Adieu, Chaps

I just read that Pierre Chapoutot died a few days in an avalanche. He was a pioneering rock climber and mountaineer, and his first ascents are ubiquitous and numerous, particularly in the Oisans. He maintained a fantastic blog about his adventures which I enjoyed greatly. One of his first ascents was a route up the Bastion Centrale of La Meije, and he generously provided me with detailed information on the route. Here is an excerpt from his emails

If you want a long and beautiful climb without any people, in a splendid atmosphere, you can choose the "Bastion Central" route + upper part of Dibona-Mayer. It is in the same grade as the Pierre Allain, but longer and more sustained. Equipment : all the belays, and few pegs or spits (6 in all !) in the pitches. It ends between 2d and 3d Tooth between the Grand Pic and the Doigt de Dieu, and from this point it is not easy at all to reach the Grand Pic (horrific rappel from 1st Tooth to the Breche Zsigmondy !). So, it is reasonable to choose the way back on the Doigt de Dieu. I think that this route is the most beautiful on the whole South Face... mais c'est un point de vue très personnel


Unfortunately I wasn't able to round up a partner for La Meije before I left, and now I'll never be able to email him back and tell him what a fantastic route it is.

Cable Graveyard

I'm a cable pack rat. Things were better for me in France when I knew I couldn't accumulate too many bits and pieces, but since I've been back in the US, I've reverted to my old ways. The problem is that I've had a big box of cables that I've been carting around since college with all sorts of cabulature in it; it has been living in my parents garage for the last 4 years, so clearly most of the cables aren't really necessary (I also have my Power computing powertower pro in there, and an ancient powerbook 520c in drawer). Anyway, there was the usual fare: many Ethernet cables, RCA cables, RCA to stereo min (somehow I had like 6 of these!), coax, USB, firewire, 2 wire telephone, 4 wire telephone and on and on. However, there were also some really funny things in there which I've documented below. Test your computer savvyness (or age as it might be) by identifying them. Answers are in the nonworking rollovers at the bottom.
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Half Moon Bay

Today we drove south to Castle Rock for a little bouldering, but the rocks were saturated and it was FREEZING. Instead, we wandered around looking for undiscovered boulders and stumbled upon Summit Rock, which looks like it might have a days climbing as well.

We continued on along Skyline blvd, where we came upon power lines which had fallen across the road. A traffic jam was developing, and SUV people were proudly and happily going into FULL OFFROAD MODE and driving around the road. It was magnificent. Chloe and I returned to the last intersection and had a hot dog while we waited for the lines to be cleared. Unfortunately, the lines were still down when we got back, but by now there was a large dirt road from all the off roadin'. On a whim, we took the road down toward the pacific and ended up parking in the fabulous Ritz Carleton Half Moon Bay parking lot (We assumed that they only allow the riff raff in because of some agreement they signed). We walked along the beach,





tried to figure out what was going on with these columns in the headlands


and watched birds get doused by waves

Canons

Living in the Presidio, we drive past canons every day... canons at the gates, canons on the lawns, canons in the parking lots, canons in the front yard. We never really stopped to look at them, but the detail on some of them are amazing, and well, bizarre:

Stereo

Back in high school I would sometimes go to high end audio shops just to see what kind of crazy things were being offered. I don't know how it started or what my motivation was, since there wasn't really anything that I could afford. Occasionally if the staff were bored they might let me "audition" the latest McIntosh amps, or huge electrostatic speakers, or any number of other ridiculously priced components. On those occasions I was shocked by how life like, smooth and "present" the sound was. Previously I had no idea that a sound system could possibly sound that good. But I did know that even if I someday acquired $20,000, I sure as hell wasn't going to spend it on a stereo.

Fast forward to one year ago, when a chance posting on a climbing discussion board alerted me to the presence of a different way to get excellent sound: the Do it Yourself (DIY) community. It turns out that there are people all over the world who assemble their own amplifiers from kits or raw components for under $1000 which sound *almost* as good as their $5-10k brethren. As soon as I discovered this, I immediately set out to find the best deal among a bewildering array of designs and kits. There were the push-pull amplifiers, the in vogue Single Ended Triodes, the fancy looking Output transformerless amps and on and on. All of the amplifiers that I was looking at were based on old but beautiful sounding vacuum tubes. I settled on a kit from DIY Hifi called the Joplin, and bought a set of speaker drivers from Bastanis speakers. The components arrived while we were still living in France, and although I was able to start the wiring for the speakers, I never got a chance to complete them. They require cabinets of course, and despite my best efforts I was unable to get a carpenter to build them for me. I was in contact with two carpenters who said they were interested in the project and would get back to me soon with price quotes. Well first of all, what "project"?! Its a BOX! And second, they never got back to me. So when our things finally arrived last week, I was excited to rewire the amp for US voltage, get the speakers wired and build the cabinets. The amp rewiring took about 30 minutes, as did the speaker wiring. The next day chloe and I went down to Ashby Lumber, ordered a 4x8 sheet of MDF and described what sized pieces we wanted it cut into. Amazingly, their cuts were almost perfect to the millimeter (except one or two panels which were good to 3 or 4 mm), the guys working there were all helpful and knowledgeable and they were done in 15 minutes. No talk about "projects", no meetings or faxing, just 16 pieces of MDF cut to order in a quarter of an hour for $35!

After we got home I went into full "project mode" which I think Chloe was a little taken aback by. "Project mode" is a state of mind that I enter when building things which means no breaks and intense working until things are finished. The first cabinet took around three hours to build, but the second one took a lot less time since we pulled the measurements off of the first cabinet (The plans for the cabinets were in metric which led to some quick calculations at the lumber yard). When we brought the finished speakers upstairs and fired up the amp I think we were both amazed by how good it sounded. Here's our setup: