like “Dude!” and she was all like “it was weird.” And suddenly, there was a huge-ass mother of all thunderclaps basically right over my house which caused Mr Bell to rocket into the air, followed by a wicked lightning strike, and I looked outside, and saw this:

And I was all like “damn, dude, those are some bad-ass clouds,” and then I popped into the alley, and saw this:

And I was like “HOLY CRAP.”

So I ran inside to say “holy crap” to Baxt, and I grabbed my camera, and I went outside to take pictures, and then it started raining, so I had to hide in my doorway and take pictures:

Look, kids, I am not from the Midwest. It does not thunder, rain, or lightning in June.

Ever.

Period.

The end days?

They are here.

Did somebody order an apocalypse?