hamster
give me one good reason why we aren’t doing this at work: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/18/100kw_raygun_barrier_falls/
BL
we buy all our laser materials off of them
they’re super nice guys
hamster
that’s not a reason why we aren’t doing it ourselves
BL
probably the .5MW of electricity that the thing requires would be the first reason not to do it
hamster
bah, we can get into power generation
we’ll use a bunch of poodles… a poodle-bed reactor
hamster
i need you to start cloning me poodles
BL
i’ll get right on it
So, as I drifted in and out of sleep this morning around 8ish, I had this dream, that I had this DVD or something that I was showing to someone, that when played in this special player, produced virtual reality kittens. Really. The idea was that you had the kittens, and they made happy noises and you could pet them and it would make you smile and feel better.
During the demonstration, I placed my hand into the virtual kittens, and one of them grabbed onto my fingers and clawed the snot of out them when I went to remove them, so I had to go into a menu and delete the bugger.
The dream took a turn, and I’ve lost the rest of it. But I do know that when I woke up, my right index finger was hurting. I examined it, and discovered the whole side of it is scratched up with short, straight cuts.
My only explaination is that Spike was being particularly needy this morning, demanding attention as soon as I was slightly stiring, and at some point, he must have had a battle with my hand while it was under a pillow or a blanket. So, here I get to sit, with a slightly painful finger. I even have a scratch under the nail! Geeez.
It’s interesting how your brain can craft a story based on input it is receiving that you are not even aware of. I do feel that our dreams are trying to tell us something, and that something is some virtual story to help us process the data that has become jammed in the works, as it were. I read somewhere that an important part of dreaming is to present the logic parts of our brains with a false reality, so that it can ‘practice’ a response. Example, you are having a dream over and over about falling out of a window. The reason, according to this story I read that I can’t cite, is that you have a low level fear of falling out of a window, and as such, your brain is running it through ‘simulations’ so that you can work out what to do and how to cope. It made a lot of sense to me, as I tend to have dreams that are take-offs from reality and the things that I experience.
Yesterday, I was going to die. It was all laid out in front of me. It was certain. No limping home from this one, at least that’s what my brain told me. Here’s the setup:
I got on the interstate headed south the 22.5 miles to work. Construction zone ahead with speed limit 55, but I had a mile or so, so I blip it up to 75, and merge over to the left lane (3 lanes here). Mental map of traffic says there is a car to my right, two more and a truck to the far right, and a white car just in front, going slightly faster than me. I see brake lights ahead, where the construction starts, so I left off a bit, now I am doing about 60-65. My attention comes back to the car in front of me, which, apparently, had come to a complete stop less than 1/8 of a mile in front of me. It seems there was a car just in front of it that had stopped under an overpass just inside of a lane shift in the construction zone.
Panic. I pull on hard front brakes, shifting down, little rear brakes, front tire barking. White car is getting close, and I am going to hit them. There is no two bones about it, I can’t get rid of my speed fast enough to stop. I am going to smack right into the white car and there is nothing to be done about it. My brain suddenly presents two options to me:
1) Continue braking, hit rear of car, “Oh God, Here We Go”
2) Swerve to the right, possibly side wipe traffic to right
Option 2 sounded like less pain, so… I let up on the brakes a tad, swerved to the right, waiting for the contact with the traffic… that never came. I flew past the stopped traffic with a foot or two to spare, and I check my right shoulder: no cars there. I’m clear.
I arrived to work (after two more minor incidents) slightly shaken, but all in all, it’s not going to convince me to stop riding.
All in all, every day is more experience. 30,000+ miles of riding for me in all weather conditions and traffic and I still learn new things every day.
So, I’ve been busy, and meaning to update, but I just haven’t had the time. As such, I thought it was high time to post a wrap up of randomness from the last, oh… month or so. So, prepare yourself for a Mel-like post of epic proportions.
