Deep Cave Exploration - Yikes!

In my continuing quest to be very well read and well watched in things I would never do on my own, I'm listening to a book on Deep Caving called Blind Descent (http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B003L8GZLQ).

Now I like tourist caves where you go and see all the cool formations that form from something being dripped on or from for many millennia. They are beautiful.

I also like hiking and climbing up mountains partially for the physical challenge, but mostly for the view really, and to spend time in a lovely environment, breath some fresh air and just to get outside the box.

Deep caving offers precisely none of these features save for the extreme physical challenge.

To risk sounding like Andy Rooney. I don't get it.

To be fair I'm only half way through, though I have little doubt my view will change much. [I'm much further now and I was right.]

Features of deep caves

• pitch blackness, no light at all, you are totally dependent on artificial illumination
  
• they are flooded much of the year and such are very wet
• they are surprisingly noisy because of wind
• your sleeping accomodations might be a narrow wet ledge that you have to worry about rolling off ot
  
• you go down first so when you "top out" you now have the hardest part of the climb still to go
• there are myriad ways to die and nearly no help is available or what is is days away.
  
• similar to mountaineering even the simplest of injuries are much more difficult to manage, even worse than mountaineering is the possibility of infection because of all the wet, dust, and silt is much higher. And the no help factor too.
  

Remarkably the main guy who leads a lot of the effort to discover the deepest cave seems pretty sane. His name is Bill Stone (ha) and you can see him speaking here at a Google "TED" conference:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5797001505961854840#

National Geographic took at interest and has some information here:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/caverace/week9/index.html
and here
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0505/feature4/


You can also learn to be a cave diver. That is also another thing that the touristy "oh look all the cool sealife" totally is appealing to me, but when you get down that deep it more looks like this photo of the US Deep Caving Team's webpage:
http://www.usdct.org/
completely empty of life (well mostly).

As one reviewer of the book said. "It's all kinda creepy in a way." You are deliberately placing yourself in a really strange environment simply because no one else has yet been there. It is the last frontier on this Earth. Quite literally a journey towards the center of the Earth, and how people deal with being obsessed with finding the deepest cave in existence.

Of course the first or second thing that occurs to me is that this is a moving target in a way. Water, volcanoes and earthquakes are constantly reshaping the Earth. What is the lowest point now is very likely not going to continue that way for too long, but we are talking geologic time so it may not matter.

The Churchill Downs Reality Check

There is going to be a National Dog Agility event in Louisville and some folks who are going are really interested in seeing Churchill Downs. I had to warn them about how disappointed I was when I finally got to see it many years ago. Churchill Downs is in the middle of Louisville, just like Santa Anita is right in the middle of Los Angeles. When I was there I had just seen Lexington and was so impressed by its beauty. I had this wonderous romatic visions of Churchill Downs when we arrived in Louisville. Wow what a let down.

This is what I was picturing (this is a track somewhere in Lexington.)




This shows what the area really looks like - I was so bummed:
Here is a link where you can view it yourself
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Churchill+Downs,+Louisville,+KY&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=50.424342,76.640625&ie=UTF8&hq=Churchill+Downs&hnear=Churchill+Downs,+Louisville,+Jefferson,+Kentucky+40214&ll=38.202408,-85.770521&spn=0.024652,0.037422&t=h&z=15

A "New" Bike with a History

Some while ago I sold my road bike because it really didn't fit me and left me in pain when I rode it because I was reaching too far.

Now I've been road bike less for a while now and it does bug me as though I love my mountain bike there are things that a road bike does so much better such as climbing hills on roads and going really fast.

I was lamenting this to a coworker and another coworker said that he was selling a road bike that belonged to his daughter who he just lost from breast cancer. Pause. Really? Turns out that we are of similar height.

So he brought it in and even though it's not the smallest size available for women, it's smaller than the one I sold. After I rode it and measured it a bunch and agonized about it with Terri, I decided to buy it.

The oddest thing for me is that this bike used to belong to a woman who was younger than me, and who is gone. I feel as if I'm riding a ghost's bike. A very recent ghost. It's a weird feeling. I sometimes think I feel her old presence, but I could be imaging it too.

I have quite a bit of emotion tied up in bikes as it is and I'm trying to reassure myself that if this one doesn't work out that it's not a big deal and I can always get the 43cm frame instead. This one is a 47cm. The 43 is a sloping top tube, but has an "effective top tube length" that is an inch shorter.

The other thing is that buying a used bike is way cheaper than the 4 figure price that new bikes cost, so in once sense this is buying me time and giving me a chance to figure out if I love it enough to make time for it.

Bike riding used to be tied up with pain and frustration and feelings of failure for me as bikes didn't fit women very well in the 80's and I and a ton of other women were reaching too far, and leaning too far forward and hence getting pain in the crotch area. I was also getting hand/wrist pain because my tendinitis wasn't being properly treated as I was still thinking that I needed to work through the pain. Nope. The solution to Tendinitis is rest, ice, anti-inflamatories, and more rest. And then gradual reintroduction to the activity - and for heaven's sake stop feeling like a failure.

So while I'm worried about this new-to-me bike I'm telling myself that this really isn't a big deal and I should just enjoy it.

Costs of Flying your Dog in the Cabin

Ok so it's a dog post on the nondogblog - we'll just have to cope won't we?

I try to keep track of how much it will cost to bring my dog along with me in s plane. It used to be cheaper than boarding but no longer. I do pine for the days when I could bring my dog along with me for $50 each way. That said the rules are slightly more reasonable as it used to be one animal per cabin and that sometimes was an issue, now the number is higher.)

Here is my latest walk through of major airlines. Note pet policies are very difficult to find on airline websites. Absolutely the fastest way it is to google: (airlinename) pet

In cabin flying of pets

Alaska Air
$100 each way
http://www.alaskaair.com/as/www2/help/faqs/Traveling-With-Pets.asp

American
$100 each way
http://www.aa.com/i18n/travelInformation/specialAssistance/travelingWithPets.jsp#Fees

Continental
$125 each way
http://www.continental.com/web/en-us/content/travel/animals/in_cabin.aspx

Delta
$125 each way - domestic
$200 international
$75 Brazil (Go figure)
http://www.delta.com/planning_reservations/special_travel_needs/pet_travel_information/pet_travel_options/index.jsp

Northwest (See Delta)

Southwest
$75 each way
http://www.southwest.com/travel_center/animals.html

US Airways
$100 each way
http://www.usairways.com/en-US/traveltools/specialneeds/pets.html

United
$125 each way
http://www.united.com/page/article/1,,53410,00.html

So does this mean that my dog will be joining us next time I go up to Seattle? I'd like to think so but I don't know. He's happy where he's boarded and that would be cheaper. The other dog stays with a friend and even though she'd rather be with us, it would take wanting to take $200 and set it on fire. I even went to all the trouble to find a carrier that fits them and fits under the seat. Sigh.

Aerial Dance

It's amazing to me what happens when I stop paying attention. Sometimes, I'm not the only one imagining what's possible and even better is when someone actually does something about it.

One thing that I haven't taken enough time to explore is Dance. The problem is that there aren't many forms of dance that really speak to me, but there are some huge exceptions. Contact Improvisation for one (which I first saw at 848 Divisadero now called CounterPULSE) - there is nothing as beautiful as dancers working off each others bodies to create something more that each one could do. other things I love are ones that get the dancers completely off the ground such as Cirque du Soleil (their most recent show Ovo's final is incredible and has people bouncing from the ground and up on to the wall. Details here.) and Streb.

Also as I write the above I realize that I'm forgetting some really influential dancers in SF that were loosely associated with 848 but have moved on. Keith Hennessey (now Circo Zero) and Jess Curtis come first to mind, but there is also Scott Wells and Kathleen Hermesdorf, and many others.

I think it was Streb that had the dancers on the wall and this completely stirred my imagination and I was coming up with all sorts of dance/aerial stuff that I'd like to create. But that's where I left it. 848 was hard for me to get to on a Tues afternoon, and Streb is in freakin' Brooklyn, plus quite honestly I find the dance world pretty intimidating since I haven't been doing it since I was 6 years old. Every so often I take a class and I get a little frustrated. The 848 one I took was an exception, but still haven't gotten a good enough vision on how to make that work.

But it keeps ghosting at my imagination. SF Circus Center has started classes, and I just heard about a Berkeley dance group called Studio 12 Flys, and my imagination has totally woken back up all of those on-the-wall dance creations that I totally want to create - I have visions of dancers running on the walls. Recreating the regular world rotated by 90 degrees.

Even when I'm being lowered at the rock gym or rappelling which I just learned, I totally want to turn and start bouncing and rolling or turning upside down (which is probably not that safe).

But how to start? It's not like you can roll in and say you want to be a choreographer. I think it's with some of the basic classes and hope I don't get hurt or discouraged - I prefer the one's where you can wear a harness and don't have to be super strong. Check out the arms of those performers you see doing "Ribbon Work." Studio 12 Flys has an intro class here. SF Circus Center has there classes here.

Something about dance in particular makes me want to Do It. I'm terrible at just watching (always have been - even when at a bar with a dance floor). When I see a dance I'm trying to remember the details and I never succeed as that part of my brain that can be shown something once and they get it just hasn't gotten enough practice. Even at gym classes I struggle with remembering patterns. But! Now there is You Tube and I can play and replay videos all I like. I'm suddenly a whole lot happier.

And I also wonder what it is I really want to learn. I know all about harnesses. Don't know much about dancing in one. Then I think well maybe I want to know more about trampolines which aren't just for kids anymore and other things like trapezes (or maybe not). And of course the tricky thing is that I want to learn all of this stuff without getting hurt as while I love (reasonable) risk taking in order to learn a skill, I do take longer to heal now, and have to consider more carefully my activities and vulnerability to injury.

And what do I want to see or explore? Is it more dance or acrobatics which is starting to merge ever since Cirque has been with us. (How cool is that? I have seen every Cirque that has come to town since Allegria.) I looked at the videos of Studio 12 Flys and they are more of the meditative style rather than the acrobatic one that Cirque, 848 and Scott Wells favor. I must admit to prefering the later but it is probably where I'm at right now.

And on a slightly tangential note it is interesting how acrobatics has worked it's way into all sorts of things. It's always been in skateboarding, ski stunt jumping, sky diving, airplane acrobatics, and even frisbee dog, but now can be seen in snowboarding, windsurfing, regular surfing (some), bmx, motocross tricks, base jumping (because it's not dangerous enough?). Haven't seen it much in rock climbing, but give them time they're certainly talented enough for it.

It may be hard for me to sleep tonight.

Barbie could be a Snow Camper

I love snow camping and never knew that I would.

I should probably be more specific. I like camping on snow, but not necessarily winter camping. I like snow camping in mild temperatures that are cool enough at night to keep the snow around, but warm enough during the day to relax and not have to pay so much attention to survival issues.

People have these images of snow camping being challenging and difficult. Not really. Save for having to melt now for water it's not all that different.

There are some benefits that I didn't anticipate.

#1 is that you stay cleaner. When someone mentioned this to me, I didn't think too much about it until I went camping in dirt again. Suddenly I'm very much: "Ewgh I'm dirty. There's grim under my fingernails and I can't get it out, and my pants are stiff with crud." Suddenly I'm this big dirt wuss This doesn't happen in snow. No dirt under the fingernails and you can rinse things by just wiping them in carefully selected snow. Your clothing doesn't get stiff with brown stuff and if it gets wet it dries fairly quickly. (You're also not wearing the traditional pants, but more stretchy underwear with snowpants on top.)

#2 is that with snow and a small shovel and daylight, you can play house all you like
You can make a level surface or you can have a sunken bedroom complete with walls to protect you from the wind. You can make tables and other platforms, and have a kitchen, you can have a private or semi-private bathroom. Heck if you're ambitious you can even dig your own snow cave (I don't bother - too much work.)

But what about the cold? Well in Spring it's often not that cold. Laying on the snow? Well you choose well for sleeping bags (mine is a -5 degree down bag that fits me very well.) and you choose very carefully what pad you use. My most recent purchase is a Thermarest NeoAir and it's just awesome at keeping the cold away, and way better than their other pads mostly because it's actually a modern air mattress.

What amazes me is that in the snow I can wear the same thing for days (except for underwear and sock linings) and I don't notice. I very much notice when I'm somewhere else in that kind of situation (even dog agility).

So Barbie might be an ok snow camper.

Wait, You're not Supposed to Die on Mt. Shasta

Mt. Shasta is indeed a real mountain, but the easiest route is very forgiving of beginners who have some training in the basics (how to stop yourself from falling using an ice axe being the most important) and some instruction in when not to be on the mountain (afternoons being the worst.)

I've always contended that with respect to snow, Mt. Shasta is safer than the very popular Mt. Whitney because there is a nice long place for someone to tumble down if they fall. Whitney's snow has a whole bunch of boulders around. If you fall on Shasta you will likely get hurt, but dying is not common.

But this year has been more than a little exciting on my favorite mountain. First there was a experience climber who got stranded by weather on the summit and subsequently tragically died of HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema).

Then things were back to a more extreme version of normal with rain and then extended cold weather creating a whole bunch of ice and very slick conditions and the week before I was there with stellar weather there were 7 rescues of fallen climbers. Lots of broken bones and teeth and a whole lot of bruises and some serious mental trauma for those who got to see someone tumble past them at 50mph (do not try to stop them), but no fatalities.

Well. I was on the phone to my mother-in-law who lives near there and she asked if I'd heard about the Bay Area woman who was killed on Shasta today. WHAT?! Fortunately the computer was on. Not a lot of details yet just the same short AP article everywhere:

http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15450300?nclick_check=1

Kathi Jeanne Ludwig, 56, was climbing the mountain when she was struck by a watermelon sized boulder at 11,000'. She later died of her injuries. I am so very sorry, and offer my deepest condolences to her husband and her family.

But there's so much of the story that we don't know, and I hope to learn.
We don't know where she was or what time or if they were going up or down. We do know that it was a group and there were two guides but we don't know the guide service.

On June 26th we were climbing on the "Avalanche Gulch" route which despite its name is the easiest way to climb the mountain. The key is that you need to be climbing in the morning when everything is frozen into place. Climbers start around midnight to 4am (an "alpine start") to maximize their safe climbing time and noon is usually a turn around time.

Because of altitude sensitivity, I don't climb well above 9600' and so had just slogged up to that very same altitude of 11,000'. As my climbing partner and I were talking, above us on the route we hear what you don't like hearing. "ROCK!" I assure you this is not about music. It means that a rock has been dislodged and is now falling towards you. Luckily for us the dislodgers were a few 100' above us and slightly to the right of us. What was impressive was the rock keep falling and falling in almost what looked like slow motion. While it's mesmerizing to watch you have to get ready to take action if you have the time.

I tell my climbing partner that if the rock keeps coming I want her to leap to the left and arrest (lie face down, holding yourself in position with the ice axe pick dug in the snow). She responded along the lines of "I don't remember signing up for this." I respond "Sorry."

Fortunately for us the sub-volleyball sized rock stopped beside us in a glissade track. Which actually did result in some entertainment as then the climbers above did glissade by. I told one of them "There's your rock" hoping he would stop and move it but I don't think he realized it was in a glissade track (he was in a different one) and he kept on going. Then very soon after someone was using that track and "There's a rock in front of you." definitely got a cartoon-like flailing over-reaction.

We then commenced on my favorite activity on Shasta: glissading. Probably the best time you can have on your cold butt. I love it. (Again you have to know how to stop.) Someone videoed themselves doing it here and here.

So 11,000' is associated with fun and frolic and some potential rock dodging, but nothing terribly serious. To think that someone died in the exact spot under similar, but oh so different circumstances, gives me more than a bit of pause.

I await the details and have set a Google Alert so I can track any posted news.
Hopefully I will hear something soon and not have to wait for it to be documented in Accidents In North American Mountaineering for 2010.

--------
I now have more details.
It was on the West Face out of Hidden Valley. An area that has hardly any rock fall.
It was ONE rock.

It is very much in the class of freak accident.

sk..., sk.., SKKKKKK...

[Older post that I forgot to publish.]

Last night I had the telescope out to look at planets - is that huge bright thing Mars or Saturn or Venus? I think Mars. Anyway I had positioned it and was letting Terri have a look and while she was looking a creature appeared on the sidewalk (We were on the front lawn.)

At first I thought cat then the movement was all wrong, then a raccoon no that's not either, then what could it b.. EEK.

It was right out of a cartoon. Grabbing Terri's arm and trying not to be alarmist and trying completely unsuccessfully to be calm. Sk, Sk, Skkkk..unk She looks up from the telescope and it's of course gone. HOW? It was right there.

The Lowly Parentheses: Its important job in email

The parenthesis servers a surprisingly vital role in determining where email really comes from. In the email "headers" are a series of Received lines. The email server inserts vital information about an email's origin inside the parentheses. It is the one bit of information you can rely on.

For example:

This is a falsified Email Received line:
Received: from 89.210.237.165 by autotec.com.inbound15.mxlogicmx.net; Fri, 18 Jun 2010 02:01:56 0200

The parens are missing completely.

