Warm days are beginning to grace us along the Front Range of Colorado and with that comes my annual yearning to get back on the water in my whitewater kayak. Although I have kayaked and owned my van for many years, two years ago I made deliberate choices about both that have had significant positive impacts in my life. I decided that I would stop wavering on the sidelines of more serious kayaking and would finally apply myself to become an advanced boater. There were many things I did towards improving my kayaking throughout 2009, and I simultaneously chose to get my 1985 VW Vanagon Westfalia in proper working order so that I would have a kick-ass support vehicle for my adventures.
So in February of 2009, I embarked on my most ambitious mechanical project to date- a complete engine removal and swap for the old Vanagon. There was obviously the financial risk of plunking a few thousand dollars down into a 25 year old van, but even more so, there was the fear of the unknown. I likened the whole process to a human heart transplant. Surely without a heart, a person will cease to be. And without an engine, a vehicle will cease to be. It was certainly ambitious, but it wasn’t as if I were replacing a human heart with another human heart. It was more like I was replacing it with a bionic heart. My van was becoming like Steve Austin. Not only could I rebuild it, but I had new technology, so I could build it better than it was. Better… stronger… Faster…
Apart from prep’ing the 7300 mile, 2003 Zetec engine during a few evenings, it only took two weekends and the evenings in between to rip out the old heart and put in a new one. Granted, I had nice a warm garage and the help of another Bostig convert, but I was astounded that I was able to enact such a dramatic transformation so quickly. I thoroughly documented the whole experience in a series of blog posts and YouTube videos which have attracted tons of Vanagon fanatics who are also considering taking the plunge.
My 2010 kayaking season picked up right where 2009 left off. The 70 days of whitewater kayaking from the previous year gave way to to 82 days on the water that were kicked off in earnest with an incredible Memorial Weekend road trip to Glenwood Springs. Shortly thereafter, we found ourselves on record-high water on the Poudre River near Fort Collins as the rain poured and the river swelled all weekend. Our only respite from the incessant moisture was under the van’s awning and in its cozy interior that we packed 8 people into at a time! The kayaking season turned out to be one for the story books, and I excitedly chased water every single weekend and most weeknights throughout the state in search of one more perfect wave. The transformation I made to the van was apparent almost immediately, but the transformation in my kayaking and the confidence I have gained in both over the past two years is hard to state.
So like I said, 2011 is upon us and I am itching to get back out on the water! This year, I fully expect to kayak more than 100 days which will mean a lot cruising around in the van throughout Colorado. One of my hopes is to complete a route that I’m calling the Great-8 that follow rivers from Glenwood to Aspen to Marble to Telluride to Durango to Salida to Buena Vista to Steamboat Springs and finally to Fort Collins! I think it is the perfect Colorado whitewater road trip, but it remains to be seen whether it can be done in 9 days! Until then, wish me luck and if you see a bunch of kayaks on van down by the river, stop by to say Hi…
Today, there are more ways to share photos online than ever before, from Facebook to Flickr to Picassa to Snapfish and literally hundreds of more options. However, almost all of these online photo sharing tools have a few negative aspects in common. First and foremost, the provider of the tool makes the rules. That means that if Snapfish goes belly up, say buh-bye to all of your albums. It also means that they decide on the look and feel of the album- from the size of the images to whether metadata is displayed. Second, some photo sharing tools, such as Facebook, claim to own your photos after you upload them which is completely ridiculous. No matter how you look at it, what you gain in convenience with these tools, you more than lose in control over your photos.
Years ago, I used to to code photo albums by hand in HTLM, but since those early days of the web, I have found a stable, free photo album tool called JAlbum. It is an extremely flexible, easy to use tool that can be run locally on your computer or remotely on their servers. The basic premise is that you build a photo album which is static in its very nature. This means that the album is an entity unto itself that can be saved, copied, moved and as long as HTML remains in existence, will be a permanent, unchanging record of how you wanted your photos to appear in the album. Basically, it is the digital equivalent of the old-time, “real” photo albums that sit on your shelf at home. Contrast this with a transient, fleeting view of your photos that online tools provide. As far as I’m concerned, my photos-- my memories-- deserve better treatment than the online tools can provide.
