Flashes of Panic

The town that cranks

I did notice pretty quickly that there appear to be more bikes about in Eugene than I’m used to seeing in Amherst. And, parenthetically, I’ve seen more bikes than what seems to me to be usual in Amherst this summer. I think it’s a gas-price thing, because many of the riders have backpacks or panniers (i.e. they’re commuting) and many of the bikes make the sibilant grinding sound that means the chain hasn’t been lubed in two or three years.

Eugene seems to have taken this to a new level, even though they’re not terribly good at wearing helmets. Aside from the Pedal Junkies we met last night, apparently tomorrow one of the features of the Eugene 2008 Festival is going to be the Track Town Power Station: “citizens cycling to create energy.” If I’m reading that right, there’s going to be a bunch of people generating electricity with stationary bikes.

Which is a kinda cool idea, I suppose, but I’m not sure that leg power is really our #1 untapped renewable energy source for electricity generation, you know?

Posted by pjm at 3:18 PM | Comments (1)

Pedal shuttle

I am three hours east of whatever time is reported for this, so it is still Thursday here. Although I’m reaching that state of fatigue where time zones are sort of irrelevant.

Anyway, on our way back from parking the car at a remote shuttle spot, we got picked up by Wayne (I’m guessing) from Pedal Junkies, two guys working on starting a pedal cab service in Eugene.

I don’t know how crowded the bike path between the parking lots at Autzen Stadium and Hayward Field is going to be for the Trials, but if you want to ride to the track in style, you could do worse than to give them a call.

Posted by pjm at 12:55 AM | Comments (0)

The Dungeon

As everyone who may care is undoubtedly already aware, it’s been disgustingly hot in the U.S. northeast since about Sunday. “Disgustingly hot” means high 90s; apparently we cracked 100 today. This is not unheard of around here, but generally it happens in late July and August, not early June. We’re due for thunderstorms any minute now to break the heat (high 80s forecast for tomorrow, low 80s on Thursday, much more seasonable).

This house is good at holding on to its cool air during the day, providing it gets any; this is useful considering there’s no air conditioning. We keep the windows shut to keep the hot air out, then open them up and run my big box fan at night as soon as the outside temperature dips below inside. It’s still crawled up into the mid-80s yesterday and today, driving us to head for Puffer’s Pond (which is still cool but warmer than one would expect this early in the year.)

Today I caved and retreated to the basement, which is at least ten degrees cooler than upstairs, possibly much more. I have a little table (too low) and a chair, and a direct ethernet connection to the router, which is down here. I also have to put up with a musty smell, but I prefer that to having sweat drip off my nose and on to the keyboard.

Posted by pjm at 9:37 PM | Comments (1)

Microclimates

One thing I’d forgotten about long rides away from the main roads, especially on steamy-humid weekends like this, was the way the combination of speed and exposure highlights the pools of warmer and cooler air, and greater or lesser humidity. You flit through pools of cool, dry air like passing through a shower.

Posted by pjm at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)

Fixing it myself

I discovered, as I was getting ready for a little geocaching expedition yesterday, that I hadn’t used this particular GPSr since 2006—the Mt. Washington expedition, specifically. Unsurprisingly, the batteries had leaked, leaving a white film of corrosion around the battery compartment.

Four years ago I might have given up on the unit—sent it in for repair or just pitched it and bought a new one. Yesterday I brought up the small-size screwdrivers and got the back off. A few minutes with some fine-grit sandpaper and some canned air cleared most of the grunge out and allowed it to power up with a new set of batteries.

It took the better part of half an hour for it to find all its satellites and figure out where it was, but it was functioning fine… except for the buttons. Some of them worked, some didn’t, and those which did, didn’t work all the time. (The last time I turned it off, I had to do so by popping one of the batteries out; the power button had failed.) The most frustrating part was that without the “Menu” button, I was unable to load the waypoints I had carefully stored on the SD card, which meant I could only hunt caches where I had printouts showing the coordinates.

So this morning I opened up the unit again, and this time I went at the other side of the pressed circuit card. I took apart the button assembly and dusted all the pieces carefully, sometimes employing a damp paper towel, and dried them all in a sunny spot on the table. Back together, voila! It works!

Now I just need to make the two-hour one-way bike ride up to the Wendell State Forest again to go after this big blob of caches. Again.

Posted by pjm at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)

The turkeys of South Pleasant Street

I was coming up the hill towards the College on 116, passing my Favorite View in Amherst® when I spotted some large birds flying low over the road ahead of me.

“Hmm,” I thought, “I wonder why those geese are having so much trouble getting altitude from the golf course.”

Then I realized that I was watching a flock of turkeys—well over a dozen, maybe twenty—crossing the road. I’d seen groups of turkeys (generally fewer than this, of course) hanging out in the nearby woods and sometimes browsing the hayfields where the cross-country course goes, but never this many this close.

And I have to say, there’s nothing that flies quite like a turkey. They fly the way novices ride bicycles: tentatively, in short segments, sometimes crash-landing.

Now Playing: Fortunate Son by Bruce Hornsby

Technorati Tags: amherst, birds, flight, turkeys

Posted by pjm at 1:18 PM | Comments (0)

Unemployed and on the streets

You see a lot of litter when you run. Generally it’s of the beer-can-and-McDonalds-bag variety, but the odd stuff sticks out.

Today I spotted not one, but two 5 1/4” floppy disks, about a mile or so apart. They did appear to be from the same box (at least, they were the same color.)

Technorati Tags: litter

Posted by pjm at 8:36 AM | Comments (1)

Silly car story of the day

Starting my run today, I was waiting for a walk signal in downtown Amherst when I saw a guy drive by in a dark-green Miata. He had on a winter hat of the kind the Russians call a shapka, with the ear flaps down.

I know this because he had the top down on the Miata.

I wonder if it was stuck down, or if he thought the current weather was relatively balmy? I hope the second, because it started snowing a few minutes after I saw him.

Now Playing: World Party from Fisherman’s Blues by The Waterboys

Technorati Tags: cars, convertibles, snow

Posted by pjm at 4:19 PM | Comments (0)

Icy tree

On my way over the Winnegance causeway last night, past 10 in the evening, I could’ve sworn I saw someone out on the ice. On my morning run, I saw that it was not a person, but someone’s Christmas tree, hauled out and “planted” in an ice-fishing hole.

The ice on the lake is so perfect you could almost fool yourself, from the house, into thinking it was still water. This afternoon I got out my skates and, with my camera in my pocket, went over to get a shot of the tree.

My skates are literally rusty and my skating skills somewhat more figuratively so, but most of the time I went sprawling on the ice it was because I caught a blade in a crack. In the sun, the ice flexes and burps, and the surface (which isn’t often visited by a zamboni) is seamed with the cracks of its flexing and with the tracks of the ATVs which cruised the lake while it had more snow on it. At night, the plates rub together at the cracks, and the ice pops and sings with an eerie howl. Once down on the surface, it shows a definite texture, both wind ripples and the slight hills and valleys that come from the cracking and crunching of its plates. I’m a little surprised that I managed to keep from smashing my camera on the ice.

Now Playing: Mothership by Drop Trio

Technorati Tags: christmastree, Maine, skating

Posted by pjm at 4:30 PM | Comments (0)

Make your own treadmill

Though I have access to the treadmills at the College when I’m in Amherst, I’m less well situated in Somerville. I can wave my (expired) University ID at the guard and get in to the indoor track there, but I haven’t tested the attentiveness of the fitness center attendants, who actually take your ID when you check in to use the treadmills there.

Cold doesn’t bother me nearly as much as poor footing (ice and packed snow) so finding places to run when the sidewalks are bad is a matter of finding low-traffic areas, good sun exposure, and/or responsible sidewalk-shovelers. Cemeteries are often a good bet, but they usually involve multiple repetitions of the same loop.

I found a route I call “the Arlington treadmill” which features slightly more variety and excitement than the indoor kind. After crossing the Alewife Brook Parkway into Arlington on either Massachusetts Avenue or Broadway, there’s a series of one-way streets between the two, starting with (yes) Marathon Street and going west to Palmer Street, nearly in the middle of Arlington. Excepting Bates Street, which is two-way, they alternate direction all the way.

By running against traffic, I can see all oncoming cars well in advance, which means I can choose between the roadway or either sidewalk depending on which offers the least traffic and the best footing. The homeowners on the side streets are pretty good about shoveling their short patches of sidewalk, with a few notable exceptions (mostly on Broadway) and by zig-zagging west, then back east again, I can get in an hour or more of pretty clear road without hitting the same sidewalks more than twice, encountering many cars, or even stopping for major road crossings. It’s not half bad. There’s even a distant view of the Pru on the return leg (heading east on Mass Ave.)

I sort of wonder why more people don’t do this.

Now Playing: Little Mascara from Tim by The Replacements

Technorati Tags: arlington, shoveling, sidewalk, snow, treadmill

Posted by pjm at 1:32 PM | Comments (0)

No wonder it felt so much warmer

I’ve been using the little weather Dashboard widgets supplied by Apple to keep an eye on the unseasonably warm temps, and for some reason in recent days the temperature in Boston has been showing as notably warmer (as in, twenty to thirty degrees warmer) than other locations I follow in the area, e.g. Amherst.

Today I got suspicious, because everyone is buzzing about this incoming storm, and yet my Boston widget was showing clear weather both today and tomorrow. So I clicked through (the widget gets its data from Accuweather; I tend to use the National Weather Service myself) to figure out what was going on.

Turns out that a recent upgrade, either from Apple or from Accuweather, requires the widget to use both city and state. My widget, which was requesting simply “Boston”, was getting its forecast and conditions from Boston, Georgia, which I assume is alphabetically first on the list of Bostons, rather than, oh, most likely to be what people mean when they just ask for “Boston”?

Technorati Tags: accuweather, Boston, dashboard, snow, weather

Posted by pjm at 12:32 PM | Comments (1)

Talking about the weather

Let the record show that I did a workout on the University’s outdoor track in a light rain today, in spikes, with no ice on the track. Or snow, for that matter. And I was wearing shorts and short sleeves. And sweating. I’m pretty sure it’s still January, though.

Now Playing: See You from The Colour And The Shape by Foo Fighters

Technorati Tags: running, spikes, track and field, weather

Posted by pjm at 7:21 PM | Comments (0)

Riding bright

It’s been my experience that, at least where I’ve lived, drivers tend not to hassle a biker if they notice them in time (and if the biker isn’t doing anything egregiously stupid, of course). So aside from Not Being Stupid, the key is making sure they notice you, and of course, the biggest problem is getting noticed at night.

Given that Boston-area drivers sometimes fail to notice vehicles like ambulances and police cruisers which are actively trying to get their attention, I figure the sky’s the limit when it comes to lighting my bike. I work with these rules:

• Blinking is better than steady
• LEDs are better than incandescents (more efficient and usually brighter)
• Any light is better than a reflector
• A reflector is better than nothing
• More is better, period.

I’ve had a headlight and taillight since the town of Emmaus required them, lo these many years ago, but lately I’ve been upgrading. Last year I swapped the Cat-Eye incandescent headlight (no longer available, I think) for a bright, blinking white LED I can’t look at for long, from Planet Bike. I lost my forward-looking lighting, but it wasn’t really all that effective anyway, and at least once I had some local toughs convinced that the cops were on to them (for a few seconds).

I got a front-and-back LED set from Planet Bike for Christmas, so last week I put the new, much brighter headlight on the handlebars right next to the old one. I let that one blink, and leave the old one steady, hoping maybe to get some visibility out of it, but maybe if they strobed out of phase I could really mesmerize oncoming drivers. The new one is bright enough that I could probably go deer jacking with it, if I did such things.

I also moved my existing taillight from the seat post, where it was sometimes obscured by my shoulder bag, to the back of the cargo rack, using some fittings from the new taillight. The new light clips on the shoulder bag sometimes, but optimally I’d like to figure out a better way of attaching both taillights, plus maybe the original red reflector if I can find a spot for it.

Combined with the Scotchlite band I use to hold my trouser cuff, and the standard-equipment pedal and spoke reflectors, I feel like I could compete with an ambulance if the siren wasn’t counted.

I completed my overhaul by adding a new rear fender which actually fits in under the cargo rack and should keep a few more drops of road gunk from flipping up on me. It came with a front fender which offers better coverage than my current one but doesn’t attach to my front fork properly. As with the second taillight, maybe more hardware would solve this problem.

Now Playing: Four Leaf Clover from Strangest Places by Abra Moore

Technorati Tags: bicycle, headlight, lights, night, safety, taillight

Posted by pjm at 7:04 PM | Comments (0)

Angle of repose

Speaking of mild Pennsylvania winters reminded me of the less-mild winter we had somewhat later in my time there. I was sharing a duplex with Z at the time, and naturally we were responsible for shoveling our back walk to the cars, the front steps, and the sidewalk in front of the house. We were not technically responsible for shoveling the alley between us and our neighbors to the east, but since they were both retirees—the wife worked for Rodale when its primary business was electrical switches—we shoveled the alley and their sidewalk as well, unless one of their adult children managed to beat us to it.

The back walks were not much of an issue, but the sidewalks posed a storage problem. We couldn’t shovel the snow into the street—the snowbanks there were a problem by themselves—so our yards were the only realistic snow repository. These “yards” could be mowed in less than three minutes with a reel mower, and ours had two enormous shrubs encroaching from the porch side. It was not long into the winter when the mountain of snow in our front yard, containing the snow from an area roughly twice its own (and yes, we shoveled the neighbors’ sidewalk onto their lawn, not ours) obscured the view from our front window.

The view not being much to cheer about, this wasn’t much of a problem, but we had other issues. The biggest one was that the snow pile was so large, about half of any shovelful thrown up on it would simply avalanche back down onto the sidewalk. We started pushing all the snow in the alley back into a similar mountain at the head of our back yard, which expanded to the point that it didn’t finish melting until well into April.

The heap immediately to the west of the end of our Amherst driveway is looking much like that now, even after last week’s melting spree. It’s as tall as I am, if not taller, and yet I must throw a significant fraction of the snow from the driveway up on it. I try to pitch the snow over the peak and in behind the pile, but some of that is starting to roll back out into the street. The problem is similar to the one we had in Emmaus: when the snow goes to a relatively small area, it doesn’t take a very big storm to lead to a big snow pile.

Yesterday and today, I also went across the street and shoveled out our neighbor’s sidewalk. She’s not home, I think, but when the big storms came through earlier this month she didn’t really shovel, and the sidewalk got pretty bad. I figured someone had to do it. I spotted a roving band of kids with shovels this afternoon, though, and I’m wondering if I can pre-pay them to shovel her out for the rest of the winter.

Now Playing: Columbus from Heyday by The Church

Technorati Tags: shoveling, snow

Posted by pjm at 7:20 PM | Comments (0)

Loose at the heels

I remarked to A this morning on our run that I probably became more consistent in my winter training after college because I had better equipment. By that I mean running jackets which actually kept me warm, running pants which weren’t tights, and the discovery of shirts which weren’t cotton.

Thinking about it more, though, the first few winters after college were pathetically mild even for Pennsylvania; I think I lived in Pennsylvania two or three years before we got a snowfall I would even consider significant. I spent plenty of time in those years chasing Adam Bean and Mark Will-Weber around the hills that cradle Emmaus to the south and west.