This is a real one;
Received: from ppp089210237165.dsl.hol.gr (ppp089210237165.dsl.hol.gr [89.210.237.165]) by ahost.somedomain.com (8.13.5/8.13.4) with ESMTP id o5HN38he003988;

Another common thing is for a scammer/spammer to falsify the origin of an email, but the Received line rats them out:

A real, but modified example:

Return-Path: 
Received: from mx1.mytiolo.info (mailhost.dwdtechllc.com [74.119.64.217])
 by host.domain.com (8.13.5/8.13.4) with SMTP id o5HLswgI022584
 for ; Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:55:11 -0700

The spammer claimed to be from mytilol.info but it really came from dwdtechllc.com because it's what's inside the parens of the Received line that is correct.

These falsifications are sometimes legit (not everyone owns their own email server) but are often not.

Hurray for the parentheses.

Fake virus scanners which are really viruses

My work has been getting a blizzard of viruses sent in email recently. It's not a problem as we just block them at the firewall but the intensity is a bit daunting.

They are all of the same flavor.
They send out a very obscurely written Javascirpt (sometimes encoded) and if the person clicks on it when running windows and has administrative privileges then the browser goes off to a site that's been compromised and has the actual virus on it (the Javascript is just a trigger). Downloads and installs the virus.

In the case I've seen it installs a fake virus scanner that claims to find a lot of fake viruses and for a more $50 you can get the "license key." If you don't payup then your computer continues to pop up a million windows and pretty much won't let you do anything. Symantec and other virus scanners are disabled and the task manager won't run. We call this "Ransomware."

One of these little creatures is called Protection Center which is stolen from a Microsoft Product, but it's not from Microsoft. You can see a picture of it here:
http://www.spywares-remove.com/remove-protection-center-protection-center-removal-help

Best way to deal with it is to reboot into Safe Mode by restarting and pressing F8 repeatedly and then running a virus scan. There are faster ways to kill it by using msconfig.msc and manually deleting it and the associated registry keys but that takes more know how.

While it's actually a very interesting virus I don't fully understand it enought to really expound on it - most of it is non-functional crud and the web addresses have a lot of extra characters that are taken out at the last second. it is very obfuscated but with a little effort you can read it. There is an excellent analysis of it here:
http://garwarner.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-twitter-spam-html-attached-threats.html

If you have a copy of the base64 virus you can run it through an online base64 decoder and then decode the resulting javascript. What you're looking for is the line that generates the web site. Once I figured out where it was going I stopped but the above link goes further.

As with most things it's better to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Prevention
If you are a Windows User:

- Don't click on weird links or attachments
- Run as an unprivileged, non-administrative user
- Disable Java in your browser
Firefox 3.0.6: Tools-options - click on Content and uncheck Enable Java
Seamonkey 2.0.4: Edit-preferences - click on Advanced and uncheck Enable Java
internet Explorer 8.0.6001: Tools-internet options - Click Programs, click manage add-ons, click on Java and click disable (along with any associated java add-ons).

"Hanging Out" on Shasta?

I had one of those synchronicity experiences today that you just don't plan on.

I was up at Shasta and the weather was icky and rainy and I had decided not to go on my trip since I had a second trip planned also in June (because this isn't the first time I've been rained out). I was down in the fantastic local mountaineering store asking for an explanation of the confusing topic of Randonee Skiing gear (I'm much less confused now), and the store staff was chatting about a Shasta Mountain Guides trip and I tossed in a bit of info that I knew.

One of the people involved in the conversation was an SMG guide and looked right at me and said "Hey I know you. We hung out together - on the West Face." Now while I go to Shasta a fair bit there are very few people there who recognize me and I wasn't initially familiar with the location, but she looked familiar so I played along for a moment, with the brilliant response of "Really?" "Yeah you do dog shows right?" Oh God she's right obviously. Then I thought to introduce myself and she told me her name and it all came back. I'm totally impressed that she remembered me from a year ago because she guides a lot of people in a season.

The West Face is above Hidden Valley and I've only been there once on an SMG trip, so I wasn't immediately familiar with the term even though it's an obvious feature. It was during that trip where I realized that my altitude issues now prevent me from keeping up with a group. This guide, let's call her L, stayed with me when I fell behind. She was so patient with me. What really amuses me now is that "hang out" is the last thing I'd call my struggling with not enough oxygen in my non-responsive muscles. We did spend some time together and I'd love to hire her as a private guide sometimes. I do hang out when I'm on Shasta but it's at Horse Camp when I'm casually relaxing and chatting with others. Her using the term makes me laugh because of its deliberate absurdity.

What was amazing was when I finally decided to turn around she went back with me (they kinda have to), and then she turned right around and booked back up the incline to catch up with the group. It was still early enough that we were all using headlamps (Travel on snow is easiest when the snow is frozen and that's in the very wee hours.) and I could follow her remarkable progress. She openly admits to being a calorie burning junkie and I can relate to a much smaller extent. The endorphins are hard to beat.

Anyway I mentioned the possibility of maybe hiring her to do a private climb of the lower part of the Cassaval ridge or other routes and she said that they often do things like that.

I so admire good guides. They usually love what they do and it shows.

My Love/Hate Mountain Obsession

I am supposed to be getting ready for a trip to Shasta and I'm SO dragging my heels. I love that mountain but I really don't like all the prep especially because circumstances make it appear that I'm going by myself. It means backpacking up to Horse Camp and them leaving in the middle of the night just so I can climb as high I as can. I have difficulties with altitude so I'm not going to summit, and the travel is on snow which makes things both easier and harder at the same time.

I'm vaguely considering just starting from the trailhead Bunny Flat but that adds time on to the climb and decreases how far I'll be able to get. But it would mean not having to lug a backpack and not having to do that saves a huge amount of energy. I could instead camp at Bunny Flat (http://www.shastahome.com/Camping/Campgrounds.html) and the car would be there. The bummer is that it's noisier (snowmobiles) and there isn't that delectable spring water - in fact there's no water and I'd have to bring it or melt snow.

So I'm supposed to be getting ready but instead I think I'll sit and watch Archer (a recent fav).

Then I laid down for a couple of hours and I'm doing much better and am back to the original plan of backpacking up to Horse Camp. Except carrying a 2 person tent is a real drag when you're one person. I'm telling myself that it's a short trip so I could do it in two trips if I want to. I'm also debating taking my skis. I have never skied there but it might be fun to try (carefully).

But I keep going back to: What is going to end this obsession? Perhaps just trading it for another obsession perhaps? Though I seem to collect them and they don't really go away. I'm discovering that what I really like is dropping anchor somewhere (some people have started calling them "base camp" trips), and exploring the area using just a day pack. We're going to be doing that in July in Yosemite Cathedral Lakes area and I'm excited about it. It's going to be a lot of cross country because there are not many trails in that area.

But I really do want to get higher up on Shasta. I know the lower part of the mountain very well and could even guide it, but I haven't been above Helen Lake and I really want to. One way that I'm considering is have someone else sherpa my pack up to Helen Lake but that means that I have to actually get up there myself so that I don't get separated from it. It means lugging extra fuel to melt snow and camping at Helen is a bit crowded, and it's not nearly as nice to camp at as Horse Camp though it is 2000' higher.

So my adding obsessions is just meaning that I have enough of them that they are now round robin. I'm not going to Whitney this year (I think), but if I don't I'm definitely going next year and will be trying to summit from the lower Outpost Camp which means climbing nearly 5000' - eek.

But enough for now, right now it's Shasta and there's a ton of snow and it's going to be gorgeous.
However I just double checked with the Fifth Season Snow Conditions line (530-326-5555) and it's saying that the snow pack is more than 120% of normal and there is no running water anywhere on the mountain which means bringing extra fuel to melt snow. This means that delicious spring water isn't available yet which is a huge reason to camp at Horse Camp so I'm back to wondering about Bunny Flat and maybe just doing some skiing in the area. Oh, I don't know - argh. I have a second trip planned later in the month and that might be a better time.

I Hate Literary Surprise Violence

When I read a book I let my defenses down, so I can fully experience the story. This is not a conscious choice it's just something that happens. So when I feel an author is messing with my head I really, really take it personally. Surprise extreme violence is the worst, and it's funny (?) how what happens is strangely similar to real life - it takes repeated violations for the relationship to end.

Something I dislike happens in a book and I continue reading/listening thinking that it might get better. It usually doesn't. If an author has decided that that's their thing then they use that cheap trick (and that's all it is) repeatedly.

The most recent one I WAS listening to has painted a bleak scenario for the characters. You know the main character is going to be ok, but those along are very much at risk, so in a sense I had been warned. But the author will take you off on a the main character dreaming about the innocence of playing in her childhood and you get sucked into that story and then pow. The main character wakes up to find that one depressed/hallucinating character has killed herself, and then of course the main character spends time describing the dead woman's body. I spent time cursing at the author.

