Falcon @ MindSay

I just found out that a friend of mine is working on a "camel ranch" in the Northern Territory! I'm still here in Canberra living my life with few if any changes to my routine and he is off experiencing things that never even crossed my mind as possible. Fear of the unknown is my discount card. I always take it with me and know where it is at all times.

In other news I converted several misguided teenagers recently. They were of the opinion that the XBOX was a system comparable to other consoles. I showed themt he error of thei ways. Not a day went by that they did not forsake their devil box for the wonder and majesty of my Gamecube. I've been staying at a friends house recently and goddamn have we had the best time ever. I made a new record for my longest time-span spend in total consciousness. Forty-four hours. Hell-freakin'-yeah! I slept for a cozy seven hours afterwards.

I must say, Super Smash Brothers Melee is nothing but a tremendous improvement upon the orignal. The original maintains a place in my heart, though it is Melee that I believe is one of the greatest fighting games ever produced. Sure there are all those "technical fighters" in which you have to learna ll the moves and work out what beats what. They strike me as a revoltingly complex game of paper-scissors-rock. Nothing more. I will add that King from Tekken rocks though. Man ... goddamn. All Smash Brothers needs for a person to become good at it is to play it. Here's how it goes. Choose character: Captain Falcon. Because you're a noob, choose one move to use over and over: Falcon Kick. By the time the other noobs work out how to beat Falcon Kick you've deicded you want to start using Falcon Punch. In the end you'd mastered his four special moves. Yes, only four. None of that "two-hundered different moves" crap. In the end you think you'd got the basics of the game and you all change characters and proceed to beat the crap out of each other yet again.

I can't think of a game with a better learning curve, but then I'm in love with Nintendo. I can't get over them. However, other systems do have fine offerings. I'll admit that. It's be stupid not to.

Not sure what I was saying, suffice it to say that I don't think I'll ever get sick of Smash Brothers. My bastard mates always provide a challenge. Except Mark always uses Fox. Goddamn. I'm learning slowly how to beat him. Slowly. Prick.

On with the show...

When we woke up on the first day, and saw that the sun was shining, we decided it was a good day to go out for a whale watching tour, which we really wanted to do.  Most places were closed, but one guy, Captain Jim, runs all year long.  It was cool.  He doesn't take out more than 6 people at a time, and on this particular day, it was only me and my wife.  Some of the tours are on large boats with tons of people.  His way of doing it is cool, because you really get to know him, and he tells you all kinds of things about the islands, the wildlife, and the history of the area.

Unfortunately, we didn't see any orcas, but we saw a lot of other wildlife, and the scenery was amazing.  I've decided not to post much of the scenery, in order to put up more wildlife shots.  Now, I realize some of these pictures are a little blurry, and maybe tilted a bit.  It's hard to take pictures with a 300 mm zoom on a swaying boat :P

The first bit of wildlife we spotted was a bald eagle sitting atop a tree.  As I've mentioned in other entries, I love my telephot lens.

The closest thing to an orca that we saw was a Dall's Porpoise.  Many people who don't realize what they are think that they're baby orcas.  It's easy to see why.  They were fast (can swim up to 30 mph), and getting pictures was tough.  This was the best I got.

Apparently, peregrin falcons are rare to see.  Captain Jim was telling us that he once had a birdwatcher on his boat who had never seen one, and was going blind.  They spotted one during the tour, and the guy cried because he thought he'd never get to see one.  Pretty cool.

We crossed into Canadian waters, and the Canadian Navy came after us!  Kidding, they were only out on an exercise and didn't pay any attention to us.

For the first couple hours, we had seen seals poking their heads out of the water every now and then.  Then, finally, a rock covered with harbor seals.

Here's an interesting part...  At some point, some guy bought this little island and wanted to turn it into "Safari Island."  He imported a couple breeds of deer from Europe and big horn sheep from the Middle East.  Now the guy who owns Oakley owns the island (and built a giant bomb shelter on it... ummm... ok) but the animals are still there.  Here's a fallow deer and big horn sheep.

We saw many different types of duck, but none were as pretty as the harlequin duck.

The last animal we saw was a sea lion.  These boys are big.  Unfortunately, we didn't see any out of the water.

So, no whales, but the tour was still really cool.  It's something I would recommend to anyone.

That's it for Honeymoon installment #2.  Next will be some random images from around San Juan Island that didn't involve the town of Friday Harbor or the whale watching.