Running with Jody. 27 degrees

YouTube fixed the shakiness of this video.  I like the results.

Snow day pictures

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Windy cookie baking day.

 

 

 

Morning Fog

 

 

 

 

 

 

Running the Conewago Trail

Yesterday we jogged on the Conewago trail, which is a rails to trails path between Elizabethtown and Hershey. 

 

It was about 30 degrees and no wind - nice conditions.

 

This running business is going to Sharon's head.  During this outing she made the crazy statement "we should get a pull-up bar".

Lancaster Junction Trail

This morning Sharon and I went running on the Lancaster Junction trail near our house

It was 41 degrees, overcast and misty, but very good running weather.

Sharon wore her new shoes!

We kept it slow to avoid injuries.  I tracked our jog on Endomondo, which recorded some massive altitude changes.  Strange.  I doubt there is a change in elevation greater than five feet on the course.  Maybe the GPS satellite was bouncing?  We started at the little red line at the bottom, then ran north on the blue line to almost Colebrook Road, then back.

This trail is the rail bed of the Reading and Columbia Railroad, which started in 1863, and was abandoned in 1985.  It transported coal, iron ore, general merchandise, and passengers.

Below is a map in larger context, showing the coal fields up north.

 

 We passed a field that was filled with Diakon Radish.  If this isn't being grown for food, then this field is getting a massive biological plowing job, as those radishes dig their huge tap roots deep down into the soil.  You can read about this cover crop here.  It's important not to fall behind in your radish-related reading.

 

Diakon Radishes

I've recently come to recognized a plant that I didn't know about before this autumn.
It's the Diakon Radish.  I see it in several fields which I pass on my normal running routes

 

It's the big leafy thing.  The leaves are like a cross between Collard Greens and a Fern.

 

It's used in no-till farming to aerate the soil.  It grows a huge root that spikes down in to the earth for a foot or more, but then dies off and the radish rots away, leaving holes in to the soil.

 

I pulled this one from the berm of the road.  No field was damaged in the creation of this blog post. 

 

 It often seems to be mixed with other cover crops, or cover plants.  This field, below, has the radish mixed in with some type of grass or wheat.

 

 

This field is a mixture of radish and clover, or alfalfa.

I first learned about Daikon Radish from Scott Breneman, from Goodwill at Homefield Farms, a CSA over in Millersville. He came to talk at our Rotary club a few weeks ago.  If you are the hearty sort, you can read about it in our weekly Rotary Newsletter.  It starts on the second page, halfway down.  

Olympus 850SW - RIP

My trusty little Olympus 850SW finally bit the dust.  Or the seawater, actually.  I took it snorkeling in Aruba, and I guess that was one too many times in the water.

 

It still boots up, but it always comes to the setup, which never saves.

 

And then there is an error about the door being open, but that goes away in a few seconds.

 

The top left corner of the view finder and photos is all washed out.

 

Here are the photos taken on the camera's final day.

Heading in to the ocean.

This is probably the last photo before the water damage.  It was a good little camera.  While snorkeling, I'm pretty sure I saw a barracuda.

I own all the cable, two memory cards, a little case with pockets a battery charger and a handful of extra batteries, so if anyone wants the entire set-up, it's yours.

You can see the damage in the lens.