July 27
I was a little bit stiff when I woke up and so when I got out of bed I did some stretches to help loosen up my muscles. I should have gone outside; the floor in my apartment is wood and it's kind of slippery underhoof sometimes. Not as bad as the bathtub was before I got the mat, but it's easier to do deep stretches when you can really dig your hooves into something. I learned that from an earth pony.
It was a nice day outside, and I thought that I'd start with a short flight to warm up my wings, then do some trotting, and fly back home for lunch. Then I thought I'd go and see the makers and find out if they could come up with some kind of harness for my GoPro.
While I ate breakfast, I considered whether I wanted to wear my camera or not. It was going to be an easy flight, so even if it slipped off I could catch it, and even if I had to land to adjust it that wasn't a big deal.
So I put on my camelback and my vest and then I sat on my rump and pulled the camera-holder over my head. It was kind of stretchy, so it gripped pretty well.
If I was going to turn the camera on, I would have to take it back off, 'cause I couldn't use my hooves on the buttons.
Since it was just for practice right now, I left it off. Nobody would want to watch a movie of me flying to the nature center anyways.
I flew low, so that I didn't have to bother the airplane directors, and went straight to their pasture and dropped in at the far end, away from the deer. Deer didn't like new things, and ran off into the woods whenever something scared them.
My GoPro had stayed on all the way over here, so now it was time to see what it would do when I was trotting.
I did an easy lap to warm up—I hadn't been doing as much legwork as I ought to have, mostly because I didn't like cantering and galloping on sidewalks. With how close the nature center was, though, that really wasn't a good excuse.
I picked up speed a little bit on the second lap, and when I was on the straight leg that went to the high point, I went to a full-out gallop.
That turned out to be a little much for the GoPro, and I felt it begin to slide up my head, until the strap got caught on my ears, which was really annoying, and I had to stop and pull it back down. Which told me all I needed to know about the head-mount: it was okay for gentle use, but in a storm, it would be gone by the time the first big wind gust hit, and I'd never find it again.
So I didn't go any faster than a canter after that, and my GoPro stayed on my head where it belonged.
When I started to get tired, I made one last trot around the path, and on the uphill side I changed into a canter even though my legs were starting to get tired, just so when I reached the peak I could let my wings take over.
It wasn't quite as fun as doing it at a full gallop, but it was close.
I kept up my speed as I climbed above the trees, and then I peaked out at about two hundred feet and dropped my nose down to keep my speed up, and then just for the fun of it I went to the first road as fast as I could, until I angled across Westnedge. Douglas Avenue swings by really close to it for some reason.
I followed Douglas Avenue until it angled east, and I went west to get back to my apartment.
I decided that I'd pamper myself with a bath, and started filling up the bathtub before I took off my equipment. It felt weird to take off the GoPro harness; the way it had been squeezing down on my head made it feel like my head got bigger when I took it off, and it kind of tangled up my mane some.
It felt really good to lie in the bathtub, even though I couldn't stretch out my wings over the water unless I turned sideways and scrunched myself up against the edge.
The bath would have been nicer with some bath salts, too. I wonder if humans have those? I'd have to ask Meghan.
When I felt fully relaxed, I got out and drained the bathtub and shook myself off and went into the bedroom to have lunch.
As I was eating, I looked at the bag of birdseed that was supposed to go to Aric's. I'd had trouble with the last one, and I didn't want to risk dropping it on somebody below me on my way over to his house, which meant that the sensible thing to do would be carry it on my back.
There was a way that earth ponies lifted heavy things up onto their backs, and I kinda knew what it was because I'd seen them do it plenty of times, but it wasn't anything that I'd ever tried, and even when I got partway under it, I had trouble lifting my head up to slide it down.
I'd never thought that earth ponies had strong necks, too.
I could use my wings to shift it a little bit side-to-side, and that got it centered, and that was about when I started to think how I was going to get down the stairs and open the door at the bottom. Flying off the balcony wasn't an option; with it crosswise on my back, I couldn't really use my wings.
Then I got the bright idea to slide it further back to clear them, and I could sort of bend my legs and hop it back which worked pretty well once I got the hang of it. I'm sure Aquamarine would have been laughing if she'd seen me.
