Christmas in July

Let’s face it, the economy isn’t the best right now. People are pinching pennies and ditching discretionary items to afford gas and groceries or mortgage interest expenses that are at multi-year highs. Not the time when one might be willing to drop half a grand on some frivolous fun… or is it? 

We’ve been shopping around for items we’ll need when we head off to Europe later this summer. It’s amazing how much we’ve already spent on such things as tickets, tours, travel bags, clothes and power converters… yet still there is more. We keep watching videos and making notes of things to purchase, even as we have no idea how we’re going to carry it all with us. 

One of the things we’ve learned in studying up on Amsterdam in The Netherlands is that it is the bicycle capital of the world. Nearly everyone there owns a bike, and there are more bikes in the city than people. That mode of transportation makes sense in a place that favors pedestrians over vehicles, and regardless of need it is a hell of a way to enjoy the scenery rather than from behind the windshield of a gas-powered car or bus.

We likely won’t be cycling while visiting Amsterdam, but it isn’t surprising that the romance of two-wheeling has rubbed off on us these past few months during our trip planning. That, coupled with our growing awareness of electric vehicles here in the states, has sparked our recent interest in e-bikes and e-scooters as alternative forms of exercise and transportation.

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LENN WAS BITTEN by the EV bug a few years ago, shortly after leaving his commuter job behind and giving his trusty Toyota Corolla to our son Ben. No longer did we need to rely on a second car as Glenn settled into a new routine at home before eventually taking on his current telecommuting gig editing content for Local News Matters. It is nowadays a rare occasion when Glenn needs to drive somewhere and can’t use Roni’s car or, in a pinch, take the big Ford F-150 that also sits in our driveway. 

But still he found himself longing for a simple alternative to get around town other than on foot. Walking is fine exercise, but not something one wants to do in the rain or extreme heat, and riding a bike means having to lock it up when you reach your destination, only to worry constantly that it will be stolen or vandalized by the time you return. 

That was how Glenn became interested in electric kick scooters. No longer the realm of childhood playthings, today’s crop of scooters are sleek and practical for short trips to work or school. They are the go-to mode of transportation for college students who find them cheaper and more convenient than owning a car, and they are gaining popularity as “last-mile” transportation for commuters between trains and offices, where a circuitous journey by bus or Uber might not be practical. 

So Glenn began researching e-scooters and watching videos about them, learning about the pros and cons and various features that other users found important. He also discovered that, like all consumer products, there is a dizzying array of models to choose from, ranging in price from a couple hundred to more than $4,000. It took a few days to discover a sweet spot balancing features and affordability at around $800. Still in the category of nice-to-have but not have-to-buy. 

The thing that moved Glenn off the fence from window shopper to purchaser was Prime Days, when in addition to various items we’d been saving for our trip, a scooter he’d considered also came on sale. The Segway Ninebot F40 normally goes for around $799, but Amazon offered it for just under $500. After thinking it over for a night, he hit the buy button on June 12. 

The scooter won’t arrive until July 23, after this newsletter goes to bed, so we won’t have a full review until next month. But for now, Glenn continues to watch videos about scooter life and anticipate his package like a kid on Christmas morning. It really is Christmas in July.

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T MAY NOT have been Christmas, but Glenn did have a birthday on July 1, celebrating 58 years. In a quirk of fate, that day also coincided with the annual Oakley Summer Fest (formerly known as the Oakley Cityhood Celebration) at Civic Center Plaza downtown, where Roni had a booth for the Ironhouse Sanitary District. So we didn’t go overboard with our birthday festivities, knowing that between the festival, Ben’s work and the 100-degree heat, none of us would be up for more than flopping on the couch by that evening.

Not wanting to spend the afternoon alone at home, Glenn decided to walk up to the festival and meet Roni for the final few hours of the show. It was miserably hot, but fortunately Roni’s booth was inside the air-conditioned council chambers at City Hall. The festival’s organizers had decided to hide all the community and nonprofit booths inside while making more space for the craft vendors and carnival zone. Too bad for them, but good news for anyone lucky enough to not be in the heat. 

