Category: Fun in the Desert

Ted Raguso has been on my case for a while, to go for lap swim after church.  I did a few times last year, and it was great… but then again at that time I was driving to church.  These days, I tend to cycle – but I took my swimming suit this morning, and figured I’d drop by the pool after service.

It’s a bit of a trek – something like 35 km (21.8 mi) according to the Google!

Right from the get-go, I felt tired this morning, not sure why.  But I got onto the bike and got rolling in decent time.  The service was fine, although, yikes, that last hymn – the Americans went and changed the tune for a familiar hymn, we sounded rather thin!

After he service, I cycled over to the aquatic centre and had a nice swim in the pool – outdoor lap swim pool – I need to get some polarized swimming goggles or something!  I was only able to do 1/2 of my regular 60 lengths / 1500 metre swim – 30 lengths / 750 metre total.  I was tired when I got into the pool. and you know that I was even more tired when I got out.

I left my swimming trunks on, put on my shoes and my cycling shirt, and headed for home.  Oof, I could not believe that I had no reserve, couldn’t kick it up when coming up on traffic lights….   and that hill at 13th Street, about 4 km (2.5 mi) from home, which is always a tough slug on the way home, was almost impossible!  I had to stop at the top for a minute, down a bunch of water, breathe deeply and let my heart rate recover :-)  But, I made it!

It took 1/2 hour at home before I could get up to shower.  I was going to jump in the pool, but it’s still a bit chilly – 24.2 C – I really want 25 C before I even think of going in.  After my shower, I was so whipped that I slept on & off for another hour.  Zounds, that’s not like me, to sleep in the afternoon.  Oh well.

According to my weather station, the temperature peaked at about 35 C around the time that I got home (2 PM).  No wonder I was a little zoofed after the ride :-)

I’m still fighting to avoid turning on the air conditioning, save energy, save money, and all that stuff.  I bought a couple of box fans on Thursday, and put them in the windows all night, blasting away.  At the peak of the heat outside, it was 25 C inside, which is OK if you aren’t exerting yourself – with little to no humidity, 25C feels just nice.

I’ve been repeatedly invited to Albuquerque by Don Bartrip, president of Winmer Technology Innovators, a former customer of ours when Jason & I were at Norscan Instruments.  The Trinity Site, where the world’s first nuclear bomb was tested, in the middle of White Sands Missile Range, is only open two Saturdays a year – once in April, and once in October..  and the NRAO Very Large Array radio-telescope site has guided tours on certain Saturdays.  They coincided (probably not a coincidence), so I went for a drive to visit Don and see them both.

I took Friday off, so I could have lunch with Norbert Wegner of ERLPhase (visiting family here from back home), then make a leisurely drive up to Albuquerque, but alas, it was not to be.  We were in the middle of an installation at SRP’s Perkins Substation, and my part wasn’t functional yet – so I had to drive up and do a couple of hours’ work on my day off.  I had to make a 70 minute drive in about 45 minutes, and still ended up being 15 minutes late.  Sorry, Norbert!  We had a good chat anyway.

Then, off through Peyson, onto Interstate 40, and going east.  And east.  And east.  Just as I crested the plateau northeast of Peyson, my car threw a “service engine soon” indication.  ARGH!  If you know me, you know that I can’t stand a SES light on my dashboard. 

The next chance I got, which was Holbrook just before going onto I-40, I whipped out my handy OBD-II bluetooth adapter, plugged it in, fired up my tablet, and got the code out – it appeared to be a temporary “engine too lean” indication, probably due to the change in altitude together with the push of passing on a hill, so I cleared the code and moved on.  Yay!

