A hike and a movie

Mt. Sefrit from lookout at Goat Mountain

I could have gone skydiving this past Sunday, it was such a beautiful day, but I opted instead to go on an "extra" hike with four other Trailblazers. We were scheduled to head out somewhere on Monday (yesterday), but the weather was so much better on Sunday that we decided to find out how much snow has fallen on Goat Mountain in the High Country. Plus, I leave for a southern California skydiving adventure tomorrow, and since I will miss Thursday's scheduled hike, I was happy to go.

Criss-crossing contrails

It was very warm and beautiful, with a high dew point, making contrails from jet aircraft visible all over the sky. We ran into snow at about 4,300 feet, but it was sunny and warm, so it got slushy pretty fast. There was somewhere around a foot of fresh snow on the lookout at Goat Mountain, with evidence of previous snows that had already melted. This might all be gone by this coming Thursday, while I will be (with any luck) having a great time at Lake Elsinore.

Taken by Diane with my camera

I used my cellphone camera for the best pictures of the day (those first two were taken with HDR on my iPhone 4S), and this one was taken with my Canon PowerShot. Notice the definition and especially the sky is much better in the first two pictures. I also took some closeups using my Camera+ app, and they were very good. It makes me think maybe I will stop carrying my Canon on these hikes. I am simply amazed at the quality I can capture with my cellphone!

Bullock and Clooney in Gravity (not taken with my camera)

Yesterday I went to see the new Gravity movie with my friend Judith. (This is a different friend than my usual movie-going partner Judy, who wasn't available.) First of all, let me say that the special effects in this movie were simply amazing. But I don't think I will hurry to go to another movie at the Regal theater any time soon. The level of sound, throughout not only this movie but all the movie trailers, was incredibly painful to my ears, even with ear plugs. I ended up giving away all the extra ear plugs I had with me, since there were other people who couldn't deal with the sound level. It was damaging not only to my ears, but I felt it in my entire body. No more.

That said, the movie itself was pretty awe-inspiring in 3D. Sandra Bullock did a great job, too. But it was very thin on plot and basically told the story of one person who survives a catastrophe in space. There were a couple of groaners involving space itself, but that's only going to bother people who know anything about orbital mechanics. Since their original space station has been destroyed, Clooney suggests that they use his jet pack to get over to the International Space Station. Well, from this review by Dennis Overbye at the New York Times, I found a salient quote:

To have the movie astronauts Matt Kowalski (Mr. Clooney) and Ryan Stone (Ms. Bullock) zip over to the space station would be like having a pirate tossed overboard in the Caribbean swim to London.

If you go to see the movie, be sure to take ear plugs and please, let me know if you enjoyed it or not, and why. I'm all ears.
:-)