BrummellBlog

Monday Rant: FCOJ Reduction

2012-01-03T19:21:00.003-06:00

Late last year, all of the canned, concentrated fruit juice in local grocery stores shrank. The cans used to make 1.42L, now they make only 1.13L, using the same "add three cans cold water" directions. Why? Why have they done this? It's all of the juice, from the big names (Minute Maid, Old South) to the store brands (Signal, in the case of my local Sobey's).

These juice containers should be considerably more full - the orange juice container, at 1.5L capacity, should be in danger of overflowing!

Unrelated bonus mini-rant: Attention Flickr/Yahoo, Google/Blogger, Hotmail, and other websites that require me to log in - I will not give you my phone number. You don't need it, I will never desire you to send me a text or a voice call, stop asking!

Book Club: The Origin of Species

2012-01-01T16:30:00.001-06:00

I threw my lot in with Professor Angry by Choice to participate in his book club, reading Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, one chapter at a time. Today marks his deadline for reading chapter 1, which I did over a couple of days during my christmas break.

Oxford "World's Classics" edition, with introduction by Gillian Beer

Oxford University Press, 1996

After the general introduction by Gillian Beer, we get to Darwin's Introduction, which is mostly an explanation of the circumstances surrounding the publication of the first edition of The Origin of Species. This printing follows most closely the second edition, published in early 1860 that included some responses and clarifications by Darwin to some early reactions to the first edition of the book. The important distinction between the fact of evolution, visible in the fossil record, biogeography, and other lines of observational evidence, and the theory of natural selection is made in the Introduction, with an emphasis that the observations alone are intellectually insufficient and require some mechanistic theory to explain them. The Introduction ends with:

I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descentants of that species. Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.

In these two sentences, Darwin lays out the importance of evolution for biological taxonomy and the relationship between descent and modification through time and Linnean taxonomy, as well as the point that natural selection is one of presumably several mechanisms by which this modification can occur. It's right there in the Introduction: natural selection is not the only thing in evolution.

Chapter 1

The part about the "many laws regulating variation" is interesting. Darwin describes several examples of what would now be called pleiotropy, or apparent connections between traits, and mentions the constraint this places on artificial selection - breeders manipulating one trait, such as beak size in pigeons, also carry along correlated changes in other traits, such as foot size. I think the field of evolution-and-development ("evo-devo") has explored and continues to explore this realm.

The following few pages, read from a modern perspective, appear to me as so much weak speculation, given Darwin's ignorance of genetics and embryology. There are some interesting examples there, and it is easy to see how he is tailoring his arguments to his audience, but I find it a little boring.

There's a discussion of the various views of the relationships between domestic and wild species, and the morphological characteristics used to distinguish between species and genera. Apparently, in the mid-1800's there was a popular view that any domesticated species set loose in the wild would automatically revert to its wild form in a few generations, and Darwin devotes some text to showing the holes in this argument - basically, there's no evidence at all to support this hypothesis, and considerable evidence, both circumstantial and direct, that it is wrong. There is also a use of the sneering or dismissive form of the word "empirical", in:

It has often been stated that domestic races do not differ from each other in characters of generic value. I think it could be shown that this statement is hardly correct; but naturalists differ widely in determining what characters of generic value; all such valuations being at present emprical.

The first example (possibly) of Darwin's ideas being later demonstrated incorrect: dogs.

I do not believe, as we shall presently see, that the whole amount of difference between the several breeds of the dog has been produced under domestication; I believe that some small part of the difference is due to their being descended from distinct species.

I'm pretty sure the entire domestic dog diversity arose from the domestication of the Eurasion grey wolf, Canis lupus, followed by strong selection on different lineages, much of it by breeders in the last few hundred years. He does say, however, "the whole amount of difference", and I wouldn't be too surprised by a bit of injection of genetic material from other wolf species (avoiding completely any arguments about species-level diversity within wolves) in the dingo or North American dog lineages.

I am less familiar with the work on the other example domestic animals given by Darwin, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, ducks, rabbits, and chickens, though I suspect all have been demonstrated to be derived from a single wild ancestor species, not many. After some more wanderings among the dogs, we get to Darwin's famous study of pigeons.

On the Breeds of the Domestic Pigeon - Believing that it is always best to study some special group, I have, after deliberation, taken up domestic pigeons.

The structure of the argument for natural selection is becoming clear in Chapter 1. Darwin is using the example of domestic pigeons to lay the groundwork, showing that extreme traits such as beak size or flight characteristics do not have to derive from wild ancestors, and can arise from the careful selection of mating pairs by breeders. This provides the first important piece of evidence, that novel traits can arise from a population and be heritable. I hadn't realized this point needed to be made, but this sub-argument takes the form of a thorough demolishing of the notion that all domestic races must have been each independently derived from now-extinct wild species.

Selection - Let us now briefly consider the steps by which domestic races have been produced, either from one or from several allied species.

This section is a fairly straightforward argument about the visible effects of many generations of Selection (always capitalized in as "Selection" here), both "conscious" as by breeders and "unconsious" by everybody else, on domestic animals and plants. Perhaps it is mostly my 150-years-after-the-fact perspective, but there were few surpises in this part.

Antibiotics

2011-12-29T20:50:00.000-06:00

Unexpectedly, the issue of the use and misuse of antibiotics came up today. This annoyed me, but rather than yell at people, I'll put up a little primer here. I guess spending my time with biologists, chemists, biochemists, microbiologists, and toxicologists means I forgot most people don't spend much time thinking about these things.

Briefly, antibiotics are chemicals that kill bacteria; there are a few that will kill fungi, protists, or other organisms, but the vast majority of antibiotics prescribed for treatment of human illness will kill bacteria. Mode of action varies; many antibiotics interfere with bacterial cell division, which is a process different enough from how animal cells reproduce (e.g. cell wall synthesis - we don't have cell walls, some bacteria do) to hurt the bacteria without hurting the host (i.e. you). The net result of a course of antibiotics is to kill a very large fraction of the bacteria responsible for an infection, or to prevent them from reproducing long enough for the immune system to get ahead of the bacteria and wipe them out.

Antibiotics are an obvious agent of selection. Any bacterial cell that can avoid or reduce the effects of the antibiotic - for example, by producing an enzyme that destroys the antibiotic before it can interfere with the bacterial cell - will have a clear advantage, and its offspring will carry that resistance. This is why it is VERY IMPORTANT to take the FULL COURSE of a round of therapeutic antibiotics. The symptoms of the infection - pain, puss, whatever - might clear up in a few days, but the antibiotics will be in sufficient number of pills for more than a week. KEEP TAKING THE ANTIBIOTICS. The bacteria are down but not out after those first few days; most of the surviving cells may be resistant. In many cases, resistance means reduced but not eliminated effect of the antibiotics, so those nasty cells are still getting hurt, just not outright killed as their less fortunate compatriots were. Keep hammering them, and the immune system will clean up the mess - few bacteria can withstand the double-blow of compromised reproductive ability and roving bands of killer white blood cells.

Here's a picture of a neutrophil, a type of white blood cell (immune system) that targets bacteria and fungi (photocredit to Bob Blaylock and this Wikipedia page).

Sports Car Olymics 2011

2011-10-20T20:05:00.001-06:00

The weekend of Canadian Thanksgiving, October 8 and 9 (the 10th was the holiday Monday) I drove my new-to-me BMW to Regina to participate in the 2011 Sports Car Olympics, hosted by the Queen City Motorsports Association (QCMA). I was a member of the QCMA for most of last year (2010), but I only took part in one-third of last year's SCO; this year I decided to do it all.

There were three events. First, on Saturday morning was the rallycross. The term has different meanings depending on where you are in the world; in Canada it means an autocross event on a soft surface of either dirt or gravel (rarely grass, which gets chewed up into dirt pretty quickly). Autocross events are timed runs through a course, usually laid out with bright orange traffic cones, one car at a time, with a handicap system to allow less-powerful (i.e. less expensive) cars to compete fairly with powerful sportscars.

Here's a shot taken by one of the organizers, Rob Howell, of me splashing through the wet part at the far corner. Hurray!

I took some pictures at each event, this is one of Elvis putting his new-to-him Saab 900 Turbo through its paces.

The second event was the Time-Speed-Distance (TSD) rally. TSD rallies are long-ish timed events held on public roads; the point isn't to go as fast as possible (that would be illegal in any case), rather it's a form of precision driving, in which navigation plays as much a role as driver skill during tricky cornering, and penalty points are gained by being too early through a checkpoint as much as too late. I greatly enjoyed last year's TSD, in which I navigated for a man who helped organize this year's events, rather than participate. I navigated for Elvis, in the Saab shown above, partly because I know Elvis is an excellent driver and partly because I didn't want to take my bimmer into that kind of driving environment before I've had a chance to re-tune my reflexes from front-wheel-drive to rear-wheel-drive (and approximately double the horsepower of my previous car).

Elvis' mighty 1989 Saab 900 Turbo, purchased only days before for $1000 - a hell of a deal, in my opinion, considering the total lack of rust anywhere on it. We had some troubles with it, mainly in the form of a malfunctioning cooling system, but it served us well. Plus, it just looks cool. Those rally lights were just something Elvis had kicking around in his garage, and didn't actually provide any useful additional light at night, though they were wired up fine.

In addition to a Swedish car, Elvis had inadvertently acquired a crystal ball, which I found under my seat during the rally.

Rally directions here cover up some of the crud on the windscreen, as we drive slowly along a path through a field.

The third and final event was an autocross, held at the 3 Flags Cart track near Lumsden, about 20 km north of Regina. QCMA often holds autocross events here, which is rather different from the parking lot we use in the Saskatoon Sports Car Club (SSCC); the cart track surface is less rough than a typical parking lot, and the track constrains the possible route choices severely compared to a big empty square.

A Porsche Boxter on the opening slalom at 3 Flags.

I drove down Friday night, for registration and because the rallycross started at 8:00am on Saturday. Thanksgiving weekend is a busy weekend for hotels, but I was able to book the last available room at the Sunrise Motel. I'd give it about 1.5 stars, which was perfectly adequate for my purposes.

I only booked one room at the Sunrise because I decided to gamble on somebody in Regina offering me a couch or spare bedroom. Such did not materialize, so I ended up spending more money at the Super 8 motel Saturday night. It was a lovely suite, the last anything at the hotel, though I confess I didn't use most of the facilities at all. Oh well, some gambles don't pay off.

Somehow, I'm not sure exactly how, yet, I won third place overall. I know I did poorly at the rallycross, probably not last but certainly not near the top, and I'm almost certain I came last in the autocross on Sunday. Elvis and I came in second place in the TSD rally, behind the first place winners by a slim margin. But, however it happened, I'm very pleased with my TSD Silver Medal and the additional free T-shirt I got for coming in third overall.

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that this very powerful Subaru rally car, driven by an experienced and skilled driver, was soundly defeated by Elvis and myself in a 22-year-old, $1000 Saab with "one-wheel-drive".

1996 BMW 328is

2011-09-29T20:45:00.000-06:00

Today I bought a car. A 1996 BMW 328is, in dark purple (it's kind of an unusual colour), and with 250 000km. The previous owner is a professor at the University of Regina, and he told me he bought it from a Dean, who got it from his daughter. There are reciepts and expired vehicle registration documents going back to 2000, which includes the original invoice from Three Point Motors used vehicles department; I don't have any information on the original purchase, except the license-plate surrounds which state "Victoria BMW". As a strange coincidence, Pixie the Prelude, my previous car, has a Three Point Motors sticker on the trunk; both of my Saskatchewan cars were apparently sold at that dealership (they're mostly a Mercedes dealer these days, it seems) at some point.

I had been half-heartedly looking for a new-to-me car ever since I decided the rust issues on Pixie meant she wouldn't last another winter. Hondas from the 1980s don't have good defences against rampant metal oxidation, and once the rust got into the rear panels above the rear wheels it progressed rapidly. I was awarded a scholarship (that I'm still not 100% certain I'm allowed to talk about - it's from NSERC and they asked I not broadcast my award until after they've announced it through their news section) that started in May, so my budget increased from "it runs" to "hey there are some options at this price point!"; I upgraded my search to "whole-heartedly" a couple of weeks ago as the weather started to change. An older Bimmer really isn't THAT expensive, though maybe I should wait on such pronouncements until after my first significant maintenance. On that topic, the previous owner described some rather major recent work done on the car, including a new clutch - so at least I'm not likely to find myself stranded with a blown clutch on some half-abandoned gravel road, as happened shortly after I bought Pixie nearly two years ago.

This car does not yet have a name; I'm of the opinion names for cars emerge after some time has passed, and I await the appearance of the name.

As for Pixie, I have made arrangements for her to be an organ donor for a ministock racecar, a very similar 1988 Prelude that turns left, abundantly, at high speed. This is, I think, a better end for my faithful Pixie than to rot in a junkyard.

Enough text, have some pictures.

Sunday Drive 64: Afsluitdijk and IJsselmeer

2011-09-25T18:50:00.000-06:00

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Before I travelled to the Netherlands, I talked to several people (in real life and on-line) about renting a car in the country and driving around. While everybody acknowledged the excellent train system and bicycling possibilities, I was also told that as long as I stay out of Amsterdam, driving in the Netherlands is a fine way to get around and really explore some places not easily reachable by other means (plus, I'm lazy and out of shape so long bicycle rides were a bit less appealing).

There were two examples of Big Engineering I wanted to see: the Afsluitdijk, which divided the former Zuiderzee into (part of) the Waddenzee and IJsselmeer, and the Delta Works, a series of dams, dijks, canals, and other structures that protect the province of Zeeland and important places further inland such as Rotterdam from flooding during large storms in the North Sea. In Dutch, -zee usually seems to indicate seawater (i.e., salty) and -meer a lake (i.e. freshwater). The IJsselmeer is a huge, shallow lake and since its creation nearly 80 years ago has had some areas walled off and pumped dry to create new land. Zeeland is a large and relatively sparsely populated province that would be almost unhabitable were it not for the protections built after a devastating flood in 1953.

I went with Andy to Schiphol airpot early Saturday morning - it's easier to check out of a hostel and ride the trams and trains with another person, even if both of you are carrying luggage. Andy headed for the departure lounges, but I turned left and entered the rental-car zone. Six car-rental companies operate counters at Schiphol, and because the Hertz desk had a small queue (and because their website had strongly implied much higher prices for walk-ins compared to on-line reservations, which I didn't want to do through the wi-fi at the hostel) I went to Europcar. I expect all of the companies had very similar prices and cars and at this point I'm not interested in being proven wrong - besides, no price quoted on a website ever carries over to real life in my experience. There's always *something*...

Anyways, arranging the rental was pretty straightforward. They gave me a choice of three cars in the second-smallest size class (smaller cars are much less comfortable, and cost trivially less to rent); I went with an Opel Corsa because we don't have Opel in North America. Of course, Opel is just a brand within General Motors, but there are different cars from even the large multinationals in Europe compared to North America (though the differences are less than I expected). As I expected from a rental, an Opel Corsa is more "driving appliance" than "proper car". It was boring, but massively reliable and thoroughly practical. They offered me a satellite-navigation system to rent for something like 12 Euros / day, but I'd brought along my Garmin GPS unit (named Serena) and downloaded their map of Europe before my trip. As an aside, despite the high cost of that map (about $100 through Garmin's website), it was very worth it. Not just for my driving around, but also getting lost in Amsterdam and other cities while walking.

It took me a little while to figure out the car, mainly the goofy windscreen-wiper controls and the very grabby clutch, but I was underway on Dutch motorways pretty quickly. Needing breakfast, I fumbled with Serena after I got off the motorway and found a small shopping plaza, I think in the town of Zwanenburg. At 9:00am, shops were just starting to open, and I helped a young man practice his English when I bought some ham-and-cheese pastries to enjoy just before the rain resumed. The pastries were very tasty, and the local crows watched me eat but politely waited until I was done before swooping in for the crumbs.

Once I got the car figured out and Serena fastened to the inside of the windshield, I poked around a bit and discovered I was pretty close to Zuid-Kennemerland National Park. The name "Parnassia", which is one of the park entrances, just sounded enchanting so I told Serena that's where I wanted to go, and I was off.

Getting out of Zwanenburg involved a short drive along the Zwanenburgdijk. Narrow roads like this one, with zero shoulder and frequent traffic-calming devices, are abundant in the Netherlands.

Once past the traffic and roundabouts of suburban Haarlem, I quickly reached the edge of the Park.

Zuid-Kennemerland National Park is built around the near-shore dune system, the ecology of grazing animals (semi-wild horses and cattle) on the scrubland vegetation in the dunes, and the broad beach at the North Sea. Parnassia is a small facility consisting of a restaurant with patio and a modest sandy walk down to the beach, with close access to trails leading through the dunes. The weather at the time of my visit was exactly what I was expecting when I saw on the map that I was close to the North Sea: rain, wind, grey. Perfect.

The structures on the horizon in the middle of this picture are on the breakwater protecting the entrance to the Noordzeecanal.

This is a very tight crop of a picture I took looking straight out to sea from Parnassia. The offshore windmill farm I saw from the airplane is just visible here, along with what I think is a tender ship.

The gulls (Lesser Black-Backed Gulls, Larus fuscus, I think) seem to like weather like this even more than I do.

After my wanderings near Parnassia, I tried to pay for parking at the automatic booth. It did not accept coins, nor any card I happen to possess. In my fumbling to get the machine to return my ticket so I could pay at the exit gate, I accidentally called the attendant. He was able to sort me out, and take my coins when I got to the exit.

My goal was neither bracing North Sea weather nor tasty pastries, so I set Serena towards the town closest to the Afsluitdijk on the south side, Den Oever, and returned to the Dutch motorways. Normally on my Sunday Drives I just leave my GPS on wanderings mode, showing the map and my position & velocity but not giving directions to anywhere in particular. In the Netherlands, I mostly chose destinations and had Serena give me directions, which was very useful both for getting to interesting places like National Parks, and for freeing me from navigation decisions when passing through small towns with many bicycles, traffic lights, and pedestrians to watch out for.

I got off of the motorway as I approached the dijk (the A7 runs right over the Afsluitdijk) and found a quiet side road near the dijk that protects Den Oever and the adjacent village of Ooserland from storm surges coming through the Waddenzee.

The N242 is a smaller road than the A7; I think the N-series are comparable to most 2-digit highways in Canada, while the A series are freeways; I refer to the A roads as motorways following the British convention for talking about big highways without stoplights (apparently I am alone in this habit).

I think this illustrates the difference: this is the A7, which is divided highway with a central grassy median.

My car for a few days: an Opel Corsa, in dull-as-dishwater dark silver. Still, it handled reasonably well, was comfortable, and never failed me.

Looking west along the shore of the Waddenzee

Playing with depth of field.

After my little diversion at the Waddenzee, it was time for the main event: the Afsluidijk. Really, it's not too visually interesting, as it's a straight dijk that runs for 32 kilometres and is as close to perfectly level as any human-made structure. Fortunately, there's a monument and some other facilities near the middle.

A view of the Afsluitdijk and statue of Cornelis Lely, the primary architect of the dijk.

The freshwater-side of the Afsluitdijk, showing the top layer of stones applied to the dijk as it was constructed. Every one of those stones was fitted by hand, though they were transported to the site by machinery.

Looking northeast from the overpass. It really is a rather boring bit of scenery, but its history makes up for it (in my opinion).

After going full-tourist on the Afsluitdijk, I continued across. I wanted to get off the A7 as quickly as possible, but I made a few wrong turns and missed exits before I could make my way back to the shore of the IJsselmeer.

A farm in Friesland. Lots of Dutch farms look like this, from what I saw. The Netherlands has some of the world's most efficient and productive agriculture, according to some sources.

Wandering around, generally heading towards the water, I eventually found myself on the road that runs along the base of the dijk that separates Friesland from the IJsselmeer. Unlike most of the other dijks I drove along in the Netherlands, I could not find any place open to the public to climb over and see the water.

Many of the churches I saw were not located within a town or village, and instead were surrounded by agricultural lands.

Having satisfied myself with the Friesland shoreline area, I perused my maps and set my GPS for Weerribben-Wieden National Park. This took me out of Friesland and into the province of Overijssel, but for atmosphere's sake I played with the car's radio until I found a station that might be broadcasting in Frisian. This is the local language, which is supposedly quite distinct from Dutch; I have a tin ear or something because I couldn't really tell the difference.

The Dutch are masters of bridge-building; every possible design appears in some form, somewhere in the country. I quite like this wooden structure, one of a pair, that crosses the A7 near Sneek.

I accessed the park at its north end, through the town of Ossenzijl. Dutch roads always seem to provide just enough time to adjust and mentally switch modes from motorway driving (pay attention to the cars, drive faster than 100km/h) to town-and-country driving (pay attention to the bikes and pedestrians, keep it under 50).

I'll talk more about the park in a future post about the wonderful national parks of the Netherlands that I visited. I only spent about 20 or 30 minutes at Weerribben-Wieden, mostly because I wanted to press on with my big drive - it's a beautiful area, and I'd be happy to spend several days there.

Looking at my maps and my GPS, I decided I had spent too much time on really big roads that don't show much of the country, and I discovered a nearby road that runs along the top, rather than on one side, of a dijk with the badass name of "Hammerdijk". Of course I had to drive it. It turns out this road/dijk is approximately the border between the provinces of Overijssel and Flevoland.

Driving along the top of the Hammerdijk.

Another presumably-high-efficiency Dutch farm, just over the border in Flevoland.

I don't know what was going on here with this little stone hut and the freakin' cannon on the dijk, I suppose I should have stopped. Farmers displaying their stuff prominently near roads seems to be fairly universal though, so perhaps instead of a plow or an old combine, this farmer has a Napoleonic (?) bit of fortifications. The signpost indicates two roads that meet on the Hammerdijk, Kerkbuurt and Blokzijlerdijk. The name of the road on the top of the dijk apparently changes along its length, perhaps the beligerence indicated by the cannon had something to do with this?

As I think I mentioned previously, many roads are narrow enough that even small cars must move into the bicycle lane when encountering oncoming traffic. Here on top of the presumably-centuries-old Hammerdijk, such narrowness at least makes sense.

Having satisfied myself with some dijk-driving, I set course for Almere. The province of Flevoland, which contains Almere, is largely composed of large polders constructed after the IJsselmeer was created. My Lonely Planet guide describes the province as:

"Flevoland, the Netherlands' 12th and youngest province, is a masterpiece of Dutch hydroengineering. In the early 1920s an ambitious scheme went ahead to reclaim more than 1400 sq km of land - an idea mooted as far back as the 17th century. The completion of the Afsluitdijk...paved the way for the creation of Flevoland."

