In a Van Down by the River

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.

Soon after I completed the engine conversion, I was heading up into the mountains in pursuit of snow and water every chance I got. Whether it was a chilly night at Loveland ski hill, kayaking and camping along the Colorado River in Glenwood Springs, or battling the snowy roads towards a desert raft trip, I soon discovered that my Vanagon would be joining me on all my exploits. As the spring and summer progressed, I followed through on my promise to kayak the Class IV stretch of the Arkansas River called the Numbers and promptly thereafter loaded up the van and headed east all the way to the Ottawa River in Canada where I learned kayaking from the very best in the business, EJ himself. A quick trip down to Cape May, NJ to see the family and then it was back to Colorado. Wheh, what a summer! But there was more for the van in 2009. I gathered up friends and motored over 12 hours straight through the night (even as hallucination-induced Ronald McDonald heads hovered over the Utah roadside) to Zion National Park for a long Thanksgiving weekend. Apart from the freezing mornings under the shadow of the Watchman and the spectacular scenery in the canyon, one of my favorite nerdy memories was when I submitted trouble-tickets to Jim from Bostig on pirated WiFi and then re-flashed the ECU of the van while not moving it from its hunkered down camp spot so that I could reinitiate alternator voltage regulation.

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…

-Pat Brown, Boulder, CO

JAlbum Usage

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.

1. Download JAlbum and install it on your computer.
2. Start JAlbum.
3. Configure directory preferences
   • 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
   • On the Advanced page, I’m sure to select IPTC Caption as one of the Comment sources, since I want to be able to extract all the wonderful metadata that I previously added to the photos.
6. 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.
   • Since BluPlusPlus is an add-on to the default skins, you will need to download it from the JAlbum skins website and install it per the directions on the website.
   • 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:
     • Iptc.Object Name||Iptc.City, |Iptc.Province/State |Iptc.Country/Primary Location||Date||FileName|Dimension|FileSize||Iptc.Copyright Notice
7. 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!

Be Deliberate

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.

Glory goodbye.

From thesaurus.com:

Main Entry:
disappointment

Part of Speech:
noun

Definition:
saddening situation; letdown

Synonyms:
bitter pill, blind alley, blow, blunder, bringdown,bummer, bust, calamity, defeat, disaster,discouragement, downer, downfall, drag, dud,error, failure, false alarm, faux pas*, fiasco,fizzle, flash in the pan, impasse, inefficacy,lemon, miscalculation, mischance, misfortune,mishap, mistake, obstacle, old one-two, setback,slip, washout

The “old one-two”. Yup, that’s an apt description of how it has felt to work on the Glory mission. At precisely 2:09am PST this morning, Glory literally rocketed up into space. Except it didn’t quite make it into space. From what we all know right now, the rocket fairing was unable to separate which prevented the Glory satellite from achieving orbit.

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.

 

California Road Trip

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.

Photo Album from the trip

Glory Launch Delay

Sometimes, things just don’t go as planned. Such has been the case with NASA’s Glory mission throughout its long development cycle. Throughout the 7 years that I have worked on the project, the setbacks have been formidable but somehow the team of dedicated people have overcome the odds. The mission was finally scheduled to launch on February 23, 2010 at 2:09am PST and hoards of Glory faithful made the trek across the country by car and plane with their friends, families, and even their dogs (yup, that was my River dog!). We piled onto 6 tour buses in the town of Buellton, CA at 12:30am and slowly made our way over to the golf course viewing area on Vandenberg AFB by 1:48am. The California air was chilly, but the sky was exceptionally clear and the air was calm- perfect conditions for a night launch. The excitement was palpable as the final minutes faded away prior to the big launch. Folks stirred nervously, snapped off photos of friends and colleagues, and kept an eye and ear on the NASA launch tv’s that were distributed about the area. With only 7 minutes left before the critical, 48-second-long launch window at 2:09am, the NASA launch reporter delivered the disappointing news- there was an issue with the launch abort system and the launch had been scrubbed until the next reasonable opportunity. Collective disappointment is a powerful force. But so is sleepiness. The hundreds of NASA pilgrims made their way back to the chartered buses with heads held low. Another day they said. Perhaps as early as the following night. But as the next day’s news was relayed among the parties, it became clear that the launch would not be occurring for another week due to the technical issues and a poor weather forecast. More disappointment. But that’s not the same thing as failure. We all scattered from Buellton- some to flights out of Santa Barbara, some to Disneyland, and myself to new vacation adventures. But regardless of the letdown, we all knew that patience and Glory go hand-in-hand and that success can’t always be rushed.