Mark used to wear Sporthill pants with a stirrup, though I remember the strap almost always flapped loose around his Achilles tendon, soaking up slush. (Since I was almost always lagging behind Webbs, I had a lot of time to contemplate his heels.) I got a few pairs of the same pants, wearing them with the straps on. (Having cuffs snug around your socks keeps your ankles warm. You’d be surprised what a difference this makes.)

As I get in better condition and my stride moves up to my forefoot, I find that during the course of a run one or both of these stirrups will make its way back over my heel and pop out the back of my shoe, to dangle like Mark’s used to. I wonder if that’s what happened to him; his natural stride was much closer to his toes than mine is, so maybe he just couldn’t keep them on?

Now Playing: Sands Hotel from Dead Air by Heatmiser

Technorati Tags: pants, running, winter

Posted by pjm at 12:21 PM | Comments (1)

This is the payoff

I sometimes grumble about having a black car during the summer, when its interior temperature ranges from ‘uncomfortable’ to ‘broiler’.

But on snowy days like today, I can give it a cursory sweep-off to expose its blackness, and let the sun do the defrosting. By the time I need to go anywhere, it will almost certainly be clear.

Now Playing: High And Dry from The Bends by Radiohead

Technorati Tags: snow

Posted by pjm at 9:26 AM | Comments (0)

How we treat our neighbors

Around Boston, we like to kid a bit about how in Southie, they’ll slash your tires if you park in a shoveled spot that’s marked with something—a chair, a garbage can, whatever.

The idea behind marking the spots is that the person who did the shoveling should get the benefit. But various municipal officials (mayors, etc.) make noises about having garbage trucks pick up the markers, because parking gets wicked tight when there’s nowhere to throw the snow; you wind up losing one in every three spots (if you’re lucky) just to stack the snow.

It looks like Somerville is a lot closer to Southie than I thought. As I walked up to work around lunchtime, I saw a lot of trash cans and sawhorses marking spots in the street. And I spotted something too large to be a ticket on a car window. Amused, I snapped a shot with the phone:

And then the owner came out. Thomas told me he had lived up the street for ten years, but this was a rental car so his neighbors must not have known it was his. He noted that there should have been room for two cars where he was parked, but that only one spot had been shoveled out. And then, folding the note up, he said, “I’d take a note like this more seriously if it was signed. They don’t sign because they are cowards.”

I can sympathize with wanting to have the spot you shoveled available when you come back, but aren’t anonymous notes a little… I don’t know, passive-aggressive? There’s plenty of street out there, folks, even if you can only park on one side of it right now. Shovel a bit more of it (but hurry, it’s going to set up like concrete tonight.) Pitch in for other people and maybe they’ll let you park in their spot someday. That’s the benefit of sharing, instead of staking out your own little patch and hissing at anyone who comes near.

(And maybe we should all consider fewer cars and more alternatives. I wouldn’t want to take my bike out last night, but today it was fine.)

Now Playing: Never Enough from Show by The Cure

Technorati Tags: Boston, boston drivers, parking, snow, somerville

Posted by pjm at 6:47 PM | Comments (3)

Sunset day is coming

I’ve been getting antsy, anticipating the arrival of Sunset Day. It appears to vary a bit from year to year; according to a program called SunGraph, it looks like Sunset Day in Massachusetts this year will be Monday, eleven days before the actual shortest day and much later than last year. Since I’ve been notably bad at getting up with the sun lately, Sunset Day will be the real start of more daylight for me.

SunGraph also gives me more geeky data than I expect to ever have a good use for—for example, here in Amherst, though the actual sunrise was at 8:00 AM, first visible light was at 6:36 AM and Civil Twilight started at 7:28 AM. Which leads me here: first ever song about the time “between the sunset and certified darkness.” (I imagine this is a much bigger deal in Winnipeg.)

Now Playing: Civil Twilight from Reunion Tour by The Weakerthans

Technorati Tags: analemma, daylight, sunset

Posted by pjm at 8:49 AM | Comments (0)

This never happened in my research

It seems that Bernd Heinrich, University of Vermont professor emeritus and author of a few books I have on my shelves, is missing some ravens he raised from chicks for his research. (I suppose the fact that this makes the AP wire is a testament to Heinrich’s eminence.)

Now Playing: It’s No Reason from Hindsight by The Church

Technorati Tags: bernd heinrich, ravens, research, vermont

Posted by pjm at 11:48 AM | Comments (2)

Autonomous toys

There was yet another mouse last night. I heard a ruckus in the bathroom and got up with a flashlight. Iz was easy enough to find, and as he came to the door to greet me (“Hey, want to sub in?”) I flicked the light around the room to see if there were any corpses. Iz moved to reveal another small, grey mouse frozen on the floor, and then corralled it like a hockey player with a loose puck. After smacking it a few times (whereupon it would squeak and change direction) he chased behind the door for a moment and emerged with the mouse in his mouth.

He carried it out into the dining room and dropped it next to my bag, then stepped away a few feet, apparently hoping I was up to give him breakfast. The mouse sat, frozen, for a few seconds, then bolted in to the kitchen and under the stove (clearly the source of all mice.) Iz pounced too late and found himself with both front paws under the stove and no mouse.

I’m developing a theory now that Iz really does have a problem killing the mice. Pardon the blunt images, but cats kill their prey by biting down hard near the neck, snapping the unfortunate critter’s spine. I can vouch for Iz’s jaw strength, as he has sometimes clamped down on me so hard I’ve imagined the bones in my hand rearranging under his teeth. He just doesn’t seem to know that’s what to do with mice; his M.O. seems to be playing with them until they expire. (A thinks he doesn’t even realize they’re alive, and that he considers them a self-propelled version of his faux-fur toys. There’s something to that.)

Another, related theory centers on the fact that so far, he’s only killed mice when I’m in Amherst. The idea is that my reaction is generally positive (I take pictures of the “trophies”), while A seems a bit disapproving of the dead-mouse concept. This theory suggests that he needs a “father figure” around to really mature as a mouser.

Either way, I’d rather have him here keeping the rodent population in line than relying on traps or poison.

Now Playing: Begin from Dulcinea by Toad The Wet Sprocket

Technorati Tags: amherst, cat, mouse

Posted by pjm at 9:04 PM | Comments (3)

Two down

After Iz’s previous kill, there were some predictions that it would not be the last. In fact, we heard the little tiger tearing around last night and maybe some squeaking. I remember thinking, “It doesn’t matter whether he catches them and kills them, or just scares them to death so they move out.” At any rate, when I got up to feed him this morning I opted to sweep my path with a flashlight rather than step on something. Sure enough, mousie down at the side of the kitchen door.

Again, I got a photo of his trophy (which, again, I won’t post.) This one was smaller than the first, with less white marking, and looked a lot more like the one we’d initially seen in the house. It also wasn’t quite dead, and peeped as I swept it up in the dustpan, which was a bit disconcerting. As we discovered with his bats, Iz is fine at catching, but he has to get better at killing.

It took Iz a little while to get used to this house, but now I’m guessing he thinks it’s the best place he’s ever lived: the toys are great!

Technorati Tags: amherst, cat, mouse

Posted by pjm at 6:41 AM | Comments (0)

Grape season

It’s grape season. Or, it’s slightly past grape season. Since returning from Japan, I’ve been continually noticing the scent of grapes on my runs—not just while running through vineyards but in the middle of the woods in Amherst, last night in the Breakheart Preserve in Wakefield, this morning on Battle Road in Lexington. I can seldom pin down the source of the scent, but suddenly the air will smell thickly and unmistakably like grape juice. (I’m running, and therefore probably thirsty, so grape juice comes to mind rather than, say, jelly.)

Last week our coach picked clean the grape vines in his back yard and brought “the last of the grapes” with him to our workout, then sent them home with us. I had a few I hadn’t consumed before I going to Germany, and I thoughtlessly left them out on the counter while I was gone. On my return, the container (and, consequently, the trash afterward) smelled strongly of wine.

