Friends and Family Day at the NGPRL

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Last Thursday I was able to take my family to the Friends and Family Day at the Northern Great Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory south of Mandan. As a kid growing up south of Mandan, I remember occasionally riding my bike toward town and visiting the facility. The people we talked to were cool, and gracious in explaining what they were doing to a curious kid. They showed the same sort of hospitality to kids and adults alike last Thursday.

Ever play Garden Jeopardy? Me neither. This was just one of several breakout sessions that were held throughout the day. They focused on subjects from soils to gardening to trees, and looked really interesting and informative. I watched one guy talk about “rain gardens” and how one can collect rain water and retain moisture in soil by how it’s landscaped and the type of soil used. I didn’t get to stay for much of it, though…

…because my wife and boys were waiting for me at the horse and buggy. I kept our infant and stroller with me, while little PJ and mommy went for a ride. He’s 18 months old now and talking up a storm, and said “horses” a lot after this ride.

This was his other favorite stop. Daddy took him up into the cabs of a lot of these big tractors, but wouldn’t let him touch any of the buttons. One of them even had the key in the ignition, as PJ pointed out, but I was a party pooper and wouldn’t let him touch it. I don’t think I’m insured for that kind of damage.

I’ll admit it: this was Daddy’s favorite stop. I absolutely LOVE those Cloverdale brats. I was able to keep from getting mustard on my camera, too. Thanks for the free lunch!

This was one of the activities for the kids. There was face painting and other fun going on, but this tunnel seemed especially cool. It’s to show kids about what goes on in the soil underneath their garden or field. Note the roots and carrots sticking down. The kids got to wear a headband light too, so it wasn’t too scary.

Not a lot of takers on the “greenhouse gas emmission” information. I’m not surprised; the farmers finally have a couple of good years, and now they’re supposed to get uptight about the greenhouse gas emissions of their operation? The whole “greenhouse gas” nonsense is a political issue, anyway…not a scientific one. Too bad research grant money is given out by a political process.

These folks got a really cool ride! Rolling bleachers…I never thought I’d live to see the day. I wish I’d had time to hang around and take this ride, but I don’t think the little boys would like it much and we had the stroller & stuff to worry about. Too bad, it’s been a couple of decades since I really poked around out here. Perhaps next year I can take PJ on the ride. I’m sure he’ll remind me about the horses and the tractors! Thanks again to the NGPRL folks for their hospitality in putting on a great event for the community.

If I had a boat

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“If I had a boat, I’d go out on the ocean…and if I had a pony, I’d ride him on my boat…”

For the music reference title of this post I picked a Lyle Lovett song, but I’ll always think of it as a JPL song, since my favorite version of it is done by my pals in JPL. Two of the guys are my frequent live-sports coworkers and employees of NBC in Fargo, and the third (J) is the brother of the other (L). They are extremely talented, and the best of their work isn’t even on the Myspace page I have linked for them. Enough about JPL, though…this picture is of JCP: Jonathan, me, and PJ.

We spent an evening by the river this week, with PJ learning how to throw rocks into the river and calling out every airplane, boat, or motorcycle that passed our view. He really loves motorcycles, which he calls “norlkles”, and can even turn the key and start one of my Kawasaki motorcycles if help him get up onto it. Imagine what he’ll be like when he’s two!

The river seems to be where it’s at this year. The sandbars are now fully revived as a place to gather and spend a summer afternoon, despite the city of Bismarck decimating the summer sandbar scene when they carved up Sertoma Park many years ago. Nowadays one simply needs a boat (or a friend with one) to join; I don’t, but considering that my little boy thinks they’re so keen, I suppose it’s time to shop for one! I never wanted one before because I didn’t think I’d use it enough to justify it. I suspect that these two little guys would encourage me to take the boat out plenty. Hm…if I had a boat…

New feature added! And a reminder of an old one

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If you noticed the site loaded a little slowly this week, it’s because I animated the top banner. Doing so involved a little bit of Javascript and Flash, and that stuff has to load the first time you visit the page. Once you’ve visited this site with the new header, it should load quickly in repeat visits. I had been playing with a few ideas for new banners at the top of the site and couldn’t pick one, so I decided that I should just rotate them. I hope they’re pleasing to the eye.

Now a reminder of an older, less frequently used feature. When I activated this feature a long time ago, I posted instructions on how to “Rate the Windbag.” The number of regular visitors to the site has grown by leaps and bounds since then, so I’ll post this again for those of you who are new. While older posts have rating counts as high as 400 or 500, I’m getting several times that many visitors on even a slow day now. So perhaps not everyone knows what those dots are for.


