Silver Case

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Interpol has issued an urgent global security alert for an accused leader of an al Qaeda-linked militant network who escaped from detention in Singapore on Wednesday.

Ling says there are Gurkas, Commandos, and police everywhere.  They’ve been delivering wanted flyers to the house, etc.  I am hoping that they don’t catch him before I return on Sunday, so that Mona and I can participate in the manhunt.

The Tribe hung out all day Monday. First had brunch in Wallingford, then over to Greenlake park where Luke ran amok. Matt captured some great photos of him. After that, we baked under bright sunlight at the furiously packed Zoka. It’s worth it for a cup of Rwanda Cylya Mugambira, Cup of Gold #8

Luke flying around the carousel. This is the first time he’s ridden without crying and jumping off.

Late afternoon, Ling and I bought the majority of QFC’s deli counter and loaded our dinner table with a huge spread of cheese, antipasti, meats, breads, and salads.  Once we were sufficiently stuffed, Luke went to bed and we played a long game of Six Man Settler of Catan. (I beat mom. HA!)

All the non-Asians in our party climbed onto an ancient-looking seaplane and took a 20 minute tour around Seattle today. The plane was too modern. Mom never looked sufficiently gripped, except when she needed to jump from the floating dock into the plane.

Second Office XunQi

Gripped (L) Hung-over (R)

Dog Sledders

Safely Ashore

Momma stayed on the ground

Shannon heads back to Baltimore

Last night had dinner at the house. We drank wine and played board games. The wine won.

Now we are just waiting for Megan to get here ASAP.

The Quickening continues. Ling, Luke, her mom, and Tien-Lee arrived today. We all went to lunch at Coastal Kitchen in Seattle. We were trying to control a tired and ever-testier Luke. Some bald guy in my line-of-sight gave me one or two funny looks. I didn’t think anything of it except, “I’ve paid barely a modicum of attention to the guy - why is he looking at me as if I’ve been staring at him for an hour.”

After a while it occurred to me that the guy looked very much like Neil Stephenson. By the time I left lunch I was pretty convinced.

Now that I’ve got home and checked the Interweb for photos, I can confirm, yes indeed, it was him.  And he looked about as friendly as he does in this photo.

I guess the follow up comment is, “who cares.” But at least it reinforces that Seattle is a very interesting place to live.

Made it to the rental house.  Had dinner at the Metropolitan Grill with Mom, Dad, and Matt tonight. It was quite nice.  One of the best steaks I’ve had. Enormously nice flavor.  Steak better than the sides.  Quiet table in the corner, undisturbed by pushy waiters.

Both Stevens Pass and Snoqualmie Pass are closed. Earliest Snoqualmie opens today (if at all) is the evening. Looks like we have to do a bone run south, below the troublesome mountains, via Portland, Oregon. That’s an eleven or twelve hour drive. ugh. Not much else to do. No interest in waiting for passes in grim hotel rooms in grubby little Washington towns. At least my iPod is charged.

Could be straighter.

I would expect (not certain!) that we’ll be back to Seattle by midnight Saturday.

Today’s mission was to snow-shoe to the top of Helsey Hill.

The trail

I was irritated because I bought my KX1 and its antenna, but forgot my earphones! It ultimately didn’t matter, because by the time we were one kilometer away the trail was just a huge, deep drift. My snowshoes were sinking in a foot deep each and I was dying. Progress nearly impossible. We ended up quartering behind a pile of logging scrap, eating some hideous premade oscar-mayer sandwiches, and then (compartively) raced back down the file mile trail.

Me hating, hating, hating the latest Garmin garbage product. Garmin SUCKS.

It was irritating to get so close but not be able to finish the deal. As Matt said, we did eighty percent of the trail and expended fifty percent of the effort required.

Matt the Imperial Snow Walker

When I came home I checked the internet. The only recommendation people had for snowshoeing through heavy, unbroken trail was to have lots of people marching, alternating lead every three minutes. Doesn’t work very well with only two people.

It was windy and damn cold at our high-water point. Doubt I would have wanted to hang out at summit for very long working bad QRP QSOs.

Matt hacking at the Lodge.

What took us three or four hours to climb took one and a half to descend. Then we were safely back at the lodge drinking beers and surfing the internet in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.

Our hike as it would appear in the summer.  Four miles one way.

Friday, our last day in Yaak, we’ve got a snow-shoeing project. We’re trying to snow shoe up to Helsey Hill. This is a former US Air Force radome base. It was part of the US “Dew Line” of radar stations designed to detect Soviet Bombers rolling across the north pole towards America. Unfortunately it looks like the radome has been removed, but it should still be a fun snow hike. I plan on bringing my Elecraft KX-1 in attempt to have a QRP Contact or two. The hill is quite high, so hopefully I can work someone.