That idea didn't even make it over the balcony railing. As soon as I started to lift off, the weight back there pushed my rump down, and I just managed to level out before it slid all the way off. But I wasn't going to lift off, not with it unsecure.
So I had no choice but to resort to walking down the stairs with it pressing against my neck, and then when I opened the door hop it back until it was centered on my back.
After that, it didn't give me any more trouble. Every now and then it wanted to shift, but I could use my wings to get it back.
When I was finally in his backyard, I dropped it off my back (gently, so the bag wouldn't break) and opened the garage door, then I gripped it in my forelegs and flew it in and set it on the bench. Then I thought about the mouse—or mice—and how it would be better off in a metal container where they couldn't get to it.
There were some metal boxes with tools in them, and I suppose I could have filled them with seed, but I would have had to empty out the bag into them, and it would be really inconvenient when I needed to fill the bird feeder again. I could have put them in the cab of not-Winston, but I didn't feel like taking it back out of the garage.
Then I saw his icebox, tucked away in a corner, and it was big enough. So I got it down and opened the lid and jammed the birdseed bag into it, and when the lid was closed again I was satisfied that would stop the mouse.
I flew back home and got my GoPro, then flew over to the building where the makers worked. It took a little bit of searching to find it, because I couldn't quite remember how Peggy had gotten there, and a lot of buildings look kinda the same from the air.
I found it eventually, though, and landed outside. There were a bunch of cars parked around it, so I went inside.
Karen was there, and a couple of boys that I remembered from before but I didn't remember their names at all, which made me feel kinda bad.
Well, they were happy to see me and it turned out that they made the rope for tying up a cloud. I'd kind of forgotten about that, and of course they wanted me to try right away, but I didn't have my flight gear (I'd stayed low so I didn't need it) and there weren't any clouds in the sky anyway.
When I told them that I wanted a harness so that I could fasten my GoPro well enough to use it in a thunderstorm, they got really enthusiastic, and Karen went into a little side room and brought out a harness like the one I'd tried on at Best Buy. I told her how it wouldn't work, and she said that she'd make it work, and all we had to do was figure out how to adapt it to me.
So I stood there while she fitted it on me and took measurements with her tape—one of the boys who was called Conner wrote down all her measurements—and then she got some pins and bunched up the harness and it was a little bit better but still didn't fit right. She and Conner debated about that a little bit, and then they sketched out something that they thought might fit better.
Karen went back into the side room and brought out a roll of narrow cloth, like what the bottom part of my camelback straps were made of, and started building a harness around me, and then I thought to tell her that I would be wearing a camelback when I wore the GoPro.
So that made things different, because they had to account for those straps, too, but then she thought that it might make it easier, because they could put buckles on my camelback straps and then all it would need was a loop around my back.
I didn't have my camelback, but they had a backpack that was kind of similar, so I put that on and she made some more measurements and once she had something she thought would work, she had me move my head around to see how I got in and out, and before too long she said that she knew what to make.
She told me to come back Friday afternoon, and we'd do a final fitting, and hopefully there would be some clouds then so that I could use my rope.
I flew back home, and out of the corner of my eye I was starting to see clouds off to the west, and if I'd had my flight gear, I would have turned around and gone back so that I could wrangle a cloud.
Before I ate dinner, I checked the weather on the computer. I'd been thinking of flying south all the way to the 80 and 90 Highway; that was about 37 miles each way, which was just a little bit longer than my flight to Grand Rapids had been. The forecast said that there was about a 50% chance of thunderstorms tomorrow, though, and I didn't want to tire myself out with a long flight if I was needed for weather patrol, so I thought that maybe it would be smart to check the weather again in the morning and then decide what I wanted to do.
After I'd eaten, I sat down on my papasan and read more of Isaiah. He said that once God got done being mad at the Israelites, he was going to be mad at the Assyrians, and then He was going to strike down Babylon and the Philistines and Moab and then Damascus and Cush . . . it sounded like He was mad at everyone for not following his rules. Isaiah even said that God was going to devastate the Earth, even though He'd promised not to do that anymore after the flood. That was kind of worrying, because He'd even made a rainbow to remind Noah and Noah's children of His promise.
I thought that maybe as long as He kept sending rainbows, that meant that it wasn't time for Him to lay waste to the Earth yet. That was something that I could ask Liz about. She would know.
