Kiting

I had my first major-mishap-free session at third today, and actually remembered to switch on my GPS. I managed a few jumps and actually landed them, but I always get nervous of the bridge looming downwind, so I haven't been very adventurous. Breaking down on "the outside" would be pretty serious. The GPS data is downloaded in .gpx format with GPSBabel with this command:

gpsbabel -i garmin -t -f /dev/ttyS1 -o gpx -F waypoint.gpx

Then manually edited to put all the tracks into one master track (I also had to edit out a spurious point which put me *in* the driving range), then GPSvisualizer.

colored by distance

colored by speed


I made a Google maps interactive viewer page (highly recommended) too.

note that the GPS stopped working at some point -- probably when I crashed after an ill timed jump. I ended up on the small beach that can be seen southwest from the track in the google maps page.

I also grabbed a few webcam shots of myself
pumping my kite up
more pumping
looking around
in the channel
in the channel again
whoa!!!
about to land my kite
landing it
putting my kite down
Drying off
Checking out the poor guy self rescuing in the bay

The airplane game

A while ago, I mentioned a game I came up with, which involves taking pictures during a plane flight and then having your friends (and yourself) try to guess where exaclty they were taken. Unfortunately, there was a lot of cloud cover on my trip from OAK to San Diego, but I did grab some interesting ones which are shown below. I enhanced them all in iphoto. Click for an enlargement. The route was from Oakland to San Diego and they are in chronological order.

#0 (toughest one)


#1


#2


#3


#4


#5


#6


#7


#8

alta

I cleaned out the chimney today by climbing up onto the roof -- which is pitched just enough to be scary -- and using a special long handled wire brush. I managed not to fall of the roof and then installed a locking door knob after much cursing and drilling of holes in the wrong places. After a bath and calming down a bit we went for a walk down Drum Power House rd. to gather blackberries at Chloes secret spot. I was already pretty tired at this point so we had to turn around about halfway down to the bear river.

On the way to and from alta, we saw several decked out vans and buses on their way to Burning Man. There seemed to be a steady stream of these for the whole weekend, but on our drive back we saw all of the team trucks for the indy racing league. It was a fun contrast between the home painted vans with stacks of PVC tubing poking out of the backs with the streamlined impeccable graphics Toyota and Honda team trucks. Amazingly, there was no traffic coming back to the bay area this time!

snowshed bouldering

We got an early start from Berkeley today and headed up to the Snowshed at Donner for a little bouldering. The problems were fun, even if there weren't very many of them, but there was one beautiful and inspiring line which I threw myself at for an hour or so without too much success. With cooler temperatures and a little more power I might have a chance this fall!

We also put some finishing touches on the hot tub: specifically a lid for the heater and some hasps.







As it got dark, the bats came out and were swooping in near the deck to catch the bugs that were swarming us. I sat on the deck chair and managed to get a great picture of one of them, with the dark outlines of cedars in the background


after thirty more minutes of sitting in the dark with my finger over the shutter release, getting attacked by mosquitos, I managed to get one more bat shot:

air

After the usual out and back session at Alameda, I headed downwind to see how Chloe was doing. Along the way I noticed that the water was pretty flat, so I decided to take the plunge (literally!) and try to jump. We bought a beginners kiteboarding video called "Progression" which includes a long section on jumping, but I had been too focused on actually staying on my board to attempt it until now. However, watching the video allowed me to visualize all the steps, and I had been mulling it over for weeks. The first attempt went poorly: edge hard against the kite, steer the kite up hard... woooOOOOOP (sound of getting shot into the air)... SPLASH. IT was exhilarating, but a little painful. The second and third attempts were equally painful. Finally I managed to land one, and it was amazing. I repeated it several times, and soon I was way down the beach, looking at a long walk back to the launch.

no GPS track because I didn't press the "on" switch hard enough :(

A walk to Crissy

Some finishing touches

Chloes sister amy arrived on friday and we all went up to the cabin yesterday. We stopped at Hills Flat Lumber for our twice-a-weekend $100 Torx screw and various other parts fix. We also got a replacement for the dangerous and leaky 20 year old gas can that my parents had found. I'm no safety officer, but even I draw the line when you end up with only one third of your gas in the generator gas tank and the remaining third on the power cord and control panel of the generator. We all water sealed the existing structure, and most importantly the lower deck onto which water will spill.

While Chloe and Amy went off for a little hike (they found some really amazing tasting blackberries!) I put in some diagonal joists to support the decking around the corners of the tub. This is what the frame looked like when I got started:

Next, I cut redwood decking and attacking them until I ran out of nail and screws AGAIN. Here's the deck sans nails

I also made a pine lid for the tub as well as a pine door for the Chofu water heater. Thankfully, Chloe and Amy came back and offered to go back to Hills Flat to get some more lumber and screws. While they were away I cut the rest of the redwood for the deck and attached the final diagonal joist. When they got back, we nailed all of the decking, attached the pine lids, and water sealed everything. We also attached the pine siding. This is a shot showing the hinged lid


Today Chloe and I carried the last sheet of half inch plywood down to the cabin, measured and cut it and fired up the bath. While the water heated up, chloe attached hasps for the lids and I made a redwood railing.





I've been impatient to get the tub and platform done, so I've relied mostly on modern building techniques an materials, which has meant no Japanese style joints. All of the important joints have been Simpson Strong-Tie which have the added advantage of making leveling easy. However, I wanted to make at least one set of nice joints, and I decided that the railing was a good place for that. I didn't try anything too fancy

The only thing left now is to attach some more supporting crossbars, and make a cover for the water heater... but apart from that it's almost done! we all got a turn soaking in the tub before packing up for another four hour drive back to Mill Valley (We had dinner with Amys aunt and uncle). We were a little more careful about how much wood we put in this time, and closed the door at 95 degrees. It still ended up getting pretty hot, so next time we'll try closing at 90.

This is the almost finished deck:

3rd ave kiteboarding

I tried out my dream board today: the Underground FLX. As usual I hadn't adjusted the foot straps very well, but man can that thing eat chop. It felt like I needed to edge a lot harder than my gigantonoob board, but I imagine that that's just a necessary step in getting better. After a few futile attempts to switch the board for my own I ended up with barnacle shredded feet, so I rode downwind to the cove, where Chloe was waiting for me with my other board. I was definitely happy and grateful to have her there today supporting me: 3rd ave still feels pretty rough to me. I did manage a few small jumps of waves and stayed upwind for a while. Unfortunately my GPS was too shielded under my impact vest, so I don't have a trace to show today. However, Chloe took some photos of me boarding


here's me getting in with the Underground FLX 128 in tow:


then some random other shots




The good news is that even in somewhat higher winds than I am used to, my kite (Cabrinha Switchblade 12) performs well enough in its detuned (lower knot) setting.

Ode to Torx

I have switched over completely to Torx for the moment; Torx screws in combination with my Dad's MAkita drill made our lives much easier this weekend.

First Heat!!

It was perhaps the most significant day of the new century: today we obtained hot water for our stock tank soaking tub.

We started the day by attaching the excellent drain that we had bought with the Chofu heater from The Island Hot Tub Company.

Then we attached support 1x6s to make sure the plastic tub wont bend too much when sat in

Next, we drilled ports for connection to the hot water heater with our newly acquired hole saw, and added self-adhesive foil/foam insulation to the tub

And connected up the ports to the heater

We hooked up the water pump, crossed our fingers and ate lunch


Unfortunately, we soon had water leaking out of most of the connections that we had just hooked up; our fancy new drain was dripping slowly and the lower cold water intake was leaking at two places. We moved the heater closer to the bath to allow us to slide the port assembly further onto the pipes, re-clamped everything and started filling again. It required one more iteration of tightening, but we soon had the tub quite full with no (okay maybe a little) leaking. After a heroic effort by Chloe, we (well, she mostly) assembled the eight foot tall chimney, drilled holes with a cobalt bit, and sunk screws into the heater collar and the pipe sections. Finally, we clamped the chimney cap, put some oak (The same oak that I had cleared from the roof the previous weekend!) into the stove and waited, biting our nails as we dipped our hands into the water


(Notice the bucket of water nearby in case of problems)
I calmed myself by continuing on with the upper deck



It started heating slowly at first: we would dip our hands in occasionally and exclaim "hey, that feels warm!". We were all a little doubtful that it would work, so the first assertions of warmth were met with a little dubiousness. Soon however, the stream of hot water coming out of the upper port was undeniable. Indeed, it got extremely hot and was painful even to stir. The design of the heater, since it has no pump, causes an accumulation of hot water near the top of the tub, which needs to be mixed in with the colder water below. A normal person would use a paddle, but since I am not normal and didn't have a paddle, eventually resorted to using a shovel to stir it, but only after cooking my arms. After a relatively short while, the water was really, really hot and I decided that it was time to inaugurate the tub.

When I was little, my dad took me to various hot spas in Japan, and I remember the water seeming unbelievably, almost painfully hot. Since then, I haven't really experienced that same level of heat. I should say "hadn't" because that water in our tub was excruciatingly hot, and it was only getting hotter! The instructions state that the heating rate will decrease when you close the door to the stove. This is true, but because of the tremendous rate at which the water was being heated, it still was cranking out almost boiling water. In fact, I screamed a little when I got in, but gritted my teeth and subjected myself to the crab cooker. Soon after getting in I asked Chloe to start up the generator to pump cold water into the tub. After a period of pumping cold water in and letting the hot water drain out we were able to withstand the heat and soaked for a while

My face was red for about a half an hour afterwards from the heat. Gail and Kenji also took baths. Heres Kenji doing his best mountain monkey impersonation:

After hammering a few plywood boards on the top and sides we called it a day and headed to Auburn to try out a restaurant that we must have passed a few hundred times: "Lou La Bontes". The food was fine but nothing special, and a bit overpriced. On the way back we hit very bad traffic. We arrived in SF around 11:00 pm, roughly four hours after leaving Alta.

