more Choppin

After breakfast at the Dutch Flat Hotel, we took a walk around Dutch Flat, then headed back to the cabin, where Kenji was again directing all of us clueless workers.

I'm not sure what we'd do without him.

That's supposed to be a portrait of me on the left door by the way.
Chloe and I took a walk and finally met the neighbors, who told me that there's a fish farm upstream on the Bear Creek (which runs through our property), and sometimes fish escape. I haven't seen fish in there for years, but the guy we met told us that he's seen up to 18 inch trout down there!

After walking past scary pitbulls and along the canal, we ended up next to the PG&E Alta hydro-power office. They have a mini snowcat with a cab heater and plush seating which I covet:

A little googling reveals that it is a Pisten Bully -- "It’s like a sportscar, for snow". This particular model looks like a 100 flexmobil. Heres a video. I'm no linguistics expert, but judging from the title "Schneepistenpräparierfahrzeuge Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug AG BeachTech Strandreinigungsgeräte", I'm guessing they are made in Germany or Austria. I don't want to know how much they cost.

I also did some more wood choppin' which really isn't that exciting. We have enough wood for the winter now.


I did discover one useful thing though: When chopping wood, even if you get very hot, leave the damn shirt on. Otherwise irate spiders will swarm you, bite your back and stomach and leave large tomato colored itchy welts that make mosquito bites seem like the gentle nuzzling of kittens.

Heres are some shots of the painted doors and windows



We ran into traffic on the way home but got crazy good mileage

The Sierra

We drove up to Alta this morning in the new used Prius, and upon arriving I immediately got to work finishing the damn roof. It's been hanging over my head for a while and I just wanted to be done with it. With Kenji cutting the cap shingles and complaining vigorously about it, I was able to finish up in an hour or so.


Next came some wood choppin with my new Gransfors axe (I know, EXCITING!!)



I was a little disappointed to find that the old school low budget super heavy axe that we've had for 20 years actually seems to do a better job with the bigger rounds, just by virtue of its weight. I'm not sure what I would have done without Kenji's running commentary:


Later on that evening I grilled some steaks that Gail had brought up. This had two unintended consequences. The first was that the "meat bees" (not bees at all, but yellow jackets) came out in legions, which enraged Kenji, who began attacking them with the fly swatter, hats, napkins, forks (no I'm not kidding) and whatever else he could get his hands on. Here's a picture of him in between deadly swings, corn cob in one hand, broken fly swatter in the other

and some of his unlucky victims


The other unintended consequence was an abundance of smoke: these were fatty and well marbled steaks on a small, hot grill. The smoke easily cleared the trees. In the middle of our meal we heard the whine of turboprops and looked up to see the red and white markings of the CDF on an OV-10 Bronco, probably out of Grass Valley. We didn't really pay much attention, other than to collectivley notice that it was in a high speed banked turn. Shortly thereafter, a CDF Bell Ranger flew overhead. Hmmm. A few minutes later, the Bronco circled back around with the helicopter following. By the third circle, I was starting to get worried, despite knowing that there was no way they were spotting the small smoke trail from our Hibachi. Still, I half expected smoke jumpers to start parachuting in!

A birthday card for my dad

woot

We bought a used (2005, 42k miles) Prius!

Saving gas?

Chloe and I are probably going to buy a used Prius (an 05), and before you yell at me about it not being significantly more eco friendly (because of the eco-cost of manufacturing) or ultimately more economically sound (they are expensive) let me just say that I've heard most of the arguments for and against. There is one important variable which is a good tie-breaker though, and thats the HOV sticker. In any case, here are some back of the envelope calculations:

subie: 57.3 mile trip (cant take bay bridge in AM) / 22.8 mpg * 5 days = 12.56 gallons / week * 3.30 (prem.) = 41.40
prius: 50.3 mile trip / 50 mpg * 5 days = 5.03 gallons / week * 3.10 (reg.) = 15.59

for a savings of ~25 a work week.

Alta, roofing, Smart's Crossing

We headed up to Alta for some roof shingling, wood splitting with my new Gransfors Large Splitting Axe and hanging out with some of Chloe's friends from UCSD (Becky and Fred)




I decided to use the subie as a shingle carrying device since I was getting sick of the heavy 20 packs tipping the wheelbarrow over. You see, there is a magical moment in which gravity takes over, the shingle packs are expelled from the barrow and the barrow itself is dumped sideways. It's a remarkable phenomenon for which I have coined a term: "the Falling over point", and I expect to be writing more about this soon. Anyway, I got the car to within 30 feet of the cabin and even managed to drive it back up the hill without getting mired.



After a long day of laying down shingle and chopping a few rounds of oak (The arborist did a fantastic job, by the way) we all took Rotenburo baths. Unfortunately, a mouse had fallen into the bath right before Becky and Fred used it

But was saved from a nasty death by Fred.



We walked down the road to Smart's Crossing for a brief swim. The water was FREEZING, and made for a quick exit. Someone has made a nice rope ladder to get up onto the log with.





After heading back and eating lunch at the cabin, a very unwary deer and her two fawns came within seventy or so feet of the cabin.

=
I spent the rest of the day trying in vain to finish the roof. I got pretty far though.


It doesn't look like it in the first shot, but there are actually four more rows needed just to get to the top. The shingles around the chimney were also a big pain in the butt to get right.

Salt Lake City

I was at a conference for the whole week. Besides the conference itself and the oppressive heat, there isn't much to report about other than my being very grateful and relieved to have been scheduled to talk on the first day. I think the local mormons were excited for all of the fresh blood available for conversion (that's my theory for why the SLC convention center is so plush). Here they are working their wiles on an unsuspecting American Crystallographic Association attendee


I was also in town for Pioneer Day which is apparently the biggest holiday in Utah.

Guest Blog By Chloe-The Tipping Point

After much nagging, Max convinced me to read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. He did this not because he thought the book was good, but rather because he thought it wasn't and wanted a second (i.e. validating) opinion as the book was met with a great deal of acclaim and popularity.

There was a time when I would have attributed Max's dislike of a book to "uppitiness." This is based on his appreciation of fine literature, his favorite author being Nabokov, and his mild disdain for my trashy mystery novels (however I try to get trashy mystery novels written in french, thus they are really educational and not just trashy). However, this was before our encounter with a book called The Adirondack Detective. We were living in France and after much lamentation and whining about the necessity of care packages, I was sent one from my father and stepmother. With the care package was a book called The Adirondack Detective. A police mystery type book, judging by the blurb on the back jacket. Fun and innocuous I assumed. Well Max got first dibs on the book since he had read all the handy books in English, was desperate for something to read, and had grown tired of struggling through books in french. It was within maybe half an hour that the complaints started. Poor writing, poor grammar, was there even an editor for this, how could this have been published, etc etc etc. I just assumed he was too persnickity and told him something to that effect. Then I tried to read it. I have rather a high tolerance for lackluster writing and really only need the barest thread of a story and enough dead time to get through just about anything. The Adirondack Detective, however, completely defeated me. The writing was not just "poor" but rather schizophrenic/stream of consciousness first person narrative. It was like the rambling of your crazy old grandfather talking about a fishing trip twenty years ago where nothing much happened. I no longer have the book, but I will try and recreate the atmosphere. "I went into Betty's Diner for breakfast like I do Thursday and Sundays. The food is pretty good there and the muffins are chuck(sic) full of blueberries. I like dogs." So after this experience, when Max says a book isn't good with a particular level of vehemence, I tend to believe him...

Max had described "The Tipping Point" and it's apparently novel concept of a point after which things change quickly and dramatically brought about by something seemingly small and inconsequential. My response of " You mean like the straw that broke the camel's back? What's so novel about that?" was met with a withering stare and the demand that I read the book to better agree with his assertion that it was poorly written, not nearly as insightful as the author and popular wisdom claimed, and that the author was a smarmy toad or something to the effect. Not exactly a motivating force for me to read the book, but after much badgering I agreed to read at least part of the book so as to be able to write a review with at least some knowledge of the subject. I almost failed. Now I am a big fan of the illustrative anecdote and case study. However, it was within the first 20 pages that I became convinced that I had somehow lost my place and was re-reading the same section twice. Actually the same point was just re-iterated using the same words 3 pages apart. I asked if reading 20 pages was enough to write a review for the blog, but Max would only agree to at least 100 pages before I was off the hook and allowed to return to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (actually Harry Potter et le prince de sang mele, in french: so educational!). I dutifully read 132 pages, skimmed the rest, and feel that The Tipping Point is not a groundbreaking work; the concepts have all been around for quite awhile. And just to be snarky, the cover art with an unlit match and lit match reminds me of a old commercial for hemorrhoid medication where a guy strikes a match and then puts it out with a "medicated pad" to illustrate the benefits of Tucks. Perhaps an example of "stickiness" in advertising and a potential follow-up case study for any The Tipping Point sequels.