Helsey is a documented UFO site.

According to Project Blue Book:

Sept. 1, 1952; Yaak, Montana. 4:45 a.m. Witnesses: Visual
sighting by two USAF enlisted men, radar tracking seen by three
men using AN/FPS-3 radar set. Two small, varicolored lights
became black silhouettes at dawn; flew erratically. One hour.

and in 1953

Summer 1953; Yaak, Montana

Unidentified objects were tracked at an Air Force radar site several times. S/Sgt. William Kelly described the incidents in a taped interview with Olean, N. Y., newsman Bob Barry.

On one occasion Sgt. Kelly and other radarmen picked up six unidentified targets. In five sweeps of the antenna (about 1 minute), the UFOs changed direction 5 times, sometimes making 90 degree turns. When radar indicated the UFOs had approached within 10 miles of the station, the crew went outside to look for them. They saw six objects in trail formation, switching to in line abreast, then stack formation. Other radar stations were notified and they also tracked the UFOs.

The radar crew calculated the objects’ speed: 1400-1600 mph. (In 1953 the official world speed record for aircraft was 755.14 mph.; see table).

At other times, the station tracked UFOs making similar maneuvers. Sgt. Kelly had also tracked UFOs climbing vertically out of the radar beam, with height finder equipment confirming the rise, until the objects went off the scope.

I had a lot of equipment failure today (boot sole unglued, unchargered camera battery, etc). Hopefully I have better luck tomorrow, on an important day that all my tech works.

Matt charging his four-dog  team up the hill

Today was a busy day. Got up (lateish) at around 8am Pacific Time, had a hearty breakfast here at the Yaak River Lodge and then drove west one hour, back to Idaho where we met up with True North Expeditions to learn the rudiments of dog-sledding.

Dan at True North has a fifty-dog kennel full of sled dogs he’s taken from Alaska, Canada, and Colorado. Make no mistake, these are not your pretty AKC Huskies you see as far removed as Singapore. These dogs all look like mixes and mongrels. In fact, they generally are. The eskimos don’t care about pedigree, they care about practicality. Need a dog that runs faster or has longer legs, breed in some greyhound. Need a dog that can smell the trail in a blizzard, breed in some bassett hounds. Consequently there is a huge variety of dogs. In fact, he has a one year old girl that is learning to be a lead dog. She looks like Mona’s sister.

?Nama? the one year old girl learning to be a very good lead dog. Looks like Mona!

So we first met all the dogs. Then rode the dog sleds (sans dogs) down a hill, to feel the braking. Then he dragged us around a field, pulling our sled with his snowmobile. Afterwards, we ran a two-dog team around a small loop. These dogs, 40lbs each, can pull twice their weight, 80 lbs, no problem. So although you have to help them a bit on the hills, they do a decent job. After we tried that, we set up four-dog teams and rode on a larger circuit around his ranch. It turns out to be terribly fun. Terribly tiring for me too, but fun.

The dogs are amazing. For one, they absolutely love pulling sleds. They basically go apeshit when it’s time. They run till they’re tired, and after a one minute thirty second stop, they are yipping and leaping and pulling against the sled, rarring to go again.

The kennel, if you don’t know better, looks like a cruel nightmare: 1) every dog tied up to a five foot long steel chain. 2) Piss and shit all over the snow. 3) Plastic barrels to sleep in.

But, it’s actually ideal for the huskies: 1) They love to be on the chain, its their natural urge to be pulling. 2) They shit a lot because they eat an incredibly high-calorie diet. Being 40lbs, absolutley rib-boney, they eat something like 6000 calories per day, so of course they shit a lot. [They don’t drink water. They eat snow. To get them to drink water from a bowl, you have to mix meat in with it] 3) They love cold temperature. It was 30F today. Apparently they prefer -10F. Whenever we’d stop the sleds, they’d rub their heads trying to get snow behind their ears to cool off. One dog was already shedding his winter coat. Dan (the guide) said some especially smart dogs manage to pack snow under their armpits.

I’d like to come back with Ling and Luke and do more of this. I think they’d all enjoy it.

Kootenai Falls

After we finished up sledding, we drove to Kootenai Falls. It’s some brilliant blue-green rapids coarsing down a mountainous valley. There is a cable bridge across the river. On the way back, instead of snowshoeing back the path we came, I convinced Matt to climb under a fence, cross some railroad tracks, and climb up the side of a steep hill side. In exchange I took the photos.