Now Playing: Closing Time from Feeling Strangely Fine by Semisonic

Posted by pjm at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

We're so proud

Iz brought us a little present this morning. When we got up to run, there was the mouse in the bedroom doorway, dead as the proverbial doornail. “Food nnnnnow?” Iz asked: the mouse was, aside from a puncture wound, undamaged. (Which is good, since I’ve heard that other cats tend to bring such presents in a headless condition.)

So I took pictures of the trophy, which I won’t include here (surprise! dead mouse in your blog feeds!) and then disposed of the body. This is, of course, far from Iz’s first catch, but it’s the first time he’s both caught and killed his prey entirely unaided.

I’m hoping this was in fact The Mouse and not just a mouse. The one we saw seemed smaller than the one Iz caught, but it was moving a lot faster, so maybe I’m a poor judge. But if there’s more than one, I guess Killer will have the situation under control eventually.

Now Playing: Black Gold from Grave Dancers Union by Soul Asylum

Technorati Tags: cat, mouse

Posted by pjm at 9:49 AM | Comments (0)

Talk to Strangers

Street writing in college towns has always been more iconoclastic than simple vandalism. (I recall the square of sidewalk near Davis Square which I once saw admonishing me, within a meter or so, both that “Santa is real” and “Doritos is people”.)

In Amherst, they like rising above simple traffic direction (a sign modified like this one) or simply being subversive within the traffic-direction medium. Consider this crosswalk, one of several so marked in town:

Now Playing: Starlight Motel from Tarantula by Ride

Technorati Tags: amherst

Posted by pjm at 10:12 AM | Comments (0)

Brake for moose

It’s getting so driving on 202 is always an adventure. Tonight, there were lots of flashing lights north of New Salem. As I crept by, I was looking to see which of the various cars pulled on to the shoulder was damaged, and almost didn’t see the large animal lying in the southbound lane. Next up was a Jeep with heavily starred windshield in the northbound lane; I didn’t see what other damage it had (there must have been some.)

The animal… too skinny to be a cow or even a horse, far too big for a deer. I’m guessing moose; I’ve heard some hang out in the Quabbin reservation, though I’d never seen one there myself.

Growing up in Maine, of course I’ve seen moose before. (If you reach a certain span of residence in the state without seeing one, natives start taking you on long drives in boggy areas in hopes of spotting one to show you.) Most often, though, I’d seen the “Brake for Moose! It could save your life!” signs common on the way out of the massive suburban sprawl zone around Boston. This was the first time I’ve seen a moose (if that was what it was) lying on the road.

The signs, at once comic and deadly serious, don’t point out the primary problem with hitting moose: they’re tall. Hit a deer or a cow, and both the animal and your car hood are going to take some damage points. Hit a moose, and you’re going to sweep its legs out from under it and probably catch the body across your windshield, which looks like what happened to this jeep. (My car would probably wind up with the moose on the roof, which would be equally distressing.)

Now Playing: Blackout from Human Cannonball by School Of Fish

Technorati Tags: driving, massachusetts, moose

Posted by pjm at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)

The bowfisher

I’m used to seeing anglers along the Mystic when I run on the river-bank path to Arlington, even though the river is placid enough to be a bit unappetizing. However, today I spotted a young guy standing on a rock at the water’s edge with what seemed to be a home-made bow and a long, unfletched wooden arrow. He had it nocked, but didn’t pull it back while I was in sight; maybe he just didn’t spot anything to shoot at.

Modern bowfishing gear usually involves a barbed head and a line attached to the arrow, so the archer is essentially shooting a large hook into the fish and then reeling it in. This angler didn’t appear to be using any such hardware, so I wonder how he was retrieving any fish he managed to shoot.

Technorati Tags: archery, arlington, bowfishing, fishing, medford, mystic river

Posted by pjm at 9:30 AM | Comments (0)

Not exactly plodding

I guess the thing that’s missing from the NYT article about the lobster boat races is the recognition of how unique this sort of thing really is. You can’t really compare it, for example, with racing work vehicles on the road (e.g. pickup truck races) because the nature of the water is different.

On the road, the minimum requirement for a functional vehicle is that it roll. The minimum requirements on the water are a good deal higher (it has to float, it has to move efficiently through the water, and yet it should resist being pushed off the course it is steered on, for example) and that dictates the form of both pleasure boats and work boats to a greater degree than on land.

So a lobster boat has a lot more in common with a speedboat than it would appear. “Bulky, plodding boats” doesn’t really describe what’s going to the line in these races.

Technorati Tags: lobsterboat, races

Posted by pjm at 9:27 PM | Comments (0)

"Not just $1,000, but bragging rights..."

“…as the fastest lobster boat in Casco Bay.”

This announcement on the marine radio was followed, after a beat, by the comment, “No more messing around, now, let’s see that thing haul some ass.” Apparently someone forgot which channel was the trash-talking channel.

After all, traps are more commonly hauled than ass by, for one, Motivation out of Boothbay, or Cry Baby with the straight-six which was nearly the fastest non-diesel boat at the Harpswell races we went over to see today. This was my first time going to the races; I got sunburnt despite massive and repeated application of sunscreen. We considered taking a swim to cool off, but we put off that idea by heavy spectator boat traffic and the fact that the water, at 62 degrees, was notably colder than where I’d dipped in the New Meadows when I finished my run.

It’s hard to describe these races without showing them; this New York Times reporter tried and pretty much failed. (Apparently not someone who really understood what he was watching.) This video does a lot better; we saw a lot of the boats in there race today.

There are a lot of things we do in my state that they don’t do anywhere else, that’s for certain.

Technorati Tags: Harpswell, lobsterboat, Maine, races, rash

Posted by pjm at 9:45 PM | Comments (0)

The other side of berry season

After my raspberry glut the other week, I enjoyed my berries in a completely different way this morning.

I had set out on a long-ish loop in my hometown along a course I’d never run before. I was around an hour and ten minutes out, and since waking up I’d had only about two-thirds of a squeeze-bottle of Gatorade. (I’d stashed the bottle and remaining contents in the weeds under a stop sign when I started the loop, and was about a half-mile from retrieving it.) I was under a self-imposed time deadline for the run.

When I saw the telltale leaves, I looked quickly for blueberries, and saw a few ripe ones. A quick stop can’t hurt, I reasoned, so I stopped for about thirty seconds. I picked and at maybe a dozen berries—not quite a mouthful, for low-bush blueberries—and ran on.

Those few berries were everything I needed; I could’ve had a quarter pint and achieved the same feeling. I had the taste in my mouth and all the feelings that go with it, and I’d grabbed it in an impulse stop by the side of a lightly-traveled road.

Immediately after retrieving my Gatorade bottle, I saw another, bigger blueberry patch, with ripe berries practically screaming out from under the leaves at ten feet away. But I had somewhere to be, and I didn’t stop. It turns out I had had time, but I can’t imagine that more berries would have been anything more than the few I had picked.

Technorati Tags: blueberries

Posted by pjm at 6:33 PM | Comments (0)

Cricketers

Leaving out scattered dog-walkers, the biggest organized use of the park across our street is softball. The lit fields are in use pretty much all year, from “warm enough” to “too dark.” The softball players come from all over, take up all available street parking, and often hang around drinking beer and setting off fireworks when their games are over.

Next comes soccer. Our neighborhood has a large Brazilian population, and I frequently see massive pick-up games going on, generally using portable goals about the size of a lacrosse net.

Sometimes there is a crew playing flag football in a season roughly corresponding to the NFL season. They play on Sunday mornings, rain or shine, and tend to rip up the tuft a lot when it’s “rain.” Also, the local Catholic school doesn’t have fields of its own, so they use a corner of this park as a practice field every fall, rendering it essentially barren by Thanksgiving.

Last Sunday, though, and again this morning, there has been a small group playing cricket out in the middle of the field. For some reason, this tickles me immensely.

