Today was rough – I punctured – I will never forgive the hippo.

Sometimes an animal journeys with me with whom I have less history, today was one of those days. The reason in this particular case stems from a PII incident which I can’t divulge. Nonetheless, we still ventured out.

I have a lot of SmugMug albums and sometimes I have a hard time tracking down in which Category and SubCategory one resides or whether I’ve updated all the albums to use square thumbnails – thus was born smugfind.

No bike, no animals.

I look to my left at a fellow cyclist stretching along the railing as I pull the sheep from my bag and secure them for the shot.

We enjoyed our last trip to the Bloedel Reserve enough to become members and membership has its privileges – an annual mushroom walk.

The animals arrive pre-packaged now, nestled in their stuff sack, so I wasn’t exactly sure who made the trip this morning.

“There’s the polar bear. The polar bear is on the big boat. The polar bear is eating.”

Billy the Goat, fittingly (let’s see: the Badgers lost twice in a row with leads in the fourth quarter and the Cubs and White Sox got bounced from the playoffs (go Red Sox!)), traveled today on the big boat.

I was pretty excited today when my daughter presented both ZoZo and Amélie for a trip on the big boat. I’m pretty fond of the letter Z and zebras, less so the animal and more so the football official, my dad having officiated football throughout most of my childhood and the memories I have thereof. I knew just where I was going.