As with any software tool, there are some tips, tricks, and workflow techniques that can really make the difference in JAlbum’s effective use. Since my usage of JAlbum tends to come in waves, it only seemed appropriate to document the steps and the configuration that I find useful.
Set the “My Albums location” under Tools->Preferences and then the Album tab. This is the location where JAlbum will create your albums. In older versions, it used to create the album in the same directory as the photos, but now that it can accept photos from many directories, it makes more sense to keep all the albums in their own separate location from the photos.
Create a new album if this didn’t happen automatically by selecting File->New Album Project
The Album Name will also be the directory name that holds the album in the album location that you set in Step 2, although you can override that location if you need to. Generally, I leave this alone.
Add some photos to the album by clicking on the “Add” button in the toolbar in the top of the main window.
Modify the album settings by selecting Album->Settings
On the General page, set the Output directory to a value of “.” Yup, just type in a single period into the whole line, which tells JAlbum to output the album files directly into the album folder instead of a subdirectory.
On the Pages page, set the “Image linking from thumbnails” to “Link to originals via scaled images”, since it is always nice to be able to download the original file, but it is much easier to flip through an album that has scaled down images
On the Images page, I leave the default values alone. In particular, I want the JPEG quality to be 100%, Thumbnail size should be pretty small at 130x130 pixels, and Images should be a medium size at 600x600 pixels.
Install and configure the BluPlusPlus skin. Skins provide a very customizable look, feel, and functionality to your albums. I prefer BluPlusPlus for its simplicity and its ability to handle metadata well.
Select BluPlusPlus for the skin and “expedition” for the style on the left side of the main window
Now back to Album->Settings and there should be a BluPlusPlus page, which has several tabs of its own. On the Slide tab, enable display of some nice metadata by entering the following for the Slide Caption Comment:
Create the album by clicking on the “Make album” button in the bottom-left corner of the main window
After the album is created, you can “preview” the album which really just means that you are looking at the local copy of the album. Since the album is its own static entity, this preview should be the same as the “live” version, but it is housed locally on your hard drive instead of on a web server.
If you edit the IPTC metadata after you initially added the photos, you may need to delete the corresponding images in the My Albums directory so that JAlbum is forced to really read the metadata.
Finally, upload the album to a webserver to share with the world.
Keep in mind that these are the steps that matter most to me and that there are infinite ways to build JAlbums and that there are tons of online resources to help you figure out all the different steps. Have fun!
10,000 hours. 10 years. Either way, it’s a lot of time and it’s how much time they say one needs to commit towards an activity to become an expert. But even then, putting in time isn’t enough. According to Geoff Colvin in his book, Talent is Overrated, the key ingredient is Deliberate Practice. While the topic of deliberate practice is extremely compelling, I have discovered that the simple act of being deliberate is sufficient to lead a more productive, meaningful life.
Being deliberate means that you aren’t acting haphazardly, you aren’t swaying in the wind, and you aren’t blaming the world for your situation. It means that you have made a conscious choice to affect your own outcome from the smallest of situations to decade-long endeavors. It’s the difference between just getting by and having a smile on your face every day. And it’s what I believe is the linchpin to Victor Frankl’s logotherapy that was described in his seminal book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Because when a choice is deliberate, there is purpose, and when there is purpose, there is meaning.
It is always fine to believe in something based on what you have been taught, but I find it infinitely more convincing to grasp a concept based on personal experience. Last summer, I found myself kayaking 7 days a week during the peak run-off, and I couldn’t be happier as I pushed the limits of my body and engaged in the physical world. After a few weeks of this, I realized that the water levels would recede and with it my exciting participation. I was presented with a vision of gloom and I made a choice. It wasn’t a mind-blowing choice, but it was an important choice. As the kayaking season slowed down, I would ramp up running with a half-marathon goal for the autumn. And that is exactly what I did. My evenings slowly switched from Clear Creek outings on the water to south Boulder outings on the trail, and my enthusiasm never waned. The weeks and then the months passed, my days on the water became more rare, and my time on my feet increased dramatically. Even before the half-marathon came, I believe that I reached the apex of my running when was on the trail for 2 hours or more and was then hopping in my kayak for an afternoon of autumn boating. The feeling was truly glorious.