Besides, even though things don’t go as planned, they can still provide a context for something else worthwhile. In this case, I had a wonderful reason to pack up my 4Runner with River dog, camping gear, my bike, and my kayak and head for the California Central Coast for some February R&R! More on that in another post…

New Floors

If you didn’t hear from me during the whole month of January, I can tell you that I had a good reason for being out of touch. Every weekend and every night, I spent slaving away installing new wood floors in my condo. It was an exhausting project that involved moving all of my possessions from one room to another so that I could tear up the nasty, old carpet and get down to business installing the new floor. While I was at it, I replaced all of the baseboard molding and tended to other trim projects. I think that the overall effect is really impressive! Be sure to check out a few more photos in this album.

Photo Album of new floors

New Year’s 2011!

Another year has come and gone and it only seems appropriate to take stock at this time.

I just spent the past hour or so at my piano re-learning how to play “Falling Slowly”, and it really put the past year into perspective for me. A year ago at Christmas, I struggled through the first notes of that song with my nephews back in New York, and now I find myself easily reading the sheet music after a six month hiatus from the song. What is funny is remembering how painful and challenging it was to learn it, how rewarding it was to perform it at the recital in May, and similarly, how challenging it is for me to learn Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” right now. I suppose that it points out how the learning process is a never ending continuum, and that it really does take significant effort and struggle in order to achieve meaningful progress.

These New Year’s post have become somewhat of a recent tradition for me, and I think there is real value in sitting down and putting down my thoughts and goals and ambitions into words for the whole world to see. I know that I have looked back on the posts from the past two years on many occasions in order to motivate myself or bask in the glory of a job well done.

This past year has taught me even more about setting goals and working diligently to achieve them. It hard to know where to begin, but I can honestly say that weighing 15-20 lbs less than I did last year at this time is a huge accomplishment for me. Of course, the end result is wonderful but the process has been the most interesting and rewarding part of this accomplishment. As expected, I went full-force kayaking this year with 82 days on the water which bested my 70 days from last year and I stepped up to my first Class V run. The entire kayaking experience and lifestyle has really grabbed hold of me and mid-summer I made the very conscious choice that I wanted to maintain the energy and excitement of kayaking through the rest of the year in all other aspects of my life. So in July, I began to run after taking a long break since my first half marathon in 2008. Basically, I maintained my excitement and energy level by redirecting it towards running as kayaking began to wane. Ultimately, I ran my second half-marathon in November at the Highlands Ranch Backcountry (trail-run) Half-Marathon. And as a side-effect of all of this exercise in the water and on the trail, I wound up losing 15-20 lbs of unneeded weight which has almost gotten me back to my high school weight! I’m not going to go into this anymore, but I can say without a doubt that this is the best I have felt physically in over 15 years and I don’t want it to stop. As a matter of fact, I was running through an L.A. neighborhood this fall when I saw some out of shape, lazy suburbanites. Since I was running high on adrenaline from an adventurous trail run, the contrast between my current life and theirs was particularly accentuated. At that very moment, I decided that I wanted to be a person who lived life energetically and that I would be in the best possible shape I could be from now on. So here I go on this new path…

It has been almost 3 months since I wrote the first section of this post, and I finally have some concrete resolutions for the coming year, so like 2009 and 2010, I am going to put them down in writing with the expectation that it will keep me honest. After considering various goals during long, peaceful runs the past few weeks, I have categorized them into 4 groups:

1. Be deliberate

I believe that acting deliberately is not only necessary for achieving the following resolutions, but is also a basic ingredient to sustained happiness. For that reason, I have written an entire blog post dedicated to acting deliberately.

