Well…it’s been a pretty interesting Week so let’s dive in.

New Years Day was excellent food wise with ham, sweet potato medley, pineapple topped with sugar and caramelized with the cook’s torch Connie bought him for Christmas accompanied by a nice bottle of wine. The only drawback was that there was too much sweet involved between the pineapple, sweet potatoes and the mustard/brown sugar sauce from his childhood on the ham. 

In the evening we moved onto the second quarterfinal in the College Football Playoffs…Miami beat Ohio State on the evening before to advance to the semifinals and Alabama went up against the top seed Indiana. As he expected…Alabama continued to display zip in the running game department and at this level you simply aren’t going to win without a running game to keep the defense honest unless you have a brilliant quarterback and a stable of NFL draft choice receivers…and while they have a better than average passing game it’s not spectacular. The defense played pretty well but wore down in the second half as Indiana continued to run the ball primarily. Neil never thought he would see the day when the Tide simply couldn’t run and the defense wore down late in the game…it’s always been the opposite case but not the past couple of years. The jury is still out on the new coach…he hasn’t learned that you simply have to run to get to a championship and clearly they have not worked sufficiently on that task. They continued to try to run on 3rd and long to medium despite limited success and never really threw downfield to try and open up some running lanes…Indiana packed the defensive line and as a result of that and their own running success won the game handily. Still though…advancing to the quarterfinals in his second season is an improvement but the man really needs to get a running game and a more mobile quarterback in order to continue the expected ‘we are in the championship game’ that their fans demand. But…we were all spoiled by how good Nick Saban was at building and continuing a dynasty and they’re just not back there yet.

Then there was the seizing of the president of Venezuela and we’re not sure how we feel about that. Sure…he’s an unelected dictator (well, there was an election but it was clearly rigged as opposed to the US one in 2020) but the country does have a constitution and under it he was the duly elected president. The White House claim that he runs a narco terrorist organization seems like a lot of invention of facts to support what they want to do. Like the attacks against the supposed drug smuggling boats over the past couple of months…it seems more of a convenient method of justifying what they want to do rather than actually following both US and international law. And then the claim that the US will run the country for the indefinite future…well, that just ain’t happening unless we put a whole passle of troops on the ground and that seems like it would be an act of war. The country absolutely does not need to be involved in another nation building attempt that will be opposed by significant rebel opposition…we been there in Afghanistan and just don’t need to go there again.

And just yesterday we seized a Russian flagged tanker in the open ocean…and again that seems to be across the line of legality. However…might makes right to a great extent and we’re pretty sure that all of it will be upheld in court.

Let’s see…what else is going on?

Connie’s off at a Ladies of Elks planning meeting this morning and they’ve got to make some decisions on what to do with the Ladies group. As both merger attempts of our lodge with another have failed…the board decided to just keep on going without a lodge…and we had made the decision if that happened we would dimit over to the North Fort Myers lodge and we mailed in our paperwork this week. The Ladies is a separate 501c3 corporation from the Fort Myers lodge and with no lodge they can’t hold any fund raising events to support the charities they want to support. Hence…the planning meeting and they’ll figure out what they want to do.

Neil’s off to a good start biking in the new year…don’t know if he’ll beat out last year’s mileage but he’s gonna work on it. He likes his new schedule…instead of every other day he’s shifted to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday to keep from needing to go on Sunday’s as with concerts, Mass, and the heat in summer afternoons made that seem a smarter idea. If he keeps to the schedule he’ll get 8 days every 2 weeks instead of 7 so he might just beat last year but it’s really way too early to even guess on that.

That’s about it…so let’s get on to more images from Botswana last August.

This is the vehicle (well, 1 of 2) that he used at Camp Kanana. They had 3 clients in each one at 1 per row so that shooting out of either side was easy along with a driver and Steve/Rose who alternated in the front seats. The clients rotated forward for each game drive and the front one rotated to the back in order to give everybody the advantage of all the seats as they are progressively higher going to the back. Diesel and in 4WD most of the time with only occasional shifts to the 4WD Low mode. The mornings were quite chilly ad you can see here but there was a nice hot water bottle and blanket for everyone to stay toasty as we drove around.

Sunrise taken about 3 minutes after the shot above.

First stop was this elephant in the woods pulling leaves down from the trees for breakfast.

Next  stop was the local lion pride…2 males, 3 females, and 9 cubs…of which there are 6 or 7 in this shot.

Mom looking out at something but we couldn’t figure out what.

This hartebeest might have been what the second female above looking toward the vehicles was checking out…but as you can see both of the females have pretty full bellies so it wasn’t worth the effort to go after it.

Shortly after leaving the pride they happened across this bull elephant…and he clearly resented the vehicle’s presence. Our driver stopped and revved the engine and sounded the horn to try and get him to turn away…but he started towards the vehicle like it was the beginning of a charge so the driver stomped on the gas and sped past. He was only 50 feet or so off of the road they were driving on.

Neil was in the back seat that morning and spotted this Lilac Breasted Roller about 20 feet maximum from the road off to his right.

It looked like it was getting ready to fly so they all switched camera modes to pre-capture to get the takeoff/flight sequence and through the magic of pre-capture and 20 frames per second got a nice sequence. These are all sequential frames so less than a second for the sequence before he was no longer able to keep the bird in the frame but then it was going away and any more would have mostly been roller butt.

That’s enough for today and pretty much wrapped up the morning…I’ll finish up with the afternoon drive next time.

Interesting things found on the net.

I said no pictures…seems apropos for an Africa safari post.

We keep seeing the progressives demanding that the rich pay their fair share of taxes…so who really pays them? Yes…rich people can take advantage of tax loopholes to reduce the amount they pay…but as you can see from this they still pay the lion’s share of the total tax dollars. This is based on official IRS data. Of particular note…the top 0.01% of taxpayers paid 25% of the total dollars and the top 4% paid about 67% or 2/3. The trouble with progressive socialists is that sooner of later you run out of other people’s money. 

We’re still waiting to see what the new NYC mayor does…he’s moving from his rent controlled apartment to the mansion but has said he’s keeping his apartment for after his term. He appointed a woman even more radical than he is to head the rent control office…and she has said in the past that “home ownership is white supremacy” despite the fact that she is a white woman and her mother owns a $1.5M home in Knoxville according to one of the local newspapers in the city. When questioned about this…the woman ran away in tears from the journalist who asked the question according to the local paper.

Mandami has promised free buses, a freeze on rent increases in rent controlled properties, and 4 city owned grocery stores to lower the cost of food…but unfortunately has announce no plans on how he intends to actually pay for all of those giveaway programs. We understand that NYC is expensive and prices are going up…but that’s the same everywhere these days. I don’t know what the answer is but clearly Mr. Mayor doesn’t know either.

And finally…in a really strange coincidence…back during the Civil War the First Battle of Bull Run was mostly fought on the farm owned by a fellow named Wilmer McLean. After the battle was over he wanted to move far away from that site so he built himself a new house further west and became a successful merchant during the remainder of the war. Turns out that his new home was the Appomattox Courthouse where Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant literally in McLean’s living room.

Strange things happen. 

Cyas.