Technorati Tags: cricket, medford, softball

Posted by pjm at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

Paddling on the Mystic

We discovered a few weekends ago that the Mystic River boathouse on Shore Drive near Assembly Square, run by the Somerville Boys and Girls Club, rents canoes and pedal boats at $5/hour. So yesterday we went down to check it out. We made two trips, actually, since the first time (shortly after 1) there was a sign on the door saying, “7/21 hours: 3 to 8”.

On our return, they took my license (collateral), gave us life jackets, and pushed a pedal boat off the dock for us.

In hindsight, a canoe would’ve been a better idea, but I was fascinated by the idea of the pedal boat. It turned out that the rudder in a pedal boat is largely ineffectual (it appeared to have two bearings, “veer left” and “veer right,” without much room in between,) and also, the work one does in cranking the pedals is inefficiently applied to the water—in other words, working harder doesn’t move you faster.

Nonetheless, we probably set a range record from the boathouse. In the hour and a half after we set out, we made our way down to check out the dam on the southeast side of the Orange Line bridge, and up to the Revere Beach Parkway bridge. (I suspect this inlet has a name, but I don’t know what it is.)

The day was pretty nice, but we probably would’ve had a better time in a less balky craft. Alas, I neglected to take pictures. The majority of the visible wildlife was avian; ducks, a flotilla of geese returning from a shopping trip to Target (or Petsmart?), several smaller, busy guys (terns of some sort?) and a larger bird which may have been an owl; I didn’t get a closer look.

Technorati Tags: everett, mystic river, somerville

Posted by pjm at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)

Neck deep in raspberries

I didn’t think it was possible to eat enough raspberries that I felt sick, but you really do learn something new every day, I guess.

One of the hangups of fruit and vegetables—particularly the organic grew-it-in-my-yard variety—is that you get none for a long time, and then suddenly you get a lot, all at once. (Zucchini is a great example of this. There is no such thing as enough zucchini, if you’re growing it yourself; there is either none, or too much.)

A’s parents have a raspberry patch, about the size of the fenced-in play area we had in our backyard when I was very small, and when the berries start coming ripe you can pick a liter in about half an hour, probably in excess of a gallon of berries every day. And that’s with a significant amount of the picking going directly from bush to mouth, with no stopping in the picking container. And then, after dinner, you can sit at the table with the container in front of you and eat raspberries until you feel sick, knowing there will be more tomorrow.

Berries—raspberries in particular—are really a stupendous idea, evolutionarily speaking. The plants put a pretty big percentage of their annual energy budget into producing these sweet little fruits surrounding their seeds; then they wither. Untouched, the berries re-seed the patch for another pass next year, but they’re also attractive to a wide variety of animals, from birds to bears. Those animals get a caloric boost and return the favor by (unintentionally) spreading the seeds. It’s a gorgeous system right there, but the berries work another strategy: they ripen in stages (if a deer gets all the ripe ones today, there will be more ripe ones tomorrow) but they all ripen over a short period of time and glut the market (so there are more berries than any one host can monopolize.) There may be some competitive advantage here, too, where the seasons are staggered with other competitive food sources in the area; it forces the berry-browsers to shift around to different sources of food rather than exploiting one past recovery.

Trees do this, too, but the strategy is different. Their seeds tend to be damaged by animal consumption (acorns eaten by squirrels seldom become mighty oaks, though if the squirrel caches them and forgets them they may yet do well.) The trees have “mast years,” where after three or four (or a dozen) years of light seed production, suddenly they will flood the seed market, trying to produce enough seeds to get a few past the consumers.

I wonder, though, if I’m inventing this idea while looking at a relatively artificial (if organic) berry patch. The blackberry and black raspberry patches my father finds on his walk home from work seldom produce at this volume, but they aren’t as large, either. I remember being able to kill ten or fifteen minutes picking wild blueberries in certain spots along the coast, when I was younger; I had a bear’s nose for blueberries then. I was able to spot some atop Katahdin, but not enough to flood any consumer market; I could’ve picked most of the Katahdin patches bare in four or five minutes if I could’ve reached them safely.

Now Playing: You’re Still Beautiful from Gold Afternoon Fix by The Church

Technorati Tags: amherst, birds, blueberries, raspberries

Posted by pjm at 10:49 PM | Comments (1)

Immigrants

My family sometimes refers to the Canada geese becoming more common on the lake behind our house as “tourists” or “immigrants,” mostly because of their name, but this morning in Medford I saw a real non-native hanging out in the sun.

We were walking back from running with a grad student over at the University, and I looked over at the open door of an art studio along the way. Sitting on a table outside the door was a massive lizard, easily on the order of four feet long. I assumed it was prop of some kind (I think there’s a scenery shop in there somewhere) until it moved.

Based on my web research, I think it was an iguana, not unlike this one, but larger. It was a little surprising to see, and I found myself wondering how fast an iguana can run.

Now Playing: Sooner Or Later from Bang! by World Party

Technorati Tags: iguana, lizard, medford

Posted by pjm at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)

Nothing wrong with being early

Somerville, apparently, has fireworks early over the Independence Day holiday, and with the holiday itself coming on Wednesday, everyone else claims this weekend, and Somerville launched tonight. We live in a part of Medford which is practically Somerville (I have joked that you could throw a baseball into Somerville from here, and it might be true if there weren’t so many houses in the way; certainly Breaux Greer could get a javelin over there) and the Somerville fireworks are nearly on the Medford line, so we can hear them from the house; this year, we opted to walk up and watch.

I tried taking some long-exposure photos, but I was sabotaged by the twin problems of neglecting a tripod and there being significant shutter delay on my camera. Most of my photos showed the dim embers of fireworks, if they showed anything at all. The others are so busy they’re nearly psychedelic.

But I expect if I wanted to learn from my mistakes, I could probably find a few more fireworks shows between now and next Wednesday.

Now Playing: Burnin’ from Tarantula by Ride

Technorati Tags: firecrackers, medford, somerville

Posted by pjm at 9:54 PM | Comments (0)

Battle Road

A and I ran this morning on Battle Road in Lexington. For a runner, Battle Road is exactly what Boston doesn’t have enough of: five miles of rolling trail, groomed pretty flat (translation: few roots and rocks) but with rolling hills, turns, and lots of good scenery. The Winchester Fells could be like this if anyone cared to take good care of the trails, but instead we wind up running on a lot of concrete sidewalks.

The “road” itself follows pretty closely the route taken by the British soldiers returning from Concord, via Lexington, to Boston on April 19, 1775, and the surrounding land has been kept in (or restored to) pretty much the same configuration it had in 1775. In addition to the usual park-service signs illustrating various events and helpfully explaining how long it took a British grenadier to load his musket, there are numerous smaller markers, saying things like, “Several British soldiers are buried near here,” or, at the far end of the trail at Meriam’s Corner, “Boston Harbor 16 miles.”

It’s one thing to run those miles in light clothing on a pleasant May morning, carrying nothing but your clothes and moving briskly. But these little reminders make it easy to think about what a different thing it would be to march sixteen miles in heavy wool clothes, carrying a sixty-pound pack, keeping step and keeping the column dressed, and with other people shooting at you. (This point is brought home particularly when rounding a stone-walled corner and seeing the sign labeling it “Bloody Angle.”)

(Kenneth Roberts made the point quite neatly over fifty years ago in Oliver Wiswell, that one of the reasons the British lost was that their military leadership was, on average, pretty dim; why did the regulars have to carry their full packs to Concord? Similarly, why did they march on Bunker Hill with full packs?)

It’s also sobering to consider the families living in the various houses along the route, and imagine what it may have been like for them to see the British column marching through their yards—assuming they were still there when the column came by.

Technorati Tags: American Revolution, Boston, concord, history, lexington, massachusetts, battle road

Posted by pjm at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)

What I did on my spring break

I went skiing.