Trinity Test Site

This site is deep in the middle of the White Sands Missile Range.  You turn off the main two lane highway, go down another paved 2 lane road for a couple of kilometres, until you come to a fence and gate, guarded by armed MPs.  They look at your passport and wave you through.  From there, you pass a group of buildings, and head out across the desert.  All side roads have pylons to show they are closed.  There’s the odd vehicle with armed MPs, watching.  You go about 8 km and turn off onto a sand road, and after another couple of km, it opens into a huge parking lot.  There were probably about 1,000 vehicles there.  You walk about 2 km to the actual site, which is about 1/2 km in diameter, well fenced off.  In the centre is a cairn with a plaque, which is apparently at ground zero – where the tower sat on that fateful day in July 1945, that they set off the world’s first nuclear bomb.  They apparently didn’t know how well it would work – or even if it would work – but it put out something like three times the expected energy, and vapourized some recording equipment that they weren’t planning to vapourize.  Great planning went into the work – multiple sets of monitoring & recording equipment at various distances from the blast.  The light from the blast was like a second sunrise when seen from a great distance.  People demanded to know what it was, but the government at the time (and for long time later) just waved their hands and said, “nothing to see here, move along” :-)  As well they should have, I suppose!

About 4 km away from the Trinity Site is the McDonald ranch house.  All this land was expropriated from ranchers during the war, and this house and its outbuildings were left behind.  The military used the house as an office, a lab, and assembly building.  There are artifacts and displays inside.  Outside, the other outbuildings are gone, just remnants remain. 



They have nasty fine sand here.  I dropped my camera, and it started misbehaving.  You will see later pictures where the lens didn’t fully open.  So sad.  I had to spend the rest of the day checking each time I opened the lens, to ensure that I could get an unimpeded picture!

NRAO Very Large Array

 

Next, we dashed to the other side of Interstate 25, and onto Highway 60 headed west (yes, the same highway 60 that goes through Mesa and Phoenix, and continues up to Kingman).  From a ways off, you can see the little dots in formation – wow, that’s a big arrangement of satellite dishes!

It turns out that there are 27 dishes, each about 25 metres across and each mounted on a large heavy tripod arrangement and having bearing & azimuth drive.   There are railroad tracks going out in a “Y” formation some 34 km in each direction from the centre.  At various intervals, there are small (10 m?) spurs off the track, and a site pad where a dish can sit on three foundation pads.  They have a special carrier vehicle that goes down the railroad track, puts down its feet, turns 90 degrees to get onto the spur, then goes out under the telescope.  They support the telescope then unbolt it from the foundation pads, pick it up, and (slowly) move back onto the railway track and down to where it needs to be.  Wow.

There are four formations, “A”, “B”, “C” and “D” (how imaginative), where the 9 dishes in each arm are spaced at different distances from each other.  They change the formation nominally every 4 months, and, depending on the distance of the change, it can take up to 2 weeks to change over!

They have a supercomputer (built by the NRC in Ottawa?) inside, that takes the signals from the 27 dishes, correlates them, removes noise, integrates over time, etc., and they come out with images that rival the best visual images from Hubble!  Wow.

The radios used in these radiotelescope dishes are all built & maintained on-site.  They are unique in the world.  Cryogenically cooled, they are low noise and very sensitive.   The signals are brought back to the central computer by low loss cable, which they know the exact characteristics of, and the exact length, so they can compensate for everything when they do their calculations.  Cool.

They do observations 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  In pre-Internet days, researchers lived on-site during their observation period.  Now there’s just the bare minimum crew out there, keeping the system going.

Time slots for observations are assigned on a merit basis.  You don’t have to be some high end scientist to get time on the system.  They schedule the observation, and then queue them up on the computer.  Often they are 1 or 2 hours each, but can be more or less.  The on-site supervisor makes the final call, perhaps adjusting due to weather or other circumstances.

At the end of the tour, we went out and stood under the closest dish.  It was huuuuge!  As we stood under it, an observation changeover occurred.  It was wild, seeing these huge dishes moving (almost) silently, all perfectly choreographed.  These dishes are no slouches – I would estimate that it takes 60 to 90 seconds for them to go 180 degrees rotation, or from full low azimuth to pointing straight up.  Pretty impressive.

Visiting Winmer

On Sunday morning, Don and I did lunch at Hello Deli, a one-of-a-kind nice little breakfast & lunch spot.  Then we dropped by his office, Winmer, which brought back memories of the last time I was here, I think it was 2009.