2. Fitness/Athletic

As you can tell from the beginning of this post and my post on being deliberate, I’m really jazzed up on fitness and kayaking is still holding center stage. I always say that time on the water is key to successful kayaking, so I am going to best my previous year’s record by kayaking more than 100 days in 2011. And in order to keep my frequency up throughout the year, I am going to kayak every month of the year as well. Additionally, I am teaching kayaking for the Colorado Whitewater club and for Renaissance Adventure Guides, so I’m sure that I will get a whole lot of extra days in on lakes and in pools.

As I am writing these goals, I am actually 3 weeks away from the April 17th Horsetooth Half Marathon in Fort Collins, and my training has been going exceedingly well. After I complete the half, I will go into a recovery training mode and then kick into gear training for the October 9th Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in Denver! I never expected that I would run a marathon in my entire life, but now I see an opportunity that I am going to grab. I don’t think it will be easy, so I plan to join a training group that will provide me a deliberate framework in which to not only finish, but do so with a smile on my face.

Generally speaking, I plan to continue this life of exercise that I’m on in order to not only stay in shape, but actually increase my fitness to a higher level than ever before. I expect that my days at the gym will wane during the summer, but with outdoor pools throughout Boulder, there is no excuse to not enjoy a lunchtime swim! Ultimately, I expect my swimming technique and fitness to increase dramatically throughout the year so that I can consider participating in triathlons in 2012.

3. Projects

Anyone who has spent time around me as an adult knows about me and my projects. I always seem to have something in the works, but as I find my time occupied by so many other worthy pursuits, I find the projects get set aside. So I think it is worthwhile to make a few realistic resolutions regarding my projects. First off, I’m mentally ready to move out of my condo into something bigger, but before I can take the plunge, I need to save for a heftier down payment and make a few final improvements on the condo in order to increase its resale value. After having installed all new windows the past two years, January 2011 was dedicated to installing new wood floors. My remaining condo projects for the year are to replace the wood fence and replace the decking on the front porch. These aren’t particularly challenging projects, but I hope that putting them down in writing will help me follow through on them as I’m drawn each weekend towards kayaking in the mountains. Apart from my condo, I actually want to limit the number of projects I work on this year. The van is an endless source of projects, so I know I will continue to sink time into it, and the only van project that needs a kick in the pants is the Arduino-based battery monitoring system that I have 50% completed. I am telling myself that only after I finish it can I install solar panels on the van!

4. Intellectual Pursuits

Lifelong learning is one of my highest overall priorities. After spending years in school, I can’t imagine a life that isn’t filled with books, computers, and most importantly, intellectual stimulation and engagement into new realms. So it is not surprising that several of my resolutions for 2011 are geared particularly towards intellectual pursuits.

Writing this very post is another reminder of how much I enjoy the simple act of writing. I initially started my blog as a simple way to capture a few notes to go with photo albums I was posting, but over the years, it has become a wonderful outlet for me in its own right. I have discovered that I don’t write so much for others to read, but just for its own sake. I have also realized that as I get busy, I stop writing. So this year I am making a resolution to write more consistently throughout the year. I have gone to great lengths to implement a system that allows my little netbook to remain synchronized with my desktop computer, so there really isn’t any excuse for me to not bring it along and capture my adventures in writing throughout the summer.

Considering that I expect to be writing more and more often, I believe that it is critical to read as much as possible in an effort to stimulate all the parts of the brain that enhance the understanding and usage of the written word. I have almost a dozen great books sitting on a shelf waiting to be read, and now I just need to make sure that I bring them along with me and spend a little time on them throughout the summer camping months.

Finally, the exhausting flooring project in January forced me to face a reality about time and effort and motivation. Rather than limping along doing a poor job, I chose to halt my piano lessons for the time being. It was a hard choice for me to make, because I understand that it is very tough to return to a pursuit like piano after stopping it. So for 2011, my piano resolution is simple- I just want to keep playing the songs that I already know. I want to continue to experience the enjoyment of playing the piano with the hope and the expectation that my enthusiasm will be renewed and then I can continue with lessons once again.

I have my work cut out for me in 2011, but I’m lucky to get another trip around the Sun and I’m fully prepared to make the most of it!

Costa Rica Kayak Adventure!

