Winner of the Sweet Sistine

     "Why is there anything?  Every religious, business, and governmental  question has the single derivative:  'Who will exercise the power?'  Alliances, combines, complexes, they all chase mirages unless they go for  the power.  All else is nonsense."   ~            Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

Our daughter, Katie - I could not be prouder of her - is studying this semester in Rome.  She called us this afternoon after the Vatican announced "Habemus Papem!"  I'd been thinking of her.  I knew that her dormitory and school adjunct was not far from the Vatican.

She said, "Dad, can you hear them?" and stuck her phone out the window.  Sure enough, I could hear the cheers.  Sounded just like the cable news shows.  Then before I could answer, I heard a girlish discussion in the background that ended in squeals and "Let's go!" and "Dad, we are going to see it!" and a click.

Later, I got this picture. 

Habemus Papem

Her short note attached said, "I never knew a 1 inch tall guy could be so cool."

On that happy note, I remain,

Dad / Geoff

Riding Sleds on Valentine's Day

 "Health, Money, and Love, and time to enjoy them."  ~ Anonymous toast

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

It's been some time since that last time I posted.  Not because I haven't done anything worth writing about because I have.  I've just been lazy.  Here's to start trying to catch up.  Please remember that you can click on the blue links for more information and the pictures to make them larger.

Ann and I spent Valentine's Day at the cabin in Wisconsin riding the 'sleds'.    This is something that a decade ago, I'd have thought you'd lost your mind if you told me I'd look forward to doing. Certainly, it's not a traditional Valentine's Day activity.  We rode about 107 miles and spent just short of 6 hours in roughly 25° F weather.  Romance is where you find it....

We rode over into Minnesota's St Croix State Park - a park that welcomes sledders.

To get there we had to cross the St Croix River which is the boundary of Wisconsin and Minnesota.  The old railroad bridge has been converted to a snowmobile, bicycle, ATV bridge.  This is a picture of Ann on the 'Gandy Dancer' bridge looking north towards Danbury, Wi.  Note the open water on the east side of the river and the sled tracks on the west.   We did not go down on the river and I'm not sure that the riders who did were wise.....

Ann looks north on the Gandy Dance Bridge

 The park sits about 25 miles to the west of the cabin on the eastern border of MN.  Several big rivers flow through the Park.  The second biggest river is the Kettle River.   Here are pictures of me when we stopped to enjoy the Kettle River crossing.  The sign you see next to the trail certifies that the ice is 20" thick and safe to cross. 

Geoff on the Kettle River crossing

 Here's the sleds looking ready to cross.  This was the farthest west we went.  We just crossed the river to say we did and then turned around and came back. 
 

Skidoos waiting to cross Kettle River

That was Thursday.  We had a short ride on Friday and had to go back down home for a family event.  Now it is Saturday and something pretty interesting happened today.  In the frozen north the snowmobile trails are usually maintained by clubs.  The Lakes and Pines Club maintains a lot of the trails in the area of the cabin.  They also publish the trails maps using advertising money from the businesses that serve along the trails and user contributionss.

Today they had the 21st Annual Barrens Chicken BBQ and Money Raffle as a money raising event to support the groomers and trail maintainers.  Ann and I left home this morning and drove back up in time to have a tasty meal in the beautiful, clear 16° F weather.  I turned on my GPS tracker on my phone and this is the track over to the BBQ.

View 2013-02-16 @ 14-27-25.kmz in a larger map

Here is a picture of Ann and and I chowing down.

Mmm, good stuff

Note that at my left elbow in this picture is a TV in a box.  It was one of the prizes raffled off.  They convinced us to put $5 at risk.  We didn't win.

Ann, Sleds Lakes and Pines Barrens BBQ

Here is Ann right after we arrived.  Note the crowd around the clubhouse in the background.