But still, I felt the winter months looming before me and a fear that I would descend into a lethargic slumber full of calories and television and lacking in warmth, exercise, and participation. Coming to this realization was half of the gift I received that autumn. Making a choice on how I would deal with the situation was the second half of the gift. Rather than letting the dwindling daylight and sinking temperatures pull me into a state of psychological, physical, and spiritual hibernation, I made the deliberate choice to continue to engage my mind and my body throughout the winter months so that as spring and summer approached, not only would I not be a portly, pastey Pat, but I would be leaner, stronger, and better educated than I had been 6 months prior.
My plan was simple. I would cross-train throughout the winter months in order to be in better shape for the 2011 kayaking season. Everyone says they are going to cross-train. No one, well almost no one follows through on it. This was before I read Talent is Overrated, yet I knew that I needed to do something different, something that would keep me motivated and going strong when it times were tough. There is a saying that, “What can be measured can be improved” and as a control systems engineer, I have wholeheartedly believed in this theory for more than a decade. I decided that I would formulate a series of different types of workouts and then I would track the frequency of these workouts throughout the winter.
First off, I decided that the best way to stay in shape for kayaking is to be in a kayak. Granted, I knew that whitewater kayaking on a regular basis throughout the winter wasn’t going to be practical, so I decided that my goal would be to get out in my kayak once a week, whether it was on whitewater, flatwater, or in a pool. Nice. Now I had a goal and was beginning to act deliberately. But being in a kayak once a week isn’t enough to escape the slob within me that was dying to escape during the winter months. Next, I found a half-marathon to run in mid-April which would require me to actively train starting in February and to maintain a base from November through January. Now I was getting somewhere. Then, I decided that if I were a pro athlete, I would train in the gym on regular basis in the off season with a focus on exercises that directly pertain to my sport. So what if I’m not a professional athlete, this is the good ole’ U-S-of-A and I can train like I’m one if I want to. I set about writing up a detailed workout plan with exercises that specifically targeted kayaking motions and then I expanded it to include a purposeful workout to do when I was in the pool in my kayak. Finally, I put together a spreadsheet to keep track of all my training activities as a function of time. Yup, it’s nerdy. But you know what, it worked. And it gets even nerdier. I had some Amazon.com credit burning a hole in my pocket, so I ordered a Withings WIFI digital scale that automatically posts body weight and body fat measurements to their website for logging and analysis. This tool provided yet another method of measuring my progress, so I could then manage it.
March is half way gone, I am near the 6 month mark in this experiment in which I have been the subject, and the question begs to be asked, “How successful was I?” Well, I ran the Highlands Ranch Backcountry Half-Marathon on November 13 which certainly set the stage for the first month or so. Then, I headed down to Costa Rica in early December for a week of fantastic paddling with my friends from Renaissance Adventure Guides. And then winter was fully upon me with no activities or strong motivational goals for months to come. But, things did not spiral out of control. Even amid the short, cold days, I felt the need to keep training and eating healthy. I think the numbers speak for themselves and so does the plot below that shows when I did workouts as a function of calendar date. I am writing this on March 17 and as of today, starting on October 1st, I have:
Kayaked whitewater 25 times and in the pool 7 times. Very good, but I definitely didn’t hit my goal of once per week.
