A goat on the Appalachian Trail (the one not in the baggy red and blue outfit)
It was right chilly in the DC area this past weekend, with temperatures in the low 20s - and the hawk was out, with wind gusts in the 30 mph range. Carl and I decided to return to hiking the Appalachian Trail and did an old favorite: the seven mile section from Gathland State Park down to Weverton Cliff overlooking the Potomac River.
In the pre-smart phone days, we both would have been carrying cameras but these days the camera in the phone is about it. About 4 miles into the hike up ahead I saw what I thought was someone hiking with llamas - unusual, but not unheard of in exotic places like Peru or Burkittsville, MD. Carl pointed out llamas don't have long beards, and that there were no hikers nearby the two animals.
Centaurs, maybe? We got within about 15 feet of them and it became obvious they were some very fancy goats, the kind that could win their category at the Westminster Goat Show. They were blocking the Trail and were looking at us while making chewing motions. Most of my knowledge of goats comes from watching Bugs Bunny cartoon and I assumed they were seeing us as giant tin cans, since cartoon goats always ate tin cans. Or they were measuring the angle to our rear ends, as another common outcome between goats and people seems to be the goats butting the people in their nether regions and the people flying through the air - in the cartoons, anyway.
Turns out they were probably just looking to see if we had any goat food we were going to give them, or if we were there to end their vacation out in the wild and take them back to whatever Olde Goate Farme they had escaped from. Carl fumbled around for 10 minutes to get his smart phone out, turn the camera and actually take a picture - as you see above by then the goats had moved off the trail and in the picture all you can see is a shape that that vaguely resembles some kind of large dog.
Cell phone cameras make the most awesome outdoor pictures just meh. I guess if we could have gotten the alleged goats to sit still for a face shot, much better.
A close up of the shoulder of some old goat.
Now, at the opposite end of the photography resolution spectrum is the MRI machine. A bit hard to carry around when you hike, but apparently if you damage your rotator cuff and it doesn't improve, doctors want a picture. A cellphone picture, not so much - noooooooo! They want to strap you to one of those giant machines that you see on House and all the medical shows, put a giant hoop around your shoulder and have this machine ingest you after first giving you all kinds of contradicting warnings about how bad it will be, even though you shouldn't worry because it is not that bad, even though it looks really bad.
After a lot of humming and clicking and clacking and weird, actually painful pulsing in my shoulder, they let me out and gave me a CD with pictures on it - it was just like the log flume ride at Great Adventure! I went home and loaded the CD onto my PC - and the Chinese hackers immediately stole all my passwords so do not open any attachments I may have sent you...
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