Near the end of April, the UTA (Utah Transit Authority) opened their new light rail system called the Front Runner, a nod towards the fact that it runs parallel to the Wasatch Front, and, I’m guessing, also prompted by the ‘Rail Runner’ down in NM that opened more than a year in advance. I had been watching test trains run up and down the rails on the side of the interstate during my commutes, and my interest was growing about the whole thing. I discovered that they were having ‘free’ rides on the train for the first week of service, so I decided about the day before it opened that I wanted in on that. I really like trains, you see. Amanda and I trudged down to the local station. The line was out to the parking lot, and it took us about an hour or so to make it to the platform, and finally on the train. It was standing room only, but the ride to Salt Lake was fairly short. We took a free bus from the main station in Salt Lake down to the outdoor mall thingy nearby. Amanda, who was totally nonplussed about waiting that long in line for a train, and who had been making fun of Utahan’s comments while in line, was amazed by the bus. Apparently, she was not used to public transit buses with seat cushions and no trash/graffiti. We had some food, watched a movie, and arrived back at the train station around 11pm. This time around, the train was nearly empty and we managed a seat upstairs. Amanda proceeded to leave the first bit of trash on the train, which was the ad section from the paper she was reading, and I surfed the net on my phone via the free wifi service on board the train. All in all, it is a nice service. I plan to ride my bicycle over to the station and ride it into work off and on.
Almost a month ago, I went with a group of local V-Strom riders out on the Pony Express route. Yes, that Pony Express. There is a leg from the middle of Utah over to Nevada that is still dirt road. Still utterly desolate. It was really amazing to ride 145 miles of dirt in the West Utah Desert and know that it had not been altered much since the days of the actual Pony Express. I’ll have a more in-depth write up of this once I get the pictures off the camera. It was a great day, with about 8 of us out there, flying down dirt roads at 60 MPH on the motorcycles. It really helped me get used to dirt and get over any remaining dirt road fears I had had on the bike. My tip of the day: air down to about 20PSI front and back. It makes dirt roads feel like highways.
Weekend before last was the Northwest Caving Association’s 2008 regional. It was held in central Idaho, near American Falls, out on the Great Rift in the middle of the Wapi lava flow. I debated going for about a week or two. I was going to take the motorcycle, but then I wasn’t going to go, but then I was, and ultimately, I took the pickup. The drive up there was great. I had never been in that part of the country before and I rather enjoyed the scenery. I arrived early Saturday morning, just in time to learn I had missed the trip signups for most of the actual caving for the day. But, there was a couple headed down the lava flow a ways to hike to some ‘kipuka’ areas. This means an island of the original land that the lava did not flow over. I was game, and soon, I was in the back of a Toyota heading down dirt roads. We met up with a woman with a dog and an older guy with two dogs, and headed off. I found the lava flow to be ‘soft’, as it seemed more weathered, and much more lichen growing on it than I was used to from NM. I still have scars on my boots from hiking the Valley of Fires lava near Carizozo, NM. The other folks commented on how rough the lava here was, and I just smirked thinking of my old stomping grounds in NM. We hiked about 4 miles total, and explored a couple of holes and two kipukas. Nothing major was found, but it was interesting.
Back at camp, I had dinner with the group, and enjoyed talking to the cavers for a while after. I knew no one here, except sort of from a grotto meeting or two down in Utah. But, I could still pick out the same sort of folks I knew from back home. It is kind of funny, the different personalities that crop up in the same sort of event, ya know? I ended up going to bed around 9, as I was dead tired, and slept like a rock for the night in my new tent that Amanda bought me for my birthday. Around 9ish, I lurched out of the tent and over to the signup sheets for Sunday. On the way, a guy I had met the night before who was kind of from my new grotto in Utah stopped me. He said, ‘Me and this guy, Brian, are going into Creons after dinner. You want to come?’ I thought for a moment. ‘Sure, why not?’ Heck, I knew nothing of this cave, but I figured I would find out over the course of the day. I managed to get in on a trip into Crystal Ice Cave, which was just a stone’s throw from the camping area. I was the random guy in a group of 6 guys from Seattle. These guys reminded me a lot of the old, original NMT caving club, so I had no trouble blending in, as it were. They made sure I had rope experience, and we headed to the hole.