Then the book goes on to describe Flevoland's cities as "grindingly dull places, laid out in unrelieved grid patterns." and doesn't mention Almere, a city of nearly 200 000 people, at all.

The shore of the IJsselmeer is lined in several places with large arrays of windmills.

I arrived in Almere, travelling mostly on high-speed, bordered motorways (borders of trees block out much of the road noise from surrounding areas, but conceal those areas from view from the motorway), at around dinnertime. Many businesses in the Netherlands close earlier than I'm used to, such that approximately nothing was open by the time I found a parking meter in downtown Almere. Some sort of festival or event was just packing up in one of the main squares, and the local McDonald's was full of children. Even here, so far from the usual tourist areas, the employees understood my English (smiling and waiting for the machine to show me numbers makes things easier).

I ate at McDonald's, rather than looking for something more "authentically Dutch", in reaction to my Lonely Planet guide. If I'm going to be in a cultural wasteland, I might as well dive fully into this dull grey nothingness. Having said that, I have no problem with McDonald's or their food; you get what you expect, at least. Plus, I was at the edge of a large mall in a concrete jungle built from recently-drained seabed within the past few decades. Throw some grime on everything and add a few flying cars and it would be a great stand-in for Blade Runner.

My Lonely Planet guide was more-or-less correct about most things, even if it sometimes takes a condescending tone, so I relied on it again and chose a bed-and-breakfast in Amersfoort as my first choice for the evening. I didn't want to drive in any big cities (parking is death), but I put together a vague plan in my head to try for Amersfoort first, then look for a motel or something in Utrecht if accomodations were very busy.

Serena was able to locate not only the B&B in its four-centuries-old building, but also the best way to enter the old town center of Amersfoort. The B&B itself was not very well marked, not with big signs or other clear indications that I was naively expecting for a place that charges money to sleep there. I found a big black door that seemed unlikely to be for a simple residence, and I knocked. I was let in, and at the desk made the happy discovery that they were far from full even on this lovely weekend, and their prices were quite reasonable - about 70 Euros for my own room with a shared bathroom (shared with nobody else - they were much less than 1/2 full) and a place to park my car down the street.

Having woken up very early after a noisy night of limited sleep, I was more tired than I expected when I got myself settled into my room, and I crashed on the very comfortable bed at some embarassingly early hour. The evening light was lovely, but I couldn't pull myself together enough to explore the town. Instead I resolved to spend as much time the next day here before moving on with my explorations.

Friday Fish: Hiodon alosoides

2011-08-26T23:00:00.000-06:00

The goldeye, one of two species of "mooneyes", family Hiodontidae, endemic but widespread in the freshwaters of central, northern North America. Presumably, there are some near me here in Saskatchewan.

Image from the Smithsonian

Friday Fish: Pegasus volitans

2011-08-12T23:00:00.000-06:00

A seamoth, family Pegasidae, order Pegasiformes. This is a very small and very strange family; my Fishes of the World, 2nd Edition (Nelson, 1984) describes a single genus, with five species, and only this family in the order. It also describes the family as

"Body oddly shaped (broad and depressed), encased in bony plates; mouth small and toothless, beneath a long flattened rostrum (formed by fused nasals), with an unusual mechanism for protrusion of the jaws...

Image from WildSingapore's flickr page, here.

Friday Fish: Emblemaria hypacanthus

2011-08-05T21:30:00.000-06:00

The Gulf Signal-Blenny, a member of the family Chaenopsidae, of the order Perciformes.

Image from the Encyclopedia of Life.

Friday Fish: Albula vulpes

2011-07-29T22:40:00.001-06:00

I have reverted to my old method of choosing a Friday Fish: open my fish taxonomy book to a random page, and read about orders and families until a genus or species name appears. This is the very widespread, tropical bonefish, though it may be a species complex with several cryptic species.

Photo from and taken by (Flickr photostream of) Brian Gratwicke.

Friday Fish: Gymnothorax funebris

2011-07-22T22:25:00.000-06:00

The Green Moray, a member of the species-rich family Muraenidae, order Anguiliformes (the true eels). This photo was sent to me by Necator - thank you very much!

Netherlands 2011: Overall Impressions

2011-07-16T20:50:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, late enough to be encroaching on today, I returned from a two-week trip to the Netherlands. The first week was for a workshop and conference on the nitrogen cycle, and the second was vacation.

I had never really visited the Netherlands before, aside from some family vacations when I was 11 or 12, so I had some expectations but very little solid knowledge of what to expect. There are of course a number of stereotypical views of the Netherlands among English-speakers such as myself, including windmills, dykes, and Amsterdam's red light district. I saw all of those things, and I'll write about them in more detail in planned upcoming posts, but before my trip I hit upon a slightly different theme for my vacation: big engineering. The Dutch have a long history of taking on really large, landscape-scale improvement projects; about half the country is very close to or below sea level, and famously the people of the Netherlands have claimed some fairly large chunks of seafloor for themselves as land to live on. I have an odd sort of fondness for really big engineering projects - dams, bridges, road networks, et cetera - and this small country seems to teem with such things. In the end, I discovered a more general category of Dutch achievements, beyond the list of Dutch Big Engineering.

I flew to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport via Minneapolis/St. Paul on June 30, a total trip time of somewhat more than 11 hours. That's not hugely impressive by international travel standards, and I was lucky enough to have two seats to myself on the longer 8-hour leg over the Atlantic. Travelling east, I have found I need to squeeze two days into a period considerably less than 48 hours long; this means I need to sleep for at least a few hours even if I'm not particularly sleepy. I was able to catch about 4 hours of sleep that short night, in two roughly-two-hours-long blocks. I was pretty tired upon landing, but overall OK as far as jet-lag was concerned.

Somewhere over eastern North America, just before my Delta flight served dinner.

Close to the Dutch coast, a taste of things to come: an impressive array of offshore wind turbines, and a fleet of what I assume to be ships tending the turbines - they were showing no wakes, so I think those ships were waiting nearby, for what purpose I do not know. Other ships in the area (Rotterdam is a very, very busy port and is not far away) were showing clear wakes from our altitude when I took these pictures.

The North Sea entrance to the Noordzee canal that links Amsterdam to the ocean.

Customs at Schiphol was fairly disinterested in my visit, and I was through with my baggage rather quickly. As is typical for my visits to Europe, I got on the wrong train at first, but some friendly fellow-passengers were happy to help me out, and after waiting about 10 minutes at the Amsterdam-Zuid train station I was on the correct train to Nijmegen*. Rather than attempt to navigate the surely-excellent local public transit, I just took a taxi to the hotel where the workshop and conference would be held. It was in the taxi that I first met an interesting difference from my expectations: the driver's English was very good, but he would frequently pause and admit he didn't know a word. Unlike my trip to Norway last year (which I still haven't written up, or edited very many photos, ugh I'm bad at this blog thing sometimes), the people of the Netherlands are good at English, rather than perfectly fluent (better than many native speakers) like the Norwegians. I do not want to suggest that the Dutch don't speak English, but at the population level the level of English fluency in Norway was higher. In Norway, people spoke to me in English first more than half of the time, and switched instantly when it became apparent I knew no Norwegian if they started in that language. In the Netherlands, people talked to me in Dutch, and in many cases did not switch to English if I was not perfectly clear about my ignorance of their language (for short interactions, like paying for things in a shop, I relied on the "smile and nod" method). In both countries, I was flattered and a bit embarrassed that so many people were willing to accommodate me; I feel somewhere between unfairly privileged and decadent when I travel in places with such a high level of English-as-a-second-language skill - I feel a bit guilty that I have to make no effort at all to be understood even when so far from home.

