Yoopers

  "Old boys have their playthings, as well as young ones, the difference is only the price."  

~ Benjamin Franklin

             

Gentle Reader and Love Ones,

            As I’ve mentioned before, in Minnesota in winter, if you don’t get out you will go bat-hanging crazy. Droughts make this worse – there is no snow. Generally one thinks of drought as involving a lack of rain – not so here in the frozen north-land.  Now… most normal people who have a real life consider this a good thing.  Lack of snow means generally safer driving, less shoveling, lower road maintenance costs and other such benefits.

            I understand this mindset and in a small way agree with it.  But in a larger sense, I don’t agree at all.  Snow is what makes winter fun. (Yes, I know.  Those of you who know my old southron self are chuckling. One adapts to one’s situation….) No snow results in living in a bleak, wind-blown tundra. Snow can be slidden upon in multitudinous ways.

            I have been looking forward to firing up the sleds and going riding for months.  As the dreary December rolled over into an even bleaker January, something had to be done.  So, we decided to drive up to Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Yoopers always get good lake effect snow.

            Further, they’ve built a winter economy around the phenomena.  They have lots of active snowmobile clubs and they groom their numerous trails frequently.  Copious bars and restaurants that cater to sledders line the trails.

            So after a moderately detailed internet search Jaybo, Ann and I settled on the West Shore Resort on the western shore of Lake Gogebic, slapped plastic to hold a cabin and took off.

            First we had to drive up to the cabin in Wisconsin and load the sleds on the trailer.  We decided to take Velvet along.  She loved every second of being in the back seat of the truck with us – shedding dog hair continuously and barking happily.

            Lake Gogebic appears to be a natural lake.  It is the largest lake in the UP, running north south and is maybe 1-2 miles wide and almost 15 miles long.  Frozen completely over, the ice was roughly a foot thick.  We had no concerns about riding or walking out on the ice.  In fact, many people drive their trucks out to their ice house to fish.

 

            Once we arrived at the cabin, we unloaded, set up the room, made sure Ann was comfortable with a good book then Jaybo and I took off to ride around the lake.  There was well groomed trail system ringing the lake and we mostly rode on it.  We did cruise for more than few miles on the lake itself.  Because the UP was the only place in the Midwest with snow there were riders everywhere.

            When we got to the eastern shore Mother Nature familiarized us with yet another northern concept – Ice Fog.  The wind was generally blowing from the west.  Snowmobiles throw up a rooster tail of ice and snow particles.  Usually these dissipate but we discovered that these rooster tails seeded a low hanging fog that was blowing up against the eastern shore.  We lost track of each other in the fog and had some problem finding each other.  Once rendezvoused, we decided to slow down and get off the lake at the first opportunity.
           We found the trail on the eastern side.  Where the trail forked west, we encountered a sad tableau.  A group of four sledders – two married couples - were clustered around a stricken sled.  They had stopped to look at the map and during start broke the start rope.  Jaybo saved the day.

 

He grabbed the spare starter rope out of our sparse tool kit and wrapped it around the drive clutch of and started it up.  We felt all proud and civic minded and helpful as we drove the last 10 miles back to the cabin. 

            One of the things one simply has to do while sledding is to visit the bars servicing the trails.  After a little research we went down the road to the Gogebic Lodge.  There we discovered Keeweenaw Widow Maker Black Ale.  Good stuff.

            The next morning the plan was for Jaybo and I to ride up through Bergland and further north to Lake Superior and the Porcupine Mountain area.  When Ann was a kid she used to ski there and it looked like a trail went up to the Lake of the Clouds overlook.   Ann and Velvet would follow us up and I would trade with her after lunch so she could ride.

             So we layered up and started up.   

An expensive day-long tragi-farce ensued.  Snowmobiles do not have a key.  They have a lanyard with a encoded plug that the sled recognizes.  Wrong code, the sled will not start.  You clip the lanyard to your person so that if you fall off, the lanyard pulls the plug and the engine shuts down.  Unnoticed, the plug had somehow gotten crushed out of shape – probably stepped on - since the previous ride and was not making a good contact with the sled.  It would start but all the electronic indications were bad and the sled ran very badly and backfired. 

