Season 2, Episode 8: Josh Gant, 2020 Ocean County, NJ Big Year

Well, it's Friday, November 7, 2024.

I'm now five weeks late for my latest podcast, this episode with Joshua Gant, which was supposed to have appeared on October 1st.

Well, I got busy in October, actually in September as well, and I started a project that kept me pretty busy.

Not only was I building a set of cat shelves in the living room for the cats to play on this winter, I was building a dream project of mine.

I was born in 1960, and in 1966, the TV show Star Trek appeared, and by the time I was about 13 or 14, I was getting into woodworking, and I loved building the props from Star Trek.  I used Lego and wood and tape and markers to make my own phaser and communicator, and kind of destroyed my brothers clock radio to get the parts I needed.

So, yeah, that was a different time.

I was not a birder way back then, but I was an obsessive compulsive, though I didn't know that at the time, and I decided at that point that I was going to make the ultimate prop from Star Trek, the command chair that Captain Kirk sat in.

Well, as a 13 year old with crappy tools from Canadian tire and a bunch of plywood and other scraps of wood that I found behind apartment buildings and things like that, I tried to make one.

I didn't get very far.

It fell apart before it even got started.

Well, fast forward to 2024 and as a woodworker, who builds a lot of my own furniture, I decided it was time to build my own chair.

So that's what I've been doing the last six weeks.  debuted it on Halloween, and it was a success, and now it's in my recroom as my TV chair, so woo hoo for me, but as far as my podcast is concerned, yeah, I kind of dropped the ball on that.

So, the last few days, I've been working feverishly to finish the podcast, which I did yesterday, and the episode is finally ready.

Josh Gant is a birder from Tom's River, New Jersey, and he did an Ocean County Big Year in 2020.

So thank you for your patience and your continued support of my little show.  I appreciate everything that people say to me when I meet them in the field.

It's always exciting to know that I put something out there that people enjoy - all three of you 😏 -

Thank you very much.