Roni’s booth included a board where kids could make their handprint out of construction paper and tape it up for display. Glenn added his own artwork to pass the time while Roni talked with festival visitors about the virtues of recycled water. Fun stuff. Ben stopped by during his break at work and went over to La Costa to pick up a burrito and quesadilla for us to eat for lunch; too bad we hadn’t noticed that our favorite Giant A$$ Sausage booth was there or we would have gone for hot links instead. 

Back home that evening, we ordered dinner from Oakley Tavern that we were mostly too hot to eat. We did manage to save some room for ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery, making sure this time not to light the decorations on fire as we did for Ben’s birthday. 

For his main present, Glenn received an Insta360 X3 video camera and a variety of accessories that should come in handy during our trip to Europe. It was one of those gifts we likely would have purchased anyway, given we have been searching for a new camera to document our travels without having to spend the whole time with a camera stuck to our face. 

The Insta360 is not your typical camcorder. It comes with dual wide-angle lenses, one on each side of the camera, that each record half of the scene which are then stitched together via software to create a 360-degree image. Similar in other aspects to a GoPro camera, the Insta360 can be mounted in a variety of ways to achieve different special effects. It can be attached to a “vanishing” selfie stick that will disappear from your shot once the AI software does its thing. You can attach it to a cable (what they call “bullet time”) and swing it around you to make it appear as if you are being filmed by a drone. The accessory we were drawn to is a flexible lanyard that can be worn around one’s neck for a hands-free view of the scene. This should come in especially handy when we are in Amsterdam or on tours in the UK and just want to document our surroundings. Who knows, maybe we’ll decide to do a travel blog with the video one day. 

The biggest difference that will take some getting used to is how the video the camera records gets used. With a traditional camcorder, what you shoot is what you get. The camera only records what is in your viewfinder, and that footage is all you will see on playback. With the Insta360, the camera shoots a full 360 degrees no matter which direction it is facing. That means you have a vast degree of control over what gets presented in the final edit, since everything happens in the editing process. You can replay the scene looking from behind, to the side, straight ahead or any combination of dozens of angles and transitions. It is a steep learning curve for anyone who has never used a 360 camera before — like us.

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E BROUGHT OUR Insta360 to Cosumnes River Preserve south of Elk Grove on the Fourth of July to test out the camera. The nature preserve is an ideal venue for shooting in 360 degrees (even as the temperature was close to 100 degrees) because of the interesting terrain ranging from wetlands and prairie to woods of native oak trees. Our very first shot found us down by the banks of the marsh behind the visitors center where we watched huge crawdads crawling in the muddy shallows.

We then walked out on the boardwalk that crosses the river and followed the trail into the woods, where we used the long selfie stick to look up into the tree branches and take pictures of oak galls. We played with the camera settings to shoot time lapse video, take overhead selfies and zoom through tall grasses. On the drive back home via Walnut Grove and Highway 160, Glenn stuck the camera out the window to catch the passing scenery. 

If there was any concern about battery life or having enough storage space to capture all the footage we collected that day, our visit to Cosumnes only took about 28 gigabytes of storage on a 256GB card. And we didn’t come close to using all of the 80-minute battery. Just to be safe, we have since purchased an additional two 512GB microSD cards and an external battery charger with two additional spare batteries to bring our collection to four batteries. Along with the lanyard, selfie stick and Insta360 itself, everything fits comfortably inside a rigid case Roni bought Glenn as part of his present. The case is lined with thick foam to keep everything secure and protected while traveling. 

We are still in the process of learning the editing software for the Insta360, which will undoubtedly be the biggest challenge of using it. But so far we are impressed with the camera’s capabilities, and it should help produce some stunning video during our vacation.

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ITH ALL THINGS that bring joy in life, there is also the chance for sorrow. And so it has been with our short and bittersweet adventure with our “virtual kittens,” Laser and Skittles.