Tipping Point

I know I'm probably alone in this sentiment, but I needed to vent about "The Tipping Point". I would normally have stopped reading a book like that after a chapter or so just because of the patronizing tone, but plowed through the entire thing because I felt like I was missing something. I mean, there must be something to it if it's been on the NYtimes list since the French Revolution, right? Well, no. At least, not in my opinion. Here are some of my complaints, concise and enumerated for your pleasure

1) Can I hate Malcolm Gladwell solely for making every phenomenon which gathers a critical mass a "Tipping Point" in the popular lexicon? Thank you, I will.
2) I find his tone irritating, as I mentioned before
3) His analysis is totally without any kind of rigorous method or justification in my opinion. What exactly is a Maven? You know this how? Oh right, from the statistically significant sample of "Tipping points" that you have analyzed. Wait, you looked at less than ten? Who's your agent?
4) On that note, gratuitous capitalization: Maven, Sticky, etc etc is annoying.
5) Holy crap does this guy think he's a genius. In the afterword he basically says (in a cloak of false modesty); "Wow, my book is so amazing that it's helping people in ways I hadn't even forseen!"
6)It rambles and follows strange tangents frequently. I know there's some underlying structure, but it's kind of like staring at a fractal sometimes.

North Beach

Chloe and I drove out to have lunch and cappuccinos (and Gelato!) with the parents in North Beach

Eagle Lakes

We made our first attempt on Phoenix lake/ Old Man Mountain from the southwest today, but it didn't go that well. My idea was to drive up to Eagle Lake and the follow Fordyce Creek to the mountain. As usual, reality truned out to be a little different from google maps and the maps on our GPS. We realized pretty quickly that the road was beyond the normal standards of "high clearance 4wd" and into the realm of the purpose built rock crawler. Seriously, this is not a road, this is a boulder strewn hillside

which unsurprisingly smelled like engine oil.
We walked north and found a bridge across the creek and started eastwards towards the mountain. The terrain made it difficult to follow the creek and we soon gave up, panned for gold and found the motherlode of mica! We're rich, RICH I tells ya (doing a Walter Huston Gold dance)! I should also mention that Fordyce Creek is not really a creek, but a freezing cold river with an impressive amount of water running through it. We gradually decided that it was time to try to get back to the south side of the creek, but crossings were not forthcoming and we ended up having to climb a few slabs and hop from rock to rock.

At one point I had the spooky feeling that I was in the perfect habitat for snakes and that there was probably a rattlesnake just waiting to sink its little fangs into my ankle. In fact, I thought that I had actually heard a hiss, but since the chances of that are pretty remote, I told myself that I was being a wuss and continued whacking the bushes around me with my trekking pole. I was standing on a 2x2 foot rock about a foot away from shore at this point. I took a break from the bush whacking to take in the smell and beauty of the the huge incense cedars along the riverside, when I heard it again -- another hiss. Chloe was about 150 feet down the "trail" from me, and I was now officially freaked out, so I decided to backtrack. However, when I tried to take my first step my foot started slipping. It just didn't feel right, so I looked down and discovered that I was standing on a two foot long, very pissed off snake. I jumped into the air and let out a manly yell (girly shriek) and the snake slithered off into the water.

After running down stream and trying to slow down my now racing heartbeat, it was once again time to look for a river crossing. The best we could find was a slimy log which the glacial water would periodically wash over in a wave of bone chilling goodness. Chloe shimmied across it and after watching her get soaked, I decided to take a chance and jump from one side of the rocks to the other, which went off without a hitch. We sat in the sun for an hour or so, waiting for Chloe's pants and shoes to dry off

And panned for more mica. I'll order my Greek island on Amazon tomorrow.

we headed southeast and after a few more exciting crossings


found ourselves back at Eagle Lake. The light was terrible but the lily pads on these lakes are quite pretty



After a thankfully traffic free drive home with a stop at Ikedas, we discovered that a rabbit had escaped from one of the neighbors hard and was hopping around near the fences

I tried to herd it back through the hole in the fence, but Bugs was having none of it and I didn't really want to get bitten by a rabbit, so I didn't tackle it. Good luck against the cats tonight little buddy!

nice light on the way up to Alta

Corn

Well, our ears of corn appear to have stopped growing, so we decided to go for broke and harvest one. They turned out to be... special

and not particularly tasty. There weren't even a full set of kernels! Luckily, the cod that chloe had bought from the fish market on Hopkins and her marinade turned out GREAT on the grill.

ferocious cats in our yard

Arborist

We had breakfast at the Dutch Flat Hotel and then got an estimate for a local Arborist to chop down several trees that were in danger of crushing the cabin and the permatent. We also had a brutal 4:30 drive home. we even stopped in Colfax to kill time and ate at a *horrible* restaurant near the train tracks. It's a cute town, but pack a lunch.