Archive for August 2011
In which holes are dug; holes are filled
An instance of literally paying people to dig holes, only to fill them, has sprung up in Seattle. The money to pay for some of the work, of course, came from ARRA. What a waste.
Video magic
I recorded some video of my excursion, and found it entirely too shaky to use. I searched around a bit and found some magic which, after days of fuckery, I was able to use to clean up the vibration and shakes. The downside is it relies on a very unstable software stack and produces huge intermediary files (on the order of 350 gigs for 23 minutes of video); the upside is the video looks like it was shot on a dolly. If you want to see how much motion was taken out of the video, watch the position of the dot on the glass in front of the camera; you may also listen for the suspension articulation and general “shit bouncing around” sounds.
On my trip back Sunday afternoon/evening, I found my left arm hurt quite a bit; I thought perhaps I had hit something and forgotten, or it had bad sunburn. Once I got out of the shower at home, I realized I had a bruise going from my left collarbone down towards my heart about eight inches; this was a bruise from hitting the seat belt so hard, so many times. I had forgotten to snug up before departing; hopefully, it’s a lesson I’ve learned this time.
New EDC knife?
I threw all my knives in the garbage when I saw knives that inject CO2 into your target. $400, too; what a bargain!
In which the impossible merely takes longer
Drove up to Elk Butte Sunday, took a couple pictures.
Me:
The scenery:
I passed about a half-dozen huckleberry pickers on ATVs, a gentleman with a chainsaw on an ATV, a pickup truck hauling an ATV trailer, and a couple Jeeps from Checkpoint Mike to Elk Butte. Use the following map to orient yourself:
Leaving Elk River, I drove Alpha-Echo-November-Mike. These roads are what I refer to as Idaho Interstate: graded two-lane gravel roads with no grass growing up through the gravel, no soft spots, etc. You would have no trouble driving even the lowest of low riders over this route; I kept my speed below 25 to avoid coating the campers all along this route with dust.
At Mike, I drove Oscar-Papa along the most direct route. Between Mike and Oscar, I had to pull over to let an ATV by; I talked with some berry pickers short of the inverted-Y south of Oscar. Once at Papa, you’re back on, honestly, the single-lane version of Idaho Interstate; however, between Mike and Papa is some hard-ass riding of the worst sort: the rocks that the trails are cut into crumble and form a very slippery layer of dust, narrow rutted trails with obstacles, long fall-offs on steep slopes, weak drainage causing lots of washouts and the like.
Most of the conversations with people revolved around concern that my GPS had misled me; I assured them that I had not been misled and carried on. After Summit, I did Papa-Quebec-Romeo-halfway to Foxtrot (downed timber), Romeo-1/3 way to Whisky (downed timber), Romeo-Quebec-Papa-Oscar. At Oscar, I ran into a Jeep loaded with pickers; the driver of such tried to warn me about the steep rock path from Oscar to Mike, but I said since I made it up that way, I figured I could make it down.
I will report that I feared for my life a couple times on this little jaunt. There was a section where the ass end of the van started going left when I very much needed it to stay steady; I gunned it and pulled around, stuffing the nose into a ditch for friction. What the hell, it worked. Once at the summit, I recorded my last will and testament, played some Word Feud, and headed down.
Joe, Barb and I once made this trip along a different, easier route: Alpha-Bravo-Foxtrot-toward Papa, stopping at the summit. That route is the middle route in terms of ease; the southern route (Bravo-Hotel-Golf-Romeo-Quebec-Papa-summit) is easy. The northern route is hard, as it isn’t much used for logging, and as such isn’t maintained. I was thinking, once I left Mike, that I should see what Joe and Barb were up to and see if they wanted to go up again; I figured that it would take about eight hours to round trip it, and decided I wasn’t up for a night in Moscow. Anyway, Barb, you should totally drive up there in your XJ; you might scratch the paint on your ZJ, so I wouldn’t take it.
GBR reservation made
Reserved my room at the Silver Legacy for GBR. 26 days!
The OG-43
I hadn’t heard of it, either. Italian SMG.
GBR (Reno)
Went to the credit union to get a check cut, printed and hand filled the entry form to go to GBR in four weeks. A quick visit to the post office and off it was mailed.
The whole thing was amazingly retro for a meeting of people that use technology.
I’ll probably be without arms, as I don’t think I own a single firearm that would be legal to transit the great state of California. I’m aware of FOPA ’86, but I have no desire to get my silencers and rifles tied up in some bullshit test case.
See you there!