Last month we introduced you to the pair that came into our lives quite by accident when they showed up one morning on our front porch with mama, the little cat we affectionately refer to as Nomad because she roams our cul de sac as though she has no home — which she does, next door with our noisy neighbors. Like their mother, the kittens decided they preferred our porch to other places they might have gone. Probably because we took to feeding them cat milk and occasional handouts of dry kibble to keep them from wasting away to skin and bone, which they all appeared to be doing.

Skittles, the exceptionally shy younger sibling, had actually begun to warm to us. He was never quite comfortable enough in our presence to let us pick him up or hold him for more than a couple of seconds, but at least he’d gotten to the point where he wouldn’t go into hiding whenever we came by with the food.

The older kitten, Laser, clearly was the brave adventurer and not shy at all around people, the food dish, or even the neighborhood peacock when it came to call. He loved to stalk Skittles, and was usually the instigator when it came to play or getting into mischief — which can be endearing but also perhaps not such a desirable quality when living in the wild with all its hidden dangers. 

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HE NEIGHBORS SEEMED not to care that their cats spent 90 percent of the day on our porch and roaming our front yard. In fact, we often wondered if they missed them at all, considering how ravenous mom and her little ones were whenever we put food out for them. Did they never get fed at home? 

And then came the long Fourth of July weekend. The neighbors pulled their camper trailer out of the driveway, loaded themselves into it, and departed for a few days of vacation bliss while leaving the cats to fend for themselves on a weekend that saw triple-digit temperatures. No food. No water. No one home to check in on their welfare. 

Except us. 

It’s a good thing that we love cats, because others might not have bothered to look after them. The day we saw them sprawled out on the concrete porch in search of shade, we brought them water and food and watched them make short work of the offering. True, they were only our virtual pets and not our problem, but we had grown attached to them. We had come to love them, and they apparently us. 

Only the neighbor kids would occasionally swing by once they figured out the kittens were with us. They would stand at the edge of the porch, too uncertain about whether they should come onto it, pointing at the shrubs where Nomad and family liked to curl up. No one ever attempted to take them off the porch; it was more like they just wanted reassurance that the kittens were still around somewhere, even if it wasn’t to feed or care for them.

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HEN CAME THE evening of July 6. Roni went outside around 8 p.m. and they came running up to meet her, eager for the handout she brought them. She talked to them, watched them play for a few minutes, then came inside and closed the door while they dined on the porch. That was the last anyone saw of them. 

The next morning around 7 a.m., the neighbor kids came around looking for the kittens as they occasionally did. Later that afternoon, they came to the door asking if we had seen the kittens. Mom, yes, but not the young ones. Curious. It wasn’t the first time the kittens hadn’t shown themselves early in the day. We’d gone one day a couple of weeks before when they were missing in action all day, even as mom was on the porch. But they’d eventually returned that evening, no worse for wear. Not this time, though. 

Saturday came and still no sign. On Sunday we retrieved a soccer ball from the backyard for the neighbor boy, Benjamin, and asked if they’d had any luck finding their kittens. Still no. 

By now it was dawning on us that the kittens weren’t coming home. What could have happened to them between the time Roni last saw them and the neighbor kids came to ask about them? Had they encountered a predator like a raccoon or skunk that often appear in our neighborhood? Did they venture onto the side street and encounter a passing vehicle? We hoped not. Then there was another thought: what if the neighbors had dumped the kittens without telling their kids? For all the attention they gave them, maybe they decided three cats to feed and care for was too many and it was easier to ditch them in a field somewhere. 

There existed one other possibility, which was that the kittens either got collected off the street or were adopted into a forever home, where they are being cared for and loved. That is the scenario we prefer to cling to and would bring this tale to a happy resolution. 

We still have Nomad (whose name, it turns out, is Rosette.) She continues to hang out on our porch and we continue to feed her occasionally. It is a mutual loving relationship. But our experience with Laser and Skittles has reminded us that all pets, even virtual ones, can have a real impact on your heart.

Glenn, Roni and Ben