Climbing and Building ... AGAIN!

Today we bouldered at the Grouse Slabs again, near Sugarbowl and Donner. We found a really run but difficult problem down the hill in the main area and threw ourselves at it until we figure out the sequence. I have to admit that my mind was more on the tub than the rock! After a few hours we set off back to Colfax to buy some fasteners and *another* hole saw, since the one I bought couldn't actually be used in either of our electric drills. Just on a whim I bought some more Torx head screws. Earlier in the week I had gone to South City Lumber to buy some more 4x4 brackets, drill bits and insulation for the tub... While I was waiting in line I made an impulse buy of a box of Torx head screws, since I've stripped about 40 Phillips and regular head screws so far. I know, this is fascinating stuff. The thing is, when you are putting literally hundreds of these things into wood, any little improvement goes a long way. Anyway, we headed back up to the cabin, and the first thing I did was test our $100 Little GiantPump. Now, I had done a little research on pumps, and I had been agonizing over this for weeks; it was the only piece of the puzzle that I was really concerned about. On paper, this pump looked like it could do the job, but you know how that can go. So it was with a little bit of surprise and a great deal of jubilation that we saw water pouring out of the hose we had run down to the creek! We went on to attach the second level 4x4s (the thing my hand is on)

and 3/4" plywood sheets to support the stove and tub. After this, we put the tub down on the plywood

to decide where to attach the ports to connect the tub to the heater, as well as where to put the drain, so we could drill a drain hole in the support platform


After an excellent Parentally prepared steak dinner, we retired to our tent and went to sleep at 9 pm

Kiteboarding pt II

I started off the day fully intending to be good and not kiteboard today. I even took the important step of not packing any of my gear, however fortune smiled upon me: The wind picked up, my shoulder stopped throbbing and Chloe had a doctors appointment so she brought my gear to Alameda. For once, the traffic wasn't horrendous and I got to Alameda in good time. Strangely the wind hadn't died in between when I checked it on the web and when we arrived so Chloe and I suited up and got into the water. It was a perfect day: lots of wind, and I immediately went upwind without too much trouble. I watched Chloe get up on her board quite a few times on both port and starboard tack. I tried out her GK Sonic and was having a blast with it until I dumped it in the water and couldn't get it relaunched. I'm hoping it was simply because the kite wasn't pumped up enough or because the wind was dead near the beach!

I was wearing my GPS and captured today's session from a bird's eye view. The path is color coded by speed, but it clearly isn't correct for the maximum values!



After dinner at my parents, we drove up to Alta and collapsed in the cabin

Kiteboarding

Today was my first day out on the water at 3rd ave, and unfortunately I forgot to adjust my footstraps to accommodate my new booties; this turned out to be a major pain in the ass and I ended up getting tossed on my back so hard that my shoulder got a little tweaked. I found out later that my board actually doesn't appear to be able to be used with thick booties, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do. In the mean time, its lots of ibuprofin and ice packs for my shoulder... argh!

Taras very kindly grabbed an image from the 3rd Ave webcam and sent it to me:

More Building, Sue and Barbara

After our usual breakfast at the Dutch Flat Hotel, we went to Hills Flat Lumber for another $75 of nails, screws, bags of concrete and bolts and then headed back to Alta. Shortly afterwards we were visited by Sue and Barbara (Chloe's step mom and her sister), who had been enjoying a vacation at Lake Tahoe for the past week. We showed them the streams, the blackberry patch and of course the cabin. It was a nice break from all the hammering, drilling an cutting and fun to show off all of the work we've done over the past month! After I had given them directions to Dutch Flat, we got back to work and put screws into all the brackets from yesterday (we had run out of screws and didn't have the correct sized bolts so there were quite a few brackets which had only been nailed). We also put in the 2x8 joists, mixed three 60 lb bags of cement and poured them around the piers for more stability.


The last order of business was to chop pieces O' tree off of the oak tree which had fallen onto the roof of the cabin. I'm not sure when this happened, but it's been up there long enough to shed a mat of leaves and branches on the shingles. I climbed the ladder up to the roof, swept it off and then sawed off some of the dead branches.



There was a LOT of detritus up there. Here is what the deck looked like after I swept one side of the roof:


I can hardly wait for next weekend, when we will put the second layer of the deck on and hopefully start working on the plumbing issues (i.e. test our new pump, cut holes in the side of the tub for connection to the heater and install the drain).