* Weirdly, my spellchecker (Open Office Writer v. 3) suggested the word "Nitrogen" when it encountered "Nijmegen"; the conference was about the nitrogen cycle.

The view from the terrace (terras) of the Golden Tulip Val Monte hotel. Such a view, from an elevated place overlooking a valley, is quite rare in the Netherlands, and in fact the distant ridge-line is in Germany.

We went on a guided tour of the town of Nijmegen one evening at the workshop, and because I like bridges one of my fellow attendees offered to take my picture in front of this one. "Captain Morgan" occurred to me here.

Another look at the Nijmegen bridge, over the river Waal, without me goofing off in front.

The tour ended at a local pub, which served a wide variety of very, very good beer. I went for one of their Belgian imports.

Bram is from Belgium, so he was satisfied with the choice of bar, rather than excited as I was.

I'll talk more about the workshop for early-career scientists and the conference in an upcoming post. The last day (and day of my talk) was Thursday, July 7. After the late-afternoon closing remarks, a group of us travelled to Amsterdam. Three of my companions had flights back to North America from Schiphol the following morning, but one other, Andy's flight wasn't until Saturday morning, so he and I found a hostel room to split and see as much of Amsterdam as we could on Thursday night and during the day on Friday.

Taken from a table where Andy and I ate pannekoeken in Amsterdam. I really like the continental European tradition of open-air cafes on the sidewalk in the cities and towns (at least when the weather is good).

Speaking of cafes, there's a bit of a special vocabulary when talking about places to eat and drink in the Netherlands. The term "coffee shop" is reserved for places that really only sell coffee as an afterthought; these are the places that sell marijuana in various forms (smoke-able, sometimes pre-rolled, or baked into various foods). "Cafe" actually means a place that really has more in common with a pub; they usually sell only a few varieties of sandwiches or similar quick foods, but have a variety of beers and will serve mixed drinks and wine. A pancake house (Pannekoekenhuis) serves a fantastic selection of Dutch-style pancakes (thin, very often savoury rather than sweet, suitable for lunch and dinner as well as breakfast), but are actually not particularly common. Tea houses (Theehuis - sometimes Dutch really is very easy for an English-speaker) are uncommon, but do serve food. Basically, "lunchroom" comes closest to an English word for a place that sells lunch-type foods. And I still don't really know what to call a place like Starbucks (maybe Koffiehuis?).

Bicycles, canals, bridges - this is Amsterdam, but in fact could be any one of a great many Dutch towns. I was told Amsterdam wasn't "really Dutch", but it did have some features that were very stereotypical of the country.

I picked up a rental car at Schiphol airport on Saturday morning, travelling with Andy to the airport first thing in the morning. In my driving around the country, I discovered a surprising (to me) diversity of landscapes. I was expecting almost uniformly to find crowded towns separated by high-intensity agriculture on very flat, quite wet ground. Such terrain certainly exists, and probably accounts for a large majority of the Netherlands' territory, but there were many other places to see, as well.

A view along the beach to the northeast at Zuid-Kennermerland National Park, on the North Sea just south of the Noordzee canal.

The modern (I would even venture to say "futuristic") incarnation of the classic Dutch structure: windmills! Actually wind-turbines, but windmills is a more fun word to say. Northern provinces (Noord-Holland and Fryslan, especially) are covered with thousands of these. Some people don't like the way these look, but I think they're great.

I was told sheep are grazed primarily on the sides of the dijks (I prefer the Dutch spelling) to control the grass and prevent destabilization of the structure.

A view from the monument facilities near the middle of the Afsluitdijk, one of the Big Engineering projects I'd explicitly set out to see. I have to admit I went full-tourist at this place, and bought several cheesy souvenirs, including a 5-cent piece pressed with an image of the Afsluitdijk by turning a big crank.

Roads often run either along the top or next to the dijks. This one was fairly typical - speed limit 60 km/h, and looking to me as a single lane but with two-way traffic, plus bicycles. Passing anything but the narrowest oncoming traffic required me dropping my right-side wheels into the grass.

Roads like the above are the main reason I was so surprised to see so many really big American cars in the Netherlands - Chrysler and Chevy are significant portions of the Dutch car market. As someone who drove a Dodge Caravan for more than seven years, I find the sight of such vehicles on Dutch roads to be mind-blowing. I didn't take very many pictures from the driver's seat inside the towns, mainly because I was too busy watching out for bicycles and pedestrians while squeezing down narrow lanes, and I was driving a fairly small car! I saw many quite new Chevy Z71 pickups, Chrysler minivans, and Jeep Grand Cherokees, all of which are wide enough to have rubber on both edges of the pavement on some roads.

Amersfoort, what I came to think of as a typical Dutch town. The old town center, several hundred years old, is surrounded by layers of newer development. Some towns have had some rather severe urban renewal in their cores (either by warfare, especially in the strip of the country most directly affected by Operation Market Garden in 1944, or by demented city planners in the 1970's and 1980's), but many (most?) have intact old town centers.

Hoge Veluwe National Park, another surprising landscape of sandy soil, dry woodland, heath, and some dunes.

A statue of Christiaan de Wet, prominent general on the Boer side during the Boer war in South Africa in 1899-1901 (also known as the Three Years War) and briefly a president of the Orange Free State. This was a surprise find in Hoge Veluwe, for a number of reasons. I'm planning a post about the national parks I visited, so I'll talk more about this statue then.

A lift-bridge on the way into the old town center of Den Bosch (the full name of the town is 's-Hertogenbosch, which I managed to pronounce correctly once).

The Oosterscheldekering, largest of the storm surge barriers that, along with dijks, dams, and other structures, constitute the Delta Works. This is the other Dutch Big Engineering project I'd set out to visit before my trip.

A windmill at Oosterschelde National Park, not far from the Oosterscheldekering. There were no barriers or restricted access to this one, so I was able to get right up to it. I'm pretty happy with this picture.

Another view of the same windmill. The windmills especially became part of my realization that I admire many Dutch achievements, beyond just the terrific examples of large-scale landscape management.

A cheese shop! I love cheese, and so do the Dutch.

A surprising find of a much less pleasant sort: part of the remains of Kamp Vught, a small concentration camp ('only' 31 000 prisoners over 5 years) from the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. I had thought all of the Jews and other "undesirables" captured by the Nazis in the Netherlands had been deported to camps in Germany or further east, but this camp was operated as a forced-labour camp and was every bit as horrible as the rest of the Nazi "final solution". The Dutch experience of the Second World War was quite different from that of any English-speaking country, due to their total occupation by Nazi Germany and the resulting... well, everything. I'll need to think about this some more before I can write about it intelligibly.

Obligatory bench shot. Almost every semi-serious photographer I have talked to is a big fan of benches, both as subjects of photos and as a nice place to rest during a long day of photography. There are many benches in the Netherlands.

The Stadhuis of Delft. I had wanted to visit this town because of its excellent museums and general reputation as a very pretty and very Dutch place. It was difficult to evaluate these claims, because I could not find the museum I most wanted to visit, and it rained heavily all day.

Cheese! This is a ball of boerkass (literally, "farmer's cheese") that I bought from a roadside stand, along with some cherries to eat in the car, in Zeeland after visiting some of the Delta Works. Bringing it back into Canada caused a bit of trouble with customs, but in the end they let me bring it home. I haven't yet decided if I will eat it a little bit at a time with nearly every meal, as the Dutch do, or as a special occasion, perhaps with a bottle of wine.

