Excursion to Antelope Island

Wednesday, May 25th - - Today was a “play” day! Carol's husband, Man, had informed us yesterday that today was supposed to be a gorgeous day, and rain free at that!



Antelope Island, which is the largest island in the Great Salt Lake, was our destination. At the entrance to the State Park there was a sign warning us that the biting gnats or “no see ums” were out in full force and the midges, which don't bite, were swarming along the causeway.





We made it across the causeway and up to the visitor center, where this photo was taken.



These are midges. They covered the windshield and front end of the truck. Gross. And yeah, the biting gnats were biting. Bigtime.





The Fielding Garr Ranch was established in 1848 and was in continuous operation until 1981. This is a corner of the barn where a wide variety of objects are on display.









That white stuff on the ground (and floating on the breeze, everywhere) is the “fluff” from numerous cottonwood trees around the ranch. In some areas it literally looked like it was snowing.





Indiana has cottonwood trees but I've never seen this much of the fluff before. Definitely soft and fluffy.





Little bits of the white fluff even landed on the Iris. It just adds a little texture!

It was a most pleasant day. The clouds moved in during the late afternoon but no rain came. Man sure picked a great day for a little excursion! Thank you for a wonderful time, in spite of all the icky, little bugs!

Rambling

I promise I'm not going to post pictures of our new kittens every day.



I'm starting to think that Ginger (left) is a male rather than a female. My husband thinks Ginger isn't a proper boy's name. "Ginger Baker," I keep saying, but he doesn't know who that is.

He doesn't know who anybody is.

"Tom Cruise."

"Who?"

Well it's not that bad, but almost. Celebrity Who's Who is not something he's spent much time studying.

"Nicole Kidman."

"Who? Never heard of her."

"She used to be married to Tom Cruise. She played the mother in that movie The Others, remember?

"Oh yeah."

On the other hand, I tend to remember useless trivia, such as:
Denis Lawson played Wedge Antilles (Red Two) in the original Star Wars movie. According to IMDB (Internet Movie Database), he inspired his nephew to go into show business. His nephew is Ewan McGregor, who plays the young Obi-wan Kenobi in the newer series of Star Wars movies.

My husband can't remember Ewan McGregor's name though, he just calls him Obi-wan.

Sometimes we have nutso ideas for little projects. Once we decided to have a meal featuring the cuisine of whatever country the Formula One race was in that week. For some reason that one never got off the ground.

Another time we decided to see all the films that a certain actor or actress was in. Since we had just seen Attack of the Clones and Black Hawk Down, we decided that Ewan McGregor would be a prime target - we were already two movies up without even trying.

It's a harder thing to do than you might imagine, though. Ewan McGregor has made an awful lot of movies. I think we saw 17 of them before we gave up on that project too. (But if you ever see that The Pillow Book or Killing Priscilla will be showing on one of the movie channels, let me know.)

---

Edited to add: All the celebrity talk reminded me of this hilarious post I read the other day: Jennifer Aniston Is Controlling My Brain. Actually the whole blog is great. Beautiful writing.

On The Road Again, Again!

Monday, May 2nd - - After 12 days back home in Indiana, I'm on the move, heading west. I traveled 350 miles today, through Indiana and most of Illinois, and not even one of those miles was on the Interstates!



I think we only had two days of sunshine the entire time I was home, and today was more of the same cloudy, overcast skies. It was raining when I left Columbia City but it quit shortly thereafter. My stopping place for the night was Argyle Lake State Park, about 15 miles southwest of Macomb off of US Route 136 in western Illinois. It was late afternoon, and as so often happens at that time of day, the clouds began to move off and the sun finally made a most-welcome appearance.



After a quick bite to eat, I went for a short walk – on the paved, level road through the campground then down to the lake. Just taking it easy but getting a little exercise to get the old legs moving again. And trying not to do whatever it was that I did before to cause the pain!





Lots of these pretty blue wild-flowers were near the edge of the woods alongside the campground. Each flower in the cluster was about an inch in diameter.







I opted to not attempt these stairs leading down to the lake – they didn't look very sturdy and they were much steeper than they appear.





There was no clear view of the setting sun, which was blocked by the forest on the other side of the meadow.





As the sun set further, the sky filled with color.



A very nice ending, to my first day on the road again, again!

One Way to Lower Your Bike's Gearing

overheard in a bike shop



Customer, returning from a test ride: "I love the bike! But it feels like there are not enough low gears? What is the best way to get easier gears?"



Salesperson: "Oh, well you need to ride the bike for several weeks for the gears to wear in. They should feel lower after that than they do now. If not, you can bring the bike back and we'll get you lower gears. But they usually wear in."



I almost laughed out loud, but I have to say I agree. The gearing on all of my bikes feels lower now than it did when I first got them. The gears have worn in so nicely! If you opt for this method though, be mindful that if you neglect the bike and stop riding it for a while, the gears will stiffen up and feel higher again the next time you get in the saddle. The fun facts of bike ownership.

Passing Clouds on Bishop Peak

A Cloud Drifts By, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

The Sun was setting as I hiked down Bishop Peak on Saturday, and the fast-moving storm clouds lit up in bright colors for a few short minutes before twilight began. A long exposure shows some of the motion in these clouds. Those boulders are the summit rocks of Bishop Peak, and the true summit is inaccessible without climbing gear.

