Pure Synchronicity

October is probably the best month for camping and fishing.  Empty campgrounds, hungry fish, nice cool weather, fall leaves and low lakes providing lots of shoreline exploring.  East Meadows campground was in its final week with only one other camper sharing the whole place.  The camphost had long gone, dogs could run free and it was so quiet and peaceful.  Until it started raining around 2am Wednesday morning and didn’t let up till the afternoon.  Lots of wind too.  So much, so that I had to take up the awning for fear it would rip.   Temperatures dropped to high 30’s or low 40’s.   For that rainy Wednesday we stayed in the RV and I finished two books and started a third.  I loved it.

Kayak fishing was the best ever.  I started fishing Tuesday morning and within 60 seconds of tossing out my trolling rig with a worm on the end, I had a fish on.  The strikes were constant.  I fished two hours on Tuesday, three on Thursday and just one on Friday, the day I left.  I caught 16 trout and took home 13.  Sizes ranging from 15″ – 12″.  No monsters but a whole lot of action.  I use a SEPS dodger with a worm about 18″ behind.  I have a specific area of the lake where the fishing is consistently awesome.

The East Meadows campground on Jackson Meadows Reservoir is now closed for the season, but the adjacent campground, Passe Creek CG is left open all year, so weather permitting (until it snows) I hope to make at least one more trip up there.  As seen in the photos the lake was down the most I have ever seen, but still beautiful.

When I first arrived at East Meadows campground

Top left my RV and bottom right my kayak. My short hike from home to boat.

Ben’s favorite friend to chase.

Always great views from my favorite campsite

Couldn’t decide which was better.

Large expanse of hard sand offered Biggs and Ben a great place to stretch their legs and run.

Ben

Ben swims along side while Biggs and I are in the kayak.

Mud hens

Biggs chasing Ben

Best Friends

After the rain

After the rain

Sierra Buttes in the background, looks like a volcano

On a hike around the lake.

Today I got the sixth sell signal of my long term indicators.  This marks six out of six indicators all pointing down, a rare occasion.  These include long term as well as short term indicators.  Both the Nasdaq and S&P have broken thru support, including a major up trendline on the Nas.  On a monthly (long term) basis the Nas indicates way overbought and past due for a correction.    The Nas could easily drop 400 points before stopping.  If the S&P breaks below 1800ish it could drop another 300 points.  Strap on your seat belts for a wild ride.

UPDATE 10/23 ...  the 6/6 sell signal has aborted today.  the short term indicators have turned bullish, so until they turn down again, there is no 6/6 sell signal.  I am thinking of adding longer term indicators ie; weekly and monthly charts (which at this point are still holding bullish).

Last night we found that our TV remote stopped working.  Also the Dish remote for the TV also didn’t work, meaning, it was in the TV not the actual TV remote.  However, I did replace the battery and (more…)

A year ago, I bought a Toshiba P50-A laptop and have had nothing but problems.  i7 processor, 12G RAM, Blue-Ray DVD player, 15″, 1TB HD.  After loading up my programs and data, I found that the lit keyboard wasn’t lighting.  Tech support had me do a complete restore, wiping all my programs and data, only to find they had omitted that feature in error.  Therefore I had to re-setup my pc all over again.  Then the email didnt work, could not connect via network to my Vista pc, so had to do another full system recovery.  Then the Toshiba webcam didn’t work, which was solved with an easy download.  Wireless did work but the network ethernet connection did not.  I analysed the heck out of it, and finally determined it must be the NIC card…. but to have that fixed on warranty they would have to do full restore, again wiping my HD, plus I had to ship the computer back, leaving me without it for 2 weeks.  So I figured I will just use wireless off my router.

Then about 6 months into my ownership of this Toshiba lemon, the blu-ray DVD-ROM stopped working.  It would not acknowledge cds, dvds, and not play dvd blu-ray movies.  To get it repaired under warranty would require sending it in (10-14 days without) and them doing system restore wiping the HD.   This was quite frustrating since swapping out a DVD-ROM is incredibly simply.  Two screws and it pops right out.   They could have sent me the replacement.  I found the cost of a new one to do it myself was $410 with shipping, whereas I could buy a portable DVD player for $35 on Amazon.  Again a worthless Toshiba warranty considering what one must go thru to take advantage of it.