Tomorrow, I take off for a 10 day whitewater kayaking adventure through Costa Rica! The warm weather will be a welcome break from the cold winter that has begun to descend on Colorado, and it will feel great to get back in my kayak every day after a dry spell with almost no boating. Rain and flood conditions tend to dictate which rivers are navigable on any given day, so there is no set itinerary for our trip. However, I plan to check in with my SPOT GPS each day so you can follow along from your computer. I can't wait to get started!

12/3/10- 5:09am Barely got our kayaks onto the plane. "Continental Airlines will accept one pack containing a lightweight assembly kayak less than 50 lbs ". No size restrictions mentioned or any mention of hardshell vs. collapsible. We were second in line at 4am, but the agent said there was a luggage embargo for large items and that our kayaks didn't qualify as "kayak assembly". Not cool. Fortunately, I kept my cool and after 20 minutes, I was able to convince the supervisor to let the boats on the plane. Whew. Now I'm just hoping they make it to Costa Rica.

4:31pm Made it to San Jose and the Hotel Mi Tierra and sent my first SPOT update. Now I'm updating my blog from my iPhone over wifi in the hotel. Very cool use of technology! And just as importantly, our kayaks and gear all made it here successfully. Pura Vida!




12/4/10 7:00am The whole crew made it here and we are off to run the Sarapaqui and possibly a 30 foot waterfall! Bueno!


7:55pm Awesome day on the Lower Sarapaqui. Lyle was the only one to run the 30 ft waterfall, since he broke his paddle on the descent. The jungle setting and warm water were huge contrasts to my normal Colorado boating style and very cool. Exhausted.

12/5/10 8:41pm Another incredible day in the Sarapaqui. This time we did the Upper and Lower. I could really get used to boating every day down here. It doesn't get much better!

12/6/10 6:30pm Kayaked the Upper and Lower Pejibaye today. Very cool jungle setting with huge boulders and trees hanging over the river. Big 6' drop to start things out and then slow going to avoid strainers among the boulders. We all had a great time and are now staying in the beautiful Turrialtico lodge just outside of Turrialba. Tomorrow we begin an overnight on the Pacuare, so no internet but SPOT should hopefully work, and of course the kayaking and scenery will be incredible.



12/7/2010- 9am, Change of plans. It rained all night which resulted in the Pacaure swelling up to the red gauge. So rather than chance it, we are heading to the beach for a few days. Either way, it's hard to beat!

12/8/10 8:30am. Dawn patrol kayak surf session this morning at Playa Hermosa. Now off to kayak a river. Awesome!




6pm. Kayaked Upper and Lower Naranjo. Another cool run and even had a crocodile chase Lyle!
Now we are staying in Dominical beach town for a few days. The black sand beaches have amazing phosphorescent organisms that light up like stars when you kick sand in the dark- trippy!

12/9/10 6:30pm Just got out of my boat for the last time today. It's really amazing how much time I have spent in it this week! Today, we started kayaking in a tiny mountain creek that led into the clear waters of Rio Guabo that eventually led us into the Pacific Ocean. Source to sea- how incredible! Along the way, we had shelf drops, waterfalls, a poisonous snake, a crocodile, and then 6' breaking waves in the ocean. And then we surfed our way back along the beach to our hotel. After a short break, we were back in the ocean ripping up the waves in front of an amazing sunset! Finally, darkness got us out of our boats and back to the hotel for a shower and dinner. Man, what an incredible vacation!

12/10/10 6:30pm. Living the life in Costa Rica. In the ocean at 5am for 2 hours of kayak surfing as the sun rose, then kayaked the middle section of Rio General, then back in the ocean for the last hour and half of the day for more kayak surf as the sun set over the Pacific.

12/11/10 10pm. How many days can I report on another great day here in Costa Rica? Dunno, but today will be my last until my next visit :-( Today began with another dawn kayak surf session followed by banana pancakes and then kayaking the Rio Savagre. What an amazing trip!

Finally put together a photo slideshow and posted it to YouTube!