This is not Taratino. It's not hyperviolent, but Taratino you do get warning (in the script or on film). Even David Lynch or the Cohen brothers (i'm thinking the brutal No Country for Old Men) are easier in a way than writers who seem to deliberately screw around with your comfort level. Maybe that's his point, but I rarely leave audible books behind but this is one of them. After a few go rounds like this and knowing that it's going to get worse (I read a summary in self defense), I've decided my time is better spent reading less punishing stuff and I'm going to have to offer my apolgies and views to the book club. Ironically it's a reasonably well rated book: ah well.

My Own Private Biathelon

I'm finally getting back to mountain biking which has been a passion of mine

I had stopped for a while partially because my bike got stolen out of my locked shed (grrr - new bike lives in the house now), but also because the braking was hurting my hands and wrists.
Well during my time off my wrists healed and the technology of the brakes has improved dramatically with the invention of disc brakes for bikes. So I got a newer version of my bike (a Fischer Hoo Koo E Koo - it's not just the name I like I swear - it's a really cool bike too.) but I haven't done a whole lot with it this year because of the weather.

ANYway back to what I was going to write about. When I'm on a ride I'm frequently on my own and though I'm working to change that, it does have some interesting benefits. The best of which is that I'm not constantly comparing myself to someone else. I can feel good about what I've accomplished without the "what if"s and "if only"s of: what if I could keep up with person X or if only I climb as well as person Y.

My ride was 10 miles at Mt. Diablo in Mitchell Canyon. 1 of those miles I pushed the bike up 800' of elevation. The cool thing was that I wasn't trying to keep up with someone else and I found myself mentally embracing the bike pushing because it's exercising different muscles (hamstrings in particular) that don't usually get as worked out when biking. So in a way I was doing a bike/walk biathelon of sorts if you will and what's intriguing me is that I'm wondering if this is a good workout for climbing training since you are working out more of your leg that you would if you're just biking which is very quad intensive.

May be I should ask Courtenay of Body Results for her opinion about this though I'm not a client right now.

Anyway the best part of all that bike pushing was that I got to go down on the bike. Wheeee! I love this as I hate walking down steep, gravely hills.

What "There's no there, there" Really Means

When Gertrude Stein alledgedly referred to Oakland at "There's no there, there." It's my understanding that she was actually referring to the fact that her family's home was no longer there. I know exactly how she feels.

I grew up on 2 1/2 acres. A rambling, basic, but large for the time, ranch house, and a large orchard which I've written about how I got to experience being a child slave laborer. Though I was paid well in terms of horse time, so I was properly bought off.

To fund my parents' retirement that place was sold and is now 4 McMansions. This is the closest I'll ever go to it:

It's the one place in the world that I won't go, which is really a strange feeling. Something that played such a large role in my early life just isn't there anymore. Many years ago my father tried to find the place he grew up in Tiger, GA and ran into a similar thing. The house just wasn't there anymore and he seemed kinda thrown by that. Muttering "You really can't go home again." I think I've taken that to heart. I know I shouldn't go there. It would just hurt.

My house would have been on the right of the photo and the rest was horse corral and then the orchard. Mostly of oranges, but a fair number of avocado trees as well. Ironically being a typical picky kid I didn't like avocados until I left home and experienced the heaven of guacamole. But at least I was and remain heavily into fruit so I wasn't a lost cause.

Pouting about Blogger

Up until now, blogger.com has let you host your blog on your own web site. I love this since I pay for a web site and why not host it there? But apparently those of us who do that are essentially too high maintenance (to very loosely paraphrase them) and so now they are insisting on hosting the blogs. It may look like it's on my site but it's smoke and mirrors actually.

I am bummed about this since I think it really should be on my own site but I haven't taken the time to actually learn enough about WordPress (blogging software that is available through Verio - my host) to make use of it. I do keep an unlisted training blog and maybe I can use that to see if I can figure things out. I made one attempt and really didn't get anywhere.

Though just to rub it in when I published this entry it published immediately and with FTP to my site there was always a delay.

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Facebook Scam keeps reappearing

As a followup to the last post, here is the text to a Facebook scam email that was sent from somewhere in Asia from this IP address:

123.236.12.47
------------------
Dear user of facebook,

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed.
You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,
Your Facebook.

------------------

And they include a zip file that they hope you'll open. Opening it runs a program that trieds to contact the server of the malware writers so that your system can become a slave to do whatever they wish. The program may or may not try to steal the credentials on your system possibly giving them access to your bank.

You are the Accessory in Online Crime

It used to be that viruses and trojans were highly sophisticated programs that took advantage of obscure weaknesses in software. That is still true, but the emphasis has changed. The level of sophistication is there, but it's different, and in a way much less intimidating (to me).

The art of the grifter is alive and well on the internet and has turned into very profitable business model for criminal organizations in Russia and the Ukraine. The level of organization is now where the sophistication is. What I find interesting is that China doesn't come up in the dialog. China is still relying on sophistication instead of conning.

The entire operation hangs on "Social Engineering" fooling you into allowing some sort of rogue software to be installed on your system. This is actually a lot easier than you would imagine as people often list themselves as the administrator of the system instead of running as a limited privilege user and logging in explicitly as administrator when you need to do system work. Once you have allowed such an installation, you have likely been recruited into an army of computers called a Bot Net.

The take away message is clear. If you get a message that you are not expecting, asking you to click on a link. Don't touch it. If it's your bank, initiate the log in yourself. Places like Facebook are not going to suddenly change your password and send the new password in a like (that's going around today and has been before.)

Some of you may have been harrassed by an "Anti Virus" program. I cleaned a different one off my Mother in Law's computer. Here is one that someone detailed:
Analysis of a Rogue (Fake) AV Program
http://www.secureworks.com/research/threats/rogue-antivirus-part-1/?threat=rogue-antivirus-part-1

Those who are hooked on Criminal Conspiracy TV shows may find this fascinating
Pay Per Install model of Malware Distribution (You only need to read the first 3 pages to get the idea.)
http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/pay_per_install.pdf

Understanding Social Engineering
http://www.net-security.org/article.php?id=1403

The Zeus Bot Net
http://us.trendmicro.com/imperia/md/content/us/trendwatch/researchandanalysis/zeusapersistentcriminalenterprise.pdf

Blogger Giving Me Grief

For years blogger has allowed you to keep your blog on your own web site via FTP. If you have your own site that makes sense. Now because of support issues (apparently we suck up too many resources - FTP is going away and I have to either give them a part of my url that will redirect to them or just have a blogspot url. Neither is probably horrible but i'm pouting as I like having everything stored on my own web site since I do pay for the stupid thing after all.

I've just learned that Word Press is available on my own site so I've installed it and of course i'm completely lost. I also don't know how to import years of other blogging to it. I have all of April to decide but I do need to start getting a little more serious about it.

I hate it when I'm given this great thing and then I get used to it and then it gets taken away. :(

So I see that Word Press has an import option. Cool. Except for one leetle thing.
They won't work on the older style FTP blogs. I have to upgrade the blog to the new style and then I can import it. Gee thanks for saving me all that work. Hmphf.

Dryer DIY Just Barely

I have been led down the primrose path by the internet and survived to tell about it. Not only that, but the dryer that I set out to fix (yes, this is my boondoggle though Terri got me out of it) is now fixed.

Our dryer had over the past few months developed a horrible squeaking/squealing sound and I innocently googled it and found a whole lot of squeaky dryers out there, but I also came across this page: http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/advice/t-20960.html
which has someone correctly diagnosing the problem as worn out "rear drum bearing" and he then continues on to explain in some detail how to fix it. What follows is many posts telling him thank you and that it wasn't all that bad and if you have two people it takes about an hour to do. This made me brave and even though our dryer is a little different I went ahead and ordered a "rear drum bearing" kit.

One hour turned into a week in our case.

Dryers are conceptually pretty simple beasts. They are basically a heated barrel that spins around on a post. This post or bearing had worn scores in it and was now howling. So knowing that and knowing that everyone else said it was doable even though it involved pulling that barrel/drum out completely, emboldened me. Such is how such misadventures start. What no one warned us about because our 15 year old dryer is likely just a little different that everyone else's is that while we could pull it all the way apart and replace the part and even find the little E-clip that went flying off when we pulled it off (**) (and of course was the one thing that wasn't included in the replacement kit), putting it all back together was well, just hell. One person said without any detail that putting their's back together was tricky, No one said anything about having to line 4 layers up blind. One of those layers, a disk of metal about 6 inches in diameter, would fall down at the smallest provocation and we learned later all the layers would only go back together in one orientation.

This is a photo of the dryer just before we pulled the drum out.



I don't have a photo of the drum out of the dryer. Too bad as it was pretty funny looking to be rolling around this drum outside of the dryer.

Once the drum was out you could see the bearing here:
It's hard to see but the mishapen disk thing is actually the bearing.




