zissou

Sorry to tell you after the fact, but you need a little anvil into which you place the ball while hammering the back a few times.

I hear they have good pizza there...

Actually, the pizza is pretty terrible. Ever since the movie, that place has been mobbed with tourists. I used to live just a couple houses from Mystic Pizza, and every time I walked by, I'd photobomb tourists in front of the sign.

When they were filming one of the scenes where Julia Roberts is riding around on her scooter, one of my friends rode his bike past, and they had to reshoot the scene.

I went to Mystic a couple of times when I was a kid. I think I need to go back.

We used to also give New Yorkers wrong directions. Sorry, man.

If you have the time, Paul, take exit 90 off of I-95 and head south on Rte 27. That will take you past the Mystic Seaport, which is a living history museum devoted to 19th Century ship building. If you can believe it, I used to work there Just past the Seaport, turn right on Holmes St. and that will take you into Downtown Mystic.

Now I'm feeling all nostalgic!

plus the idyllic coastline of connecticut. Looks so well-scrubbed, nothing out of place.

Ahh, wonderful, Paul! Do you recall passing through Mystic, just before you hit Rhode Island? That's where I'm from! Much of my family still lives there.

cheers zissou.seeing your trail pics leads me to a letter i received from my health insurance today.i am going to enjoy a rehabilitation for my lumbar disc lesion from july 26 in a health spa in upper franconia,bavaria.it took them only three months to make a decision for a three week rehab.cant wait to learn nordic walking,aqua aerobic and fancy basket weaving.

Ach, disc problems are never fun I am glad you'll have a chance to recover, and be sure to post photos! Can't wait to see your baskets.

Looks like a fantastic day! I love Alphonse Mucha's work...

Another RoyxCone crosspost:

Day #3 of the class took us up Big Cottonwood Canyon where we hiked through aspen and Douglas-fir forests. Wildflowers were peaking around 7500 ft in elevation, but were still very behind just 1000 ft higher. What a beautiful day!

Our trail for the day...

I love hiking through Douglas-fir forests. There were red squirrels running everywhere. They love to sit in the trees and tear apart the cones for the seeds inside. The huge piles of cone scales enrich the soil, which helps fungi to grow, which helps the trees to grow and also provides mushrooms for the squirrels, which cache the mushrooms, dispersing the spores and helping the mushrooms to grow. It's one big happy ecosystem.

I shared a new tree with everyone- the Pondersoa pine. Needles in bundles of three, seven inches long.

Sadly, like many conifers in the west, they have been hit hard with bark beetle outbreaks and fungi.

We hiked through what was quite possibly the most beautiful aspen grove I've ever seen.

And finished off the day on a wildlife hike up at Silver Lake, about 8600 ft in elevation.

Happy trails!

Our newspapers in Utah are definitely not that entertaining! Jeans are looking great, markus.

Day #3 of the class took us up Big Cottonwood Canyon where we hiked through aspen and Douglas-fir forests. Wildflowers were peaking around 7500 ft in elevation, but were still very behind just 1000 ft higher. What a beautiful day!

Our trail for the day...

I love hiking through Douglas-fir forests. There were red squirrels running everywhere. They love to sit in the trees and tear apart the cones for the seeds inside. The huge piles of cone scales enrich the soil, which helps fungi to grow, which helps the trees to grow and also provides mushrooms for the squirrels, which cache the mushrooms, dispersing the spores and helping the mushrooms to grow. It's one big happy ecosystem.

I shared a new tree with everyone- the Pondersoa pine. Needles in bundles of three, seven inches long.

Sadly, like many conifers in the west, they have been hit hard with bark beetle outbreaks and fungi.

We hiked through what was quite possibly the most beautiful aspen grove I've ever seen.

And finished off the day on a wildlife hike up at Silver Lake, about 8600 ft in elevation.

Happy trails!

do i win a special prize for best ass fades?

You win a custom leather strop for, well, use your imagination!

I wouldn't even care if it was mold.

Another cross post from the RoyxCone contest:

I've been making a concerted effort to tell myself that my real office is the outdoors, not the nicely furnished basement room where my computer sits. I also realized I hadn't taken my Golf TDI for a proper spin other than around town. Soooo, I decided to spent part of the afternoon up Logan Canyon, which is just a mile or two from my house. It was a day to give thanks for owning a turbocharged manual car.

I had just last night watched the original Italian Job with Michael Caine, which inspired me to downshift sooner and race those corners. After about a half hour of fast driving, I arrived at my destination- my favorite little campground.

Here's what I came to see: the lodgepole pines. Exciting, huh? They're actually not that common in Utah, and I needed some good photos for my class. As you probably guessed, they get their name because they grow so tall and straight that they were ideal for building tepees and lodges. I had been confused for a long time about why their scientific name is Pinus contorta, until I realized it was the needles that were all twisted.

