I enjoy my life. I am single. My son is grown up and for now he has moved away. This gives me all kinds of time after work to play. When he was young I coached little league and the summer traveling team. We did as much as we could but baseball took up a lot of our time. Now that I live alone and get out of work pretty early, I usually have plans to be outdoors most evenings.
I get bored very easily when I'm not doing something. I don't watch much television and I don't enjoy sitting around "relaxing". So I fish, hike and go birding. These are things I really love to do. Writing these posts really lets me relive memories. I usually keep any personal problems out of my blog. Unless a problem hinders my chances to go outside (such as an injury) I don't write about it. Why? because that way my blog is a source of enjoyment for me. I don't want to read about money getting stolen out of my car or when I need to get my car fixed. Besides being boring, it is depressing.
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| Keith Lockhart, The Boston Pops, and the Fat Man in the Red Suit |
I went on 68 daytrips this year. I don't have a set rule on what constitutes a daytrip. Usually it has to last more than a few hours. However that rule can be changed if the "daytrip" is expensive such as a concert or a play. If it is something I look forward to, it basically counts. Each of my trips to New Hampshire count as one even though I was up there 2 1/2 days each time.
I broke it down. The numbers do not add up exactly to 68. Sometimes I did more than one thing. An example would be I went birding all day Feb 26. That night I saw Garth Brooks with my brother, Also, if I count fishing as a daytrip, it is an all day event. Fishing after work does not count as a daytrip. The one trip I try to do a couple times a summer I never made it to was Prudence Island. I just never found the time.
Birding 20
Oudoor fishing shows 2
Fishing 14
Concerts 3
Sporting Events/Fireworks 5
Guided Walks 2
Overnights (including NH) 9 (added together these 9 trips are all or part of 26 days)
Local Hikes 5
Plays 5
Aquarium/MFA 2
Christmas Themed (not plays) 3
Skiing 1
It is amazing rereading. The early part of the year was dominated by all day birding. As the weather got warmer, those trips were replaced by overnights to NH followed by all day fishing trips.
Birding (and animal species)-
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| Marbled Godwit and Willet |
As I mentioned I destroyed my old record of species I've seen. I saw 182 species of birds. My old record was 144. The 182 species are only birds in New England. I didn't count the other 17 species from South Dakota. The reason being, I don't live there so I can't add them to next years list.
If I would have put in more effort later in the year, I possibly could have hit 200. I chose to stop chasing rare birds for the most part. It was putting too many miles on my car. The easiest bird that I missed was a Carolina Wren.
I saw 161 species in Rhode Island. I broke my previous record in RI alone. There is a website that many local birders keep track of there tally on. There's roughly 25 people that sign up. I came in thirteenth place. I was in that position basically from Jan 1 when everyone was out counting new birds for the year. The guy in front of me saw 30 more species than me, so I wasn't going to move up the ladder. I could have seen another ten or so species very easily if the three pelagic (offshore) trips I signed up for didn't get cancelled. I was really looking forward to those trips.
As I said above, I saw 161 species in RI. There were a total of 302 seen. The leader saw 285 of those species!!! There were eleven people that saw over 200 species in RI alone. I still have a long way to go. The best bird I saw all year was a Yellow Billed Loon in March at Race Point. I met people from as far away as Toronto and New YorkCity who were looking for it.
Other Animals
Random thoughts about the year
-Obviously my early summer was about my South Dakota vacation. I saw so many wild animals. I won't relive it here because I broke it down in so many posts in July, but it was awesome.
-I have two "bucket lists". One is what I try to get done in a year such as hike a certain number of mountains, or write a fishing article. The other is my life list. These are big things I really want to do, but couldn't possibly do in the same year. I knocked four of them off the list this year
1. See a rattlesnake
2. Listen to coyotes howl from a campsite (not a campground)
3. See the northern lights
4. Go to the Boston Pops
The northern lights were around one night last winter. DJ woke me up to see them. They didn't dance around the sky but the sky was streaked with pinks and blues.
-I made it a point to do a bunch of Christmas themed things this year. I hate the short days of December and there hasn't been many stripers around the last few winters. Making plans to see plays, church bazaars, and the Boston Pops always gave me something to look forward to. This was a great December despite my son moving to the Grand Canyon.
- I went to five plays this year and saw fireworks four times.
I assume this trend will continue. I really enjoy seeing plays. It doesn't matter if it is a small community theater or a big showing of A Christmas Carol. I usually get lost in it.
- I am quite sure next year when I write this, skiing will have its own paragraph. I can't wait to go again.
-By far the celebrity death that bothered me the most was Eagles singer Glenn Frey. The Eagles songs mean a lot to me. I played Peaceful Easy Feeling many times when we drove through the desert many years ago. Everyone talks about Prince, but I'll Take it Easy anyday!
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