Here are a couple of photos of the older one where you can see it better. You can actually see the scoring on the shaft which is what was causing all the screaming.

The nearly impossible part was that the dryer drum had to bolt back into those little holes on the disk of the bearing (you can see them on the left photo.) If it had just been a matter of lining up the drum with the bearing that might have worked fine but the other layers involved that you couldn't touch while trying to get them lined up made me give up twice. Terri saved the day/week (not a joke). She figured out that you needed something to insert into the holes and then place the drum so that what you have inserted keeps everything lined up. We first tried dowels which weren't sturdy enough so she figure out that a bolt big enough to stay in the bearing holes would go through all the other holes, but she asked: if only I could get a bolt without a head on it.

This is one way our skills dovetail nicely. I am something of a dremel queen. Cut the head off a bolt? No problem, me and my dremel's cut off wheel only need about 5 minutes.

Then it was a matter of getting brave and trying to get the drum to line up with these three little bolts. I was the one who had been doing the lifting, but it was actually Terri who got it miraculously lined up and then I got to do the honors of one at a time pulling out the headless bolt and getting the actual bolt in there. It felt so strange to be able to accomplish something that you had given up on two days ago. I had even picked out what shop I was going to call and say "Hi, we can't get our dryer back together. No we don't need it fixed, we did that, but we can't get all the pieces lined up correctly." And each one one lined up perfectly as Terri who can be quite methodical when it's important, had taken the time to figure out exactly which orientation was the only one that would work and to carefully mark it. I'm very impressed and it's not something I would have thought of on my own.

Then we couldn't quite reach the belt to get it back on the pulley. I couldn't visualize how it was supposed to work, but we found an internet diagram and then Terri was able to draw it out for me. The only problem was that I was still having a lot of difficulty actually reaching the belt and after struggling with it for a while I finally realized that there had to be another way since my hands are smaller than 90% of appliance repair people and sure enough there was a way to it from the back of the dryer which made life much easier.

Of course when we finally finished we had to face the possibility that it might not work so with much trepidation we turned it one and No More Squeak! Ahhh. Of course we have parts left over but that's because the shaft wasn't an exact replacement so we had a couple of washers we had to omit but it's happily drying away right now and I'm hoping we'll get a few more years out of it before having to give up on it.

All in all it was worth it since it save us having to (a) buy a new dryer or (b) pay to have it fixed. The kit was about $25 with shipping. Having it repaired would likely have been over $100. But that said it was pretty high on the home improvement adventure scale and whether it is worth it to any one particular couple (2 people are required, domestic relationship optional) can only be answered by them. And if you don't have a solid relationship before you start you may not have one after it. At least it didn't involve water (washer's are way more complicated and I'm not sure I want to mess with one) and while we had most of the dryer in pieces, we never had to mess with the gas line going into the dryer, nor anything to do with the heating portion.

So we all survived and my laundry is getting done.



** And what sadist invented E clips? It took over an hour to figure out what it was called. Clamp? Nope. Cotter Pin? Nope. Got frustrated and took the dog on a walk. Came back and tried: "C clip" while not correct that got us far enough to be able to spot a picture of ours and then we were able to figure out it was called an "E clip" which given its shape makes sense.

Then we had to figure out how to get it off and the one internet person's idea of inserting needle nose pilers into the open end and then gradually opening the pilers worked. Their idea of using a plastic bag to then catch it when it releases and goes flying didn't work, and I found myself taking apart a whole 'nuther section of the dryer apart and sifting through a decade of lint, but I finally found it. In retrospect what would have likely worked is the always essential duct tape. Tape the part of the clip that you're not working on and anchor it to the dryer.

----

This whole experience was a whole series of unplanned side steps and in home improvement you just have to anticipate that at best things are going to go in a circuitous path. it didn't end that night, but continued this morning when Terri asked if the hot water heater was on. It wasn't as I had turned it off momentarily by accident last night and that killed the pilot. So this morning was about finding the long mechnical match and then remembering how to relight it even though the instructions were covered up by the insulating jacket (turn the dial to "pilot" and hold the red button down while placing the lit match onto what you hope is where the pilot light goes, then when the pilot lights, move the knob over to "on." My first time I got it lit then carefully moved the knob to "off." D'oh. It all finally worked out and I actually had a hot shower this morning to go along with my clean clothes.

---------
Later
After less than a month it started to squeak again.
Apparently there is a front support that we could replace also.
After the last go round we decided it was curtains for the dryer and we replaced it with a used one from a local dealer. Much better.

Unplanned Weight Loss is Disconcerting

I've been trying to lose another 5 pounds and i'm suddenly getting my wish and I'm not sure I'm at all happy about it. I'm having one of those GI related problems (actually not the big D), and even though it's not particularly painful, the anxiety it causes has made me lose my appetite and I forget to eat. I fortunately can eat and do when I remember to but I don't snack inbetween meals much and suddenly I'm 3 now 4 pounds lighter. It's actually a little disturbing I find.

Fortunately, even if I were to lose another 10 pounds (I hope not) I'd still be ok.

I'm just really glad I have health insurance.

[later]
I am doing better and am now back to the weight I would expect to be (2 pounds heavier - probably had lost a bunch of water then).

Getting off the Value Pak junk mail list

In my continuing quest to get off of junk mail lists.

Valpak puts the removal instructions in the smallest type possible on their envelope.
but the number they post 1-800-676-6878
actually encourages you to use their website.

Both methods are a complete pain, but seem to work.

Entering the numbers listed after the phone number will get you to the removal part of the phone tree:
1-800-676-6878, #, 2, 2, 1
Then leave your address and spell out anything even slightly odd.

The website was a tough one too, but I finally found it:

http://www.coxtarget.com/mailsuppression/s/DisplayMailSuppressionForm

You can give them your email address which they swear is just for confirmation only, but I declined to.

Removal is for only 2 years which is annoying as I was removed and just the time I got off the other one this one started up again.

Though given that you used to have to mail then the label for them to remove you this is miles easier which is probably why they make it hard to find.

The Hidden Costs of Can't Go Home Again

I grew up in what I'm am just realizing now (funny how that works), a kid's paradise. I had animals, property to run around on (and work on which I hated then of course), and an orange grove.

It's gone now. Gone the way of most orchards and the property now hosts Yorba Linda McMansions, which I peek at with Google Satellite views in Google Maps and Google Earth. I truly and very literally can't go home again - it's a weird feeling that many folks share. Yorba Linda now remains as the one place in the world that I absolutely won't go.

And that's fine, but fate has a funny way of twisting the knife just a bit.

Facebook means that I don't have to feel guilty about not attending class reunions. I'm now in far better touch with some of my old pals on a regular basis than any reunion could have done, and this is pretty trippy in that "my world's are colliding" sort of sense I must say.

No, the weird knife bit is that in Yorba Linda of all places, a dog training center with a great reputation has been established. Well that's fine we have world class training here too, but they have taken to hosting classes/seminars from very well known trainers and behaviorists. Trainers that don't come to California that often. So I occasionally get these emails about So-and-So's only California appearance in Yorba Linda. Yeeegh (it's a Tom Lehrer sound that I don't know how to spell.)

Fortunately I have been spared by property values. The sale of my parent's property is funding their retirement. This means that property values all, but guarantee that there won't be any herding facilites founded there and it's not very likely a large agility trial place will appear either. (They have training, but it's not where you would have a trial.) But who knows.

In the meantime I still have to wait for these star trainers to get back to the Bay Area (they do come from time to time). Or I suppose I could go to them even though that's more money. I do make suggestions to the organizers, but there's always something that holds them back.

Look Carefully at my Sponsor's Skis

Sometimes when I finally notice something it seems so screamingly obvious, I wonder how I've been missing it for years.

It was actually a snowboarder who pointed this out to me. I'd been noticing that the snowboarders always seemed to be holding their boards up after a run while they waited for their score - particularly showing the underside. Then I noticed that one of the boarders was making a real obvious point about showing the name on the board to the camera. Then I noticed it again and again and again and wow, I'm slow, but they must be doing this deliberately. They are no doubt sponsored by the board manufacturer they're riding for and this just has to be part of the deal.

Then I saw the skiers. The very first thing they do when they finish a run is take at least one ski off and carry it vertically. Now when you're a tired skier this is likely one of the least likely things you're about to naturally do. Sure enough, every single skier took one or both skis off and held them up so the brand name was visible. They make it look so smooth, but it's so strangely affected. "Can you see my sponsor's skis that they gave me?" Here let me hold them up, so you can get a better look.

This is so dramatically different from the days when skiers were required to be amateurs and a skier could not be photographed with their ski brand showing. Funny how there really isn't a middle ground, we skipped from no photographs to always being photographed. Funny how it's mostly focused on skis and snowboards. It's not like runners are required to take their shoes off and hold them up. Now that would be ridiculous, but who knows maybe that's in the future.