The Drive Home

I stopped a few times :-)

Airway Beacon

Don told me about the airway beacon system from the 1920s, and that there was one at the air museum at Grants Airport.  So, I stopped by!  Cool.  The museum was closed (Sunday afternoon, after all – and actually it’s open once a week), but I wandered around and stood at the base of the replica tower.

Standin’ on a Corner in Winslow Arizona…

Yes, it is interesting how a pop song, itself a product of culture, can influence culture in a feedback loop… oh wait, that’s the engineer in me prattling on again :-)

There were people showing up constantly to take pictures and get their picture taken.  A beautiful blonde lass with an Aussie accent agreed to take my picture.  We chatted briefly, she was finishing up a bit of a road trip with her (much older) lady friend, going back to Denver and from there back to Australia…  Hmm, too bad that I was going west instead of east.  Oh well, I’ve got other issues to deal with :-)

Winslow Crater

Yes, there’s a meteor crater not far west of Winslow.  I knew that it had closed at 5 PM, but I figured that I’d stop by and see it anyway.  Nope.  I went about 8 km sound on a narrow 2 lane paved road through a cow pasture (yes had Texas gate to enter).  Had to stop to let some cattle cross the road.  Then I crested a hill…  and saw the crater’s rim standing tall in the desert.  It was obvious that it was laid out in such a way that I wouldn’t see anything without being there when it was open.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of the crater rim from the outside – should have :-)

And then home…

Then headed west toward Flagstaff, and south to home.

Right after church, Ted Raguso asked if I wanted to go to an air museum.  Now, I don’t know much about planes, but you know little boys always like planes, trains and cars.  So we went.  It was pretty interesting. 

It turns out that they used to call themselves the Confederate Air Force, but here in the USA, the word “Confederate” has some meanings that many do not like – too many people lost in the war, still fresh in their minds, even though it was long ago.  So, they changed their name.

They were having a military flea market inside the hangar, and a military vehicle show outside that day.  The vehicle show was interesting too.  One was a perfectly restored WW II jeep – a real jeep, not an imitation or postwar commercial one.  I didn’t realize that Kaizer was made to share the prints with Ford, who made identical machines.  But, Henry Ford being the guy he was (or was it his son?  no matter), they put a little “F” on all the parts.  So, restoring a Ford WW II Jeep is more challenging, because you have to track down all the parts with “F” on them.  Heh, heh, maybe that’s why they did it – to make their vehicles more collectible????

I spotted a vehicle with a Canadian military insignia, flying the New Brunswick provincial flag, and numbered with a “CZ” on the side.  What gives?  It was an all-purpose military truck, and yes it’s originally from Canada.  Ha ha, can’t get away from those Canadians, can you?

One of the tracked vehicles was some kind of gun carrier – eek, the armament on that thing!  Kind of a propos in gun-happy Arizona, let me tell you… but that’s a story for another time.

Oranges

In early March, I had the first orange blossoms on my little orange tree :-) Other folks’ trees have been blooming for several weeks, such a sweet smell… and now my tree smells nice too. Maybe this year I’ll get more than one orange from it :-)

Like last year, and the year before, there were so many blossoms on the tree, but last year I got only one orange, and the year before, only three.  After the blossom petals fall, you can see tiny fruit where the flower was – but they all disappeared, so sad.

So… just before he left, Eric helped me put a screen cover over my orange tree.  The idea is, if it’s birds (and we do have a lot of birds clattering around here in the spring), then it will stop them from accosting the tree ’til the fruit gets larger, when it seems they might be safe.

It’s a clunky contraption, but I hope it works.

Roses

It turns out that I have two rosebushes in the backyard, along the fence.  Had I known that, I’d likely have put the shed somewhere else!  Oh well.  The one on the south wall, is beautiful pink, smells lovely, came out with at least half a dozen blossoms.  The one on the east wall, is beautiful orange, came out with only three or four,   Both were lovely while they lasted!

The red rosebush appears to have been attacked by caterpillars or bugs.  I’ve sprayed to prevent further damage.

