Up for another quick intrusion of current events into my blog here? So it turns out we might be losing our favorite satellite radio station.
SiriusXM decided to move Deep Tracks from the channel 27 it's had for decades up to some very high number that might not even exist. They announced the decision only a couple days ago. Hosts on the station have talked about how much notice they did not get. And they haven't given reasons, of course, although ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger tells me that forum consensus is that's what the corporate overlords do when they figure a station has too old an audience for the good channels.
This won't affect bunnyhugger immediately. She has a satellite subscription for her car, and it carries over to her phone and computer, so she can listen to it anytime she wants whatever channel it's on. Ah, but where we mostly listen to it is through DishTV, which signed up for whatever the heck package they have, and haven't thought about it since. What they rebroadcast are mostly the low-number channels, although they have kept the 50s and the 60s music stations despite those being exiled to Old Person Numbers.
Anyway I don't look forward to losing Deep Tracks, if it turns out that tomorrow --- moving day --- sees it gone from our satellite service. It is, without exaggeration, the channel we listen to most, because it does pretty good at having a broad enough playlist. It also plays enough of The Kinks that we joke that it's bunnyhugger's iPod. It's also the only channel SiriusXM seems to offer that plays prog rock, a strange gap in its offerings.
By the time I think about this tomorrow I guess I'll know whether it's continuing on channel 6027 where I've been listening to it for a decade now. And yes, yes, I concede, they need to change their lineup now and then and keep it fresh, but why don't they change out the channels I never heard of and wouldn't miss if they were gone? They never change those, so far as I've heard.
Well, let's get back to looking at a tree park with amusements, Gilroy Gardens:
The biggest shock on the monorail ride: raccoons! These animatronics were hidden behind the sign for the Quicksilver Express, and explain the giggling we heard around there but couldn't place.
Here's another view of the Four-Legged Giant Circus Tree.
In the background on the left you can see a stage that's a sort of mockup old-time grocery store shelf. We missed seeing The Musical Market Show, both times we visited, but it looks like something animatronic-driven and that's got to be great.
Among the features in the park are various educational pieces, such as this one about hydroponics, which have long been an important growth field for elementary school science fair projects where you grow a lima bean in a Dixie cup.
Coyote Junction is one of the stops of the Train Station. The other stop is near the carousel and you've seen pictures of it, but not seen it get attention.
And now here's Bonfante Falls, with a great supply of water and, you can see, a rare non-vegetable-themed ride sign.
Trivia: 39 kilograms of high-energy food bars, each of 300 calories, were loaded onto Skylab 4/3 as part of 72 kilograms of food supplementing the supply already on the station. (Food for all three missions had been loaded on the station before its original launch in May 1973, although there were concerns the heating caused by the launch accident spoiled some of it.) The food bars came in chocolate chip, crispy, and flake, and with three coatings, of vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry, so there would be nine options. Source: Skylab: A Chronology, Roland W Newkirk, Ivan D Ertel, Courtney G Brooks. NASA SP-4011.
Currently Reading: Rocky and Bullwinkle: Complete Newspaper Comic Strip Collection, Volume 2, Al Kilgore.