            This resulted in a scene I’m sure was hilarious were I not personally involved in it.  Strong language and a haphazard trouble-shooting ‘process’ resulted finally in discovering the out of round bent plug.  Luckily, we had a spare.  Spare in place, the sled ran like a top.

            We hadn’t gone 3 miles when disaster truly struck.  Cruising north on Lake Gogebic Jaybo’s sled just stopped.  This is not good.  We took off the engine panel and discovered that the engine was jammed and would not turn over by hand.  This is really not good.  So we towed the stricken sled back to cabin and loaded it by hand onto the trailer to haul it up to Timberline Sports. 

            That’s when we broke off the plug that connects the trailer’s brake lights and turn signals to the truck.

            We forlornly hoped the dealer would tell us the lanyard was the problem.  It wasn’t and the fix would take days and cost a lot.  Crushed and angry, we bought a replacement trailer plug and turned to leave the shop.

            Then I noticed that the dealer’s wall advertised rental sleds.  I asked some questions and the nice dealer said he would pro-rate the rental to an hourly rate as long as we had the sled back by 8pm.  So we drove back down to the cabin, disconnected the trailer and collected our riding gear.  Jaybo drove the remaining sled back up to the dealer while Ann and I returned in the truck.  

            We rented a nice little 4 stroke Ski Doo sled that was a lot of fun.     

         

Setting a rendezvous point at the Superior Pub on the shores of Lake Superior, Ann took off with Velvet in the truck while Jaybo and I took off up Snowmobile Route 1 to meet her.  It was roughly a 35 mile ride up.  The first half was just gorgeous – the trails well groomed and thick with snow.  When we came over the rise and looked down the 15 miles to Lake Superior it was a wonderful vista.

            Then we hit the moguls.  I have since researched what causes snowmobile moguls.  Evidently when lots of sleds repeatedly hit a low spot the track digs in and throws snow back.  Repeat this over time and you get a non-periodic sinusoid that can be feet deep. The only way to fix this is with expensive groomers and the club that was responsible for the route had fallen on hard times.  The last 10-15 miles up to Lake Superior was bone jarring and miserable.

            Lake Superior is fascinating in winter.  Only in the most extremely cold winters does it ever freeze over.  Which is not the same thing as saying it doesn’t have ice.  The shores are lined with drift ice, piled ice and ice balls.  These make the shore line an interesting and dangerous place to walk.  Ann got up to the lake before we did and took Velvet out to explore the edges and collect driftwood.   We met her out next to the lake and took some nice photos.

            Then we went into the Superior Pub and had a nice lunch. 

            After lunch, Ann put on her snowmobile outfit and Velvet and I followed along the shore in the truck headed up towards Lake of the Clouds overlook.  The last 7 miles of the run are closed to autos - snowmobile only.  So while Jaybo and Ann ran up to the overlook Velvet and I had a nice walk in the snow around the closed Porcupine Mountain Ski Area.

            Ann and Jaybo came back down with a glowing review and that I had to go up.  So I swapped with Ann and she walked the dog.  Lake of the Clouds is a natural lake between two very high, steep cliffs.  It is beautiful in the summer and quite lovely in the winter.  The trail up is really the two lane asphalt road that cars drive in the summer.  It is a very nice snowmobile run.

            At this point, it was about an hour to sunset and I really didn’t want to pay rental fees for riding after dark.  So we set off back to Bergland to return the rental.  I was not really looking forward to the moguls.  I was very pleasantly surprised - Jaybo and I had the best 25 mile ride of our lives because we took a different trail.  The trail was like the ride up to the overlook - a closed two lane road.  We never got slower than 50 miles / hour and just skimmed along the wooded route.  It was pretty and smooth and really quite wonderful.  The early disasters seemed insignificant and I’m glad we did it.

            After we turned the rental in, we decided to see what the Hoop N Holler Bar was all about.  I took the sled back down to the lake and over to the bar.  It was easy to find as it was well it up on the lake side with a big fluorescent “Hoop N Holler” sign.  We had more Widow Maker and corn critters and a pleasant time discussing the day. 

            Then I got to navigate the inky black lake back to the cabin.  It was a really interesting feeling.  Gentle Reader, I have crossed both the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean many times, at night, in the weather.  But the MD11 has modern GPS and INS systems.  Being out on Lake Gogebic at night, by myself, with no navigational equipment was a totally different story – it was totally Ded Reckoning.  I felt my way along looking at the lights of the cabins on the shore line and trying to remember what the lights of the West Shore Resort looked like.  In the back of my mind, I realized that if this sled quit, I’d be out on the snow covered ice, a long way from the shore in the dark.  I didn’t like it.

            About the time I thought that I might be seeing the resort lights, Jaybo drove down the ramp and flashed his high beams at me.  It was a comforting feeling.   

Ann cooked a nice meal and we went to bed.  The next morning I got up first and took Velvet out into the morning for her walk.

 

            We packed up and started to repair the trailer brake light plug.  That’s when we discovered that we had bought the wrong plug.  So, we drove back west with the brake lights out, broken plug in my pocket next to the receipt from the dealer, hoping that if we got stopped the Highway Patrol would believe our story.  Finally we found a NAPA parts store in Ironwood and fixed the plug. 

            We had a very nice meal in the very nice South Shore Brewery in Ashland, WI, just south of the Apostle Islands.  I only mention this because there was a painting of the Edmund Fitzgerald breaking in half on the wall behind our table.  It fit the mood.

            We went back to the cabin and cleaned up.  On the way out of Wisconsin we got these nice photos.

We called our snowmobile dealer back home on the way back and he stayed open for us to drop off the broken sled. 

            Gentle Reader, replacing a two cylinder two stroke snowmobile engine is not cheap. 

            On that happy note, I remain,

            Dad / Geoff

Winter Sports

Gentle Readers,

This month, Jan 2012, I'm completely off work.  Because of my juniority in the Anchorage domicile I wound up 'getting' two vacations in the deep dark Alaskan winter.  So, I need to find something to do here in the frozen Minnesotan tundra to fill the time.  There hasn't been much snow so riding the snowmachines has been sparse.

Which brings me to this prediction by way of multiple choice question by John Leo sometime back....

The biathlon is a Winter Olympic event combining cross-country skiing and rifle shooting.  Because of its popularity, the next winter games will add this event:
    a.  Sitz bath-and-shoot match.  (Jacuzzis and Uzis)
    b.  Bobsledding and grenade throwing
    c.  Speed skating and bazookas
    d.  Ice dancing and fragmentation bombing.


None of those came to be, but we did get Red Bull's Crashed Ice, which is almost as suicidal.  This year, Red Bull chose St Paul, MN to expand their racing and built a new track on the big hilly bluff that the city commands.  It's been all over the news for the last weeks.

Click here, here, and here please to read some of these stories.  That third link has some interesting videos.

This link has some great overhead pictures of the race course and the cathedral.

Last night was the final event.  Ann, Jaybo and I decided to go down and see what it was all about.  It was a clear, crisp cold night, 19°F or -7°C if you insist on measuring temperature in communist units. So we layered up in warm clothing, loaded up the urban assault vehicle and drove off to St Paul.

Once we were there, they announced that there were 80,000 attendees.  Please imagine that for a minute gentle reader.  It's dark, it's cold and 80K humans to include some children and a few dogs bundled up and went outside to watch a group of 100 or so unemployed hockey players skate down an icy chute at break neck speeds.  The hillside around the St Paul Cathedral was a sea of humanity.

Red Bull puts on a good show - and sells a non-trivial amount of product.  The layer of thin snow was ground into a dusty powder under the masses.  You could smell the cigar smoke, alcohol and other by-products of a lot of people having a good time.

The race itself seemed to be a secondary interest for the vast majority of the attendees.  Unless you position yourself so that you can see the several Jumbotrons showing the entirety of the race you only see small segments of the race course itself.  Most people were there to watch the human race, methinks.

