The past few days have been somewhat cursed one. First, as I believe I mentioned in a previous post and have mentioned in the Announcements section below my posts on my home page, I have had an ongoing dental issue the past couple weeks. I had scheduled an appointment to get it checked out in Albuquerque on my my way back west, and they determined it that I needed a root canal on the tooth, which due to it being a molar required the Endodontist, complicating the scheduling of the appointment. Since the pain was manageable at that time I decided to wait until I could fit it into my route a few weeks later without much disruption, and so I scheduled the appointment for March 17th. However in the past few days the pain has ramped up big time, which was the initial reason for the delay of the Week Nine post, as I was in such insufferable pain I couldn’t focus on writing.
And now, I wish I could just go back to dealing with exclusively the excruciating pain of the tooth, which has been massively surpassed on my list of concerns after today, while driving through Salt Lake City, Utah, I was rear-ended after having to abruptly brake to avoid hitting the car in front of me, who also abruptly braked. Unfortunately the car behind me clearly was either going too fast or not paying enough attention, as they slammed into the back of my car. At first the damage didn’t seem too bad, with the driver’s side rear panel having been cracked and come loose, but it was able to be popped back into place.
After a bit of driving, however, the panel came off entirely, and in the process one of the car’s sensors went out – which, from my understanding, has the potential to be a death penalty to a vehicle with the way modern car electronics work. Hopefully it won’t be anything too major and insurance should cover anything beyond the deductible, but at the very least this will probably sideline me for a bit as I head back to Albuquerque to get my car worked on and the root canal taken care of. Murphy’s Law strikes again, and I doubt for the last time; though hopefully this will be but a minor bump in the road and I will be back to birding in no time.
There as another instance of Murphy’s Law that occurred during Week Nine: my binoculars broke! I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I believe I barely bumped them on a metal railing as they were hanging from my neck and suddenly it became impossible to get the left and right sides in alignment, making them effectively unusable. Fortunately I have a backup in my old Nikon Monarchs, which are serviceable but a downgrade from my Vortex Razors – and also fortunately Donald over at Vortex is an absolute legend and has helped get me a replacement pair sent to New Mexico which I was going to pick up when I went to the dentists (and now, get my car fixed) while they work on getting mine checked out and fixed. Donald’s help in my abnormal circumstances of travelling have been incredible, but I also want to take this moment to shout out the incredible customer service provided by Vortex to all of their customers. I have been thoroughly impressed by the quality and build of both my Razor 10X42 Binoculars and my Razor HD scope, but beyond the products themselves Vortex has the most incredible no-questions asked warranty, fixing (or if they can’t fix, replacing) all of their products without exception. If you have a pair of Vortex Binoculars, Scope, etc, and it gets broken any way at any time, they will fix it free of charge. You don’t have a receipt? No problem. They were a gift from someone else or you purchased them second-hand – doesn’t matter, it’s still their product. That has to be one of the most incredible policies I have ever heard of, and I feel it warrants a shout-out.
Today’s events do mean the delayal of Week Nine’s post for one more day, however, but the silver lining in this is that if I do end up having to spend some time sidelined while waiting on vehicular repairs I should have plenty of time to finish up the Michigan337 series here on my blog and rework my route for the future to accommodate the delay.
I suppose I might as well make use of this post to make a couple other announcements, too. I have, in recent weeks, experienced a few issues of having plans fall through at the last minute in terms of meeting up with locals, resulting in me having birded with fewer people than planned in the past couple weeks. I made up for this by fortunately being able to join Sacramento Audubon for a bird walk on Sunday the 2nd and was able to get in last-minute contact with a couple birders in California, Nevada, and Utah. But, along those lines, please reach out via email at [email protected] if you are interested in birding with me if you are in a state I haven’t yet visited. I can definitely use more contacts is basically every single state.
Also a few people have reached out about supporting me in a way other than Patreon as they didn’t want to do a monthly subscription, and so I have linked my Venmo below in the “Support Me” section at the bottom of the blog. Additionally, I have made the Daily Notes on my Patreon purchasable for a one-time $10 purchase rather than a monthly subscription; all you need to do is create a Patreon account and then go to my Patreon (using the link below), and rather than subscribing as a paid member navigate to my Collections and purchase the Daily Notes Collection. I don’t ever expect anything from anyone, but the generosity of others so far this year, be it either through support via Patreon, or the hospitality of hosting me when I am in their area or taking me out to eat, has been nothing short of incredible. My belief that the birding community is truly one of the greatest groups in existence, being both so incredibly diverse yet also so incredible cohesive, has been totally reaffirmed every step of the way this year.
Assuming no other disasters arise, Week Nine’s post will be out at some point tomorrow. My apologies for the delay, but I hope you’ll all forgive me considering the spectacular series of malfortune that has befallen me these past few days.
Happy Birding.
First and foremost - thank you to anyone who chooses to support me in this insane adventure of mine. When I initially had this idea and began planning I didn't even consider the possibility that others would want to support me, but I am extremely grateful to those who have reached out to do so. For those who are interested in supporting me, I have set up a Patreon, which can be accessed by clicking the logo to the left (or you can send me a message via the contact page). Again, thank you for your incredibly generous support!
All Patrons will receive my "Daily Notes" 12-36 hours after the end of each day, and Patrons subscribed to the "Sponsor" tier will receive monthly postcards, mailed out between the 25th and end of each month.
For anyone who wishes to support me without using Patreon, clicking the "$" Icon will link you to my Venmo as well. There is also an option on Patreon to purchase my Daily Notes Collection for a one-time $10 payment without becoming a paid member, which will give you access to the Daily Notes without having to subscribe to a monthly subscription. For those who it requests the last four of my number for, it's 1403.
Thank you again to those of you who have supported me so far, it's tremendously generous and greatly appreciated.
Follow me on my journey to see 100 species in every Lower-48 State during 2025, experience some of the incredible places and events in American birding, and meet and bird with as many local birders as possible along the way.
Posts will be made every Wednesday (I will try to have them out by 5pm, but situationally they might be a bit later) and will cover the previous Monday through Sunday. Additional posts will be made periodically with no set schedule.