I've got several posts planned, and about 1400 more pictures to sort through, for my Dutch vacation. The very short version is: I had a truly excellent time, and I very much want to return.

Sunday Drive 63: Bald Tires and Wet Gravel

2011-06-26T22:40:00.007-06:00

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Start: 331429.0
End: 331700.5
Driven: 271.5
This week's album: Reanimation by Linkin Park

This morning I realized I'd woken up too late to participate in today's autocross with the SSCC, but my tires are in pretty rough shape in any case so I hadn't really planned on melting more of them onto the parking lot of the Credit Union Centre. Still, I felt like I needed a drive, bad tires or no. I remembered I'd last driven Saskatchewan Highway 784 from east to west back in mid-winter (Sunday Drive 46, January 16 of this year), when it was covered in snow and in some places thick enough that I had worried about getting stuck. I thought I'd check it out when the risks were from liquid, rather than solid water.

It had rained a few times over the last few days, and the sky was still full of various clouds. Driving north up Idylwylde Drive in Saskatoon I could see I was headed towards at least a few big dark clouds.

The last time I tried to get onto Highway 784 from Highway 16 I had nearly missed the turnoff. This time, I turned too early, and ended up driving south on a "range road", a four-digit gravel road that took me back towards Saskatoon's northwest neighbourhoods. When I realized this, I turned right (west) on the first decent-looking cross road, which turned out to be in very poor condition.

This view of this range road is of a better stretch; during the worse parts I was concentrating on not sliding off the road too much to take any pictures. I got good and slideways on this road, at one point I think my car might have been rotated as much as 30 degrees off of my direction of travel.

I tired of the frantic antics of the road I was on, and I found a slightly larger and possibly drier road to take me north towards Highway 784. This one involved fewer fishtails, but the ruts were sufficient many times to render my steering superfluous - I had to stop myself from trying to correct too much my small skids, as I was worried I'd suddenly succeed and send myself straight off the road.

Eventually I reached the comparatively good surface of Highway 784, and turned west. This highway runs from its intersection with the Yellowhead branch of the Trans-Canada Highway (Highway 16) just northwest of Saskatoon to Highway 4, about 30 km north of the town of Biggar. It's almost a straight line, with only two deviations of sufficient size to appear on maps.

I stopped for a break on 784 near this... facility which I think is a quarry for sand and/or gravel.

While I was stopped near the quarry, I noticed a large number of red-wing blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) on the fenceposts, and they seemed unable to decide what to do between yell at each other, yell at me, or seek shelter from the approaching storm.

I drove along 784 until I reached the valley where it crosses Eagle Creek, a small waterway that drains into the North Saskatchewan River just north of this crossing. I've stopped at this bridge nearly every time I drive on this highway, I find the small valley and the creek very visually intriguing. A flock of Cliff Swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) appeared shortly after I stopped, and proceeded to keep the mosquitoes away from me.

I think these swallows may be nesting under the bridge, though there are some fairly steep eroded-soil bluffs not far downstream that they might be using.

Highway 784 climbs a ridgeline into a small patch of forest, then over some open parkland before meeting Highway 4. This bit of elevation (I think there's less than 100m difference between the surface of Eagle Creek and the top of this ridge) is sufficient to prevent too much water building up within the Highway itself, and that part of the drive was over much less rutted and gooey dirt and gravel. My tires are so bad, however, that I still managed to step the back end out a little going around one of the four large, sweeping curves of this highway.

I drove into the town of Biggar, advertised on Highway 4 as having "ALL SERVICES", and filled my gas tank at the Esso station. Even though I have yet to upload the pictures or write up my adventure, in April I ran out of gas in southwest Saskatchewan because the small towns there all contain Co-op gas stations that are closed on Sundays. Esso stations, at least, are open on weekends.

Highway 14 also has a few curves, and the pavement means I was in no danger at all of sliding into the ditch...

...but most of it is really boring straight road.

Highway 14 took me home, though I did stop two more times, to overcome the boredom of this large highway. Also, pictures, of course.

Looking east towards Saskatoon, about 35 km from home.

Friday Fish: Holacanthus ciliaris

2011-06-24T21:43:00.002-06:00

Necator sent me a zip file with pictures from his adventures. This one looked the easiest to identify, and I'm pretty confident that this is indeed the Queen Angelfish. I think this picture is better than several on Fishbase. Nicely done Necator, and thanks for sending it to me!

Friday Fish: Galeorhinus galeus

2011-06-03T18:15:00.000-06:00

The Tope Shark, a smaller elasmobranch with a wide distribution in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans. Picture from here (Hannah, am I close?).

Friday Fish: Holocentrus rufus

2011-05-20T21:48:00.003-06:00

A Squirrelfish, Family Holocentridae, subfamily Holocentrinae. Picture from here.

Edit: Reader and all-around excellent person Necator sent me a picture of this species he took while on vacation! Hurray! If anybody else reading this blog feels like sending me fish pictures I'm always happy to get them.

Friday Fish: Calamoichthys calabaricus

2011-05-07T20:00:00.001-06:00

This is one of the world's only surviving bichirs, an order of fishes (Polypteriformes) lumped in with some other weirdos (such as last week's coelocanth) that are not the ray-finned fishes that most people are more familiar with. In ichthyology and evolutionary-history classes, they always seem to get listed with the other oddballs next to or after the "main event" fishes, which in practice always seems to be composed primarily of the Perciformes. That's a rant for another day, if ever. There appears to have been some recent systematic work on the bichirs, as the alternate genus name Erpetoichthys also shows up.

Picture from here.

Brummell and Siciliano 2011

2011-05-07T19:45:00.003-06:00

Martin E. Brummell and Steven D. Siciliano, Measurement of Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Nitrous oxide, and Water Potential in Soil Ecosystems. In Martin G. Klotz and Lisa Y. Stein, editors: Methods in Enzymology, Vol. 496, Burlington: Academic Press, 2011, pp. 115-137.

Thursday morning I recieved an email from Elsevier, providing a link to the PDF version of the book chapter / journal article in the soon-to-be-printed volume 496 of Methods in Enzymology. This brings my lifetime total of published scientific articles to two.

Methods in Enzymology is a slightly odd journal, and to me appears to lie about halfway between a typical scientific journal and a book composed of chapters written by various authors but with an editor (or multiple editors) who is / are also authors or co-authors of one or more chapters; I refer to books like that as "edited volumes". Certainly our work was subject to peer-review, just as with a normal scientific journal. Our article is chapter 5 of this book, which is itself volume 496 of the journal. The editor of each volume is different, though there are people at Elsevier (the publisher, Academic Press is some level of organization within Elsevier, I think) responsible for some editing functions; typsetting and such was handled by Elsevier, but the editors of this volume made decisions about the peer-review process.

The copyright agreement we signed with Elsevier means I'm not allowed to simply post the PDF on a publicly-accessible website, but I'm allowed to email it to people who ask for it.

Here's the abstract, which I'm sure will convince most people reading this of just how boring a person I really am, fun pictures of flat places notwithstanding.

New technologies in trace gas detection are revolutionizing our ability to study soil microbiological ecosystems. Field-deployable infrared-spectroscopy detectors capable of rapidly measuring multiple analyte gases simultaneously allow estimates of soil:atmosphere gas exchange and below-ground gas concentrations, and production dynamics across divergent ecosystems, creating opportunities to study interactions between microorganisms, soils, atmospheres, and global cycling, as well as interactions between different gases. The greenhouse gases CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O can be measured in the field and compared to each other to uncover links between the biochemical pathways responsible for the production and consumption of these gases. We have developed techniques using a nondestructive, Fourier-transform infrared detector under remote field conditions in three campaigns in the Canadian High Arctic to measure highly variable gas processes in soils.