I forgot to take a good camera, but I did pull out my 'droid and gamely tried to record some of the scene.  Here I am standing downhill from the cathedral looking back toward the course.

Here are Ann and Jaybo in roughly the same spot.

After that we moved up onto the cathedral steps to get a closer look.  Note the state capital across the valley and the sea of humanity.

This put us in position to see this snippet of the final heats of the race.

After the race, we had intended to walk back up to St Paul's bar district and warm up in at The Happy Gnome, one of my favorite institutions offering adult beverages.  It was everyone else's favorite too.  They were doing a booming business so we left and and went to Eagan's Granite City Brewery where we arrived just in time to see the Tebow story die.  But that's another tale.....

I'm glad we went to see this.  If you are silly enough to live in Minnesota, you either sit indoors all winter and go quietly crazy or you find ways to enjoy the great outdoors.  Good clothing is the key.

On that happy note, I remain,

Dad / Geoff

  

Not Another Sunset

Gentle Readers,

Merry Christmas from Anchorage, Alaska!

 

While this may look like yet another sunset picture, it isn't.  It's high noon on the shortest day of the year:  the Winter Solstice.  Since Anchorage sits only 5° south of the Arctic Circle, it never has a day without sun.  However, the sun spends the short day just skimming the horizon never rising more than 6° above it. 

I took this picture yesterday just afternoon and thought you might enjoy it.

Dad / Geoff

Yet another sunset

“A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed...It feels an impulsion...this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.”  ~  Richard Bach

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones All,

I apologize up front for dumping two cliches on you at once.  Sunsets and Richard Bach quotations - how boring. Yes, I am about to show you yet another sunset.  I thought this one was special and deserving.

We took off yesterday from Guam in the western pacific and flew to Taipei, Taiwan.  A tropical depression was forming to the northwest of Guam and we had to work our way through it.  The clouds were layered and varied and it produced a really pretty progression of pictures.

This satellite photo may or may not orient you to the trip.  PGUM in the bottom right is Guam and RCTP on the northern part of Taiwan is Taipei.  The cloud mass to the northwest of Guam is the area these photos are from.  Please recall that you can click on the pictures to blow them up.
 

 

I knew the sun was going to be in our eyes for the cruise west.  But instead of being a nuisance, we climbed out of the lower cloud deck to see this. We are cruising at 40,000' above sea level an there is a fairly thick layer of stratus clouds above us. 

I zoomed in on the center of the sunlit area to produce this next picture. 

For some perspective, here is the sunset framed by the windscreen and instrument panel.

I like this next picture the best.  It shows the layered nature of the storm.  There is the status overhead and the cumulus clouds in the distance.  In the middle are the translucent cirrus clouds and through them you can see more cumulus below.  The cumulus are dark and unlit by the Sun as it has already set behind the clouds at that lower level.

As the Sun sank lower the clouds became more purple.

And finally, just before the sun set, this:

Because we were flying just slightly slower than the sun was moving down the sky, this whole process took about 45 minutes.

I hope you found these pictures as pretty as I did.

On that note, I remain,

Dad /Geoff

 

Omaha Beach - 67 Years Later

"I couldn't be happier if we had the kind of world in which people in my profession were permanently out of job." ~ Dwight Eisenhower

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

 I'm sitting in a hotel in Gay Paree, France as I write this.  Four days ago I read this post in one of Ann's and my favorite blogs.  Towards the bottom of that link is another link to an essay entitled: First Wave at Omaha Beach.  If you could not stomach the opening scenes of "Saving Private Ryan" then I recommend that you not read the essay.  

Yesterday, we flew from Indianapolis to Paris.  The arrival routes you directly over the landing beaches of D-Day and Omaha Beach in particular.  Having just read those essays, I was somewhat awestruck to be flying over the scene.  I did remember to take a few snaps that I will share later. 

To orient you, here are two maps:

View Larger Map

I stole that last map from Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_Beach

Here are the poor pictures that I took.  In all them we are flying east towards Paris.  We flew directly over the beaches.