Worked out in the gym 31 times
Swam 29 times
Ran 55 times
Biked 7 times
Skied 7 times
When you look at the plot, it becomes readily apparent that I have been working out a LOT. Still, if I had been eating like a fraternity brother, I could have gained 20lbs in that time. Fortunately, I was eating more like a bride-to-be with small salads and WeightWatchers dinners being the norm on my menu. As you can see, instead of gaining weight over the course of the 6 winter months, I actually shed almost 10 pounds! This was the first time that I have approached my high school weight in 2 decades. (It’s worth noting that the 2 spikes in my weight occurred when I “let go” during vacations. On the one hand, it clearly demonstrated what happened when I was not deliberately choosing my food carefully each day. And on the other hand, it was a deliberate choice of mine to relax my dietary restrictions during those times, so I don’t feel bad about it at all.)
Okay, I measured and I managed and I was deliberate, and yet you ask yourself, “Why does it matter?” Simple- I’m much, much happier than had I not been deliberate. So now, every time I am presented with a choice- whether it seems meaningless or not- I consider what it means to be deliberate. And I remember that being deliberate is a sure-fire way to self-satisfaction. Or as we usually like to call it- happiness.
It is a truly sad day for hundreds of dedicated people who staked their bets in this high risk enterprise. We have collectively created something amazing over the course of a decade and lost it in an instant. However, we all knew the game when we got into this. It’s not for the faint hearted. As in life, you don’t get a second chance.
But right now, I remember that things aren’t so terrible. There was a machine- a robot of sorts on this rocket, albeit a very beautiful robot. However, there was no loss of human life, just a sizeable dose of disappointment. It’s important to distinguish what matters, and what really matters.
So now we sit tight. That’s all we can do in the very near term. There will be press conferences, there will be investigations, and for our LASP team leading the charge on solar irradiance measurements , there will be an adamant campaign to accelerate the bureaucratic wheels to get the TIM instrument into orbit as soon as possible!
One-two. Down, but not out.
Here is an interview I did today with the Denver NBC affiliate, 9NEWS, and the associated website link.
It seems that about every two years, I find cause to pack up my car and road trip half way across the country. It first began with my life changing 2 month tour of the West in 1999, then the big move to Boulder in 2001, followed by a quick jaunt to Yosemite in 2003, then a visit to my parents’ house in New York in 2006, and finally my trek to the Ottawa River and Cape May in 2009. So when I learned that NASA would not pay for me to see the Glory launch in person, I figured it was time for another road trip.
With a scheduled launch date of Tuesday, February 23, 2011, it only made sense to leave Boulder on Friday, 2/18 and return to Boulder on Sunday, 2/27. And since I was going to be near the Pacific, I figured that my kayak should come along. And as long as I was packing gear, my mountain bike would surely find good use at some point. Oh yeah, what about that dog of mine? “River Dog, hop in! Cause we’re off on a road trip!”
I set off right after work on Friday and cruised out I-70 amid reasonable ski traffic and some snow showers on Vail Pass. Five hours later, I had made it to Rabbit Valley and bounced along a 4x4 road to a desert campsite where I had tethered internet service on my laptop and a cozy bed in the back of my 4Runner- not exactly roughing it. Saturday’s drive began at 6am and took me across the snow covered passes of Utah and through the beautiful Virgin River Gorge on I-15 in Arizona and on to Las Vegas. All of that driving really took a toll on me and there was no real hurry to make it to California, so I decided to camp just west of the city at Red Rocks recreation area where I had been years before with friends for a Thanksgiving climbing trip. As luck would have it, Boulder friends of mine, Peter and Cathy, had just finished up a photography conference in Las Vegas and we decided to try to meet up.
Upon arriving at the Red Rocks campground, I found it just as windy as it was 7 years earlier. And despite the warmish 50 degree temps that were displayed on my dashboard, a quick hop outside my car revealed a biting cold that wasn’t conducive to relaxing in camp all afternoon. Fortunately, I had other ideas for the wind, and 10 minutes later I had my kite flying high above the campground snapping photos using the kite aerial photography rig that I had built a year prior, but never had the opportunity to use. The photos weren’t anything particularly special, but it was very cool to prove that the contraption worked as well as I had hoped.
