Solomon took it through 49.8/1:15-high (I think) at 600m then struggled a little the last 100m, finishing in 3:08.74. THAT is the Twilight Zone.
Symmonds/Sowinski/Loxsom/Murphy, 1:44.53 winning time. Fourth place is a sophomore at the University of Akron, 1:54 in high school.
Baby is thinking about crawling but right now he looks like a seal: push up, lean forward, flop, repeat.
The USA championships meet has been exciting so far. The 800m is tomorrow, and Duane Solomon promises to take the field into “The Twilight Zone” which either means 1:15 at 600m or they all really like reading, then after the nuclear apocalypse when they finally have time to read, Duane is going to break their glasses. But 600m splits sound good until you get to 300m and you’re really tired. Im going with Loxsom/Sowinski/Murphy with 1:44.8 winner (51.0/26.5/27.3).
For romping
Hanging out with baby, and lots of painting.
Today we picked up our friend who lives on the Big Island and drove our 4×4 up a dirt road to 8,000 feet on Mauna Kea, in search of the rare Hawaiian honeycreeper, the palila:
It is completely dependent on the native māmane trees that grown on the slopes of Mauna Kea. The palila eats the little beans out of the tree’s little green seed pods, like edamame. The māmane trees are getting eaten by introduced sheep and goats that have decimated the native dry forest, so the poor palila was the first animal named as a plaintiff in a federal appeals case that ended up in the supreme court. The palila won! But its numbers have dropped to ~2,000 (probably fewer).
We struck out on our first attempt to find the palila, despite hearing its call several times. Our second stop was higher up the mountain. We saw four pueos, the super awesome Hawaiian daytime owl, but no palila. Baby guy was having a grand old time. His parents put too much sunblock on his face and he looked ridiculous.
We had spent almost an hour scanning the māmane trees, which were filled with ʻamakihi (cool birds in their own right). Our friend told us the palila was bigger than the ʻamakihi so we should keep an eye out for a “chunky” bird. We gave it ten more minutes, and then started walking back to the jeep. But…what’s that chunky bird rustling in the lower branches of that māmane tree? Lance confirmed that it was the elusive palila!
It was a young one, but it was soon joined by a second one with a bright yellow head. They were pulling seed pods off the māmane, hopping over to a different branch, pulling out the seeds and devouring them, then getting more. They hopped around, doing their palila thing, for 15-20 minutes in full view. Then they were joined by two more — four palilas! That’s 0.2-0.3% of the total population. They chased each other around and flew off. It was a pretty rare and amazing show. Baby guy can tell all his friends that he saw the palila in the wild, because it’s not looking good for them on the 10-20 year time frame. Because we really need all these feral farm animals eating the native forests. That was a great idea. Baby was so exhausted from his bird watching that he fell asleep.
My job on Saturday was to hold baby, change poopy diapers, plus be the unofficial AP photo-journalist. Turns out they prefer fast pictures over good pictures.
Here’s us by a Chinook. I was changing baby when this came into land on the volcano and we ran away.
Baby likes these cutout things. Here he is practicing to be a scuba diver like his cousin:
and the robots are coming:
Me and baby and Architeuthis dux.
Noctambulator 