No, really. When life gives you mid-March snowstorm(s), you go up to Windsor and ski Notchview. It was the first time I’d been skiing since I moved to Medford, and it was great. They had eighteen inches in the woods (who knows what that means for the groomed trails) even though most of the other areas in this end of the state are closed. (The conditions page showed a lot of, “Sorry, we didn’t expect this storm and we’ve already shut down for the year.”)

When I only had classical skis, I was all strength and no technique. (And lack of technique makes strength pretty irrelevant.) Since I bought skate skis, I still have the clumsiest form on the trail (I imagine) but boy can I fly.

Skating requires at least a little technique to move at all, and the more you practice the more you learn. Today, I actually pulled my hands out of the pole straps and carried the poles for long stretches, forcing myself to use only the skis rather than poling like a demented gondolier; it was slower, particularly if there was a hint of an upgrade (on a real uphill, I needed to get back in the pole straps) but I felt smoother if I limited myself to occasional stabs at the ground. Also, on the downhills, it was much easier to keep my poles from dragging!

On the way home, I stopped for a few photos. This abandoned ski area in Cummington has always intrigued me; there’s only one run and a lift visible from the road, but it jumps right out in the satellite photo.

Now Playing: This Is the Sea from This Is the Sea by The Waterboys

Technorati Tags: massachusetts, spring break, skiing

Posted by pjm at 8:53 PM | Comments (0)

Don't diss the storm

So, despite the sensationalized coverage from the local meteorologists, we only got, what, two, three inches? Hah! The storm missed us!

Well, yeah, it did, but I just came in from clearing our sidewalk, and let me tell you, I’d rather have shoveled eighteen inches of powder.

The snow shifted to rain in the early afternoon. This meant slush in a lot of places for the bulk of the afternoon, but now, with temps dipping back under freezing, any place where the snow was able to soak up water is now setting up like concrete.

Let’s assume it hasn’t frozen yet. Those two or three inches are thoroughly saturated with water; it’s still concrete, just the wet variety. It’s heart-attack snow. I did a first pass of our neighbor’s sidewalk, because if he tried doing it himself (unlikely) he’d die on the sidewalk; otherwise it’s going to set up and be unwalkable until St. Patrick’s day.

I actually broke the handle off one of the shovels, hacking through the frozen crust and chipping the stuff off the sidewalk. There’s a storm drain in front of our house; it was snow-clogged early in the day, and now the water running off our roofs and off the street is pooling where it should be draining. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be able to skate out there. It will take someone with a pick (or a mattock, but a sledgehammer or splitting maul will do in a pinch) to clear that storm drain now.

While I toiled, I listened to police cars creeping up and down Main Street, with their speakers squawking: “There is a snow emergency in effect. All cars must be removed from both sides of Main Street, or they will be tagged and towed.”

It’s a disappointing storm for kids at the sledding hill, no question, but the trouble created by a winter storm can’t be measured in inches.

Now Playing: Lullaby 101 from Five Stories by Kris Delmhorst

Technorati Tags: massachusetts, medford, parking, snow, weather

Posted by pjm at 10:01 PM | Comments (1)

Another reason to dislike micro-caches

Family email this morning, originating with my cousin the cop, brought my attention to the geocacher who is wanted in Portsmouth. (I love how “geocacher” is in quotes in the article headline.) It seems he left a micro-cache made from an Altoids tin and a magnet on an electrical circuit box behind a grocery store. The store found it before anyone else did, and called the police—“suspicious item on our electrical box,” of course.

Overreaction, in the light of the lite-brite hysteria in this area last week? Not really; the store wasn’t evacuated, and the fact is the cache was on store property without permission. It’s a silly place for a cache, no better than if it was actually attached to something inside the store. Which has been done, no doubt, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.

The thing that really frosts me is that the game (which, I’ll admit, I’ve had little to no time to participate in over the past year and a half,) doesn’t need another lame parking-lot micro-cache.

There are three of these in the Amherst area, which appeared either shortly before I left, or right afterward. They drive me nuts, because they fail on every point of what I consider fun about geocaching. The hunt should (a) take you somewhere you wouldn’t ordinarily go, or show you something unusual about a spot you do know, and (b) should include a hunt which requires a certain (perhaps low) level of dedication and involvement. A micro in a parking lot does none of those things; it’s just mindless thumb-twiddling, an expense of energy which could be better used in planning, preparing, and placing a good traditional cache, a challenging puzzle, or even a multi-cache. The lure of an easy find draws people away from the really pretty, rewarding locations and into a dash to find as many bits of semi-hidden litter as possible.

In the article, the hider is quoted saying, “[I]t’s hard, in an urban setting, to find good hiding places.” Right. That’s not an excuse for using bad ones, is it?

It also leads to negative interactions with the non-caching world, as this shows. Nice job, bub. Way to make us look good.

Technorati Tags: amherst, geocaching, portsmouth

Posted by pjm at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

Cluck

The Quabbin is spectacular right now. On today’s run I had a few minutes, listening to a small stream rushing down towards the reservoir and looking at the fire road winding through the trees over a background of downed-leaves brown, where I was really happy to be there.

Not much wildlife, though, I was thinking. Then, at the end of the run, I spotted a white chicken crossing the road. (Yes, a chicken crossing the road. No, there is no punch line.)

I scooted back up to the car and grabbed my phone to document this sight. I assumed this was a rooster because of its comb, but my only reference for sexing chickens is Richard Scarry books, so maybe I’m off-base and we’ve got a hen trying to raise a flock of free-range chickens in the reservation. It wouldn’t let me get close enough for a good shot, and while I stalked it, I also listened to a woodpecker working on a nearby dead tree. After a few taps, I picked it out, high on a limb, but there was no point trying to get a photo of it.

Technorati Tags: pelham, birds, quabbin

Posted by pjm at 2:06 PM | Comments (0)

Uninterrupted sleep

Last night was the first night in two weeks that I didn’t wake up scratching at some point in the night. It’s been improving steadily since the middle of last week, but this is a sort of milestone, I think. The bumps have gone away, the marks are still there on my legs, easily recognizable to anyone else who suffered through this absurd little plague.

I wouldn’t share this, but it seems this site keeps coming up high on searches for “NESCAC rash.” There’s hope, folks, and apparently for the people with worse cases than mine “hope” is spelled “prednisone.”

Now Playing: Basement Apt. from You Were Here by Sarah Harmer

Technorati Tags: cross country, NESCAC, rash

Posted by pjm at 9:59 AM | Comments (0)

Cat-o-lantern

One thing I did while in PA was make a new cat-face jack-o-lantern. I was remembering the 2004 edition, but I didn’t have the picture to work from, so it’s similar but not quite the same. We lit it on the evening of the parade, and then I brought it home with me. We haven’t yet put it out in Medford.

Technorati Tags: cat, halloween, jack-o-lantern, pumpkin

Posted by pjm at 1:49 PM | Comments (0)

Unbalanced

I heard the telltale “Sssss” of the liftoff last night, and looked out the window to see smoke in the park across the street: someone else was launching rockets in the park! I looked up, but didn’t see it come down; I did hear what I thought was a little voice saying, “Daddy, do it again!”

As I made dinner, I picked out the man doing the launching, and what was probably his son sitting on the ground not far from the launcher. I watched them fuss over something which was probably the rocket; I saw the streamer. Eventually they had it set up to launch again, and I thought, it really looks like they’ve got the pad at quite a dramatic angle, don’t they?

Well, apparently they weren’t *ahem* exactly rocket scientists. (Granted, most hobby rocket launchers aren’t, myself included.) I watched it launch, then flinched even though I was across the park from them: it did a tight loop, then drove straight into the ground about twenty meters away from them, still blazing. Then it puffed smoke (the tracking smoke) and popped the ejection charge. Don’t know what that did; I expect it may have ruptured the body tube. I heard someone shouting; there were others on the field, who probably weren’t too thrilled to have this landshark flying nearby.

