Overcast with temperatures in the 50s. Light to moderate winds.
With cloudy skies, I didn’t feel quite as compelled to spend most of the day out and about.
I spent part of the morning processing collections. This mostly involves making sure the collections are bagged and labeled with the date and location. Ideally I also put the iNaturalist observation number, though I haven’t always posted the observation yet. Today I went ahead and posted several observations so I could get them associated with the collection.
This afternoon I took my bike by the shop to get its one month tune up. I hadn’t ridden much in the first month or so, so waited on it. It only took a few minutes for the bike mechanic to get things readjusted.
Last month Paul had posted an observation of a liverwort he wanted me to check out. The liverwort was growing on a stump along the cross trail by the high school.
There are a handful of short single track trails for mountain bikes that go off the cross trail in that area. I hadn’t yet ridden any of them, but remedied that today.
Three of them are linked, and all but one of them are supposed to be one way, however when I came in to an intersection, it wasn’t always clear to me which were the allowable ways. It didn’t matter much, since no one else was on the trails.
I ended up looping around a couple of times to make sure I rode each of the paths on the town side of the trail. There was one more trail to hit on the Gavan Hill side.
This one turned out to offer three different loop options, one of which was posted as very difficult (others had rates of Easy, Difficult, and More Difficult). For serious mountain bikers, I’m sure all of these trails are very easy, but perhaps not so much for casual cyclists. It turned out the Very Difficult rating was due largely to a couple of short steep, rocky downhill sections. The steepest of those I wasn’t ready to ride today, but I didn’t have trouble with the rest (and I think with a little more time in, I wouldn’t have trouble with the bit I walked down today).
I did find the stump and took photos of several different mosses and liverworts. Time will tell whether I’m able to get solid names on any. Most likely if I do, it will require me to do some microscope work.
We had pleasant conditions at ultimate this evening. At first it didn’t look like we would have enough. A fifth person showed up and we played two on three, then we had a couple more show up, and we made it three on four. We finished out with three on three when someone else showed up just as two were taking off.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