Crystal Ice Cave, like a lot of the caves in this area, is located right on the Great Rift, which is a crack in the earth that runs almost north-south for many miles. From this crack, from time to time, lava bubbles out in flows, or spits out in cinder cones. This happens about every 2000 years. The last time it happened was about 2000 years ago, so it is apparently due up. When the lava retreats back into the earth, it leaves behind this large crack, and it is in this crack where the caves in this region are. Crystal Ice Cave is within a sizeable lava vent, and gets its name from the fact that it contains ice year round. Back in the 70′s or so, someone actually blasted a tunnel down into the cave, installed windows to trap the cold air, and offered commercial tours of the cave. This was shut down in the early 90′s, as (I assume) interest waned and the ice was starting to melt due to all the warm air the new new tunnel generated. It was sealed off and left. Since then, the ice has come back. The upshot is that this is a thru trip, meaning that you go in one entrance, through the cave, and leave via a different entrance. In the case of this cave, both of those entrances are vertical, and require a rope and gear.
The entrance we went into was about a 140 foot repel. Two experienced Seattle guys went in, and then they sent their pack of 3 newbies in. The first guy twisted his knee trying to get on rope, and ended up not going into the cave at all. The second guy went in fine, but the third guy manged to get the trail of his cow’s tail stuck into his repel device with the rope, and was hung up about 10 foot or so off the floor. It took over an hour to get him off the rope and down. I went down next. At the bottom, I was surprised as the rope took a turn into what looked like a snow slide. My options were to get off rope and slide down it, or just stay on rope to the bottom. I elected to stay on rope, as the problem with the snow slide was that if you didn’t get stopped halfway down, you’d end up up to your knees at least in wet slush. We walked out of the snow and into a large breakdown cavern. It was just above freezing in the cave, and for about the first time, I had a chance to really see beams of light played out around the cave. We ended up on top of a pile of breakdown, facing a vertical wall of ice and snow and rock with a rope dangling from it. One by one, we clipped in and ascended the rope to the top, to a long tunnel which had a floor of solid ice, several feet thick. We had to wait in the middle for another group coming from the other direction to pass us. This group included a kid who was probably no more than 12, who had been practicing for this particular trip for over a year. He was doing great.
Once we were re-assembled on top of the wall in the new tunnel, we started down it. The first room we dubbed the ‘margarita’ room, as the floor was about an inch deep of wet slush on top of the ice, and it really looked like sludging through a huge margarita. The next room’s ice was mostly dry, just wet enough for my boots to suck up some of the moisture, and freeze to the ice if I stood still. Here the Seattle guys took lots of photos, which they say they will email me eventually. This tunnel continued for a good ways, with ice-waterfalls and ice-stalagmites and other speleothems. It terminated for us at a large wall of stalagmites (stalagmites might reach the ceiling, stalactites hang tight from the ceiling…). Jutting out most unusually from the West wall was a wooden structure housing a window, with a pair of 110V outlets corroding down the front of it. The trip leader climbed the ice carefully, and opened the window, and then crawled through. Each of us followed in turn, into the dynamited tunnel used in the commercial cave. This tunnel was obviously a lot of work at one time, as it had stone walls, and a few other windows that looked out into the tunnel from behind the blockage. We found the large steel plate that seals off the old tunnel, and turned around and went back to the little grotto that had a rope dangling from above. I was the second one up this 60 foot climb, which came out into a little depression in the lava flow through a narrow opening that was blocked to keep rocks out with what, at one time, anyway, was a sign that read, ‘CAUTION: DUCK CROSSING’.