When I read a little bit further, Isaiah also said that God was going to do good things for the Israelites who followed His rules, so maybe things weren't as bad as I thought that they were going to be. And I had to remember that what the Bible said was a long time ago, so maybe all the things that Isaiah had said had already happened and I was just reading about it afterwards.
And I did know from reading that sometimes even a wise, faithful man didn't know everything that God did.
It would have been so much simpler if God had written the Bible Himself.
I should have finished Isaiah, but I felt like taking an evening flight around the neighborhood. So I put on my flight gear and took off, making a big oval that went over Western Michigan's campus and downtown.
I was yawning by the time that I got back to my apartment, so as soon as I got out of my flight gear, I lay down on the futon and fell asleep.
Noah's Ark is one of the hardest parts of the Bible to take literally. Technically, no rainbows means that God changed several fundamental laws of physics. I'd argue that there were rainbows, they just had no meaning.
I'd also point out that God did NOT promise not to destroy the world. He only promised that he wouldn't do it by flood
I would
Misunderstanding incoming
A cloud harness, how more awesome can things get?
"Except first I'd have had to check if there were any cops nearby."
God Is Mad At Everyone is basically the OT's tagline.
Shouldn't Silver be looking for a salt lick? If someone suggested that, would it be considered racist?
Undeniably true.
I admit, I forgot about the cloud rope too. It'll be neat to see Silver give it a try, to say nothing of storm wrangling videos. And I do love seeing the makers. Speaking as someone who has the engineering capacity of a concussed snail, it's always neat to see people who can make physical things and who are enthusiastic about doing so.
7601944 With how salty anchovies are, I doubt that she'd need it.
And now I'm imagining Silver hopped up on Bath Salts and trying to take a bite of someone. Horse bites can be no joke.
you know nothing miss Glow ! people would pay to watch a whole day what you do ^.^ well except for the adult parts
haha yeah silver. that would have worked out pretty well.
Considering Silver Glow sparks after thunderstorms, I'm pretty sure the GoPro will be fried at the end of her weather patrol.
How'd they pull off the cloud anchor?
Silly Silver Glow, Flying to the nature centre firs thing? Lots of people would Pay to watch you stroking the dawn for morning wood.
Next on Survival GoPro, GoPro verses Thunderstruck. AC or DC, You Decide.
Pikachu. Use Gigavolt Blast.
7602151 actually, some for that too!
7602157 I don't know, The standard waterproof case might actually be enough of an insulator to protect it from the static build up.
7602157 Considering her other electronics are fine....
7602264
You could be right. If there are no exposed metallic parts on it can probably protect the camera.
7602266
I supposed it was because they were built to specifications used in the flight industry. A GoPro is a piece of consumer hardware and static electricity can probably damage it quite badly even if not directly frying it. But, as said in my other reply, I might be wrong.
7602151
Actually, there probably would be people who'd pay to see the adult parts. The creepy pervert at Meijer, for instance.
GoPro harness that would be vary easy to do.
I am thinking vary much the same style as a western breastplate just smaller. I would attach to her camelback on top and the garth strap underneath.
fleece Breast Collar
7602316 I think it would be fine, so long as she doesn't ground out the surface charge through it.
I've seen enough video from gopros strapped to cars (especially plastic/composite bodied ones) to support the theory. They tend to build up a charge from passing through the air, and it's enough of a problem that all the modern city buses i have ever seen have a grounding strap trailing from under the engine to the pavement.
Fuel tanker trucks used to drag a chain behind them for the same reason. Idea being that the static doesn't discharge from the nozzle, igniting vapors in the below ground tank at the fuel station. Don't know what their current solution is.
7602551 Yeah, as long as she grounds through her hoof like before it will be fine. If she happens to land chest first, bye-bye Go-Pro. Vehicles that work around oil pipelines are required to have a static strip on them. Hanging from the rear axle to the ground seems to be the standard spot. I've never really paid attention to fuel tankers, but I assume they're the same.
7601944 7602003
And not just anchovies, human food in general.
7602003 I had anchovies once. On a pizza. Worst. Idea. Ever.
I would have suggested the GoPro mounted over the center of her shoulders on a mast looking over the top of her head.
There's a Youtube of an eagle cam doing that.