Now most recently, the battery icon is warning me to replace the battery, plus its not recharging back to the full state.  So I turn the piece of junk over expecting to find a hatch to get at the battery and find that the genius’s at Toshiba have made it not accessible.  Its inside the unit.  So… every time you need to replace the battery (and that appears to be every 12 months) you need to tear apart the laptop or if under warranty, send it back to Toshiba to replace … and wipe your hard drive.. thank you very much.  🙁  Incredible.  If I open the laptop, I void the warranty, otherwise I would have sent it to the repair facility without the hard drive.

The Toshiba website is also built with frustration in mind.  I could not even find a place to order the battery, or the replacement blu-ray player.  Or easily find out how to open the unit.    They sent me to National Parts, which was somewhat helpful.  I will never, ever buy a Toshiba laptop or any Toshiba product ever again!

Follow up:  I ended up sending my laptop in for warranty on 10/27/14 and got it back 8 days later on 11/4.  I had to pay $30 for the shipping FedEx and a special box, but that did make it easier than packing it up myself.  I pasted a note on the laptop saying not to run restore and if they felt they had to, then to call me first.  They replaced the dvd/blueray player and the battery and left my HD intact.  The battery warranty was only for a year and actually I had called it in a week or two after that 12 month period, so I appreciate them replacing it at no cost.  Part of the reason it went bad so soon was because I should have been running it down at least monthly, which I hadnt been doing.  I didnt realize this till after the fact and reading some documentation.  All in all, the warranty process was good, except it would have been better if there had been a local shop I could have taken it to, rather than mailing it.

Back in December 2003 I was with Bob Scarlet’s Spirit Drum Circle.  I had been playing congas in the group since 1997.  We had this one gig in Sacramento along with several other drum groups performing.  We were lucky enough to have it taped and I have uploaded to youtube and now have it here.

The King Fire that was near my last camp out at Loon Lake is now 43% contained and has covered over 95,000 acres.   8,000 firefighters were utilized, the largest number on a wildfire.   Colfax and Auburn and Grass Valley was experiencing much smoke and ash in the air up until it rained on 9/25.  Here is a map showing the status of the fire.  Note Loon Lake off to the east of the fire near the top.  Click the + button to blow up the map, then pan over to the left and you can see how close Colfax is.  In fact if you click the [ ] box at the right corner of the map, it will blow up to full screen size.

And check out this a timelapse movie of the sunset on Wednesday nite with this huge pyrocumulus cloud formation.

King Fire Pyrocumulus Sunset Timelapse.mov from Brandon Manning on Vimeo.

This was going to be my last trip to Loon Lake this year and I was so looking forward to kayaking, fishing and beach combing while the lake was down.  I love the boulders and granite formations that become exposed once the water recedes.  Meanwhile the King Fire had started near Pollack Pines but I figured it was far enough away to not affect me.  Well, not really.  Even though the lake air was clear, they had closed the main campground.  However, I found I could go to the other side of the lake where the North Loon campground was located and it was open.  It was good enough for the evening but I was concerned about getting my kayak down to the lake.  It was a pretty good distance encumbered by boulders of all sizes.  And once I got it down, imagine the struggle getting it back up.  Also around 2pm the wind had shifted and the air became rather polluted with smoke.

Well the next day I strapped on my wheels to the kayak and slowly but surely made my way down.  I marked the route so I could use it going back up.  The morning was gorgeous and the dogs and I went for a kayak ride.  Ben swims alongside while Biggs rides in the bow.  The idea is to give them plenty of exercise so that when I leave them in the RV the next morning while I fish they will be more relaxed.