Traveling the World to Compete with the Same Folks Again

So I'm noticing this Olympics that I pretty much know most of the big names in skiing and snowboarding, and if you tune in even just a little in between Olympics you will recognize names. Last year I wound up at Northstar and the weather was pretty miserable, so the only thing fun to do was go watch the snowboarding competition. And tonight's snowboarding competition was pretty much a replay of that competition. The Australian Tora Bright (who must never go home) won and Kelly Clark did very well, and one of the Tahoe locals Elena Hight placed. (I don't remember if Hanna Teter or Gretchen Bleiler were there).

This brings home in a way how small the world can get if you specialize enough. In Calif. in dog agility circles we joke that we travel 100s of miles and we see the same faces, and of course we can't help, but wonder why we bothered to go anywhere (but if you go far enough the faces do change and that's what makes it fun). I'm sure that occurs to the elite athletes as well. Their versions are even more extreme since they have sponsors and competing is their job as opposed to those of us with a moderately expensive obsession where we have to work so we can afford to do it. They really are always seeing the same people again and again, vs. the rest of us who recognize a percentage of the people we see, but by no means all of them.

I do love how in both skiing and snowboarding that the top women all know each other and seem to have this agreement about trading off who wins what.

How Many Keys on the Keyring?

One excellent way to start a religious, superstition-laid argument is to ask how many keys should be on a automotive keyring - the idea was that if there was too much weight on it that the ignition switch could wear out.

Well, pretty much a whole bunch of things we once knew about cars is now outdated. The fastest way to stop a car with anti-lock brakes is not to carefully feather the brakes, but instead stomp on the pedal. High octane gas is not better for your car if it wasn't designed for it (though that said, the higher detergent that is often in expensive gas might help). And taking a lot of time to warm the non-carburated fuel injected engine doesn't usually make a whole lot of difference in how the car runs and is pretty much only good when the car is in the snow and you want some heat. So with that in mind, I figured that the whole idea that having too many keys on your keyring is going to wear out your ignition is likely hokum these days. Google searching is inconclusive. Even the lackies at Car Talk hedged and said well 10 keys is probably ok, but it you're a janitor you might consider separating the car keys out.

So with no solid information I cheerfully ignored the key adage and I would have continued to ignore it, until something completely unrelated to the health of one's ignition switch convinced me it was a good idea to separate them out.

At a shopping center near me there was a car jacking. Now that gave me considerable pause. Mostly because of the headlines if that happened to anyone with dogs in crates in the car. Most of these dog owners would rather be shot than let someone take their dogs, but once that scary scenario dissipated I was left with another one. If your keys are one one ring and you don't have a quick release, do you think that Criminal X is going to wait around while you take your car key off your ring? This is what unrealistic comedies are made of. So not only does your car get stolen, but they have your house and other keys and they have your registration which contains: your address.

Yikes. That more that any silly debate made me separate the car keys out from the other keys.

Your Car is Not a Television

Less so these days, but something that I still see is people locking/arming their car by pointing the keypad at the car, and of course the car (usually) dutifully responds, just like pointing the remote at the TV. But the thing is your car is not a television. TVs have infrared sensors that detect the signals from the remote. Your car has no such sensors and imagine how crazy it would make you if it did. Just think of the drama in your living room when something blocks that IR sensor, now out in the wilds of the average parking lot. Thanks I'll pass.

Car arming systems use a different technology that is not based on direction. You do no need to point it at the car. I remember in the 80s how much a friend enjoyed setting his car alarm by just reaching in his pocket. Except for the funny walk, there was no relationship to the car beeping and what he was doing. With work, he would have gotten subtly points.

Try it sometime. have the fob in your hand, but don't point it at the car when you press the lock button. It should work the same. The cool thing about this is that if you're in your house and you can't remember if you locked the car (I don't use the auto lock), then you can press the button from inside your house and if the car is within range it should respond. You don't need to open the door and do elaborate aiming gymnastics. I know Hollywood has gotten a lot of mileage out of this misconception (someone aims their remote at their new car and life), but it's been bogus for a long time.

Using an Avalanche Beacon to Locate another Beacon

Avalanche Tranceivers and their use.

As I do some research I'm noticing that specific details on avalanche rescue are a little scarce. That may be deliberate as you really need to take a class, and practice practice, practice. I'm going to focus specifically on exactly what I learned and am going to leave a lot of the other detail out.

Tome of basics are listed here:
http://beaconreviews.com/transceivers/Basics.asp

I think it really needs diagrams but I don't know when I'm going to have time to do them.

The basic gist is that when out on a trip everyone has their tranceiver in transmit mode. If someone is buried then everyone else puts their transceivers in search mode so they can locate the other person.

The methodology in how this happens is really important (such as there needs to be a leader coordinating the whole search.)

The search steps are Primary search for a signal, Secondary search one you find a signal, pinpoint search to locate the victim and dig them out.

The parts we spend the most time on were the secondary search and the pinpoint search. The secondary search happens when you get a signal and you bend down and lower the receiver down to the snow level and start following the arrows on the receiver. Because of the way the radio waves emanate, the approach will naturally be in an arc.

When you're close the numbers (distance away is in meters) will start dropping and the receiver starts beeping more. When you're numbers start to go up again you need to stop and do a pinpoint search. Tell your leader about this - yell!- you will need help with shoveling if that's necessary. For practice searches that are only 1/2 a meter down, it's pretty easy to get numbers down to 0.5 or 0.6, but people buried for real may be buried much further down.

At this point you stop looking at the directional arrows and just look at the numbers. Some people cover them up but I didn't need to.
Now you need to concentrate and focus and that is surprisingly difficult with the ensuing chaos - people often mess this part up, but it's my favorite.
- Note and mark the lowest number that when things were the lowest (say 0.6m)
- Note the place where you noticed the numbers going up and mark that place (say 1.0m - a ski pole is good marker
- back up to past the lowest number and back off to the same amount in the other direction and mark that
- then back to the center and mark the same amount left and right (in this example mark where it hits 1.0 both on the left and right)
- You should now have a search box.

If the number in the marked center is less than a meter then dig with your hands
If more than a meter then the beacon and whatever it is attached to (person, pack or whatever) needs further locating. Assemble your probe and probe the center and work out from the center in a spiral until you get a "strike:" (ouch - the probes are pointed.)
- IMPORTANT, when you have located something, leave the probe in place
- back up about a stride and a half and start digging.
- short strokes are best, stay low and work as fast as you can.
- if it's a person, uncover their face as quick as you can (bummer if the first thing you find is a boot - you can't yank them out as they are likely injured. Keep digging - try not to make it worse but if they live they will likely forgive you for shovel whacks.
- if they are conscious try and have a conversation with them to see if there are other victims (the likelihood of them being at all communicative is not great even if they are alive. Get them medical attention as apparently there's nothing quite like being buried in snow and this is according to first hand reports we were lucky enough to have. One video I saw describe it as like being in concrete.

This all needs to happen with it 15 minutes. The locators on the beacons are so good that when you know what you are doing, you usually can find another beacon with in 3-4 minutes which is good because it takes a while to dig out that much snow if they're 4 feet down (average), which can easily be a ton of snow. This is why calling for help is actually secondary. It's important if they're hurt, but if they are going to live you have to be the one to find them and get them an airway. Such a grim and fascinating topic.

My entire goal of the class was avalanche avoidance, but I must say I liked the search part. It's geocaching with consequences.

The Weirdness of Minor Emotional Trauma

I'm in a position I've never been in before, and it's pretty strange for me.

Because the blog entries are individually searchable some redundant information first:

I attended an avalanche class where to get to certain places I needed to ski on terrain that was beyond my skiing ability.
I was basically in the position of having to either snowplow or side-slip down to where I needed to be and I also had to traverse some very steep terrain that would have been no problem if I was on foot or on snowshoes, but with skis one made it completely different and the snow was too deep to just take the skis off and go on foot (I tried). I was sometimes in tears from the anxiety and frustration, but I never feared for my life and only a little for my safety. The situation was intensely anxiety producing, but on paper wasn't that bad in the grand scheme of possibilities.

But now days later I still have these odd things happening to me. I'll have these moments where I have to just go cry for a few minutes, and not just weeping, but serious crying jags. I have trouble sleeping sometimes and I rarely have sleep issues. Last night a bad dream (a man who I don't know came at me with intent to do harm) woke me up suddenly and keep me up for a couple of hours.