There are some pretty cool photos of this sort of thing on Flickr; this is the best one, and contains a pretty good explanation of what happens:

… Luckily, that setting perfectly captured the full trajectory of this chaotic flight of instability. The rocket had too heavy a motor in the back, a J-class motor in this case if I recall.

For those of use who have set off a bare Estes rocket engine as kids and watched it skip randomly through space, you have a sense of what happened here. You can add a nose cone and some fins to a motor, and it will be still be unstable. You need a proper balance of weight and thrust vectors. … To be stable, the rocket’s CP (Center of Pressure) should be one or two body diameters behind the CG (Center of Gravity).

The fins are there to streamline the flow of air and provide a large surface area and help to keep the center of pressure below the center of mass of the rocket.

This is why I didn’t fly my newest rocket this week; I don’t know where the center of gravity is, and I haven’t tested its stability yet.

Now Playing: Americans in Corduroys from Ghost Repeater by Jeffrey Foucault

Posted by pjm at 1:15 PM | Comments (1)

The Midnight Softball Society

An hour or so ago, I noticed that the lights weren’t on at the softball fields. I assumed there were no games tonight, so they hadn’t turned the lights on. Or maybe there was some kind of regular night off, it being a Friday, after all.

But just now I looked out and saw two teams milling around the benches, presumably wondering how to play softball in the dark. Or, perhaps, conducting some kind of experiment to determine if the beer is as good without the game beforehand.

There was a summer program I attended while in high school which attracted, shall we say, more than its fair share of eccentrics. Among the many things I had forgotten (until I recalled it just now) was the Midnight Croquet Club, an organization made up (necessarily) of faculty and staff for the purpose of playing croquet at midnight. Somehow I suspect midnight croquet is somewhat less dangerous than midnight softball.

Update: Fifteen minutes later, the lights are on. This is going to be a late game.

Now Playing: Fumble by Frank Jordan

Technorati Tags: medford, softball

Posted by pjm at 8:41 PM | Comments (0)

It's not even work

We were anchored in Quahog Bay (as my father puts it, we had “dropped the lunch hook,”) near the rope swing at low tide, doing the most sensible thing to do in that situation (i.e. picnic lunch and swimming off the boat,) when the marketers cruised by.

And I do mean, “cruised.” It was a mother and son team, the mother piloting a medium-sized Boston Whaler and the son holding up a sign reading, “Cookies for sale.” They had a good-sized black dog sitting in the bow.

On their southbound pass, we waved them over, and while the dog investigated our boat for sandwich scraps, we bought two “blondies” for a buck apiece, following the “always patronize lemonade stands” dictum.

Now Playing: Strangest Places from Strangest Places by Abra Moore

Technorati Tags: cookies, Maine, Harpswell

Posted by pjm at 7:55 PM | Comments (0)

Swept away

A few hours after we left for the wedding, our area was hit by a fairly intense thunderstorm. Judging from what I’ve seen on this morning’s run and a short errands walk this afternoon, nearly every tree shed something, from small twigs to entire limbs.

We ducked a bit of a disaster ourselves. Our driveway was home to one of those pipe-framed tentlike pseudo-garages, which is actually visible in the satellite photos if you know our street address (and know that Google slightly misplaces our street number.) In the windstorm it apparently caught a rogue gust and went airborne. According to the landlord’s narration this morning, it clipped a corner of the house, chipping a single shingle. It then hurdled my car cleanly (not a scratch) but took out a section of picket fence immediately behind the car. It then vaulted a significantly higher chain-link fence at the back of our yard, missing a large collection of potted plants in the neighbor’s back yard but eventually smashing a second-floor window and coming to rest standing on end beside his house.

The neighbor and our landlord disassembled it with a Sawzall, and it’s now awaiting the week’s garbage collection next to our house.

This episode strikes me as particularly fortunate considering this neighborhood’s proven history of car disasters for absent drivers. On the other hand, had A’s car been parked where it usually is, perhaps airflow might have been sufficiently different that the canopy would not have taken flight?

Now Playing: Almost from All of Our Names by Sarah Harmer

Posted by pjm at 10:32 PM | Comments (0)

Cleared for liftoff

There are a lot of portrait-framed images in the Flickr Rockets pool. And some really cool stuff, if you like the idea of building stuff and then launching it hundreds of feet in the air. (Multi-engine clusters?)

I had a successful launch this morning, my first in decades, with a smaller-sized engine (an A8-3.) Engines are graded according to total thrust (the letter,) average thrust in newtons (the first number), and the delay between the end of the burn and ejection of the recovery system, also in seconds (the second number). Each letter step indicates a doubling in total thrust, so the B6-4 I’m planning on launching this afternoon will provide twice as much lifting force on the same rocket—plus the slightly longer delay before ejecting the chute should let it “coast” a bit longer, which is useful with such a small rocket. However, there are softball games going on in the park, and I think I should wait for a window in their play before I go out and launch higher. Recovery of this one almost ended in a tree as it was, because I went to an unoccupied corner of the park. (See the video.)

I discovered, in surfing around to links found via the Flickr pool, that anything flying with an E engine or lower is rated a “low power” rocket. I never flew anything bigger than a B myself, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff out there!

Update: Great launch this afternoon with the B6-4. Unfortunately, in the recovery phase (i.e. coming down with the ‘chute open) it drifted out of the park and onto the roof of a house that abuts the park. I can see a bit of the rocket in the gutter, and the ‘chute hanging out. So that’s a loss, and my fault for not selecting my range well.

Now Playing: Not The Same from Rockin’ The Suburbs by Ben Folds

Posted by pjm at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)

An impossible dream

Iz’s birthday, we figure, is just a few weeks away. Right now, he’s telling me in his most beseeching tones that what he really wants is one of those pigeons hanging out on the roof of the next house over.

Posted by pjm at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

Two or three of forty-eight

I actually managed to break the first rule not once, but twice: first, I didn’t have the GPS on when we stashed my car in the Pinkham Notch Visitor’s Center lot on Friday night, and second, I forgot to waypoint the trailhead of the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail until we had already been walking half an hour. Fortunately, we didn’t need either, not getting off the trail by any appreciable amount; also, some wise souls had placed geocaches at or near some of our major stops (the Lakes in the Clouds Hut, the Mt. Washington summit,) so I had those waypoints near where our trips were taking us. (Fortunately, I say, since part of our “training” for this trip was reading Not Without Peril.)

I also discovered, in the breach, rule two: always have your camera battery fully charged. With the chance of it dying always in the back of my head, I didn’t take as many photos as I might have. I did manage to find 40 to put on Flickr, if you’re curious.

And I hit three geocaches. Would’ve been five, if I’d done my reading and arranged for someone to help us do the webcam cache at the summit.

My brother has unilaterally decided that we’re trying for all the peaks over 5,000 feet in New England. Since we toured the Lafayette Ridge before we were old enough to drive and did Katahdin last summer, we’ve actually hit a significant fraction by now, since we made a side trip to Mt. Monroe on our way up. I don’t know the list—honestly, I don’t want to become an obsessive peak-bagger and I know how easily I could become one if I let myself spend too much time looking at the official list of the 48 peaks over 4,000 feet in New Hampshire—but I think Boott Spur might count as well. (Apparently not…)

Still, most of the rest are there in the Presidential range. On our way back around to pick up his car at the first trailhead, he pointed to a sign for a trailhead with 2.5 miles to Mt. Jefferson and said, “Remember that. We might need it.”

Posted by pjm at 9:47 PM | Comments (0)

First rule of hiking with a GPS

Always waypoint the car.

Now Playing: Undertow from New Adventures In Hi-Fi by R.E.M.

Posted by pjm at 2:27 PM | Comments (0)

Some things never change

During the reunion weekend, we took a walk by our old street. The street sign was missing. Of course, the one that used to go missing was at the bottom of the street, and this time they’d swiped the one at the top.