The next morning I woke up to a gorgeous sunrise, the likes I had never seen before.  It happened at exactly 6:30 a.m. and only lasted a few minutes.  Luckily I got some great photos of it.  I kayaked over to the south shore, where the regular campground is, and then west shore, then back.  Trolling all the way.  I only caught one trout, a bit disappointing, but I had  caught two the other morning from the shore.   Now on this day, Wednesday, the afternoon was clear, although I could see the billowing smoke in the west.  I planned on staying till Friday.  However, around 4ish the only other camper on the lake came over and told me that Wentworth Springs road was closed and they were closing Icehouse road to incoming traffic due to the fire.  Stumpy Meadows reservoir had been overtaken by the fire, which is on my normal route home.   The smoke clouds were exceptionally massive and scary looking so I figured if I had to evacuate quickly, getting that kayak up from the lake would really slow me down.  So I got right on that task.  Actually, dragging it up  was slow going but not too bad.  The wheels on the kayak worked great, especially having them strapped on really tight, but this time gravity was not my friend.  Once I got the kayak up I figured I just better leave all together.  Then on my way driving out  on Icehouse I met up with a couple fire fighters who were on their way to evacuate any campers on Loon Lake (stupid enough to still be there), and I was the only one, so I would have gotten shagged anyway.  I didn’t get home till after sundown but was glad to be safe at home with my sweet Kate.

Subsequently I put up an interactive map of the fire here.  Check it out.

When I first arrived

Sunrise 6:30AM

Sunrise Wednesday morning

I love walking along this ganite and exposed beach

Lake way down offers lots of stuff to explore

Fascinating boulders

Biggs likes to back in to the water.

Smoke was coming in, in the afternoon.

Smoke from the fire in the background. Start of Rubicon trail

You can barely see my RV at the top of the rise. This is what I had to drag the kayak thru.

Trolling for trout

From out in the middle of the lake you can see my RV in the middle of photo.

Fire getting bigger. Smoke plumes.

Smoke in the background

Cool rock formation

Biggs smiling in the wind.

Biggz

Huge smoke plumes

Lake is way down at the end of summer.

Plumes getting bigger and closer, maybe time to go.

Smoke, not clouds.

Leaving after it got scary. Smoke plumes in the background

Smoke plumes and clouds?

Veiw of the fire from route 50 east of Pollack Pines.

Jackson Meadows, site #34 with just me and the dogs 9/2-9/5.  However, this time I was able to bring my kayak, on my new trailer.  It worked out great!  Tried trolling with a flasher (dodger) by SEP’s.  With a worm on the end, it was awesome.  Silky smooth lake in the mornings.  So much fun to glide along, looking at the scenery and waiting for the strikes.  On Friday, last day, I went out at 7:30am, back at 9:30 and had caught 8 trout.  Three of them I released since I only want to keep those over 12″, plus the limit is five per day.  Total caught whole trip 12, kept six.  Dogs stayed in the RV while fishing.  Then we went for a boat ride, with Boggz on board and Ben swimming alongside, which he loved.  He could easily swim across the lake no problem.  Also got a lot of reading in and hammock time.  A very good trip.  One more time for East Meadows campground (10/13-10/17) then it closes and i will be going to Pass Creek, which they leave open during the winter.

This third visit to Jackson Meadows we took the grandkids, Olallie and Atticus.  They only stayed over one night but we got in swimming, fishing, hanging (in hammock), dominoes, campfire and an all around great time.  I missed them all when kate took them home on Tuesday.  I stayed for a couple more nights.  Got some fishing in, caught 3 rainbows, took home two.  And started some new books.  Also enjoyed my new hammock.  Very quiet campground, with hardly anyone there the first part of the week.  Always the benefit of going during the week and after school has started.  Temperature got down to 49 in the mornings. Here are some pics, Kate took the vertical ones.

Merganser

Well we managed to claw and scrape our way, once again, to the top of Fall Creek Mountain.  Our annual birthday hike.  Just to remind ourselves that we our still young enough to do it.  This year we had some new people.  Patrick Rodysill, and his pup Tess practically ran up, young whippersnapper as he is.  Nan Patmount and Arthur Saul also joined us plus some friends of Stephen and Janelle … Art and Janet.  A glorious day topped off with a swim in Island Lake at the end.  Kate was in fine form as always, right near the front of the pack.  It did seem a little harder this year than last.  Oh well.. to be expected I guess.

Spilled yogurt

Strange site coming across the lake