Photo Trickery

I love how this picture turned out.

You might ask “How long did you have to wait to get just a single bird on the wing with all the others in the water or was it just luck”? Well, no, not all luck and I actually shot a bunch of pictures in a sequence to get the one I wanted. But I also used a little bit of photo trickery to get this final result. The original picture looked like this:

Notice the extra birds in flight in the picture. I wanted to edit out each of those birds and be left with just the one. At first I tried using an editing technique in which I paint over the extra image with replicated colors in the rest of the image, and this can usually result in satisfactory results. For instance I was able to use that in the following shot to remove the people and leave only the main objects.

However, in this case I knew I had taken several pictures in sequence and some of them may have clear images in the are where the other birds appear. So I checked out the other pictures and found this one in which the marked areas corresponded with the birds in the original photo and I should be able to copy and paste over each of the birds nearly seamlessly.

I use a program I first got for free when I worked for IBM called “IBM Perfect Photo”. It contains a photo editor program I have used many times to touch up, combine, and otherwise edit jpeg images. I had lost it a few years back after switching computers but I was able to find a copy for a nominal price on line and so now I have an official, paid-for version of the program. It is my go-to Photoshop.

Disney Isn’t Expensive Enough?

OK, so after only 3 weeks at Su’N’Fun, we headed out in our RV for 5 days in Disney World. Cool, huh? Sure, it is kind of an expensive place to visit but we have good friends from New York who come down here a lot and we have a great time going to the parks with them. So we carefully listed all of the things we needed to have and got them loaded into the RV, which had been thoroughly cleaned and emptied of nearly everything. Anyway, we thought we had everything covered and we headed out with plans to stop at the Camping World on I-4 to spend a $25 gift certificate we had and to help out a friend by returning something she had bought there.

All went well until we got ready to leave and the parking break on the RV would not disengage. The good news is, Camping World has a great service area. The bad news, it’s Sunday and their service are is closed. Ugh!. Oh, more good news, we have Good Sam Emergency Road Service. So we call, and they dispatch a repair company from Orlando, about an hour away. They get the service to us, but we are pay for their work (a minimum 2 hour charge) and their return to their location (another hour).

While we waited, we unpacked the stuff we had brought to the RV in boxes but just put on the bed. While we were doing this, Ellyn discovered there was a key part of her CPAP machine that she did not pack. Oops. Fortunately, it is a part which wears out easily so she could order one online and have it shipped to the campground in Orlando. A pain but problem solved.

When they arrived, I was immediately worried. It was two guys in their personal car. I had expected a marked truck with lots of tools and possibly even parts on board. These guys had some wrenches and a voltmeter. But they assured me they are competent to diagnose the problem and set to work. About and hour and a half later, they felt they have traced it to a pressure switch under the dash, but there was no place open to get the part so I took the part and made plans to get a new one the next day.

So now, what to do for that night. We could boondock in the Camping World parking lot, but instead we opt to take the car and drive back to Sun’N’Fun, about an hour away, for the night. A pain but at least we would have air conditioning without having to run the generator all night. We grabbed out all our medications so they wouldn’t have a problem with the A/C off and headed home. There was one bright spot in our return to Sarasota; we got to watch the latest episode of “The Walking Dead”. We also got to retrieve the part for Ellyn’s CPAP machine and she had it to sleep with on Sunday night.

The next morning we headed back, but Geoff had considered the results of the emergency repair guys and decided he was not comfortable with their diagnosis. When we got back to Camping World, we turned the problem over to their service area. They were able to look it over and bring it in. The brakes actually did release this time after being held for about 30 seconds and we were able to move the coach into their repair bay. They decided that the problem was that the rear brakes were mostly seized up and need to be removed, cleaned and lubed. When they got them off, they also decided that some of the parts needed to be replaced. This meant going to find the right parts, but they were able to do this, so we were closer to having this fixed in one visit.

Ellyn took Jordy and the car and headed for Disney to spend the day with our friends and Geoff stayed with the RV for the duration, which turned out to be all day long. After everything was finally put back together, they tried the parking brake release and, you guessed it, it still did not work. Finally a call to Spartan, the manufacturer of our chassis, revealed that there was a valve in the system which was probably the fault. It was determined that the problem they fixed with the rear brakes was probably the reason the valve broke. However, they had to order that part. They were able to get the system working by bypassing the valve, but we would have to go back on our return trip to get the new part installed.

Things are not over yet, though. We found out when we finally got to Disney World that Ellyn had forgotten some of her medications so we had to get a prescription sent to a local drug store and, since it was too early for a new prescription, the insurance would not pay for these pills. Ugh! At this point this trip has cost us about $2000 more than we anticipated, and there will still be a bill for the valve replacement on the return trip. The good news, we spent 5 days in the “Happiest Place on Earth”.