That evening, as dinner wound down, Jessie and I put our gear together and went to round up the other guy. Turns out he didn’t want to go. However, we picked up two more guys, and set off for a 3/4 mile hike through the dusk to the cave. This cave was rather… interesting. We found the hole, rigged up our gear, and I was chosen to go in first. Strangely enough, I’ve been doing this long enough that apparently, I had the most experience, so… in I go. The cave is a hole in the bottom of a small depression. I crawl in, and monkey walk along a short ledge where the rope is tethered to the wall with two pieces of webbing, gingerly reach out and pull the rope up to me, and get my repel device locked on. Then, I turned, and eased off the ledge and onto the rope. Below me, the walls waffle from side to side and I cannot see the bottom, but judging by the weight of the rope, there is a long ways to go. The walls are about 2.5-5 foot apart and about 25-50 foot wide. I start down. I go, and go… and go… and go… and pass a snow packed ledge. I start over it, and decide that I should stop here and wait for the others. I get off rope and holler up, ‘OFF ROPE’ and wait. A while later, Matt comes down and tells me they never heard me, they just waited until the rope was slack and went. Jessie follows. I then head over the ledge on the rope again and down to the very bottom. It had to have been 250 foot. At the bottom, it was still narrow, and there was just barely enough room for the 3 of us. Here, the floor was choked off with ice and there was not much to look at. So, there I am, at the bottom of a 250 foot deep pit, in the middle of Idaho, at 11pm at night, on my birthday. It was a good day. We ascended the rope up and headed out of the cave into the night, and hiked back the long way. I ended up just driving home from there instead of camping another night.
So, it is good to be back into caving. There is another regional of the Rocky Mountain section happening in Wyoming over the 4th, that I am planning to go to. Jessie also claims he will drop me a line and we’ll go caving locally this summer, so, we’ll see.
This last weekend, I went down to Cedar City to the Western V-Strom Gathering. About 50-60 folks on Suzuki V-Strom bikes showed up. I probably put on about 800 miles this last week, and managed a high of 53 miles to the gallon on the way back. I’ll have a few photos of this sometime soon. Bryce Canyon national park was pretty neat, and Cedar Breaks and that whole area was an awesome area to ride in. I rode down by myself, but came back with a couple of guys from the Salt Lake area. We seem to have quite the active group of riders up here, we’ve been riding at least once a month for the last while.
Anyway, that’s my updates. I hope you enjoyed.
A few years back, when I heard Santa Fe was banning non-handsfree cell phone usage, I thought it was a dumb idea. I mean, it takes some concentration, but you can drive sanely while talking on the cell phone, right? Why do we need the government step in and regulate the usage of such a thing?
It wasn’t too long after that that I started riding a motorcycle. I still thought the cell phone ban was a bad idea, but, I already had a Bluetooth handsfree in the truck, so it didn’t bother me much.
Fast forward to living in Utah. There are far more people out here, and since I pretty much commute on the bike, I get to deal with them all the time. As a result, I have noted that 99% of the time, when I get cut off or otherwise have some kind of altercation with a driver… there’s a cell phone glued to an ear. I mean, it’s not even funny how often it happens.
For example, a couple of weeks back, driving downtown Salt Lake looking for an electronic parts store, this car just pulled right out in front of me from a side street. He noticed me at the last minute, and instead pulled out to the center turn lane, but I was already stopped, and damned if I was going to let him drive behind me. Cell phone on the right hand side.
Yesterday, and truly the last straw, I was riding home on the interstate. They had the interstate down to a single lane from 3, so traffic was congested with everyone merging. I was riding the left lane, as on the bike I can ride pretty up to the last possible moment and safely merge over. I merged the first time no problem, and the second time I started moving over to merge. I was halfway into place when this lifted, black Chevy truck just went ahead and merged over from the right. I mean, just came over. I was just in front of the driver as he came over, and I looked at him. I was greeted by a Motorola Razr cell phone glued to an ear. The guy looks over at me at the last second. I pulled up my left hand, looked him in the eye, and waved to him. Waved like he was an old friend. If I wasn’t wearing a helmet, he would have seen a stupid smile on my face too. The look on his face was priceless. He looked as though he was debating whether he had just really screwed up, or if he should know me from somewhere. He slowed back, I got in front of him, and I shook my head exaggeratedly for his benefit.
So there it is. My last straw, folks. If you are talking on the cell phone and driving, non-handsfree, I have no respect for you. Please quit endangering my life and hang up and drive. I’ll be the first person to support any new laws banning cell phones from henceforth.
Drive responsibly for a change, you jerks.