 

Here’s an update from early April.  Again, still lovely :-)  I will have to spray them earlier next year.

 

And here’s from a week or so later.  They just kept coming :-)

And a few days later.

Creeping Vines

 Those who’ve been here know that I have a patio area covered in vines.  These vines appear to originate from my neighbours’ house – their whole south side, and half the west side, is covered with them!  I shudder to think of the damage that they’ve done to their house’s structure.  Oh well.

Anyway, these vines periodically get these big, beautiful, yellow blossoms on them, so beautiful.  Also, good hummingbird attraction as well – I’ve seen them a few times, but never fast enough on shutter to catch a picture.

Here’s what it looked like this year.

Honeybees!

One Saturday in March, my neighbour told me by text, that the bee’s nest on his house would be taken down Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, in the middle of the night.  What bee’s nest?  Oh the big one facing my kitchen window.  Hmm, never saw it.

I don’t know how I missed it!  It was over a metre across, it was crazy!  Constant activity around that hive.  I was wondering how I always had bees around my outside lights at night, and I’m sure that’s why.

Apparently, they were honeybees and not nasty bees, so they were going to a farm – being relocated.

The guys didn’t show up on the appointed night, but about a week later, while falling to sleep, I heard something and looked out front.  Sure enough, a couple of white vans marked with the name of the bee keeper’s farm, and saying “Bee Relocation Service”, and they were readying their suits & ladders.  Now the eaves are empty. 

There are still a few forlorn honeybees flying about.

Eric came to visit for almost two weeks this year.  He made it a sports extravaganza, taking in a NASCAR race, 4 baseball games, and an evening of dirt track racing.  We did Sedona & the Grand Canyon on a road trip.

Let’s Go Racing!

13 March: Eric and Dean go to NASCAR

It was loud!  It was fast!  It was thrilling!  Lots of fender benders, of course – what would NASCAR be without a few crashes????

19 March: Eric & Dean attend evening of Dirt Track Racing at Arizona Speedway

It is way, way, way out east & south… an hours’ drive, even with little traffic!  Had stock cars, modifieds, and sprint cars.

The funny thing is, with Phoenix being as big a centre as it is…  Grand Forks track is way, way nicer!  Stands, concessions, and all.  Oh well, in spite of that, we had a good time.  And some beer.  Beer helps too.  [ it looked like beer helped a lot of people that evening :-) ]

Other Car Stuff

Gotta check this museum out next time: Arizona Museum of Open Wheel Racing

We drove by, after the baseball game in Tempe, but they were closed :-(

The Martin Auto Museum

We visited the Martin Museum, a little gem of a private auto museum tucked away on the east side of I-17 just south of the 101 loop.  It is a small, unassuming building (although it does have a cool sign), but inside it has a fantastic array of race cars, performance cars, sports cars, and memorabilia.  Very cool.  Check it out if you’re ever in town: http:// www.martinautomuseum.com.

Play Ball!

14 March: Eric & Dean attend California Angels vs Cincinati Reds in Tempe Diablo Stadium

18 March: Eric & Dean attend Kansas City Royals versus California Angels in Surprise Stadium

16 March: Get Out of Town!

Eric & Dean take road trip to the Grand Canyon

I did not realize that Eric had never been to the Grand Canyon.  He expressed interest, and when I realized that he had never been, we just had to go!

On the way, I insisted on a side trip through Sedona, taking an extra maybe 3/4 hour, mostly to see the view from Oak Creek Vista.  Oops, forgot that it was spring break, ugh!  Took over an hour just to get to Sedona.  Mostly 2 lane, and a lot of traffic circles… had a chance to practice my circle etiquette.  Let’s just say that Eric found my etiquette a bit lacking a couple of times.  I needed the practice, I guess!

By the time we got to Sedona, we were starved, so we stopped for lunch.  Ugh, parking, finding the restaurant, then getting out of town…  I guess I could have planned it better.  Oh well, more dad & son time :-)

Oak Creek Vista

One of the most interesting things about here is that you can look back into the canyon that you just wound your way up out of – and see the teensy weensy cars winding their way up the road you just came on!