Bodies are funny. I recognize that my body is healing from what it considers an emotional trauma, what's weird is I've never been in this position from something as minor as getting dragged into something that I would not of chosen under normal circumstances. I have experience with emotional trauma, but more in the realm of real trauma (depression, breakups, sickness, death: the more usual kind of emotional trauma that takes months/years to really heal from), but this is different as I never could have anticipated it. For one I usually don't let other people push me into situations that are over my head. I push myself, but I, of course, respect my own limits. I have been in groups where the skill level was beyond me, but I always had the option to drop out. I've never been in the military or other groups where you have to keep up. This situation has made me swear off groups/tours if the potential for this exists.

What's also strange is how it manifests. After seeing how well snowboards could cope with the steep terrain and knowing that the reputation of snowboarding is that it's initially difficult, but you can get good at it in a much shorter time period, I've decided to take the step of starting learn it. This gives me no anxiety. I think because starting to learn snowboarding means spending a day or more on the bunny slope and right at this moment I'm all for bunny slopes.

There's also another very positive experience about this whole thing. The trip was there and back in two different chainsor 4wd only storms. While I do have 4wd envy I was very pleased with how the car did in the storm and how well I fared putting on the chains twice. I did it one with tighteners and once without and I didn't notice a difference. The manuf. says don't use them and everyone else says do. I split the difference.

The cool think about traveling in a storm on 80 is that at least going back the speed limit is 30mph and there were no accidents. I like it. Very slow going but not that stressful.

And I have finally pulled it together to make the beacon location entry.

Snow Grieving

Still reeling from my avalanche class. I loved it but was put on terrain that was above my skill level and that seems to have messed me up some (though the class itself was great and I still need to write more about it in time.)

Given how much trouble I had with skiing on difficult terrain and how I'm not willing to move to the mountains since my life is here and I like it and I pretty much emotionally need to be near the ocean as its nearness has always been a part of my life, I've decided to learn snowboarding. Snowboarding has a very steep learning curve BUT unlike skiing, if you stick with it you can get proficient in a much much shorter time period. I had avoided snowboarding since its use was limited in the backcountry, but that's changing with the invention of things like the Split Board (A snowboard cut in half and used like skis to climb and put together like a snowboard to go down.) i'm excited about this decision, but with this resolve to learn it comes an inertia about everything else.

[later]

I'm still grieving about how skiing went during the avy class. I feel as it I've lost something dear to me. I feel as though what I've been working towards is not attainable (being an expert skier while being a part time skier - and it's true - this might not be attainable) and it was just torn away, but that really doesn't cover it. I was placed in a position over my head and forced to cope and unlike common "wisdom," it didn't make me grow. Instead I've gotten worse and my confidence has been shook down deep. I don't want to even plan a trip at all as I'll just fail anyway (never mind that I learned a lot - that doesn't seem sink in). Fortunately, I don't think I'll fail at snowboarding (it is easier and eventually attainable even part time) though some part of me fears even that.

I was planning a Shasta trip. I don't want to.
I was going to apply to Whitney. I don't want to.
I was thinking about Yosemite trip. Not any more.
I was thinking maybe just Lassen, but not even that appeals.

I want to bail on the Sierra At Tahoe women's ski camp, but I'm going to make myself go. They say that it's run at whatever level you are at.

It's funny how this grieving (weird that that's exactly what it is) comes in cycles. Most of the time I'm fine and then suddenly I'm not.

Of course the dogs don't want me to go anywhere without them and it's tempting to just give into that.

Terri read this and mention that I'm letting my fears run away with things. She's right but I feel I have to let it run its course and not make any serious decisions right yet.

Avalanch Course Pt I: Basic Overview

I really do need to stop bemoaning my lack of skiing skills and start writing down what I actually learned which had nothing to do with skiing.

The class held by the most fabulous Babes in the Backcountry (http://babesinthebackcountry.com)

The instructor was actually one of the Avalanche Forecasters at Squaw which was quite the coup.

It was about

Why do we need to learn about avalanches?

In what terrain do avalanches occur?

What are the parts of an avalanche so we can talk about them and study them?

What are the classes of avalanches?
(The relative size or R scale)

How do we measure the destruction that an avalanche causes?
(The D scale)

What conditions make avalanches likely?

Weather and how it contributes

Snow types and how that contributes

Field work

Gather data from websites, and other sources.

Rescue equipment and how to use it
(transceiver, probe, shovel)

Rescue methodology (very important, and this is where the class become vital)

Terrain observation and applying what data we gathered beforehand

Explained some of Squaw's weather station instruments

Ran a lot of rescue scenarios and analysis and debrief.


Fri Kings Beach area near the cabin we were staying at.

Sat Squaw (http://www.squaw.com/):

Here's an annotated mountain map:



Top of East Broadway lift and Shirley Lake area

Then back to Snow study area near High Camp and introl to snow pit digging

Sun KT lift (oh my freakin' god)
Avalanche rescue demo at Squaw complete with one of the avalanche rescue dogs.

Solitude a difficult blue run very steep and soft at the top very frustrating for me to get around on. (I think I'm taking up snowboarding.)
More involved scenarios
More extensive snow pit which was really cool


I could be writing for days and I'd rather not recreate an acredited course, but the basics of this information is in the book Snow Sense: A Guide to Evaluating Snow Avalanche Hazard by Jill A. Fredston, and Doug Fesler

http://www.amazon.com/Snow-Sense-Evaluating-Avalanche-Hazard/dp/0964399407
or
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Snow-Sense/Jill-A-Fredston/e/9780964399402


Instead I'm just going to focus on the fun stuff. More later.

Avalanche Class - Some Sketchy Details

I took a 4 day avalanche class in Tahoe and I'm still a bit reeling from it.

the vague details are:

I attended a 4 day avalanche course put on by Babes in the Backcountry (http://babesinthebackcountry.com) where the instructor is one of the Avalanche Forecasters at Squaw Ski resort. this is actually multiple blog entries but in short.
Drove to Tahoe in a storm (with chains)
Spent part lecture time in a sweet Kings Beach house (on the edge of Lake Tahoe) learning about what causes avalanches.
Learned how to use avalanche beacons (think geocaching, but you HAVE to locate it in 15 minutes or the person buried is likely dead - yikes).
Watched a Squaw rescue exercise complete with 7-8 crew members and an avalanche dog.
Got dragged onto ski slopes way above my ski skill level (they had one person showing me the easier ways - but still scary).
Dug a snow pit in a light storm at the top of Squaw and took a lot of readings and measurements. Yes this is total snow geek city.
Same day, drove back in a different chains-only storm with snow dumping around Blue Canyon.
Fell into bed after an 18 hour day.


Hopefully much more to follow when I get my head together.

Skiing: The Varying Shades of Blue

Ski resorts use a colored system to grade their runs

Easiest is a green circle
Intermediate is a blue square
Advanced is a black diamond
Expert is a double black diamond

I am an intermediate skier and I'm finding that there are many varying difficulties of blue. In fact I've often seen described "easy blues" and "harder blues." and the real trouble is that the degree of difficulty can vary on the run and the only way you have to learn about it is to try it or have a trusted person who knows your ability tell you about it. The net effect of this is that you find yourself on a run beyond your ability and you feel like a cat in a tree. Fortunately I know how to slide sideways down too steep sections but it's still very disconcerting.

Last friday when leaving Sugarbowl I had a great view of Mt Disney (Jerome Hill where I usually hang out wasn't as clearly visible) and spotted one such blue run that I've been stuck on more than once. I haven't worked up the courage to try it this season but probably will.

Here is a photo with the run on it (click on it to see the annotation). The really troublesome thing about this run is that you've been blissing out on a very nice gentle run and then you get dumped off a cliff. Allegedly there's an easier way down, but I haven't found it yet.

A Trader Joe's Quest

I went by Trader Joes on a mission. We have some Trader Joes gift cards and Terri wanted to know if there was something special we could get. Do you know how much fun it is to walk in looking for something expensive?

So right now
$11 gets you 2 Dungeness crabs
$13 gets you a large hunk of uncured ham (she's on her own there, but I dutifully reported it)
$11-12+ gets you a significant quantity of Alaskan Smoked Salmon
$13 gets you a foot tall container of free trade coffee
$23 gets you an even taller supply of protein powder (she passed on this :)
$8 gets you what appears to be a lifetime supply of Castle Soap
$7 gets you an enormous amount of olive oil

I now realize there were probably some great cheese wheels, but I must have overlooked it in self defense.

Dungeness crab immediately won - yum.

The Callanish Stones follow-up - the Quest for Callanish V

This is a follow up to my blog entry about the famous Callanish Stones
http://www.frap.org/Blog/2009/12/callanish-standing-stones.html

I mentioned that while the main attraction was amazing, it's a total blast to locate some of the more obscure standing stones in the area that are associated with the main one ("Callanish I"). There are over 10 and the quest for Callanish V had us having a grand time tromping all around a very large cow pasture.

Inspired, I scanned in the photos of our quest for Callanish V. there is a lot of mucking about for which there are no photos as well it was just mucking about (though just trying to follow the printed instructions is a challenge - this is pre-GPS).