Our Last Two States

Since we started RVing in 2008, we have camped in every one of the 49 states accessible by RV except for two which we always seemed to go around, one way or another. On our travels back to Florida this year, we decided to take them in. We are now camping in Elkins, West Virginia at the Pegasus Farm Campground. This campground was a little funky to get into, since we turned onto a gravel road and the entrance is a single lane path from the owners’ house down to the camping field. We were actually greeted at the entrance by the owner, who was very friendly and escorted us to our campsite. After getting set up, he came back with information on the area and our registration paperwork. He was trying, in a joking way, to get us to stay for more than 2 nights, but we have a deadline in Dothan Alabama and we still want to visit with friends in Kentucky. He mentioned playing music and found out that I play guitar. He came back later in the evening and brought his mandolin. We played together until the light was failing. I think we sounded pretty good.

The second day, we went into Elkins and took the New Tygart Flyer, a 1950s streamline locomotive pulling some 1940s train cars along the Cheat River. Along the way we went through a 3/4 mile long tunnel with an s-curve in it and ends at the High Falls of the Cheat River where we were able to get off the train for about 30 minutes and check out the falls. The track also takes a the sharpest curve east of the Mississippi and the train could not make that turn.

After two nights in Elkins, WV, we headed west again to Lexington, KY. Traveling west on I-79 through West Virginia, we passed through lots of rolling mountains covered with tress. It was very beautiful. We landed at the Kentucky Horse Park Campground. The first evening there, there was a horse jumping competition in the arena at the Horse Park. We went to see it and it was very interesting, with a points system based on making all the jumps in a specified time. All of the riders who made it with no errors in the time allowed went into a “jump off”. The final rider had to beat just over 39 seconds with no errors and she did it. It was very exciting and she looked very happy. It looks like a dangerous sport though, as there was one horse that fell and threw the rider in the first round and then a rider who fell from her horse in the jump off. Fortunately all the horses and riders seemed to be fine.

The next day, we went back into the Kentucky Horse Park as real tourists. There is a small admission fee, but they are currently only charging 50% so it was really reasonable. We rode our bikes in rather than trying to find parking for the car. We took in the “Horses of the World” show twice, in which they bring out different breeds of horses and explain their origins and uses in their countries. We also went to the Museum of the Horse where they have many artifacts and information about the history of the horse and its relationships with man over the ages. It was quite interesting but Geoff eventually got “horsed out”.

Next, on to Louisville, KY to spend an evening with our friends from Sun’N’Fun, Rick and Gayle. Jordy got to go along too and see their doggy, Sarah. While the dogs relaxed at their house, we went into Louisville for a tour and to visit the Louisville Slugger Factory (which curiously used to be across the river in Indiana). It was fun although we could not take any photos in the factory. Geoff and Rick tried (in vain) to hit balls in the batting cages and we saw a fun film which made us ready for Spring Training to start.

Next we will be stopping in Nashville, TN for a couple of nights to take in the Grand Ole Opry before going to Dothan, AL for Rosh Hashanah and then (finally) off to Sun’N’Fun for the winter.

The End of Summer

Our Summer travels are coming to an end. We have been parked in Salem, Massachusetts now for more than two weeks while visiting with our sons and their families. We returned to Winter Island Park where we had come for the spring as well. It gave us an opportunity to return to some of our favorite spots. We took in a couple of exhibits at the Peabody Essex Museum and even became members. We saw the very end of the exhibit on maritime paintings by Joseph Turner and the beginning of the exhibit on the sculpture Calder. Plus we got to revisit some of the other exhibits in the museum in downtown Salem. We also got to go back to a few of the restaurants we enjoyed in our first time here. This time, we spent two days in the field and then two weeks on the water. There certainly are some fabulous views in Salem Harbor.

Of course the major reason for returning here is our Grandson, who is just turning one year old. Last year at this time, we came here for his birth and then stayed through the end of November to spend as much time as possible with him. Now he is walking and starting to imitate talking he hears and is doing a little sign language and understanding things you tell him. We got to sit with him once and to visit with him and his parents a few times. We went to the water park with him while the weather was still hot and he played in the water spray. Of course the highlight was celebrating his one year birthday. He certainly got a lot of gifts and his fill of chocolate cake. It was the most sugar he had consumed in his first year of life.

Tomorrow, after a lunch visit with Brian, Katherine and Oliver, we will move on. First stop is our friends David and Myra in Trumbull, CT and then we will make our way toward Elkins, WV. We have two states, West Virginia and Kentucky left on our camping map. We plan on staying in both of them and then we will have filled our states map by camping in each of the lower 48 and Alaska. We have also stayed in 7 of the Canadian Provinces. Our schedule is to be in our home in Sarasota, Florida by the end of September after spending the Jewish Holiday of Rosh Hashanah in Dothan, Alabama with our friends there. It was a great summer but autumn is upon us and we are looking forward to being back in our home.

Friends 2014

These are just a few of the friends we visited with this last year while traveling. It was nice to see them all.