On that happy note, I remain,

Dad / Geoff

Reunion

     "The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation  between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its  fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards."  ~ Sir William Francis Butler

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones, 

This blog has - for the most part - been a place where I write about the things I see while doing my job.  I try for a lighthearted and flippant attitude, occasionally succeeding.  Last week, Ann and I traveled to Colorado Springs to attend my 35th year Air Force Academy Reunion.  We did some things that have a have a 'Gaddaboutish' nature to them and I may well write about them in a few days.  But this reunion was different and I want to share it with you.

Normally, reunions - especially military academy reunions where the vast majority of us have completed our military careers and either started new ones or are retired - are friendly and nostalgic affairs.  This one was different. We usually have limited contact with the individual cadets, but this time we got to spend time with them and I really enjoyed it.

The USAFA Cadet Wing is divided into four Groups and each Group into ten Cadet Squadrons.  A cadet spends the fourth class year in one squadron and then is moved into another squadron for the three remaining upper class years.  I suppose in many ways a squadron is like a fraternity or sorority - but it is also very different. You grow close to your fellows in the squadron in the long years that the institution molds and changes you.  I spent my upper class years in CS-25 Redeyes and remain close to many of my classmates. 

Saturday mornings at USAFA are often reserved for the cadets to receive military training.  This can be anything thing from briefings to inspections and testing.  This time CS-25 invited us to come visit with the cadets in the squadron area and then they took us to lunch – the idea being for us to share some of the ‘experience and wisdom’ we supposedly have gained from surviving to the point where we are able to attend a 35 year reunion.  It was my privilege to talk with the youngsters who will start pilot training next year.  They were full of questions and I tried to answer them.  But I found myself often asking questions of them in return.  The Institution has changed in detail but I think not in the main from the academy I graduated from.  I was warmed and impressed with the intelligence, enthusiasm and good sense of the young people I met.  It was about the best time I’ve had over a meal in a long time. 

I’ve saved what I think is the best for last here.  I had two long term roommates at the ‘Zoo’.  I choose not to post names on the blog anymore because of its’ public and ‘googleable’ nature.  Those who know me know who my roomies were.  They are impressive, intelligent and accomplished individuals and it is my privilege to be their friend.

The daughter of one is a 'Firsty' and will graduate next summer.  She hopes to go to pilot training and was one of the cadets I spent the most time with. She is intelligent and my observation was that she is a leader in the squadron and comfortable with accepting the responsibility of command. 

The mission of the Air Force Academy is to produce young officers who know how to be followers when obedience is required and know how to lead when leadership is required.  Even more importantly, they have the foundation of education and training to accept increasing responsibility in the defense of our nation as they progress through life. While this concept does not apply so well in my humble case, this weekend I think I saw a generation of young people that have taken this ethos to heart and immersed themselves in it.   

Gentle Readers, I think you should be very proud of the young folks I saw.

On that note, I remain,

Dad / Geoff

 "However much you may wish for peace, never forget military skill if

you do not wish to suffer the same fate as the Byzantine Monarchy." ~  Peter The Great
 

Autumn at Wisconsin Cabin

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

Just a short note to share some pictures.  Ann and I went up to the cabin last weekend and just goofed off.  We took some pictures to share.  I'm not going to tell a story.  Just enjoy the pictures.

Nelson's Landing St Croix River

 

Cabin Beach Sunset

Cabin in the Trees

Living Room Windows

Living Room

Velvet Sunset Fetch

Velvet Sunset Shake

On that note, I remain,

Dad / Geoff

Favorite Scenery

     Plagiarize!
     That's why the Good Lord made your eyes
     Let no one's work evade your eyes
     So plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize.
     ...(But always call it research). ~  Tom Lehrer

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones All,

No, this is not me jumping on the bandwagon to make fun of Joe Biden.  A friend just sent me a nice link to a Wall Street Journal article.  It's a wonderful description of things you can see from airplanes.  I highly recommend you read it!

Click This to read it.

