Bear Mountain Hiking

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Given the nice, cooler fall weather that we have had, we took the chance to take Shio and Emi hiking upstate around Bear Mountain at Lake Skanatati. The fall foliage was beautiful:

Shio is actually a very good hiker. We used an extra long leash so that he could go his own way, and he really enjoyed finding his own path while staying with the pack. Emi, on the other hand, was very nervous and tentative at first. It took her about an hour to get her courage up -- she wouldn't even climb over fallen branches in the beginning!

Of course, crossing little streams was very interesting. Shio would always try to find the driest possible path -- and most of the time he would do so quite effectively (much better than us humans actually). However, there was one particular crossing where there was a running body of shallow water that we initially thought Shio would be able to get over on his own. T was very patient and tried to lure Shio over. He was having none of it.

In the end, I had to carry Shio over...

All in all, it was a very fun 5.5 mile hike. And if you love taking photos as much as I do, then this time of year is the perfect time to go on these short trips with your pups!

P.S. The only downside to hiking is that both humans and pups are targets for ticks! I personally found 2 on my body (with one attached to my stomach!!) about 3 hours after the hike... YUCK!!

Photos taken with Leica M9 + Summilux-M 50mm and Olympus OM-D + M. Zuiko 12mm f/2.

Shio + Goo Goo vs. Coney Island

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We have talked about taking the pups out to Coney Island for a family field trip. The weather was beautiful, so it was a perfect day for it... ... Except the guy who booked the car before us ran 30 minutes late.

Shio, in particular, was not happy with this -- Whale Eye alert!!

When we finally got into the car, the two shibas immediately went to sleep...

After the 30-minute drive, we reached Coney Island. Shio immediately pulled us off the boardwalk and onto the beach.

Our final stop was, of course, Nathan's! On our way there, we admired the color signage that Coney Island is famous for.

All in all, it was a great way to spend a Saturday with the pack.

Photos taken with Leica M8 + Summicron-M 35mm f/2, and Panasonic GH2 + M. Zuiko Digital 12mm f/2. Processed with VSCO.

Labor Day Weekend, Part II

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We took Shio to yet another dog run near us -- Rapelye Dog Run. But this time, Shio was surprised to the downside; the dog run was quiet, boring, and seemed abandoned almost...

The last photo is great, because Shio basically tells us exactly how he feels about this particular dog run...

Photos taken with GH2, M. Zuiko 12mm f/2.

Reboot

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Sorry for the lack of new posts. Two months ago we were very excited to have migrated Shio's site to Squarespace.

While there were many things we liked about it, we ran into 2 key issues:

  1. Ting could not gain administrator rights to the site, and thus was not able to efficiently work on the blog. We asked tech support to help - there is no way around it
  2. We could not gain access to our content - unlike WordPress where all our content resides on our server. This would severely limit our flexibility going forward (not to mention the fact that we didn't have full access to our work scared us a bit)

As such, we took the weekend to basically migrate everything back onto our own server, running on WordPress.

While it was a painful process, we managed to add a few more tweaks to the site that we like - especially the sliding Twitter sidebar to the left there.

Hopefully it will be a while before we have to revamp the site again!

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"It's ok dad. I go to Apple Store wif you to cheer you up!"

Photos taken with GH2, M. Zuiko 12mm f/2.