Now Playing: Chaos from Priest = Aura by The Church

Posted by pjm at 9:16 AM | Comments (0)

Early summer scents

All weekend, the air in this residential neighborhood smelled like lighter fluid and charcoal briquets.

Tonight, I dragged out the baby Weber that’s been with me, unused, through the last three moves (two apartments without lawns,) and fired it up for what may have been just the second or third time since I moved back to New England. While I waited for the coals to be ready to cook, I breathed in the scent and reminisced. (I’m getting good at that. I’m practicing to be old, I guess.)

In the house where I lived with W and Z, we grilled a lot. W was stereotypical carnivore, but some time after he moved out, Z fell off the vegetarian wagon in a big way, and we would grill three or four nights a week. We had some basic plastic furniture and a low-end hammock set up on the concrete apron behind the house, and we’d sit around the baby Weber with our supplies, watching the coals in the chimney-starter get pumpkin-red before we dumped them in and started cooking: burgers, pork chops, fish, corn on the cob, whatever came to mind.

I’d sit sideways in the hammock with a beer and dinner, and afterwards we’d skewer marshmallows on bamboo kebab-skewers and toast them over the remaining coals as the neighborhood got dark. We’d discuss our plans to get out of our jobs and that house, our relationships or lacks thereof, and whether the lawn needed mowing. (One blistering summer, it never did; the only moisture it got was when I discovered that our six-pack of Catamount was skunked, and split it between the lawn and my garden plot.)

We hosted one party involving half-liter bottles of Hacker-Pschorr (my, was that ever good beer,) party food from the grill, and marshmallows; I remember the then-editor of Men’s Health idly burning skewers with no marshmallows like cigarettes he couldn’t smoke.

At this remove (by this time five years ago, I had already interviewed for my next job,) there’s a pretty high tinge of nostalgia going there, but there’s nothing wrong with remembering the past fondly as long as you don’t prefer it to the present. Tonight was a good dinner, even though I don’t have any marshmallows in the house.

Now Playing: The Day I Let Glory Steer from This Town Is Wrong by Nerissa & Katryna Nields

Posted by pjm at 8:08 PM | Comments (0)

Adoption

Clearing out some of the email that had stacked up in my inbox during the last push, I came to one from an Amherst area geocacher who was also prominently featured in the Hampshire Life story a few months ago. Since last summer, he and I had been discussing potential maintenance on my two caches out there. I’d been hanging on to them out of some kind of sentimentality, but after the last few weeks I faced up to the fact that it would be weeks, at best, before I could attend to any problems with either hide. They needed to “belong” to someone who could take care of them.

So today I “put them up for adoption.” The geocaching.com site has a facility for offering ownership of a cache to another user, and I spent two minutes putting Bub’s cache and the Misty Bottom cache up for adoption. They’re not mine anymore, probably for their own good, but it’s still a bit tough to give them up.

It is gratifying to see the number of people who’ve visited both hides, and their comments. Misty Bottom, in particular, is one of my favorite places in all of Amherst, and it’s a lift to read the comments from all the people who went down there to find a box, and found a hidden little natural place as well.

Now Playing: Basement Home by Jesse Malin

Posted by pjm at 9:13 PM | Comments (0)

Chained

Like my niece, who can’t eat ice cream without getting it in her hair, I seem to be incapable of getting my bike out of the basement and on the road without smearing my clothes with chain grease. I’m wondering if the long-term wear-and-tear reduction on the bike due to regular lubrication is going to be worth all the clothes I’ll need to replace if the stuff doesn’t come out. Unfortunately, I’ve only found one way to get the bike up to the door and out, and it requires me being on the chain side of the bike.

Now Playing: Clean Up Kid from Songs From The Other Side by The Charlatans

Posted by pjm at 3:51 PM | Comments (1)

Increased demand

I’ll admit to a little admiration for the two boys who have (twice, already, today) rung our doorbell and offered to shovel the steps and the walk. They’re cruising the street for business which has been pretty slow, so far, this winter, and they’re out in the worst weather pursuing their business.

That said, though, not only is the snow still coming down (and the forecasts I’ve seen suggest we’re in for five or six more hours,) but it’s blowing like mad, and there’s as much drifting as there is falling. Any work they do now is likely to need re-doing in just a few hours. Certainly that’s a renewable resource from their point of view, but it also suggests that now isn’t the best time for me to be investing, if I was going to.

Meanwhile, our neighbors, who were out of town when the snow was forecast, have had their cars towed. I feel somehow responsible, though there was no way I could’ve moved the cars myself.

Now Playing: Listen Like Thieves from Listen Like Thieves by INXS

Posted by pjm at 3:57 PM | Comments (0)

Means to an end

There was an article on Geocaching in the Hampshire Life section of Friday’s Daily Hampshire Gazette. I’m quoted extensively. It’s mildly amusing, since I believe I’ve done fewer than five caches since I moved, and only one close to home; I’ve done more in Indiana than Massachusetts lately.

I actually went as far as to propose a similar story to the same editor a few years ago, but never wrote it. I think they got a better author to finally do it, because I would’ve written a pretty straight ad for caching, and this writer came in questioning the point of the whole activity. “Do we really need to hide things in the woods to make the woods worth visiting?”

We brought him around eventually, of course.

By now, it’s becoming clear that in geocaching there is something else hidden besides that plastic container or ammo box. What that is, I’ve finally discovered, is the idea that the cache isn’t simply an end, but a means to an end.

Sad to say, the Gazette is subscription-only, so if you aren’t a subscriber and really do want to read the article, drop me a line (or comment) and I’ll use their “send this story to a friend” feature.

Now Playing: Is It Like Today? from Bang! by World Party

Posted by pjm at 4:40 PM | Comments (1)

Snow hunting

With highs in the 40s for the past few days and green grass on the park across the street, of course I’m thinking about cross-country skiing! Except that my favorite, Notchview is now an excessively long drive for an hour or two of skiing. So I’m doing some research on where to go around here.

A few years ago, A and I read Bill McKibben’s book Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously, in which he sets out to spend a year training hard for ski racing. Not long into the book, a familiar theme of athletic-training stories cropped up: training conditions are less than optimal. Runners’ books tend to be litanies of injuries kept at bay during heroic racing seasons; McKibben’s could have been subtitled “The Quest For Snow” if it hadn’t been for other family issues which came up in the course of the year. McKibben’s choice of coach also intrigued me: Ray Browning, co-author of Serious Training for Endurance Athletes.

Anyway, in snowless winter, McKibben sometimes mentions the Weston Ski Track, a 2K loop in the Boston suburbs where a small team of dedicated maniacs with snowmakers maintain a 2K loop throughout the winter. From their website:

Our snowmaking and grooming expertise means that under almost any circumstances you can cross-country ski on our trails. … Even though your backyard is green, our teaching area has plenty of snow.

He made it sound roughly as attractive as a twenty-miler on an indoor track, but looking at the site now, they seem to have quite a bit of trail out there—even if they’ve only got 1K open right now. I’ll have to swing out and check it out sometime soon. All the other interesting places seem to be in New Hampshire: next on my list is Windblown.

Now Playing: 0408 from El Momento Descuidado by The Church

Posted by pjm at 10:12 PM | Comments (1)

We were always out shovelling

We did not, in the end, get an inordinate amount of snow today. However, the hour or so in the middle when it shifted to rain, then back to snow, means there’s an inch-thick substrate of slush underneath, and all the streets are glazed with a packed and frozen layer the plows just can’t scrape up.

In other words, this weather is why God made knobby tires for bikes.

However, I need to look in to some form of indoor storage for days when it’s actually coming down; spending five minutes blowing on the lock to thaw it enough to insert the key isn’t my idea of time well spent, right now. I think I also need to look in to winterizing my ride a little better.

Now Playing: Rain King from