On that note, I remain,

Dad / Geoff

Yesterday's Solar Transit of Venus

 "It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers." ~ James Thurber

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

As I've said before, I like amateur astronomy.  Yesterday's solar transit of Venus gave me an opportunity to exercise my inner geek. My 8" Orion Dobsonian Reflector has sat gathering dust for years now.  Yesterday, we resurrected it.  Katie helped me dust it off, clean the primary mirror and wipe the cobwebs out of the tube. Then we took it outside and started testing the solar projection method to view the transit.

 

Gentle readers, I am about to describe a process that is a very safe way to observe the sun.  However, if you don't know what you are doing, you can permanently blind yourself.  If you look at the sun through a pair of binoculars or a telescope directly, it will burn through your eye, out the back of your head and kill your neighbors.  Don't do this.

My telescope is a Newtonian reflecting telescope. It has an 8" diameter mirror at the base of the tube.  The surface of the mirror has been precisely ground to focus the light it collects into an image. There is a point in the tube where all that light is focused down into a point.  If you think a little magnifying glass will start a fire, you ain't seen nothing like an 8" disk focusing the sun. However, you can safely point the scope at the sun and hold a screen a good distance away from the eyepiece and it will project an easily viewed image that you can see even in bright sunlight.  In fact, I quickly learned I needed to go get my sunglasses to cut down on the dazzle. I checked frequently and the scope never got much more than warm.  The secondary mirror was the warmest part.

We started setting up about an hour before the transit started.  Our slashed together viewing screen using a cardboard box and some paper was a dismal failure as you can see here.

 

Then I remembered that I have a 30 year old movie projector screen rusting away out in the garage.  So I got it out and it worked great for people to look at visually.  However, I discovered the weave of the screen really makes for bad photos.  You'll just have to trust me that it looked really good in the bright sunlight to people.  I got it setup just in time to capture the beginning of the transit.  The little cut out at left center is Venus just moving in front of the sun.

This picture above is a close up of the first picture in this post. 

It was about this time that neighbors started noticing what I was doing and came over and asked to see.  This would continue until sundown. After about 20 minutes, Venus moved fully into view and we saw this.  Note the sunspots at the right edge of this picture. There are six of them.

Here is a closeup.  I'd love to tell you that the colors around Venus are an artifact of the sun shining through Venus' atmosphere but it really is just that my telescope mirror is old, oxidized and not collimated correctly.

 

The transit progressed and Venus moved across the sun.  I took some more pictures.

In this next picture, some clouds moved in front of the sun.

Once the sun moved behind the trees on the west side of the house, I had to move the scope out near the street.  By this time, we had called friends and family and we had a fun group watching the screen.  It is my sad fault that I did not think to get any pictures of the group.  We even had various joggers and dog walkers stop to look.

This is a closeup of the above shot.  Note the sunspots.

As the sun sank lower, the scope began pointing at the airplanes taking off and landing at MSP International.  Twice the crowd oooohed as a jet went directly in front of the sun and for a fleeting moment you could see it silhouetted.  None of use were quick enough or lucky enough to get a picture.

Later, just before sunset, the sun's image began to take on a sunset glow and Katie got this nice picture.  Soon after, the sun sank below the clouds you see and we were done for the night.

Prepare yourself for this next picture.  Katie says I look like a High School Science Fair geek posing uncomfortably for his parents.

On that happy note, I remain,

Dad / Geoff
  

Northern Lights

 "I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look into the heaven and say there is no God."  ~  Abraham Lincoln

Gentle Readers and Loved Ones,

Back in January and Feb, I wrote about our sledding trip up into Yooper land here and here. 

I just found this photo of star trails and the Northern Lights taken near us at the same time we up there.

I found the photo here.  It is a 17 minute long timed exposure taken in  9°F clear, calm conditions on the shore of Lake Superior near Marquette, Michigan on Feb 18 2012 by astrophotographer Shawn Malone.  Click that link to read more.

There are more here.
 
On that note, I remain,

Dad / Geoff