Matt post-holing his way up the slope in awkward snow-shoes

Dinner in Bonner’s Ferry ID and then back home here to the Yaak River Lodge (which I give high marks for hospitality and quality)

Today is the first day of Chinese New Year. This is the Year of the Rat. I am not celebrating it traditionally. Intead, sitting on a leather recliner in a hunting lodge, with a ember-filled wood-burning stove is pretty decent alternative. I’ve got new clothes to wear today, as is practice, except for my pants. All the pants I brought I forgot in the drawers of the hotel in Sandpoint. oops. I’ll have to pick them up on the way back through idaho. For the time being I have to choose between XC Ski Tights, insulated ski pants, or a single pair of desert army fatigues. Nice.

Anyway, overnight 6″ of snow fell here. Apparently there is another 8″ due today. The roads seem to be kept assiduously clean, so it really doesn’t matter too much. I suppose the roads are kept assiduously clean because the alternative is total closure. Most side roads are entirely closed off due to snow and it would be a herculean effort to open them back up. Dan Phillips, our Dog Mushing guide, told us that the heavy snow on the forest roads doesn’t melt away until July.

Ling posted a ton of new photos of our house. Renovation has slowed during CNY because most of the workers have gone back to Malaysia, etc. to celebrate during their one large vacation per year. Small thigns continue to work, and Ling has annotated quite a few pictures.

41 Springleaf Height update

Brought my KX1 with me, haven’t used it yet. Am going to try to take it out tomorrow and work a few contacts at least.

Drove north to Yaak, Montana this morning. We’re staying at the Yaak River Lodge. Today we went snowshoeing, tomorrow we’ll go to dog-sledding class, and Friday we’ll got, I guess, cross-country skiing.

This area is remote. Everyone knows the UNABOMBER had his cabin in rural Montana, but Lincoln is about three hundred miles away. Much closer is Sandpoint, Idaho, where we stayed four days. Near Sandpoint is Ruby Ridge, where FBI snipers went out of control and killed several members of Randy Weaver’s family in the early 1990s. Even more interesting is that several evenings Matt and I had dinner or dessert at Connie’s Diner, outside our motel. I just discovered a transcript of a “Sixty Minutes” interview with traitor Christopher Boyce, the “Falcon” of “Falcon and the Snowman.”

RAY MARTIN: Were there times when you came close to being caught
in those 19 months you were away?

CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: When I was pulled over by six officers up in
Bonners Ferry, Idaho, late at night, with no I.D., driving the car
and, but up in Idaho, they asked me where I was going and I
mentioned a friend of the sheriff’s and they let me go.

RAY MARTIN: This is the most, perhaps at that stage, the most
wanted fugitive in the country.

CHRISTOPHER BOYCE: Well, that’s how they classified it. Then up
in Idaho during the ‘80 elections, I was sitting in a restaurant in
Sandpoint called `Connies’, eating a ham and egg omelette, and in
walks Senator Church, campaigning with his whole entourage,
reporters, body guards. And he walks in that restaurant, come up
to my table, shook my hand and told me how much he needed my vote.
Ruined my breakfast.

Anyway, the point is, this area is remote. It makes sense people come here to escape.

We took our first trip into the forest today. First thing we saw was a bald eagle perched on the top of the tallest, dead pine tree in the area. It was so high up that my big lens scarcely saw it.

Takling a break from snow shoeing

Snow-shoeing

Tuesday night. Just wrapped up my two day course on coffee roasting at Diedrich.  When I came out to my truck at 5:30pm I found a fresh five or six inches of snow on the car.  Oops.  Tomorrow morning we are supposed to drive to Montana, a few hours away, for snowshoeing/skiing/dog-sledding.  The snow seems to have stopped, so hopefully the roads will be clear(ish) tomorrow.

The roasting course was pretty decent.  I used my HR-1 exclusively.  There were two other, much larger units. They had gas burners, instead of my electric burners.  Thus they react probably 50% more quickly. (compare an electric stove’s to a a gas stove’s responsiveness).  But they process seven or twelve kilograms of beans at a time. Mine?  two kilograms in an hour.   It was more instructional for me to work with my unit.   I think I have a decent grounding in what to do, but now I have a lot of practice and experimentation to do. As well, I envisioned a much better data logging system than the one they describe. When I get back to Singapore, I’ll try to implement it.

Overall I don’t mind Sandpoint. Had a nice dinner at  ‘Echardt’s’ which I’d as a ‘gastro-pub’ — a bar, but with quality food. Had several decent beers along with it.

I’d upload more pictures from our snowmobiling, but the internet connection at this hotel is just dreadful and I really can’t upload much with any success.  Hopefully the place we’re staying in Montana has better connection, although I’m not at all certain it has anythign at all. oops.