In this first picture, we are due south of Cherbourg and looking directly at the landing beaches.  Omaha Beach is closest.

I have flown into Paris fairly often in my career.  The weather in Europe is often bad and this was really the first time it was clear enough to see these beaches.  I lack the skills to convey the awe I felt as we flew down the beaches at 35,000'.

On that note, I remain,

Dad / Geoff

San Francisco Walkabout

"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." ~ Mark Twain (Not)

Esteemed Readers and Loved Ones,

The Mark Twain quotation beginning this post is almost mandatory when discussing San Francisco.  I've heard it all my life - which is why I was surprised to find this link on snopes.com debunking Twain. Pressing on into the murk, the weather in the San Francisco Bay area is notoriously fickle and can change several times during the day - more on that later.

This is going to be a long and muddled mess. I apologize up front. The post will be organized around my favorite walk along SF Bay and I don't know how to organize it any better than this.  I’ve been walking this route for years and I intend to jumble observations together.  The upshot is that in mid April, I spent a nice 24 hour layover in San Francisco at the Tuscan Inn in the Fisherman's Wharf district. On Saturday, My FO and I walked out the base of the Golden Gate Bridge and back.

First, for your orientation, here is a google map of our walk.  I used the GPS in my droid phone to trace our walk.

View Saffron Cisco Walk in a larger map

I stole this picture from Wikipedia.  It gives a visual overview of some of the route from the opposite side of the bay.

We started the walk in the Fisherman's Wharf area of San Francisco.  There probably is no more "touristy" an area in the world. Since it was Saturday afternoon both the tourists and the locals were out in force on a very nice day. The range of folks walking around this area is huge - Tatooed, fat, skinny, old, young, Americans, foreign visitors - use your imagination - they are all there and thronging around the street mimes, restaurants and the street car station.

My favorite street mime really isn’t a mime - it's the San Francisco Bush Man.  He's an older codger who has a pair of artificial palm fronds.  He kneels down on the curb and crosses the fronds in front of his face.  With all the confusion and hectic activity, this simple camouflage seems to work perfectly and he blends into the chaos.  At random he spreads the fronds out and jumps up and screams ‘boo!’ It always works and he scares the clichés out of people – then they move on a bit and stop to watch the next sucker get startled.  I have no idea how this works out to be a business model – there’s probably a government subsidy at work here - but he doesn’t appear to be starving to death.

As we went west towards Fort Mason and the basin just east, we passed a guy walking in a wet suit.  The top of the wet suit was peeled back down around his waist and he was bare-chested.  This being Saffron Cisco, my immediate reaction was ‘nice fashion statement.’  I had to revise this estimate as we approached the basin as there appeared a growing number of wet suited swimmers emerging from the frigid water.  It was some kind of swim competition.  We never did figure it what was going on.

Past the basin, you climb the hill up to Fort Mason.

Before I discuss Fort Mason, I want to discuss a “Pro-Choice Rally” I saw on this spot some years ago.  This is from an e-mail I sent out to friends and family before I started blogging – I will italicize the early stuff.  My observations back then were somewhat political for which I apologize.

I hadn't gotten a quarter of a mile before I ran into a "Pro Choice Rally". Well, it is Saffron Cisco, I expected to see all the usual suspects.  There were somewhere in the vicinity of 150 sandal clad, wire rimmed, hairy legged, Pelosi voting, Bush hating patriots shouting various slogans.  

I need explain no more, everybody's seen them.  I did note - despite the fact that I am somewhat aged, I'm still a red-blooded American male – that short of a massive makeover or change in orientation, many of the protestors were not likely to need the services of an abortion doctor any time soon.  I managed to escape getting any brochures or other consciousness raising literature and continued my walk up over the hill through Fort Mason.

Fort Mason is really a pretty vantage point for the San Francisco Bay.  Big old trees - Eucalyptus, I think, but my arboreal identification skills are severely lacking - line the sidewalk and frame the Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, all the sailboats, and Alcatraz.

Fort Mason is also a rough demarcation line.  Most of the tourist types don’t/can’t climb the hill.  You begin to run into the locals and physical fitness types. 