I also needed some cones to help the students identify the tree.

Mission accomplished! I drove a little further up the road to the overlook at Bear Lake, otherwise known as 'The Caribbean of the West'. It is particularly clear water, and one of the very few natural freshwater lakes that we have in Utah (and is worth swimming in).

I made a few stops on my way back down to take some more photos. Here's one of a characteristic 'aspen dome'. Quaking aspen reproduce primarily from shoots that pop up from lateral roots. So, the taller, older stems are in the middle, and the shorter, younger stems are around the periphery.

Here's a shot of Sink Hollow. There are a lot of 'sinks' in the area that trap cold air. They rarely go more than three or four days without frost, and nearby Peter Sinks is the second coldest recorded temperature in the contiguous US at -69.3F (-56.3C).

I wandered around for a while, only to have something shiny catch my eye in the shrubs. Why, it was a very old Triumph hubcap! With a little cleaning, this would be a great addition to my garage art collection.

Until next time!

Hot damn, roy6! Those are some lovely trousers.

I've been making a concerted effort to tell myself that my real office is the outdoors, not the nicely furnished basement room where my computer sits. I also realized I hadn't taken my Golf TDI for a proper spin other than around town. Soooo, I decided to spent part of the afternoon up Logan Canyon, which is just a mile or two from my house. It was a day to give thanks for owning a turbocharged manual car.

I had just last night watched the original Italian Job with Michael Caine, which inspired me to downshift sooner and race those corners. After about a half hour of fast driving, I arrived at my destination- my favorite little campground.

Here's what I came to see: the lodgepole pines. Exciting, huh? They're actually not that common in Utah, and I needed some good photos for my class. As you probably guessed, they get their name because they grow so tall and straight that they were ideal for building tepees and lodges. I had been confused for a long time about why their scientific name is Pinus contorta, until I realized it was the needles that were all twisted.

I also needed some cones to help the students identify the tree.

Mission accomplished! I drove a little further up the road to the overlook at Bear Lake, otherwise known as 'The Caribbean of the West'. It is particularly clear water, and one of the very few natural freshwater lakes that we have in Utah (and is worth swimming in).

I made a few stops on my way back down to take some more photos. Here's one of a characteristic 'aspen dome'. Quaking aspen reproduce primarily from shoots that pop up from lateral roots. So, the taller, older stems are in the middle, and the shorter, younger stems are around the periphery.

Here's a shot of Sink Hollow. There are a lot of 'sinks' in the area that trap cold air. They rarely go more than three or four days without frost, and nearby Peter Sinks is the second coldest recorded temperature in the contiguous US at -69.3F (-56.3C).

I wandered around for a while, only to have something shiny catch my eye in the shrubs. Why, it was a very old Triumph hubcap! With a little cleaning, this would be a great addition to my garage art collection.

Until next time!

I love Little Cottonwood Canyon. Not that any of you will, but if any of you ever make it Utahway, there are two spots that you need to have at the top of list 1) Moab/Arches National Park 2) Little Cottonwood Canyon.

Hiking on the opposite side of the canyon is a blast, literally, there are signs regularly posted warning hikers to stay clear of old blasting caps as the area was mined for a century before it became a ski resort.

Little Cottonwood sure is great. The couple of days up there with my class reminded me that I need to spend more time up there. I never noticed before, but there are mine waste piles all over the hillsides up there. The mines are surely too wet to find some old denim

Thanks for the tip on Parley's. I work out of Park City from time to time, and sometimes bring my daughter along...

Wonderful, wonderful photos, dkatz! It looks like you two are having quite an adventure. Can't wait to see what else you have.

I always forget to cross post from the RoyxCone thread, so here you go:

I spent the past two days exploring Little Cottonwood Canyon outside of Salt Lake City with my class. We started at the mouth of the canyon, learning about the geologic features. The steep-walled U-shaped canyon is indicative of the glacial history during the last ice age. At that time, much of northern Utah was covered by an enormous freshwater lake called Lake Bonneville. The glacier from the canyon reached the lake and would calve icebergs into it. The large boulders on the sides of the canyon were deposited by the glacier. You might not be able to tell from the photo, but the house in the foreground is sitting right on top of a fault in the Earth. The spot where I am standing is continually dropping, and the mountains are continually rising. We're overdue for a large earthquake...

We made our way up the canyon to Alta Ski Resort, where we were going to learn about the montane plant communities. On the second day, my van died half way up the canyon, and the other van blew its water pump at the top! Amazingly, it didn't hamper our hikes, and both vans were replaced by the end of the day.

Alta is well known in Utah for receiving tons of snow each winter- on average 500 inches! They stopped counting in May of this year when they hit around 700 inches. Despite being early July, there was plenty of snow still hanging around!

