I was off to Jenner to kayak today. As I was driving into Jenner, I could see the mouth was open as it was low tide and lots of shoreline was showing.
I put my boat in the water to a bit of wind and headed across to Penny Island which looked like this as I paddled along.
I went by this great blue heron fishing along the shoreline and doing pretty good too.
Just past the heron, I spied this crow pecking at something.
As I approached, it got nervous and decided it better get the little fish away from me, so picked it up to protect it.
I left it eating the fish and went by these cormorants that were busy fishing away, diving and bringing up little three or four inch fish to devour.
The redwood log graveyard
I continued on up the river along it’s south side. Just up ahead is the old redwood log graveyard where I like to sit when the logs are exposed like they are today.
And a turtle
As I pulled into my spot in the logs, I wasn’t expecting to see this turtle as I rarely see any turtles down this far into the estuary as I don’t think they like salt water much.
It slid into the water as I pulled into my spot here where I sat and watched for a bit.
Eventually I continued on up the river going past this spot.
The river otters disappeared
Just past that I saw the river otters going ashore into the brush just up ahead. I pulled over here and waited for them to come back out for about a half hour, but they never did. I think they must of went to shore for a nap.
I paddled on up to the muskrat area and sat here for a bit.
There were some very tiny fish that swam up and around my boat, about three quarters of an inch long. I have no idea what they might be. You can see them under my paddle.
Thinking I need to get the van to Santa Rosa
As I sat there I was thinking that if I cut it short today, I could take my van over to Santa Rosa to the Spring Works people and have them measure what I need for the van’s front springs I decided to replace and find out what it would cost.
So I didn’t stay too long and started back down the river going past otter’s log here.
There were a bunch of geese on Penny Island as I went past headed for the boat ramp.
The trash guys
Before I got to the ramp a motor boat motored up to me. It turned out to be Ken and John. They were going up the river to look for a plastic trash can that Patti reported to them and also just pick up any other trash they could find. We shot the bull a bit and then they took off up the river.
An excavator opened up the closed river’s mouth
I did ask them if the mouth washed out on it’s own or they took it out. They said the excavator took it out yesterday.
Heading to the spring guys
I pulled my boat out and went home. I called the spring guys to make sure they had time to measure my springs and they did, so I fired up my van and headed for the place called the Spring Works in Santa Rosa.
I had to wait a bit, but not too long and Phil came out and measured my springs. I asked him about shortening the back side one or two inches as the back of the spring was banging into the van frame too hard and shouldn’t really even be hitting the frame.
Phil measured things
Phil measured things and said he thought shortening them one and a half inches would work out about right. Of course, this now means I have to order custom made springs, so the price shoots up.
He said he’d email me a quote once he found out what things would cost, so I went on home.
Removing some van shelving
At home I decided to remove some of the shelving in the back of my van as since I got the new fridge, I haven’t liked the way things were in there, as the new fridge was sorta in my face.
So I took the stuff out and am studying things to figure out how I want to put some new shelving back in to accommodate what I need to store back there.
The quote for the new springs
When I went into the house and checked my email there was a quote from Phil at the Spring Works. Turns out things were about twice what I expected.
A pair of custom springs was about 850 bucks and installation for three hours work was 360 dollars.
I bite the bullet
That’s more than I wanted to pay, but since things are custom I need to get it right, so I feel this is better than trying to get some springs off the internet. I sorta look at it as a present to myself, since I won’t have to do the mechanicing.
I usually do all my own mechanicing, but this time I’ll let them do it and bite the bullet just to get this all done without any complications. I figure this costs about the same as a crown on a tooth, so maybe it’s a good investment. :O) Especially if it prevents me from having any breakdowns out on the road where a broken spring can cause a lot of problems especially when I’m out in the middle of the desert somewhere.
I spent the rest of the day just studying what to do in the back of my van with the new shelving. I have some ideas.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