Welp, all caught up. This is wonderful. Cedric/Auquamarine OTP.
Hopefully Silver will be able to get some good aerial shots with her Go Pro once she gets the proper straps made for herself.
Silver really doesn't understand the internet, does she?
7601786
Well, it's true.
7601796
My dad's take on it was that the flood happened, but not really to the whole world. To the ancient Israelites though, when everything that they knew was flooded, it might as well have been the whole world,
That's true; however, Silver Glow didn't get that nuance.
7601815
Everybody would.
7601828
"Mister Salvatore, do you know where I can buy bath salts?"
"Why do you want bath salts?"
"To make me feel more relaxed."
7601900
Pretty much.
7601881
You can be sure that local law enforcement is going to get a call about there being a cloud tied to a tree.
7601944
As long as she keeps eating human food, she'll probably get all the minerals that she needs. But that's a good point, and something that someone should put in a PoE story.
7601993
The only worrying thing about the makers is that it's sometimes a very fine line between being creative and being a mad scientist. Remember the Roomba knife fight?
7602003
I was kinda thinking the same thing. Plus all the salt that goes into ordinary human food . . . but now I wonder if there are trace minerals that equines need but humans don't?
Horse bites are bad news. Especially if they get you with the fangs.
media.gettyimages.com/photos/burchells-zebra-yawning-rietvlei-nature-reserve-gauteng-south-africa-picture-id479676349?s=170667a
7602151
Yeah they would. And they'd probably pay extra for the adult parts.
It certainly would have made interpretation a little bit simpler.
7602157
I'm less sure about that, since it's insulated from her, so unless she sparks through it, I think it'd be okay.
7602196
It's a custom rope, braided with copper in it. That allows her pegasus magic to flow to the cloud as long as she's holding the rope.
7602255
If she takes a direct hit, odds are all her electronics are gonna be cooked.
7602264
I have to assume that GoPros have some EMP resistance built in, too. I've seen footage from inside a helicopter that's tying on to high voltage power lines, and during that process the helicopter's voltage goes from whatever it was when it was flying to whatever is in the power lines, and then back to normal. I don't know if those helicopters spark when they land, but I bet that they do.
7602316
The truth is that I don't know for sure. I think it would be fine, so long as she doesn't spark through it when she lands. I don't know what kind of cameras they're using in the helicopter in the above video, but you don't even see any static pops when the helicopter makes contact with the power lines.
7602332
Lots of people would pay to see the adult parts, I'm sure. The internet is for porn, after all.
7602460
That's similar to what I settled on. The only difficulty with using an off-the-shelf horse harness is that Silver Glow has to be able to put it on and take it off herself.
7602551
I've seen other trucks at pipeline projects and refineries that do that, as well. I think these days, the fuel trucks clamp a ground strap on something before unloading, but I'm not 100% sure on that.
7602777
I don't think that tanker trucks drag straps anymore, but I think that they do hook a ground cable on before unloading. I've seen pipeline trucks with ground straps, and oddly enough, when I was in Australia, a lot of cars seemed to have them.
And yes, if she sparks through her GoPro (or any of her other electonics), they'll be cooked. Likewise, if she actually takes a hit from lightning, that will probably do in her radios and GoPro.
7602881
It's like eating oily salt piles.
7603188
That would potentially be doable, although I think that the constant flexing of the mast might bother her, and there's a good chance she'd scrape it off. Mounted to her chest would still give a pretty good view and be fairly stable, and not really be in the way for her.
7603384
7603942
Of course she will. Man, wouldn't it be something to see a pegasus flying in a storm on a GoPro?
7608653
Not at all.
7611659 That poor abandoned cloud! Tied to the side of the road! It's even crying raindrops!
How could someone be so cruel?
Be glad that God isn’t like the one in Shin Megami Tensei.
To that version, all life in the universe is just fuel that thinks.
8215969
So in other words, it’s basically God of the Matrix.
7601796
"No more the water; the fire next time"
"Things would have worked out a lot better if, in the Garden of Eden, God had forbidden Adam to eat the serpent. " Mark Twain
11302939
mmm, tasty snake
m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61PFOmcLliL._AC_SX355_.jpg
A poor time in human history to be asking for "bath salts".
11331722
That's a fair point, although of course Silver Glow wouldn't know that.