Roys on snow!

We had to be careful traversing the snow, because there were streams flowing beneath it. What a rude awakening to fall through the snow and land in an icy stream!

I tried to talk them into loaning me a snowcat since both of our vans were dead. No luck.

Plants were just starting to poke through the soil in the sunnier spots.

And the tiger swallowtails had stopped for a drink.

The 'pistol-butted trunks' (curved downhill at the base) of the aspen trees were due to the heavy snow load in winter.

The large basin just below the ridge is called Albion Basin. In the summer, it's a mecca for wildflower viewing. We were supposed to go there next week, but everything is still under snow! The bowl-shaped form is called a cirque, which is where the glacier formed and began carving downhill due to the sheer weight of the ice.

Despite the vehicle mishaps and my not getting any sleep one of the nights, everyone had a fantastic time. Not a bad classroom to work in, eh?

Like I mentioned, I spent the past two days exploring Little Cottonwood Canyon outside of Slat Lake City with my class. We started at the mouth of the canyon, learning about the geologic features. The steep-walled U-shaped canyon is indicative of the glacial history during the last ice age. At that time, much of northern Utah was covered by an enormous freshwater lake called Lake Bonneville. The glacier from the canyon reached the lake and would calve icebergs into it. The large boulders on the sides of the canyon were deposited by the glacier. You might not be able to tell from the photo, but the house in the foreground is sitting right on top of a fault in the Earth. The spot where I am standing is continually dropping, and the mountains are continually rising. We're overdue for a large earthquake...

We made our way up the canyon to Alta Ski Resort, where we were going to learn about the montane plant communities. On the second day, my van died half way up the canyon, and the other van blew its water pump at the top! Amazingly, it didn't hamper our hikes, and both vans were replaced by the end of the day.

Alta is well known in Utah for receiving tons of snow each winter- on average 500 inches! They stopped counting in May of this year when they hit around 700 inches. Despite being early July, there was plenty of snow still hanging around!

Roys on snow!

We had to be careful traversing the snow, because there were streams flowing beneath it. What a rude awakening to fall through the snow and land in an icy stream!

I tried to talk them into loaning me a snowcat since both of our vans were dead. No luck.

Plants were just starting to poke through the soil in the sunnier spots.

And the tiger swallowtails had stopped for a drink.

The 'pistol-butted trunks' (curved downhill at the base) of the aspen trees were due to the heavy snow load in winter.

The large basin just below the ridge is called Albion Basin. In the summer, it's a mecca for wildflower viewing. We were supposed to go there next week, but everything is still under snow! The bowl-shaped form is called a cirque, which is where the glacier formed and began carving downhill due to the sheer weight of the ice.

Despite the vehicle mishaps and my not getting any sleep one of the nights, everyone had a fantastic time. Not a bad classroom to work in, eh?

cash- which canyon?? I was up Little Cottonwood with my class the past couple of days. Photos coming tomorrow, too tired now...

Thanks, man. Yeah, they call it Huntsman Chromexcel, which is very similar to normal Chromexcel, but the flesh side is heavily waxed. It's intended to be used as a waxed suede, but I used it flesh side in on that case, and hit the grain side with some wax. Maybe I should try it flesh side out?

This is officially the first moment that I have ever wanted Indys. Gorgeous!

I decided to put some small scraps of Chromexcel to good use. I think I'm going to have to order more tan and some black in the near future. It's so nice to work with!

I also made a 1" belt with an oval buckle. In the next week or so, I'll make one for myself in 1.5" leather that tapers down to 1" at the buckle...

Fantastic, fre$co! There are so many great pairs at this point, and yours are definitely one of them.

riff- I compliment your daughter on her Team Zissou swimsuit.

Doc- I think your zoo beats ours hands-down. Cool photos.

Fre$co- nice work! Looking forward to post-wash photos.

My Roys and I spent most of Saturday on my bike! It started with the usual trip to the bakery and gardener's market, but it was the first time I've ridden it. Perfect day for it.

The evening was pretty comical. Some friends organized a Bikes and Brews tour, and about 18 of us rode around to several bars.

I remembered to take photos of the first two, but then the rest was a bit of a blur. We ended at my house for more beers, but not before someone apparently had to tell me how to get there.

I think I've mostly cured my mild hangover with a nice greasy lunch.

TG- I'm so very impressed! You did a beautiful job on your kayak. Any idea how much they weigh, all said and done?

^ My MF's are actually a 30 ( albeit a bit loose). I'm pretty sure I could make anything from a 28 to 32 work by varying wash temperature & intensity...

Well, I was close I really need to wear my 7161s again soon. They're so comfy at this point.

p.s.- SIX MONTHS!!!