I awoke Sunday morning to Peter rapping on my car window. Somehow, we had used Facebook to coordinate an impromptu meet-up 800 miles from home which truly amazed all of us. We spent the morning casually over coffee and Einstein bagel sandwiches and hatched schemes to use my tethered balloon aerial photography system on a zip-line to capture truly unique kayaking photos from mid-rapid locations. Then it was off to Red Rocks for a hike. Our nearly identical red 4Runners wound their way past the loop road and eventually onto confusing snow covered dirt roads that led to the trailhead for Black Velvet canyon. The trail led up into the canyon that is well known for its multi-pitch rock climbs, but after a mile, the trail petered out and the cold, wet streambed halted our progress. Soon after, we said our goodbyes and I set out on a pleasant trail run along the network of mountain bike trails in the area. An hour or so later and I was back in the car, headed for Robert and Colette’s house in Santa Monica.
Compared to the Colorado winter I had left, the Santa Monica weather was certainly warm at 60 degrees. So Monday morning, I dragged Robert and little Lenny off to the beach with me so that I could get into my kayak for a quick surf session. The waves were small, but I managed to stay out of the way of the surfers and was even joined by pods of dolphins during my time in the water at Topanga Beach. Lucky for me, Robert brought his video camera and SLR, so I was able to get some fun footage of me playing in the water. After we wrapped that up, we stopped back at their place for a quick lunch and to grab our mountain bikes. Off we went into the Santa Monica mountains for the next several hours on a fantastic ride with view of the city, the ocean, and the Getty Center. Not too shabby!
Tuesday picked up right where Monday left off. After waking up, I did a great hill-run workout in Santa Monica, then we packed the cars and drove north through Santa Barbara before arriving in Buellton, which isn’t much of a town to visit in and of itself. However, there are dozens of vineyards in the surrounding hillsides which were lush with green color from the winter rains. We proceeded to visit 4 of these wineries that were down the road, including my favorite of the day, Dierberg-Starlane, then Foley, Babcock, and Melville. After all that wine, a good dinner was in order, so we wandered down the road to the Hitching Post 2 where I treated myself to the biggest and one of the most delicious steaks I have ever eaten. Then it was time to wait. It seems like I have been waiting for Glory to launch for a long time, and after dinner I had to wait a few hours before heading next door to the Marriot where all the Glory faithful gathered. Well, as it turned out, I was going to have to wait longer, because at 2am the launch was officially scrubbed. And that’s a story for another time…
Anyhoo, Robert and I were in wine country and had our bikes with us, so on Wednesday we hopped on them, cruised over to the uber touristy Danish town of Solvang, and proceeded to work our way along Alamo Pintado Road towards the sleepy little hamlet of Los Olivos. Along the way, we visited the idyllic grounds of Rideau vineyards, then Lincourt, and finally Blackjack where part of the movie Sideways was filmed. After a quick bite to eat in Los Olivos, we cruised down the spectacularly beautiful Ballard Canyon Road back to Buellton. Robert then headed back to L.A. and family responsibilities, while I moved on to more pressing issues like napping, retrieving already purchased bottles of wine, sipping cappuccino in Solvang, enjoying split pea soup for dinner at Pea Soup Andersen’s, and finally catching a movie at the local theatre next door.
Several days away from the ocean had me thinking of waves on Thursday, so after breakfast at Paula’s Pancakes in Solvang, I headed to Surf Beach on Vandenberg AFB which was the only location along the coast reporting any reasonable wave heights. Due to it being one of the only publicly accessible spots on the air force base, the beach has an isolated, wilderness feel to it with miles of untouched coastline that is occasionally marked by a radio tower or a rocket ready for launch. The waves were breaking not too far from the shoreline and were of a decent height, so I suited up in my kayak gear and headed out into the water. Unfortunately though, the waves behaved completely sporadically- crashing into foam piles, then disappearing, then reappearing. After 20 minutes in the water, I discovered that this section of ocean was just too haphazard for surfing and headed back to dry land. After hanging up my wet gear to dry, I met a veteran local who described to me that ocean currents converge from the north and south at this location which causes the unpredictable, strange behavior of the waves. Upon further reflection, I concluded that the beach actually had been named aptly- there was certainly a lot of surf in the water. It was I who had mistakenly equated that to “Surfer’s Beach”. Not a problem though, the sun was out and I had a beach chair and a book, so I settled in close to the sand to avoid the on-shore wind and dozed on and off as the pages slowly turned and River dog chewed sticks and played in the sand.