 

Tour d’Ark Follow Along

This Thursday morning, I will begin 5 days of whitewater kayaking with several friends down the Arkansas River in Colorado starting on the Granite section and ending in Canon City almost 100 miles later. The trip was dreamt up by Scott Winkleman as a perfect way to see all of the whitewater sections of the Arkansas River that we all usually kayak as day trips, but instead as one long, mulit-day, kayak-self-support adventure. We will be meeting friends along the way to share different stretches with us and hopefully provide some dinners, but we will carry all of our camping gear in our kayaks throughout the trip. It is sure to be an unforgettable journey, and you can follow along from the comfort of your living room by checking on the live updates on this map from my SPOT GPS this Thursday through Monday.
Happy July 4th!

Gates of Lodore Follow Along

On Saturday, June 19, I will embark with my friends on a 4 day whitewater trip down the Green River through the Gates of Lodore in Dinosaur National Monument! This is a wonderful trip through desert country in northwest Colorado that is sure to be a good time! As I've done in the past, I will update our remote location using my SPOT GPS messenger beacon, but I'm going to try using the real-time tracking with 10 minute location updates on this trip.  Check back here on the map Saturday through Tuesday to monitor our progress as we wind our way down through the remote desert canyons on the Green River!





Or you can check our location on the SPOT webpage.

Boulder Creek Kayak Action

Boulder Creek finally started flowing last week and I had a few really fun runs on it that were captured on camera by friends on the banks.

On Friday, I ran Lower Boulder Canyon for the first time ever at a manageable level of 300cfs. Most of the run was straightforward, but the Elephant Buttress was a bit tricky and it wound up flipping me about 3/4 of the way through the rapid. I rolled up after bouncing along some rocks and finished the run with a smile on my face!

The following day, the water started really pumping on all the rivers and creeks in Colorado as a result of the continuous warm weather, and Boulder Creek shot up to over 800cfs! I was on the Poudre River all weekend (4.5-5ft), but when I got back into town on Monday, I went out for a town run at 700cfs with a few friends. There were lots of playful waves throughout the run and we were lucky to have a friend of a friend (David) take some beautiful photographs of us in a play wave near the library. We finished up with margaritas at the Playa Azul take out which officially confirmed for me that summer has arrived!

Be sure to check out the photos in this Boulder Creek photo album.

Memorial Weekend Kayaking

What better way to kick off meteorological summer than a long weekend of kayaking? A bunch of us headed out to Glenwood Springs over Memorial weekend 2010 to catch the run off on the Roaring Fork and Colorado Rivers and we had an incredible time!


The excitement started early in the trip when the van decided to stop working 1/4 mile into Eisenhower Tunnel during one of the busiest travel days of the year! Like the Secret Service protecting the President, the tunnel crew swept into action within 30 seconds by closing the tunnel and dragging the van out with a tow strap! We were shocked by the immediate response and even happier when the van started up again after 5 minutes of rest. Whether it was vapor lock or overheating, we were happy to be on our way again.

On Saturday, we had a great high water (5000cfs) run on the Cemetary stretch of the Roaring Fork River that included some fun wave trains, and then we headed up stream towards Aspen to run the Slaughterhouse section (1000cfs) of the Roaring Fork. It was Scott's, Robert's, and my first time down the run, but it felt pretty comfortable with Mark leading the way. After that, we picked up Dede and Karen and continued down the Upper Woody stretch which was really exciting at that level.


On Sunday, we turned our attention to the Colorado River which was pumping through Glenwood Canyon at 8900cfs! Scott, Robert and I put in at Shoshone and were blown away by the big water feel of the run at that level. We then picked up Dede, Karen, and Jen and continued down through the Grizzly stretch all the way to the Glenwood wave where we got some surfing in. The girls were able to capture some video action of us going through Shoshone, but of course it doesn't really do justice to the feeling that we had in the chaotic water!



Monday started out a bit slow and we found ourselves back at the Glenwood wave for some more surf action. Once again, there was some video captured and I spliced together a fun little movie of our surf sessions.



Afterwards, we hopped back on I-70 towards Denver with a stop off to run the Upper Eagle. Robert and Mark got in a quick shot down Dowd Chutes where Scott and I joined them for an incredibly quick run down to Avon at 2500cfs. 


I have a handful of photos from the weekend in this photo album.


All in all, it was a fantastic weekend of kayaking and hanging out with friends!