Welding and Brazing: a Visual

When I wrote about fillet brazing (a lugless form of brazing) earlier, some wanted to know what was the difference between that process and welding. The quick and simplified answer is like this: welding involves heating up and joining two pieces of metal to one another directly; brazing involves using another material (one with a lower melting point) to join them, sort of like a hot glue. Last week I photographed an unpainted frame made for Josh of Bike Safe Boston that shows the two methods alongside.






Here is a shot of the underside of the frame, by the bottom bracket area. On the right is a welded kickstand plate, and next to it on the left are two little braze-ons that are (I think) cable guides. Notice the pools of golden liquid (melted brass) that surround the braze-ons, but not the welded plate. Instead, the welded plate and the chainstays it is attached to are a sort of rainbow colour, from the weld pool that is formed when joining the two pieces.






Similarly, here you can see that the seat cluster joint is welded (weld pool rainbow), but the little rack attachment point on the chainstay is brazed on (brassy border).






My description is simplistic and leaves a great deal out, but it's an easy visual for a layperson to identify brazing vs welding on a "raw" or unpainted frame. I love the colourful look the juxtaposition of both techniques creates on this one - built by Ted Wojcik and designed by DBC City Bikes. More pictures here.

Another critical look at Ice tools and Umbilicals

Ally Swinton climbing. Photo courtesy of Dave Searle




I get the, "which ice tool and whichumbilical," question at least a couple of timesa week.



My 2 cent on the subject.



It is ridiculous, silly really. As in dumb, dumb and dumber.



Not the question or those asking, but the guys building this stuff.



Like crampons there needs to be a norm in the industry. Best system yet I have seen? An incidentally themost fail proof system to date?



Petzl Nomic (or Ergo) with a Blue Ice Boa leash. And I have climbed on most everything available. From 30+ year old home made umbilicals to the first Grivel clip on versions to the latest versions from Grivel and BD.



Here is why I think the Nomic/ Boa comboshould and could be the norm if the manufactures would simply *think* about the process for a minute. Huge disserviceto us not to IMO.



Hole in handle and full strength? Easy to do in any axe during production. Check

Eliminates any issues with dropped/disconnected biners. Check

Easy and quick on and off the tools. Seconds in fact.Check

As strong andas simple as you want to make the nylon. Check

Cheap to manufacture.Check



Grivel made the first commerical umbilicals I am aware of. At some point early onthey offered a wire gate biner with a really stiff gate as the attachment method. Wire gate biners will not reliably stay attached to a fixed clip in point on a tool Theywill eventually unlatch and lever off. Common occurance now.



Grivel solved the problem quickly by addinga locking screw gate biner instead of the wire gate.

BD simplycopied the earlier and faulty Grivel system. Prone to failure from day one. Stiffening the wire gate is not the answer. Just a band aid actually.



I know of one fatal fall ice climbing last season whereumbilicals were in use. I've been told that on inspection after the fall one tool had disconnected entirely from the tool and bothgates on the umbilicals were on the wrong side of the biner gate opening.



One has to wonder if a more reliableattachmentsystemmight haveresulted in a shorter,more controlledinitial fall, with less tramaticresults.



The current commercial umbilicals are not designedto hold a leader fall. But everyone knows that is how they are being used. And have been now for decades. Insurance for the leader to avoid apotential fall and security so a tool isn't dropped.



Easy to solve this problem on any tool with a little redesign of the shaft. Easy to up the strength on the umbilicals by ditching the "biner" of any sort and building from a better and stronger webbing. There is a lot of room for improvement here with both the tool attachment point and the umbilicals themselves.



I've climbed on almost every modern tool. And on every commercial umbilical since the early preproduction and production modelsfrom both Grivel and Black Diamond.With the resulting minor failures as the umbilicals snapped off mid route on many of those combos. It is just happen stance that I like the Nomic and have used he Blue Ice Boa leash. I didn't plan this. It was a first time ice climber (thanks Jim) that showed me a better and cleaner way to lash up the Nomic with a BOA leash. Not the techniqueI was originally using



But there are lots of ways to do this and several decadesofhistory behind it:



http://coldthistle.blogspot.com//03/boa-leash-by-blue-ice.html



http://coldthistle.blogspot.com//01/ice-tool-umbilicals-repost.html



http://coldthistle.blogspot.com//01/umbilicalssomething-to-think-about-and.html



http://coldthistle.blogspot.com//02/curious-case-of-commercial-umbilical.html



http://coldthistle.blogspot.com//04/bd-testswarning-on-umbilicals.html



http://www.summitpost.org/phpBB3/tethers-t59130.html



Then there is the "Best" way.



This is not an endorsement of "just" the Nomic or "just" the Boa leash. It is only a statement onan "easy fix". This is the umbilical style that will works well on that particular style attachment point. It is so simple. Why isn't everyone doing it?













the initial loop in the umbilical leash and a full strength hole milled through thehandle of a Nomic







Webbing flattened and threaded through hole, very easy







Same picture different angle, seconds are all that is required here







Pull the loop through and spread it







Turn the loop back and circle the handle just below the hole







Pull the long side of the leash snug...you are done. This tool is set up for a right hand to keep the webbing bulk to a minimum







"Right hand" toolagain, showing the "smooth" side of the Umbilical that the palm of your hand would go in.







This shows the "bulk" side of the tool. Not all that bulky, really.












Easy on and off in just seconds even after being fully weighted.


Blue Ice Boa leash is currently sold out world wide. Check your dealer's shelf in the EU.

None in North America at the moment.



Seriously, Icouldn't make this stuff up! (Thanks Charlie)

Check out the video below:



http://www.youtube.com/embed/pYr1DVtWujM