Silver Case

During my trip to Death Valley I had two QRP QSOs using my Elecraft KX1 and a “long” wire antenna.

The first was 2/25/08 with n7oc (Stan), from my campsite at Warm Springs (an abandoned Talc Mine in Death Valley). It was a really sketchy contact, only succeedinig because Stan indulged me. My signal report was 339 (almost useless!). Stan was booming in on 7.046mhz with a 599 signal. To make it harder, my copying was rusty. I haven’t worked CW since August 2007. But it was my first contact ever with the KX1 in full field conditions (shitty antenna and six AA cell batteries). Thanks Stan.

The next day we hiked a few miles west, up the valley, and then south up a stream wash into the hills. We took a break on the edge of a south facing cliff, overlooking a giant playa. With no trees available, I just draped my longwire and the counterpoise into a crude dipole, running East/West. I was nervous that I’d hear nothing, being the middle of the sunny day. However, there were more than a few strong signals out there. I tried returning some calls to no avail, so I jumped over to 7.057mhz and started calling CQ myself. In only a few minutes a powerful 599 signal rolls in from Dennis W7RVR. His signal was clean and his fist was eminently copyable. We had an enjoyable 15 minute ragchew before Dennis signed. Definitely my best QRP contact thus far.

W3LMB QTH

Here is a panoramic photo from my temporary QTH. I took a bunch of 20mm photos while rotating and then stitched it together with the very nice bit of software, DoubleTake. DoubleTake is really clean and easy to use. Further, it only cost 15EUR.

For an even neater photo, download this quicktime VR photo of this scene, which allows you to rotate it 360 degrees! It’s a big file (8mb) and you may have to install QuickTime, but it’s quite neat result. What’s scarier is how easy it was to do this!

The only thing I like about Las Vegas is playing poker. The rest of it sucks.

Everything is expensive and almost all of it is mediocre. The only thing that wasn’t inconvenient was to waste money gambling in the casino of your hotel.

I only enjoyed the poker because it is a fun game that is complicated and involves fighting other people. When I arrived in Las Vegas I had only a skeletal knowledge of Poker (Texas Hold’em [no limit]) but no real experience playing it. My first tuition was running through a $300 cash game in under an hour at a junky poker room in the Excalibur. Adam and Matt were aghast and it looked like we all wouldn’t be playing as much poker as we’d anticipated.

Then we discovered you can play tournaments instead. Tournaments are clearly the best way for a new player to practice his game. For a fixed fee (in our case, $65) you enter a tournament of twenty to fifty people. They play until the last guy is eliminated. The winner (and maybe some of the runner-ups if there were enough participants) receives some percentage of all the entrance fees. The rest get nothing. But it’s small and entirely limited downside, which is perfect when you don’t know what you’re doing. At least some money needs to be at stake, or else no one will play like they care.

Matt had the same bona fides I did. That is, none. Despite that, in his first tournament he managed to place fifth out of approximately fifty players. (In retrospect, this is even more amazing given how exceptionally tight we started out trying to play) Matt enjoyed a golden hand throughout his stay. He won money from a variety of ridiculous games (some stupid wheel straight from Price-Is-Right and, of all things, slot machines.)

We all played in a few tournaments. In my first two games, I accidentally played too loose — playing junk cards but with no confidence. In the next several games (including a 2am yawner) I played too tight and conservatively. Although it stretches out your time at the table, it dooms you — you’ll never have enough chips to kill others, which is, ultimately, the point of the game.

Resolving for the final tournament to play more than just good hands, I started off wretchedly, blew up in short order, but bought back in, where I played considerably better. Of course the flip side of mild pleasure from a good hand is lingering, brooding disgust with myself over a misplayed hand. I’d taken three largeish pots in row, quintupling my money. In the fourth hand I held A8o. I played it strong and everyone folded except one guy who I had a particular loathing of. He was the table’s resident big-mouth, There was junk on the flop. We called and raised each other a few times and the pot was decent sized. Then he raised again, out-of-proportion to the pot size. I considered if for a long time. There didn’t seem to be much potential in the flop. No obvious straights or flushes available. I felt like he was likely not holding anything useful, but I had just enough worry about a flush plus I had just come off a good run, so I folded. He’s a tosser, right, so of course he crows about having bluffed me out with a junk hand (J2o I think). The acting-out is more important to him than actually winning. If he was smart, he should have fucking kept it to himself and left me always wondering. I was and still am totally disgusted with myself. I could and should have broken that guy’s back decisively. I should have called, gone for the draw, where I would have won. The best lesson out of all this was to be fearless and try to destroy people, not last as long as I can on the table.

Before leaving, we visited Gambler’s Bookstore, ‘The World’s Largest Gambling Bookstore’. I picked up two Texas Hold’Em books and met the colorful owner, Howard Schwarzt. He entertained us (me? Adam found him tedious I think) with Las Vegas anecdotes for twenty minutes until it was closing time then Howard was ready to slide down the brontosaurus’s neck.

My self-assessment? I’m ready to read real texts on poker. I need to get games in. I’d prefer to play physical games, not electronically. I’ll have to dig around and see what I can organize or join. I’m not ready for cash games yet, I need tournaments. Hopefully I won’t need to go back to Las Vegas, as the Singapore casinos are coming online in a few years.