Sunday Drive 60: Blackstrap Federal Riding

2011-05-01T22:40:00.000-06:00

This is a short post, I wanted to get some pictures and content up while it's still almost-topical, before tomorrow's federal election.

Start km: 329392.3
End km: 329953.1
Driven: 560.8 km

Today I drove most of the perimeter of the Canadian federal electoral riding of Blackstrap, the riding I currently reside in, and the riding in which I will cast a vote tomorrow. I did not set out with any partisan agenda on this drive, I just wanted to see my neighbours, and see the places that will cast votes with me.

Here are a few pictures, I'll put together a more thorough description of today's adventure in a few days, when I'm not so tired.

Friday Fish: Latimeria chalumnae

2011-04-29T22:48:00.002-06:00

The Coelocanth. The most famous "living fossil", the lobe-finned fish that lives in the sea (rather than muddy and prone to dehydration tropical fresh waters), and has accidentally been associated with South Africa's former racist government. They give birth to live young, which should provide a stumble for any wishing to apply the term "primitive" to these famous-but-poorly studied fish.

Photo from here: http://marinebio.org/species.asp?id=54

Friday Fish: Hysterocarpus traski

2011-04-15T23:49:00.005-06:00

Hysterocarpus traski is listed in the 2nd edition of Fishes of the World (Nelson, 1984) as the exceptional species in the family Embiotocidae, for having 15-19 dorsal spines, rather than the 6-11 of the other species in this family, also known as the surfperches.

Like the guppies I used to study, these fish are viviparous, they give birth to live young, and the male's anal fin is modified as an intromitent organ (i.e. a wang). At least according to this book, with this section apparently based on Tarp (1952), the family is restricted to the coastal North Pacific (rarely in fresh water). I know I've met members of this family, though probably not this species (judging from the picture), when scuba diving around Vancouver Island and Howe Sound near the city of Vancouver.

Tarp, F.H. 1952. A revision of the family Embiotocidae (the surfperches). Fish Bull. Calif Dep. Fish Game 88: 99 pp.

Photo from here.

ZOMG

2011-04-13T23:10:00.000-06:00

OK, it's been more than 7 months, and for that I apologize. It's likely the majority of my posts around here will start with an apology like that, but them's the breaks.

Anyways, just a quick note to say "still alive". Not sure why I'm writing right now, I just felt like writing I think. Which is odd, considering how much writing / rewriting / analyzing / reanalyzing / proofreading / editing / designing / et cetera on my computer at school I've been doing for the past... say... 7 months or so.

News, I suppose, is in order.
1. Not going North this summer, which is sad. Everything was lining up nicely for me to spend an excessive amount of time at Resolute Bay, but funding fell through at the final hurdle.
2. On the other hand, this does give me time to get some serious lab work and data generation done here in Saskatoon. Back to the molecular grind, in other words - which I'm actually looking forward to, I've been telling people "yes, I do PCR" but in that uncertain, hypothetical sense that I'm sure came through in my tone of voice and body language. It's one thing to say "I do PCR", it's another to say "I'm running a PCR right now, stop bugging me this damn pipetting robot is trying to kick-start the inevitable robot uprising again and I'm a little busy suppressing several of the metal ones".
3. I have been on many Sunday Drives since my last post, and I have not improved noticeably in my ability to edit & upload the photographs (and rare video) in anything like a timely fashion. However, I have taken steps that I feel are starting to address this imbalance.
3.1. I have purchased a "pro" Flickr account, visible here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/49837331@N06/ Link for those whose browsers don't like that URL.
3.2. I have purchased Lightroom 3.3, for about $100 using the 'education' discount. I will argue that my educational position fully qualifies me for discounts on photo-editing and photo-management software - a handful of my photos have been published by University publications!
4. I guess I should follow up that last point - back in the fall, a person whose job description includes publicity things for the Faculty of Agriculture and Bioresources approached me about having photos from the 2010 field season in the High Arctic. I did indeed, I put some together and sent them to her, and a few showed up in an article about our work in the University's internal newspaper - uncredited, of course. Oh well. Minor additional upside: she also shoots a Pentax, so there's a possibility for further gear-geekery in future.
5. More driving: I joined the Saskatoon Sports Car Club, and was nearly immediately elected to the exective (with only 17 active members, pretty much everybody has to take turns as director at large, or president, or treasurer, sooner or later). We've got about 18 autocross events planned between the end of May and the beginning of September, and I'm planning to get to every event that I'm in town for (and that my car is up for). New tires are in order, anyways.
6. Good news on the funding / scholarship side of things, but it hasn't been officially announced yet so I can't talk about it. It's very good news, though, and I am pleasantly surprised. Also, somebody done screwed up, 'cuz I sure don't deserve it.
7. Plenty of other things are in the works for the coming year. No promises, but I plan to avoid neglecting this place for quite so long an interval.

One of the reasons I like Flickr is because it supposedly streamlines linking pictures to a blog, as I will now attempt to demonstrate.

Yes, my Flickr username is "Execudork". I chose that name long before I considered the possibility that one day I'd have to spell it out over the phone to my mother. Could have been worse, I suppose. Thanks, Internet!

Canada's Best Drivers

2010-09-03T19:30:00.000-06:00

Recently, I was asked my opinion on the television show "Canada's Worst Driver" (Discovery Channel). Personally, I think the show is lame. I don't want to see bad drivers, I want to see good drivers, drivers who are better than me, awesome drivers.

I want to see Canada's Best Drivers. Instead of useless twits making idiotic mistakes, I'd like to see excellent drivers show us how it's done. Real-world driving situations, real-world greatness. The upside of 'reality TV', where the rare, truly excellent "everyday people" are discovered and can show off.

I want to see the school bus driver from Thunder Bay hold a 3-axle, 10-wheel powerslide to keep the bus on the road and out of the half-frozen lake. I want to see the Montreal inner-city van courier dance in traffic. I want to see the taxi driver who saves his clients tens of dollars, and his employer thousands, taking the sneaky back routes that avoid the permanent mess that are the normal approaches from Pearson onto the 401. I want to ride along in-car with the otherwise unremarkable man who humiliates modified Subarus in his Hyundai on weekends, sideways in a dirt parking lot behind a community college. I want to hear the sound of a perfectly tuned, just-rebuilt 4-cylinder Honda engine in a 1982 Accord with half a million kilometres on the odometer. I want to see real winter driving, as a 10-year-old pickup truck blasts through drifting snow on a lonely highway in northern Alberta.

Why does this show not exist?

Sunday Drive 31: Cannot Find Anything

2010-08-08T22:30:00.001-06:00

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Start: 314912
End: 315172
Driven: 260 km

Sorry, no map for this one, Google Maps doesn't recognize the little grid roads I spent so much of my time on.

Today I had intended to drive up Highway 41 to the town of Aberdeen, then north up 785 to the Hague ferry, across the South Saskatchewan River, and continue north to the regional parks at Rosthern and Waldheim. But, today (and yesterday, too, under slightly different circumstances) was characterized by an apparent inability on my part to actually find some of the things I was looking for.

Getting out of the city was straightforward enough, with the weather clear and very warm, with a few clouds. I needed gasoline, but I wanted to burn down the contents of my fuel tank because yesterday I'd dropped about 1/3 of a can of Seafoam in there as part of an engine-conditioning procedure, and I wanted to remove most of that before getting all homeopathic with it. I was going through the town of Aberdeen, a few kilometres removed from Highway 41, anyways, and the sign said a gas station was there. It was, but was a bit hard to find.

