The Odd Sock: Today's walk report: 121722

Another, I gotta get out of the house walk. It was somewhat meandering and totaled only about 2.6 miles but again, the intention was getting outside and moving about. Once again Docken joined me on the phone and her company was appreciated. Here are some pictures...

There was male Calypte Anna hummingbird, Dusty, enjoying cape honeysuckle flowers same as last week. Also the same was the blinding glare of sunlight coming into my face from about two o'clock. I could not see my subject and had to put faith in autofocus.

What do you do when a turkey vulture is circling overhead? You take pictures. of course.

Wandering around, I checked the sundial. According to my camera data, this image was taken at 11:47.

I walked a bunch and with the lack of subject matter for pictures I decided to head for the car and drive up the hill. There was a cross between clear skies and hazy clouds but overall it was cool and pleasant. Despite recent rains I was a little surprised to see this much green blanketing the mountains looking north. This is kind of Chatsworth, Porter Ranch and perhaps a little Granada Hills with the Santa Susana Mountains taking up the rear.

To the south, on the campus cross-country course, a course I ran in High School (there was no joy) there was what I found to be a rather odd cycling event. I am no stranger to cycling but I had to look this up. As it turns out it's an event called, Cyclo-cross. Here's how Wikipedia describes Cyclo-cross...

Cyclo-cross is a form of bicycle racing. Races typically take place in the autumn and winter, and consist of many laps of a short course featuring pavement, wooded trails, grass, steep hills and obstacles requiring the rider to quickly dismount, carry the bike while navigating the obstruction and remount.

I'm gonna guess bicycle resellers must love Cyclo-cross. The portion of the course I could see looked pretty tame.

On my way home, I took the scenic route. Candy Cane Lane has been a local Xmas decoration extravaganza all of my life. Unfortunately, a lot of it is the same old tired decorations that have been used for over 60 years. However, this is the first time I've ever seen this banner coming into the neighborhood.

I had to park and walk a ways to get that picture. Going back to the car this German Shepherd started barking at me. I quietly called him or her a good dog and it looked at me as if it wanted to be my friend.

Last year this house had a pirate ship complete with skeleton passengers dressed in Santa hats, this year the residents decided to don the hats on cactus plants.

That's all for the walk but wait! As a special bonus... I was going through content on ancient hard drives the other day and since it's the holiday season and I found a few "lost" images, originally created for Christmas time, I thought I'd include a few. Rudy the reindeer was first drawn in 2009 (I think) Frosty came shortly thereafter. I think all of these images are from 2010-2011.