The last third of my Seattle Sabbatical was a trip with Matt and Adam to Death Valley via Las Vegas. Only two hours away, we all flew to Las Vegas, rented an SUV, and drove to Death Valley. It was like our Outback 2003 trip in miniature: a car crammed full of shit and a lot of ruined tires. It meant we stayed in Death Valley one day less than expected.

I’ve endured enough trips damaged by bad outfitting. It’s time to figure out alternatives to at least two major problems.

It’s impossible to rent a 4×4 truck with all the equipment necessary to mount a trouble-free 4×4 trip.

No national rental car company offers vehicles capable to mount a desert 4×4 trip. That would require expensive heavy-duty tires, extraction and safety equipment, and a willingness to have their vehicles abused to a considerable degree.

When you rent a 4×4 SUV (availability not guaranteed) your tires will likely be road/passenger class. They fundamentally cannot take the abuse of driving up old mining roads or trails along streambeds. As soon as you lose one tire, you’re stupid to continue on unless you don’t mind getting stranded.

Your two fifty-pound luggages will be filled with lots of other travel essentials already, so you’ll need to buy your shovel, tow-straps, and air compressor at your destination for a single-use

Forget Loss-Damage Waivers (LDW) to protect against abuse and damaged tires. LDWs just make your rental even more expensive and driving the car on unpaved roads voids it anyway.

Occasionally you’ll see boutique 4×4 rentals, but their rates are insane and always give me the impression that they make a good second-income by issuing punitive damage assessments upon return.

Owning your own infrequent-use 4×4 seems expensive and logistically difficult. Even if I didn’t mind buying and storing a field-ready 4×4 for trips, it’s still another matter to get the vehicle to the trip destination. I wouldn’t have wanted to drive a 4×4 truck fifteen hundred miles from Seattle to Death Valley. That would have (1) sucked (2) wasted four days driving. There are car-transport companies, but they are slow (small problem) and cost around $1,000 one-way (big problem). Of course having a 4×4 depoted in Seattle doesn’t do me any good if I want to go exploring in Australia or Borneo.

Car-camping cooking is gross and inefficient

My earliest camping experiences were strictly backpacking trips in the desert. Carrying everything enforces a certain efficiency. Camping with a 4×4 makes me sloppy. I think my logic failure is that the vehicle has infinite storage, thus I can outfit myself with a mobile kitchen, enabling me to eat as if I lived in a studio apartment.

It turns out to be gross. Preparing fresh food requires more equipment to prepare and cook. It also requires a host of accessory ingredients and cleaning supplies. The consequence is meals that range from vaguely disappointing to vastly disgusting. And they all invariably waste a lot of time to prepare.

On consideration, the only real essentials are: sufficient water, hot coffee, some savory calories, and some sweet calories. If things can be heated up, that’s a bonus.

I’m guessing that the best solution is to rely exclusively on dried foods eaten neat and dehydrated meals prepared in-bag with boiled water. This means one stove, one pot, no plates, and minimal cutlery. On average the backpack-style meals shouldn’t be much worse than the mobile-kitchen style meals (for every pleasant sausage, jambalaya, and coffee meal, there is always a revoltingly-prepared egg-and-potato breakfast) They should be substantially easier, cheaper, and faster to prepare.

I only need to eat back-pack style, so why do I even need a 4×4 truck?

Hiking doesn’t cover much distance. Getting from Furnace Creek (a park HQ in Death Valley) to the valley we explored required a forty-mile drive across a baked, blasted playa. That’s two excrutiating days of hiking right there. Hiking alone cannot cover the distances necessary.

An enduro-style motorcycle is a step in the right direction. They’re less expensive than a 4×4 but they suffer from the same logistic problems. How to get from my depot to my destination? 1500 highway miles on knobby tires? Nah.

The conclusion I draw is to specially outfit an expedition bicycle for the job.

• They’re at least nominally air-freightable
• In a pinch you could cover 50-100 miles of road in a day.
• You can cover (perhaps more) jeep trails
• Emergency repairs are considerably more manageable
• They should be able to carry a better load burden (including more water)
• Riding bicycles is fun

Next article will flesh out the ideas around a bike-based expedition kit.

We came back from Death Valley a day earlier than expected, so on short notice needed to find a couple rooms on the Las Vegas strip. Every one of these monoliths were fully-booked. After a joyless hour of war-driving suburban Las Vegas for ethernet, I started calling random hotels. For some reason Excalibur not only had lots of rooms, they were only $99/night. Couldn’t explain why it was available and cheap, but it didn’t matter, we needed rooms.

I originally thought the rooms were cheap because the hotel is “somewhat” tacky. (As if the rest of Las Vegas isn’t) But after reading about a ricin discovery in Las Vegas, maybe I know why:

Police said Tholen stayed at the Excalibur on Wednesday night. Friday evening investigators found the room was not tainted from ricin, Lombardo said.

Well, sadly my trip to Seattle has come to an end. Returned from Las Vegas/Death Valley yesterday. Had my final Espresso Vivace cappucino this morning, collected a cache of Top Pot donuts, and now I’m waiting for the car to take me to the airport.

In the meantime, I downloaded a trial of “Ecto,” an offline blogging tool for OSX. I am hoping I have the energy, space, and memory to write some articles while I’m on my way back to Singapore.

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.

---

UPDATE: arrived at 11:30pm. Yuk. Really appreciated having to take a three-hundred mile detour. :-&

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.

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)

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

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