This is a 5-point rating system. If you like the post, click on the dot to the far right. If you think I’m out of my ever-lovin’ mind, click on the dot on the far right. Just kidding. The dot on the left is worth 1 point, the one on the right worth 5, and I leave it to you to discern the values of the remaining three.

Each time a user clicks a dot it’s added to the tally, the number on the right. The average rating is on the left. In the graphic above, 4 users have responded with an average rating of 3.8.

This diagram illustrates the difference between the way a designer sets up a web page, with how he thinks the reader will scan it in mind, and the way the average web surfer actually looks through the page. It’s a pretty big difference, isn’t it? By the same token, I tend to assume that those five little dots look like they’re clickable… but apparently not everybody gets it right away. Oh well.

That’s why, when you see the numbers at the bottom of the posts, things won’t always make sense. I’ll have a post with a low vote count, but with one comment, and dozens (sometimes hundreds) of comment views. So, while the post has been read between a thousand and two thousand times (that’s how many daily visitors I get), only one person may have found reason to comment, and not everybody decided to read his/her comment. Even fewer decided (or knew how to) vote to rate the post. It’s actually very interesting to see, especially in light of the server stats that I receive daily!

Of course, if you’re reading this post on one of the websites that syndicate it, you’re not eligible to vote. You have to actually come to bismarckmandanblog.com to do so.

Have fun. The old Democrat adage “vote early, vote often!” doesn’t apply here.

Road to nowhere

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While heading down to the Burnt Creek dock with my boys, I took the scenic route down Sandy River Drive. It’s one of my favorite roads because it’s narrow, straight, canopied by trees, and I have several friends who live along it. Just before I headed north to the boat dock, however, I saw this new item.

Marking “The Road to Nowhere”, this marker was obviously put up by someone who got a raw deal. In case you have a bad monitor, let me go ahead and quote it:

“Until 2006 the road to the west of this site contained 22 giant cottonwoods, oaks and ash trees – and two private roads maintained by residents of this area.

This marker is dedicated to the public officials who deemed “we’re from the government and we’re here to help” – even though the residents of the area didn’t want the trees removed, their roads destroyed, and the new road built.”

As usual, I proofread everything I read, and something caught my eye. If I’m right, “Pactas” should actually read “Pacta” as it’s the plural of the Latin word “pactum.” It means an agreement, contract, covenant, or treaty. The full translation of this little dictum is essentially “Agreements should be honored.” If so, all those years of high school and college Latin finally paid off. The dedication itself speaks for itself…just think the Democrats want the government to be in charge of our health care, too!

The road really DOES go nowhere, by the way. I went to the end of the road so I’d have room to turn our carbon-belching SUV around, but not until after I poked my head through the moon roof to take this shot of our tax dollars at work.

If you’d like to find this marker and enjoy the picnic table, you can take River Road north from Pioneer Park, then turn left and head west on Sandy River Drive until you spot the marker on your left. Its GPS coordinates are 46 deg 51.164 minutes North, 100 deg 51.237 minutes West. If you find out who placed the marker here (it ain’t hard to figure out), tell them I sent you.

After only a week or so….July 4th photos posted

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This year brought something different for our family on Independence Day. I was hired to take photos for Cycle Hutt, our church didn’t do a float this year because of our new building project, and my wife and I thought it better to keep the two little boys at home on the hot afternoon. That means that I didn’t sit and watch the parade go by like last year; rather, I took lots and lots of photos of the goings-on at Cycle Hutt and around & on the float for the parade.

There are around 1800 photos overall, but I pared it down quite a bit into a few image galleries:

July 3rd: Practice, brief Stunt Show

July 4th: the main stunt show, the crowds, the fun.

The parade float, complete with a burnout stand and other fun stuff.

July 5th: Another stunt show, wrap-up with the SPEED Channel crew, and a brief group ride afterwards.

Local Riders – These guys got lessons from JasoN Britton!

Enjoy! Prints are available, if you’d like. Just find the “Contact me” link on the upper right of this screen, and we’ll get you the details.

Any landing you can walk away from…

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One of my mountain biking buddies and I were comparing photos a couple of weeks ago and I found this gem in his collection. He gave me permission to share it with y’all, so I thought I would take the opportunity to do so. The tractor above was mowing near the sagging walls on a hill along west Century Avenue when a section of the wall decided it had had enough. Fortunately the tractor operator was okay.