First you find the marker stone. Given how burired it is in peat, I'm really surprised we found it. Some kind person or group partially dug it out.


The marker stone points out the row of stones that is up on the top of the rise.



Looking in the other direction:




We were looking and looking here. It actually isn't in this frame (if I remember correctly they were hiding just behind my left shoulder and further over - no doubt laughing at me), but gives the proper needle in a haystack feeling, and I spend a long time looking at this view.

One or more of these stones is not like the others...

This was around a 3 hour adventure I believe. Oh and note the crowds. It's basically you and history having a very personal chat.

It's Twenty Ten!

2010 is Twenty Ten, not Two Thousand Ten. (Someone alert They Might be Giants as we need a song like "Istanbul, not Constantinople") I don't know who decreed that (Emily Post Inc.?), but it's caught on and, if you think about it, it makes sense as it's how we always refer to dates in the past.

How do you say 1972? Nineteen Seventy Two.
When was the Norman Conquest? In One thousand Sixty Six? I think not. Ten-Sixty-Six is way catcher.
When was the War of Eighteen-Twelve? Sorry couldn't resist.

It's the Oughts (someone correct that spelling for me) that threw us off and the workaround in the past has been to use the handy, but ungrammatical "Oh." 1906 is Nineteen Oh Six.

I think the thing that make it not so obvious is that "Two thousand" and "Twenty" aren't that much different to say if you're used to saying "Two Thousand." "Twenty Oh Six" just never caught on, but it likely will in the future as the century moves forward (you heard it here probably not for the first time, but just the nth time.)

Happy Twenty Ten.

Inedible Bounty (of Oranges)

In Sept, I was agonizing about what to do with my thriving orange tree that produces some seriously sour oranges:

http://www.frap.org/Blog/2009/09/life-and-death-in-garden.html

I haven't done anything with the tree as it's honestly not high enough of a priority, but when it calls attention to itself by having a huge crop of oranges that not even the squirrels will eat (I found one on the thrown on the ground with one squirrel bite out of it), it does grate.

If I leave the oranges on the tree for a year, then they get to a state where I can eat a some if I leave them out in the sun for a few days, but that experience has lost its novelty. I've decided that my conclusion at the end of the first blog entry is probably correct, the original graft died and I'm left with bitter root stock that is really annoyingly thriving.

While this is a bummer, I must remind myself, it's not entirely bad news, The root stock part is very healthy so if I wanted to learn how to regraft a tree successfully (I've tried once with some cuttings from my family's grove trees and that failed), then I have an excellent candidate for a base.

So for now, I'll just cut it back to a manageable size and stop worrying about getting the oranges edible - they're not. Coming to that conclusion is very freeing. I can always take it out entirely if I feel it's a lost cause but as I was writing in the first entry, I do admire its tenacity and love for life even it I don't like what it produces. I wish there was a magic shot I could give it to make it start producing sweet oranges. Could I order that over the internet maybe? I'm sure I could. With guaranteed results too.

DIY Home Improvement Means Not Having Someone Else to Blame

Like a lot of people, I and my partner at the time wanted to buy a house, but the ones we could afford were not in areas that we liked, so we took the time honored route of buying a fixer, and trading sweat equity in order to get into a nicer area

That paid off handsomely, which was actually not the reason for this house purchase. It's one of those emotional decisions that, for once, worked in my favor. My area is rich in history and has no shortage of historic houses in nice areas that need love and attention. I just wanted to lavish love (and attention and money and time and money and anguish and money ... ) on a house that needed it. It's one area where you can really make a difference as a nicer house improves the neighborhood which helps everyone. (Well unless you're involved in gentrification, but we'll steer clear of that hot topic.)

The trouble is that when on a limited budget (that means just about everyone to some extent) there are always long lists of things to do and only one or two of you to do the work. So you save your pennies for the projects that you want someone else's expertise in - most recently for me is seismic reinforcements. After learning all about it I decided that I wanted someone else's help (and information about it changes so fast I'm glad I sought help.)

For the rest that you can conceivably do, you have a list of doable projects that you (ok, I) think about and think about and think some more about. Then I finally get tired of it and start on one until I hit a stopping point which leads to too many unfinished projects. Usually the reason is that you've discovered that some essential thing has to happen before you can proceed - I call this: going backwards in a project. Recently I decided that I really needed to finish a project, not just start one.

This particular project - a deadbolt - had actually taken some thought as I wanted to put said deadbolt on a door that had a window. I wanted to get around the problem of someone just breaking the window and undoing the deadbolt, so I found one that had a key on each side ("double cylinder" I think) and when we're home I leave a key in it on the inside (for fast exit in case of fire) and when we're gone on vacation I remove the inner key.

So first I did the easy part and replaced the same keyed door knob (didn't have to drill any new holes for that), then it sat for a couple of weeks until the above "I need to finish a house project" bug attacked and putting in the deadbolt was a natural target since I already had most of the hardware.

The thing about doing it yourself is that you have to accept that it's going to take you 4+ times as long as a professional who does this every day. I'm a computer professional and from time to time I'll help a friend out with a computer problem and I find that they've spent days on something that I can fix it 30 seconds. The reason is that I've already spent all those hours learning about the various ins and outs.

The other thing about fixer houses is that you had better really like tools

This job "required" a drill, a key hole drill bit, a spade drill bit, a 1/8 " drill bit, a wood chisel, a hammer, and a screwdriver. (Plus the usual: measuring tape, small T square level, and pencil) Simple huh?

The job actually took a drill, a different template kit from Home Depot which made lining things up easier, a key hole saw from the kit, a spade bit different from the one in the kit because the kit one wasn't lined up quite right. a 1/8" drill bit, the kit's nice wood chisel, a mallet (don't screw up your chisel with a hammer!), a utility knife (works better to use it to draw the outline to chisel out the mortise.

But nothing ever goes as planned and this is the problem with DIY. WHEN you mess it up there's no one else to blame (stupid locksmit - oh that would be me), you just have to be prepared for it.
So add to the above: small dowels and glue to help fill mis-aligned holes
a smaller spade bit for the dead bolt part that goes into the door jamb because they neglected to tell you that the one to put the dead bolt in the door is really too large for the other side of the jamb.
A Dremel to help make micro adjustments
A Die grinder for those not so micro adjustments.
A patient, but easily amused spouse or partner who is willing to help.
A headlamp because you don't have enough hands to hold a flash light.
Eye protection
Lipstick - this is not a joke. Lipstick put on the end of the dealbolt shows where it's striking the jamb. Rumor has it even the manly locksmith guys carry it, so feel free to look for it when they are working for you, so you can tease them about it.

Things that helped:
- patience - especially when chiseling the motises (those insets you have to make for the striker plates)
- sculpture experience for same motises - this helps you to avoid whacking your hands with the mallet
- upper arm endurance - you are drilling a very large hole in a door and the drill can catch so you need to be able to hold on tight.
- a good sense of touch as it requires putting in bolts where you can't see the screw hole
- a good eye for when things are mostly level - it's not precision work, but the closer you are the less rework you have to do.
- a sense of humor
- the knowledge (hopefully not misinformed) that you are not making things worse
- health insurance (not used this time but always good to have) - note the upper arm endurance section - drills that catch on things try to turn the body of the drill - often into you.

2 sessions later, I now have a working deadbolt and all my fingers, toes, eyes and dogs and sanity and marriage, and a sense of accomplishment. Besides it's fun to actually get something done with all of your toys.

When I first published this I typoed DIY as DYI. I wonder if that stands for Do Yourself In.

Treadmill Experiments

Happy New Year

Spent a couple of hours at the gym and surprisingly I recognized at lot of of the people there. Guess it's going to take a little while for the New Year's Resolution Crowd to get here.

I've been ill for the past few days so it was really nice to get out and moving. First did my favorite: RPM which is a stationary bike class and is an invitation to try to kill yourself while cool music plays and a super nice, super fit instructor encourages you in this pursuit. It is in RPM where I have hit my Maximum Heart Rate twice (this is hard to do - once), and one time I went past what I thought was my MHR which made me dubious enough that I replaced the heart rate monitor as it was acting slightly erratically. Fortunately since I'm coming off of a cold I just cruised. Rediscovering my actual MHR will be for another day.

After class I was pretty revved so I jumped on a treadmill and wasn't winding down at all so I just kept going and wound up staying on the treadmill an hour, so I took the time to verify something that I'd been suspecting.

At a rate of 3mph
At an incline of 5.0 (5 degrees maybe?), the calorie burn rate is 383/hr
At an incline of 10.0 the calorie burn rate leaps up to 529/hr!

This means that going uphill is just as calorically effective as jogging! Maybe not as fun when you're on a treadmill, but nice to have that alternative.