Grand Canyon

Well, of course, it was…  Grand!   Heh heh.  Eric and I stayed a respectful distance from the edge.  Yikes, there were others who were way out on ledges, even a couple who sat with their legs dangling over a long long drop… he was reading her poetry.  How romantic… but not so much if they get startled and fall to their deaths…  oh well, that would never happen, right?  Actually, it happens all the time!  Ya can’t legislate intelligence.  Hmmm, more about the Arizona school system another time.

Eric hopped the low barrier and went out on a plateau, right as soon as we got there.  Thereafter, he stayed well back.  We overheard a guide saying that you should stay your own height’s distance from an open edge – so if you fall, you are ensured that you can grab something, even if it’s a trip-launch.  Good advice, I figure.

…and then Eric went Home…

Sniff.

Apparently, it has.  Sorry about that!  I’m getting busier, here in the land of scorpions & rattlesnakes.  I’ve posted a few things on FaceBook, mostly because it’s easy from my phone.  So, you know what?  I think I’ll snag the FaceBook stuff and re-post it here, since it’s my life! :-)  Then maybe I’ll try to get started here again.

Last fall, I formally joined Mission Bell United Methodist Church at 44th Ave & Bell Road.  It’s a great place.  The minister, Pastor Paul Self-Price, is a wonderful guy, preaches thought provoking sermons, and is familiar with the struggles of the 12 step program, which made it comfortable for me to talk to him.

Well anyway, last Easter, I attended my first “sunrise Easter service”.  This year, I attended my second.  I was at the church from 6:30 AM til after noon, attending all 3 services (sunrise, contemporary, traditional).   Ugh!  Then had to go to work to prepare for this trip to Lyon that I’m currently on :-)  In between services, thankfully, we had a bit of a breakfast thing, which was very nice.

The only pics I got of the morning were of the Easter egg hunt.  So cute!!!  The setup for the egg hunt was interesting too – the older kids were asked to spread the candy-filled plastic eggs in the designated area.  The kids, especially the older boys, apparently have hearing difficulties, or can’t follow directions, or don’t care, or something like that – they put eggs all over the place outside the designated area – and got careless, tossing eggs several feet, not caring if they popped open and spilled their candy all over.  Heh, heh, pandemonium both on distribution and on retrieval!  Ah well, they are kids, and they all had a good time!  Sugar rush for many little ones that morning, eek!

The summer heat is so stifling here, and the winter is so dry here.  I bought a house with a lawn front & back – small lawns, but lawns nonetheless – but now I see the wisdom of having the front & back yards in a “natural” state.  The sun is so hot, the air so dry (most of the time – but more about that another day), that you must dump copious amounts of water onto the lawn, just so it will survive.

The sun is so strong that it works as a bleaching agent – colours get washed out here, plants die unless watered – well, except of course for the weeds – weeds seem to flourish everywhere – and the cacti.

So, it’s amazing and wonderful when, all of the sudden, the desert blooms.  Here are a few pictures of the desert plants in bloom.  The first couple are in my yard.

Part of the reason why I’m here is that I can cycle to and from work in the wintertime.  Now, I’m hoping to cycle all year ’round, but I have been warned that the extremely high temperatures here might make that a bit… um… dangerous (no freakin’ kidding, I got here last July, and wow!).   Once I start losing serious weight, I will be in better shape to cycle during the heat, shall see.  I hope so :-)

Anyway, so for now, I am cycling about 6-1/2 miles each way.  There are two off-road segments not properly shown on the map – one where I cycle the path along a canal, and one where I cut through the desert to avoid Pinnacle Peak Road and its traffic, and save about 1/2 mile of riding.

The path along the canal is not much fun – it’s a track for vehicles… but not normal vehicles.  It’s very stony and up & down.  It seems like they made an embankment along the canal, and that’s what I cycle on.

Once just before Christmas, on 18 December, I spied an easier route on the other side of the canal.  Much less up and down, it held some promise.

