Been burnt out too long

It has been a very long time since I posted anything here. I’ve burnt out a few times trying to restart. It’s my fault ultimately, but there are some semblances of excuses. Earlier on there was a long drought parching places I would go, leaving sickly vegetation and dried streams. Later on (just in time for the rains to return) I got back into a different hobby competing for my interest.

What was supposed to rekindle my interest after this backfired. I took a trip with my parents to the central Oregon Coast with the expectation of getting good splash pictures. I did, but it’s unfortunately a mind-numbing experience sifting through the resultant shots with burst fire (even at what’s considered a slow rate). I did get a couple interesting ones, but these are out of a few thousand: One has a spouting horn and a neighboring open splash going simultaneously, and the other hides a rainbow where I didn’t expect to find one. If I’m not mistaken, both of these are taken not far from Thor’s Well.

Here is a third one from the 804 Trail, where I also got a good up-close shot of a bird content to perch close to the trail.

Outside of this experience there were some good photos of other sights along the way. Yaquina and Heceta Heads’ Lighthouses come to mind especially.

Visible from Yaquina Bay State Park is the bridge carrying 101 over the bay. With the long construction work wrapping up on Deception Pass’s bridges closer to home I hope I can get more shots like this in the near future. The nearby tidal dunes look like they would be a good place to operate RC models, but the Coast Guard equipment nearby probably wouldn’t appreciate anything that flies or leaves a wake in the water.

On that note, the other hobby competing for my time is surface RC models. A neighbor (who used to be a sponsored TLR driver) got me back into this hobby after being absent since my teens, and I have ramped up all too fast on it. To be fair, the personal highlight of the whole trip was operating an old Stampede VXL in the tidal zone of Seaside’s beach. I also owe this hobby for another reason: I got my job of 3 years (and counting) as a field technician by going over how I once rebuilt the transmission on a relatively simple 2WD electric model during a phone interview. Fast forward to today, and I’ve worked with my grandfather piecing together a far more complicated transmission and driveline on a TRX4 built from a kit with many loose gears and bearings.

It might also be worth noting I basically pounded my head against a desk trying to curate material for this post, only to seemingly have it served to me on a silver platter when I was overcaffeinated.