The same cannot be said for the wall; however. The same sort of upkeep that had left sections of the wall sagging in the first place has also left a pile of bricks where the incident occurred. I don’t remember the date of this particular rollover, but it’s been a while…plenty of time to repair the wall. In the mean time, I wonder how they mow around it?

Very serious, very fundamental defect spotted on the new Liberty Memorial Bridge

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Take a look. Do you see it? I saw it right away after the bridge caught my eye. I was driving west on Memorial Highway, on my way to Mandan when I spotted it. I suppose it’s because they have removed a lot of the construction materials from the bridge as it nears completion. Do you see it yet?

I have to say I’m really disappointed. Ever since the day I attended the groundbreaking where the various mayors and senators congratulated each other and the architect drawings (done by my friend Alex, by the way) were unveiled, they’ve been talking about how this is going to be a site of interest with lots of foot traffic and memorial parks at either end. That’s why I can’t believe the oversight I spotted this week: there is no walkway on the north side!


Question: how is a person going to get a view like this without dodging traffic on the new bridge? Answer: they aren’t. There’s a walkway on the south side of the bridge, but the only time of year the sun sets on that side of the bridge is in the dead of winter. Not aesthetically pleasing, and cold on top of it. Sad.

I give the new bridge a big thumbs-down for this fact alone. If offered the choice of a walkway on the north or on the south, I’d have definitely recommended the north. Sadly, that choice wasn’t mine to make. Oh well, maybe they’ll make a wide shoulder and I can dodge traffic to get the right shot. In the mean time, I’ll just have one more thing to whine about!

This only happens twice a year

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My friend Pat gave me the heads up this week: for one night only, when viewed from his front porch, the silhouette of the capitol building appears centered on the sun. That night was tonight. Even though I had to stretch the limits of my longest telephoto lens from his house southeast of town, I think things turned out pretty well.

This also happens a little bit before June 21st, the longest day of the year. I wasn’t able to catch it at that time. Last year the weather conspired against me and I wasn’t able to catch either occurrence, so tonight was a pretty good treat.

I actually tried last night, but the sun was still a little above the horizon when it crossed the capitol building. It looked like a lollipop of sorts. I may still try to get another shot tomorrow night, with only a portion of the sun behind the capitol building. I’ll have to do it one minute earlier than I did tonight, however; we lose a minute of daylight every day now.

One of the coolest things I saw all weekend, because I’m a geek

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I took too many photos this holiday weekend to sort out right now…about 1,800 of them, in fact. Why? Two reasons: first, I love cameras and motorcycles. Second, I was getting paid to. Gotta pay off this camera gear some day. Until I get the rest of my holiday photos sorted out, here’s a treat I’d like to share…

If you were born in the 60s, which I was (depending on which time zone you were in), you probably drooled all over one of these. This is an all-original 1971 Schwinn “Pea Picker” bicycle. It was ridden by my friend Justin this weekend at the Cycle Hutt extravaganza, and I was blown away when I saw him come wheelie-ing out with it.

The SPEED Channel guys and I were taking a break and appreciating this relic. I suspect it’d be a very popular eBay item, if one was silly enough to part with it. One of the cameramen had just bought his replica a silver version of this bike, called the Grey Ghost. Schwinn started making the replicas in 2004.

I don’t know what would be cooler…the banana seat with sprung rear sissy-bar, the slick rear tire, or this: the Stik Shift. Ah, the 70’s. Who says they were all cheese?

I got some really amazing photos over the holiday weekend, all of them centered around the Cycle Hutt event and Jason Britton’s visit. Jason told me he didn’t mind how close I got when he was stuntin’, so I got some really sweet angles of him and Tony doing their thang. I’ll post pics from the weekend down the road as I sort through them.

How much courage does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

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These guys are hanging the lighting beneath the new Liberty Memorial Bridge. Rather then try to do it from below, which would be pretty tricky in most spots, they got themselves a contortionist truck and went over the side. Better them than me.

I don’t care much for scaffolds, ladders, and the like. I didn’t like heights at all in general until I spent some time working at the Big Sky Ski Resort back in the late 80s and early 90s. Countless trips on various chair lifts and gondolas solved that. I’m still a bit leary of things like bucket trucks, though…so to have to venture over the side of the bridge like that would freak me out.

There’s only one exception: if I’m holding a camera, of course! My friend Chris and I spent some time atop a fully extended Datsun forklift over at Cycle Hutt this weekend. It was a little wobbly in the breeze on Friday, but otherwise was fine. Saturday I worried a little bit about lightning, as some wet-looking clouds rolled in. I just kept my eye to the viewfinder and kept shooting.