At this point, I will return to my description of the walk years ago.

West of Ft. Mason is a long narrow grassy park in front of the waterfront district that used to be a landing strip – Crissy Field.  There is a plaque there commemorating the pilots who flew airmail in and out of SF there. 

As I walked down the hill towards the strip, I noticed several thousand people milling about.  I thought "Great, more protests."  As I walked closer, I noted that the signs being carried were "Pro-Life" signs and that bearers were more neatly attired than the previous activists I'd seen.  "Great," I thought, "it’s a Pro-Choice rally with Pro-Life guys on the outside.  Hope this doesn’t’ get violent. Maybe I ought to turn around.”  But then I noted there were plenty of SFPD

That's when I discovered that all of the thousands of people milling about were Pro-Lifers: all of them.  Imagine that: a huge Pro-Life rally and walk-a-thon in Saffron Cisco.  They literally dwarfed the measly crowd of Pro-Choicers I'd just seen.  There was a line of buses that had hauled them in.  I counted 25 Porta-Potties set up to handle the crowd and a speaker system.  This thing was well planned. 

Then I saw the coupe-de-grace.  Overhead, a Cessna 172 was pulling a huge banner up and down the San Francisco waterfront that said: "Stop Abortion Now!"


Gentle Readers, say your prayers and get right with the Lord because I think this is one of heralds of the end times.  It's gotta be in Deuteronomy somewhere.


One final thing to note: There is a sociological concept called the  "Roe Effect." The Roe Effect states that since Pro-Choicers reproduce at much lower rate that Pro-Lifers, Pro-Choice will lose political influence over the generations as their numbers decrease.  I think I saw this at work today.  First, the Pro-Choice rally was much smaller than the Pro-Life Rally by a factor of 10 or so.  Second, there were no children at the Pro-Choice Rally.  None.


On the other hand, children were running all through the Pro-Lifers.  Some were carrying the same signs as the adults.  Two little boys were having a sword fight with their Pro-Life signs.  Most telling, I saw one cute little boy thwack his little sister with his sign.  Once.  Then his Mom explained to him in easily understood terms why he shouldn't do it again.  I'm sure there's a parable somewhere in this, but I'll leave it as an exercise to the student, as my math teachers used to say.

The Marina area is wonderfully picturesque especially when there is no fog to obscure the view west.

The Presidio climbs to the south and is very lovely. Nor is the terrain and the Golden Gate Bridge the only view.  There is a wide jogging path along the bay shore with lots of physically fit people jogging by in spandex attire.  You see all sorts of folks splashing in the bay, many with dogs running around free with their tails whirling in happy arcs.  Hundreds of tennis balls and Frisbees add to the bedlam getting happily chased and chomped. 

There are lots kites too as the wind never stops blowing through the strait.

As I said earlier, SF’s weather changes.  As we got further west, the fog rolled through the straits, the Bridge’s foghorn began blaring and the bridge disappeared.  It also got increasing colder the further as nature demonstrated adiabatic cooling.

Soon you come to the main portion of Crissy Field which is just chock full of aviation lore.  The old hangars that line the field are now used for several touristy kinds of businesses.  Climbing Walls and Trampolines abound inside the old hangars as little and big kids have fun. 

At the end of the walk is Fort Point.  It is a fort that was built out of brick and mortar prior to the Civil War and intended to guard the entrance to San Francisco Bay.  Now it sits at the foot of the south support of the Golden Gate Bridge.  The literature says that it sits on the rubble of an even earlier Spanish Fort that occupied the same ground. 

In the big scheme of things, standing alone, most of us would find this fort to be a huge artifice.  It is 4 stories high and probably covers most of an acre.  It was built to house a lot of soldiers under siege and is massively thick and looming.

At least it would loom if it didn’t sit directly under the Golden Gate Bridge.  For looming purposes you can’t beat the bridge and it just dwarves the fort.

It was very cool at the fort and we were dressed lightly and somewhat sweaty from the long walk out.  We did not tarry long, but got some interesting pictures.

On that happy note,

I remain,

Dad / Geoff