Glory in the news

2010 will hopefully be the year that the NASA Glory mission launches into space. I have been working on the Glory-TIM instrument since 2004 and am extremely excited to have my own system fly in space for the first time! If I haven't told you about it before, I designed the pointing system for the TIM instrument that will allow it to look directly at the sun as the spacecraft orbits around the earth. As the November 22, 2010 launch date grows closer, Glory is beginning to receive attention in the press, so I thought I would report on some of the interesting stories out there.

 

First off, you can check out all the latest official NASA news about Glory at the main Glory website, and there is also a very nice PDF brochure about the Glory mission.

 

Now on to my entries in the Glory news! Last week, I was interviewed about the connection between Glory and the hit t.v. show Lost, and a great article was posted online. Here is an excerpt:

"What they surely don't know, regardless of how many hours they've spent scouring Lostpedia or regaling perplexed coworkers with Lost trivia, is that engineers for NASA's Glory mission have a computer and button of their own at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) that's keeping them up at night."

Be sure to check out the full article and my video that inspired the article at the NASA What On Earth blog.

 

And finally, I have a number of videos I created about the TPS that are posted on Youtube. Here is a favorite of mine that shows a time-lapse of the TPS motion during testing at LASP.

 

That's all for now, but I will be sure to post with more information as the launch date nears...

Confluence Surf Session

You might think the South Platte River that runs through downtown Denver is dirty. And you’d be right, which is exactly why I had always avoided kayaking the whitewater drops in Confluence Park. But yesterday, the spring rains had flushed most of the junk way down river (or so I told myself), and the waves were at a perfect level for a few hours of kayak surfing in the Spring sunshine. Have a look at the video and you’ll see why I have a newfound respect Denver’s kayaking scene.

Pole Pedal Paddle

What do you get when you strap a camera to a ski pole, then to mountain bike handle bars, and then kayak one handed so you can film the river? You get my decidedly “recreational” entry in the 2010 Salida Pole Pedal Paddle race and you get a fun, first person view of the race course shown in the video below.

So what if I came in last or second to last place? When and where else can you get the opportunity to ski, mountain bike, and whitewater kayak all in the same day? And when and where can you actually link these three activities together sequentially in a really fun course? April in Salida Colorado, that’s when and where. And that’s exactly what the 3P organizers and around a hundred athletes do each year in this unique event. In case you couldn’t tell from the video, it is a fantastic time and I highly recommend it if you enjoy these sports.

In addition to filming throughout the course, I also carried a GPS in order to mark the route and get an idea of how fast/slow I went. You can get a sense of race course location and my speed in the interactive map below, or you can download the GPX or KML file to view in Google Earth.

History Balloon Photos

I would have to say that recovering the balloon package is my favorite part of launching high altitude balloons. The whole process reminds me a bit of playing neighborhood baseball as a child. Inevitably, the ball would get hit into another neighbors yard or get caught in a tree or someplace inaccessible, and then a small adventure would ensue as we went about trying to get it back. As we get older, our sense of scale and focus changes, and we find less and less wonder in our usual, immediate surroundings. But every time we launch one of these balloons, eastern Colorado suddenly becomes my childhood neighborhood as I set out to search for the camera package with my friends. And every time, it is an adventure.

We do our best to select launch sites and wind conditions that will provide a safe trajectory away from heavily populated areas and airspace. And we label the camera package with our contact information and non-hazardous markings. But even with all that, things don’t always go to plan and we end up confronted with a situation like this!

It turned out that the balloon package landed in a horse corral and the shredded balloon covered the “Non” portion of the “Non-Hazardous” marking. Within 20 minutes of landing, two nice women noticed it and called the police due to the suspicious hazardous markings. Thanks to our trusty SPOT messenger, we made it there before Johnny-Law, and as Ricky Ricardo used to say, we had some esplainin’ to do. We happily shared the purpose of the mission and the joy that we witnessed when the balloon was launched in front of dozens of elementary and middle school children. We even dismantled the package to prove to the officer that we were on the up-and-up, which was sufficient for him to continue on his way. And we finally reviewed the photos with our new friends and promised that we would follow up with an email link to the photos.

A  closer examination of the GPS log showed that the balloon reached a new personal record of 109,000 feet above sea level! Be sure to check out the GPS track file with geotagged photos and the photo album of the best photos.