The trail showed signs of some use, although not much.  It had a fence on either side, no worries.  It turned out to have some seriously stony patches, so had to dismount a couple of times, but still was nice to ride on.  I got to the other end, had to navigate a bit around a few trees, up a slope, and guess what I came to?  A locked gate!!

Well if that didn’t give me a sense of deja vu from so many years ago, ha ha.  Remember the story of the barbed wire topped chain link fence at A. I. Dupont research campus in Wilmington, Delaware, on my very first business trip in 1984?   Hmm, a story for another time :-)

Yup, so anyway, had to backtrack the full 1/2 mile over the stones, etc., and cycle the other side anyway.  Learned my lesson on that one.  Or did I?

On 27 January, I decided to try the route that Google maps shows – some kind of a trail that cuts off and saves the whole beside-canal thing altogether.  It turned out mediocre-to-OK.  The jury is still out on this new trail – it’s kind of rugged and loose material in spots (makes for difficult cycling), so I’m using it for now, but considering whether it’s worth the effort.  And – oh yeah – there’s a nasty dog along the way – but the yard is mostly fenced in, and he doesn’t see me until he’s corralled behind the fence and can’t get to me.  Heaven help me if he sees me coming and takes the long way around!

On the way in on 27 January, I had a few exciting moments.  First, at the stoplight on Cave Creek Road at the underpass of the 101 Loop freeway, I was waiting at the red light when an ambulance came toward us.  Since the traffic was stopped, it couldn’t get to the intersection.  It bounced out into our side, which was no problem because most of the traffic had stopped…  well, no, they hadn’t – and the ambulance ended up nose-to-nose with a lineup of cars coming down off of the freeway and turning to head north on Cave Creek Road.  They sat face-to-face for a bit, two rows of traffic blocking the ambulance, when finally someone in the second lane cleared out, and allowed those right in front of the ambulance to cut to the right.  Just about that time, the light came green for the traffic facing us to turn left onto the freeway, cutting across in front of the ambulance.  In spite of full lights and siren, the front car in the innermost lane pulled out to turn as the ambulance entered the intersection.   It blocked the ambulance!  With the horn blaring and siren screaming, the driver froze, blocking the ambulance from getting anywhere.  For over 20 seconds, the driver sat there.  Then tried to move to the right, as the ambulance tried to do the same.  Then tried to move to the left, as the ambulance did the same.  The entire intersection was empty, everyone else was stopped, but this driver was petrified.  After at least 30 seconds, finally the driver moved their car just enough that the ambulance could pass.  I sure hope that it wasn’t a fatal error on part of the driver.  Yikes.

Two blocks further up, when I went to cross the street (to enter the trail beside the canal), I had an opening in traffic and zipped across through it… but for some reason my rear wheel came loose and jammed against the frame of the bike.  With the traffic bearing down on me and the bike in too high of a gear, I just put my leg into it and powered across the opening, just in time.  I took the bike aside and realized that the quick release for the rear axle had come loose.  I tightened it and proceeded.

At the other end of the trail, I have to cross traffic again.  Everything was going fine, until I was in the centre of the road, trying to get across the last few lanes.  As I went to power through the gap in traffic, it happened again – but this time it jammed firmly.  I powered across the first lane and half the second, then had to jump off the bike and carry it across the rest of the way.  Fortunately, there was only one pickup truck coming, and the driver saw me and steered around.  It wasn’t all that close a call but it was a bit stressful.

It turns out that the cause of all this was that the derailleur had come loose and was working its way out.  I pulled out my tools (thankfully I have them :-) ) and fixed it.

Speaking of which, my backpack isn’t as heavy as it was a month ago – it sure is nice since my new work computer arrived.  From early August until early January, I was bringing my personal notebook computer back and forth every day.  When driving, that’s not much of a chore.  But when riding a bike, that extra four or five pounds was annoying – good for me, I’m sure, but it’s a lot better now that I don’t have to.  The tool kit is only a couple of pounds, so not that bad – and much more useful on the trail :-)