The plan is: Wednesday tour of the area, Thursday dog-sledding class, Friday snow-shoeing or X-C Skiing,  Saturday, drive back to Seattle.

By next week, all the family will be rolling in from across the globe, including Little Man.

Chinese New Year starts on Thursday.  It’s the year of the Rat (me).  Supposed to wear new clothes on first day and apparently my auspicious color for that day is green. Thus I have a new pair of green insulated undertop, green socks, and a green shirt to wear.

Guess that’s about it. As has been typical throughtout this trip, I’m tired and goto bed at 10pm.  I’ve been sleeping like a damn log here.

Been here in Sandpoint since Saturday night. Today (monday) was the first day of my roasting seminar at Diedrich Roasters.  Learned the theory of developing and maintaining roaster temperature/time profiles.  Tomorrow will be roasting and cupping several batches of coffee.

Wednesday we’ll drive to Montana for the second half of the trip, which will include snow-shoeing, learning how to mush dog-sleds, and cross-country skiing.  We’ll be back in Seattle something like Saturday night I guess.

For a small town, Sandpoint is way, way better than other small shitty towns we’ve stayed in (Alice Springs and various Cootervilles across the Nevada/Arizona/California).  Had a nice bottle of Italian from Valpolicella tonight. Last night drank a bunch of bears and apple pie at a local dinner.

Posted on a flickr are a number of photos from my house, mid-construction.  All the workers left for Chinese New Year, and the photos aren’t very good, but give some idea of the cabinetry and final build-out of the room.  My internet connection isn’t very good here, so I am having some problems ordering and cleaningup up many of the photos.

http://flickr.com/photos/karavshin/sets/72157603850464619/

Matt and I went snowmobilng at Schweitzer Mountain today. It was more fun than I might have expected. There were only four of us, and the guide. No one was a turd, and the guide was fun. Blasting down fire roads of snow 9 ft deep at 30mph is, in fact, quite thrilling. The learning curve for driving these things seems pretty quick. Along the way we saw a Momma Moose and her calf. I’d post more photos, but the hotel internet is pretty shit and I couldn’t get my Flickr Uploader to work. Will try again later.

Dinner was at ‘Connies Diner’ — everything else was closed on Sunday night in Sandpoint except for a single brewery, but it was filled with Superbowlers. Ugh. The diner wasn’t bad imagine Bob’s Diner with several fingers of scotch for dessert. It was pretty pleasant. I’d say Sandpoint is the nicest rural place I’ve been.

Tomorrow is first day of my two-day seminar on coffee roasting at Diedrich. My friend, the master roaster at Spinellis, keeps warning me, “it’s going to be a lot different roasting beans in 85F ambient air than in 40F ambient air.”

Top of Schweitzer mountain. MDS (l) MWE (r)

Baby Boy

Originally uploaded by shyanl2003.

Shyan Woei was around to photograph Luke’s non-traumatic visit.

02022008071

Originally uploaded by shyanl2003.

Chinese New Year will occur while I’m in USA. Ling, Luke, Shyan-Woei, Matilda, and Luke all had Yu Sheng/Lo Hei yesterday.

I don’t know why Luke found the experience so tedious. Is he already embarassed by his nerdy parents? It took me fourteen years.

Everything went smoothly, except getting the hotel. It took some time for Matt to negotiate a room at La Quinta.

Instead using I-90’s Snoqualmie Pass route, we’ll use the State 2 Stevens Pass.  Although total route is only 30miles longer, Google Maps says it will take 1.5 hours longer. On the other hand, Stevens Pass is in better condition.We just rented a Toyota 4-Runner 4×4 truck and are going to buy some tire chains for it. So everything should be in good shape to get to Sandpoint tonight. 

Snoqualmie Pass via I-90

Stevens Pass using State 2

I picked up a local sim card today from AT&T, so that I have a USA number for people to call during this month.

The number is +1 206 883 6140

On Saturday we need to drive from Seattle to Sandpoint, Idaho. I need to cross Snoqualmie Pass to get there.

Current Conditions? CLOSED

Snoqualmie Pass remains closed from milepost 34 near North Bend to milepost 106 near Ellensburg. Extreme winter conditions continue to hit the Cascades and Snoqualmie Pass and avalanche risk is at historical levels. Avalanche control work continues. By 8 p.m. this evening, avalanche experts will be able to evaluate the success of the day’s avalanche control efforts. WSDOT will be able to provide a better assessment of a possible re-opening time. Updated information provided as available // Snowing with areas of poor visibility