I like to paint a picture of complete relaxation, but honestly, I was feeling extremely disappointed by the launch delay, the lack of waves, and no purpose to my day. So I loaded my gear back in the car and headed south in hopes of waves and beach camping, but the waves weren’t there and the state park camping cost as much as the Buellton Motel 6. Rather than stay in a motel again, I gave Robert a ring and told him that I’d be crashing at their place again. Along the route to L.A., I decided to take a quick pit-stop in Santa Barbara which turned into an hour long run along the beach with River Dog (aka, the happiest dog in the world as he sprinted off leash through the salt water and soft sand) and then a visit to the Santa Barbara Shellfish Company at the end of the pier.
There have been a few meals that I have had in my life that will stay with me as memorable favorites, and I’m certain that was one of them. The “restaurant”, if you will call it that, lacks any pretentiousness as it does one thing and one thing well, which is serve up freshly caught shellfish. After all my years visiting Maine and the lobster pounds that make that coastline famous, I have developed a soft spot in my heart and stomach for this kind of dining. Where Maine has lobsters that I adore, the West Coast has raw oysters that are my hands-down favorite. My meal consisted of a half-dozen oysters on the half-shell, a cup of clam chowder, and a Double Barrel Firestone beer, and I could not imagine a better dining experience as I savored every bite and sip while watching the sun set over the Pacific.
It turned out that Robert was heading to the airport at 5am on Friday morning, so as a way of showing my appreciation for his and Colette’s hospitality, I offered to drop him at LAX and get a jump start on my day. Part of my grand plan for the trip was to kayak in the Sierras, so after leaving the airport, I high-tailed it north out of the city before its infamous gridlock set in. My kayaking destination was Kernville and I found my route taking me through Palmdale where I had visited in November for work. My day had little purpose other than driving for a few hours, but then I realized that if I could swing by NASA-Dryden, I could take care of some work in person that would be terribly challenging to do from half way across the country. So the rest of my morning was spent in an airplane hanger designing the mechanical interface for a new stabilizing platform that will catch a ride on the highest flying airplane in the world, NASA’s ER2 (equivalent to the U2 spyplane). The morning’s work recharged my batteries and I headed north to Kernville where I road-scouted the Upper Kern in the rainy weather and grabbed a bite to eat at the Kern River Brewhouse.
Afterwards, I motored down the road to Geno’s house in Lake Isabella. Geno is a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend and apart from the kayaking community, I don’t think I would find myself randomly stopping at someone’s house in the middle of nowhere to hang out. But true to the kayaking community, Geno turned out to be a great guy, and I hung out Friday night with him and his family as he told me countless stories about the impressive creaks of the southern Sierras. I awoke Saturday to snow on the hillsides and temperatures in the 30’s, but after a quick breakfast we were ready to hit the water on the Class IV section of the Lower Kern. Fortunately, the sun was out and the reservoir-fed water wasn’t too cold. We eased our way down the mostly flat stretches of the river that were occasionally interrupted by large pool-drops. It seems that I’ve spent most of my kayaking career discovering my own paths down rivers, so when all I had to do was follow another boater, I was amazed at how easy it can be. After a few hours on the water, I got my groove back and no sooner we were at the takeout. It was a short day, but it has inspired me to make it back to California on another road trip, and that’s always a good thing!
The next day and half were pretty uneventful- about 800-900 miles of driving through desert and snowy hills with an overnight stop in Cedar City, UT. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, you know that you can truly call a place home when you return from a trip like this and you are just overwhelmed with joy and contentment. It seems that is one of the big draws of travel- it makes you appreciate home.