The local station in Aberdeen, "Gido's", has one gasoline pump and one diesel pump, behind the fairly nondescript store.

Route 785 continues north from Aberdeen, through very gently rolling farmland.

The Hague ferry was closed*, oddly. As I approached it I could see the ferry reaching the far shore, carrying a tractor. However, there was a permanent-looking sign at the dock stating it was closed, and another driver there told me she thought it was not coming back to pick us up. Oh well, I'll just drive north to Highway 312 and take that bridge, instead.

* A quick check of the Saskatchewan Highways website reveals the Hague ferry is closed for repairs. I'm not sure what the story is with that tractor I saw on it, though.

On my way north along roads not clearly described on my in-car map, I ended up back at a place I'd been before, the Battle of Fish Creek National Historic Site. Whoops. Then across the weird little ravine (presumably a branch of Fish Creek) with the pleasant marking "impassible when wet". It was dry, and I crossed successfully.

Not pictured: dangerous water.

Gabriel Bridge, on Highway 312, was open as usual when I reached it.

Rosthern is a small-ish town, and boasts a local regional park with the same name. I failed to find it today, possibly it can be accessed only from Highway 11, where I did not wish to venture (because Highway 11 is so very, very boring).

On previous drives along Highway 312, I'd vowed to someday visit this picnic table, as it's the only thing of any significance between the towns of Rosthern and Waldheim. This is a mythic picnic table, the legendary picnic table of north-central Saskatchewan. There is no table. The table is a lie.

I did, however, manage to find the Waldheim regional park, which appears to consist entirely of a very small campground adjacent to a medium-sized golf course.

This small pond is apparently quite deep. It's also nearly completely covered with surface aquatic plants, suggesting a certain degree of stagnation below. I'm not sure I'd want to go swimming with that level of slime, even if it were completely safe.

Boba Fett also did not go swimming with pond scum, but did search the links for scum of a more terrestrial and rebellious variety. No bounties today, but no green fees*, either.

* For Imperially-sanctioned bounty hunters. Regular Imperials are expected to pay, using an "honor box".

On my way back south towards Saskatoon, I remembered how boring and slow-traffic-laden Highway 12 can be, so I turned off at Warman (really, only a few km north of Saskatoon) and drove to the Clarkboro ferry. This was open, and surprisingly busy - four cars unloaded on our side, and I shared a ride over with two pick-up trucks.

Hmmm... road dust.

I don't think I was quite dusty enough. Time for some minimum-definition-of-a-road driving. I scraped bottom on most of those plants, but not on anything harder (like rocks).

I now know what is required to close a road in rural Saskatchewan. The nearest farm has to annex it for crop production, apparently.

Just before I got home I took my car to the car wash, and blasted all of that dust off. That was quite satisfying.

Sunday Drive 13: Northeastern Square

2010-05-09T20:05:00.005-06:00

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Start: 309165 km
End: 309413 km
Driven: 248 km

I drove east out Highway 5, enjoying the clear winter conditions. I wasn't the only one out playing in winter, there were plenty of people zipping around the mostly empty, snow-covered fields on snowmobiles.

It was very, very bright out. But it wasn't too cold, nor particularly windy. A very nice day, in other words.

Highway 5 is a pretty important highway in Saskatchewan, so I expect it gets ploughed fairly quickly when it snows. The generally open terrain allows wind to blow snow off of the road surface and into the ditches, which helps keep things clear, too. This means the ditches fill with snow; this is good for the snowmobilers, but any car, including powerful 4x4s that slide into a ditch are almost guaranteed to get stuck.

I turned north on Highway 2, which on my maps appears as any other central-Saskatchewan highway: straight and flat. But this part of the province is the Minichinas Hills, forming prairie pothole terrain. The highway engineers who designed and built Highway 2 apparently felt this was sufficient justification to put a few curves in the route, much to my delight.

An actual curve in a Saskatchewan Highway!

Back to the usual...

More curves! Oh happy day!

I felt a strange desire to drive something massively overpowered, thoroughly impractical, and distinctly Italian at ludicrously unsafe speeds on this 50 km stretch of Highway 2. My little old Japanese beater was fun, too, though. At Wakaw I turned west onto Highway 312, the same road upon which I'd seen a coyote back in November. It's actually a pretty boring road, although the excellent weather partly made up for that.

Despite being a bit less travelled than either Highway 5 or 2, Highway 312 was also completely clear.

I reached Rosthern, and discovered the local park, Valley Regional Park, is very close to the main highway. However, the entrance to the park was not ploughed, and I didn't feel like getting my car stuck (again).

There are deep furrows from previous, more adventuresome wintertime visitors to the park. Other, shallower tracks were made by snowmobiles, which tend to skate over snow that my car would sink deeply into.

I completed my journey back to Saskatoon on Highway 12, running south from the broad bend in the road where 312 angles south before joining the bigger trunk. Once back in Saskatoon, I noticed I was being followed by a car very similar to my own, a late-80s Honda Prelude. This isn't particularly noteworthy - I know of at least 4 other such vehicles besides my own in Saskatoon (a blue one, two reds, and a black), but this one was running a light configuration that I would like to emulate.

Note the fog lights are lit, but the main headlights are off and popped down. I would like to run my car like this during the day, with the fog lights improving my visibility (especially important on two-lane blacktop) but the headlights down for (slightly) improved aerodynamics.

I have seen some instructions on Prelude-specific forums on-line, but I have yet to really explore the electrical system of my car. Currently, the only way I can get the fog lights to come on is to have the headlights on and up; turning off the headlights after turning on the fog lights turns everything off. The driver following me may have added after-market lights, another option I've considered: in the picture, his fog lights are slightly to the inside of the headlights, whereas mine are vertically in line. I've noticed, though, among the wrecks I've picked over at junkyards (n = 2) that fog lights vary considerably between otherwise very similar cars.

Sunday Drive 12: Stuck!

2010-04-17T20:55:00.000-06:00

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Start: Unknown
End: Unknown + small fraction
Driven: About 20 metres

I had been planning to drive to Regina to participate in Ice Dice rally-cross-on-a-frozen-lake, but the previous week had been exceptionally warm, and I did not think a race on a melting lake surface would actually happen. All of my plans and considerations came to nought, of course, when a major storm rolled in on Friday afternoon, blanketing the city and most of the province with a thick layer of very troublesome snow.

Being rather foolish in any case, I decided I wanted to drive around on Sunday anyways, to see the transformation of the landscape. I made it about 15 metres down the alley behind my apartment before ramming a snowbank and getting thoroughly stuck. In my (feeble) defence, it was overcast, and there was very little contrast at ground level; I didn't realize the snow in front of me was 50 cm deep until I got out my shovel and started digging.

Yup. Stuck. I'm an idiot.

In trying to dig myself out, I discovered I'd rammed the snowbank with sufficient momentum to drive the car up onto the snow, before the weight of the car compressed it into firmer hard-pack. A large but unknown fraction of the weight of the car was resting on the oilpan, pushing down on some quite hard snow. Even when I cleared the snow from around the front wheels, they just span ineffectually, as they were not actually pressed firmly against the surface.

It took me almost an hour to dig the snow out from under the oilpan and get the car moving backwards. Then my neighbour came out and helped me get back into my parking space, an ignominious but prudent end to my little misadventure.

Sunday Drive 11: Running Down the Railroad

2010-04-10T14:50:00.000-06:00

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Start: 308908 km
End: 309154 km
Driven: 246 km

Saskatoon is a city at an arbitrary location. There is no confluence of rivers, shore of a Great Lake, ocean coast, valley opening up from the hills, or any other obvious natural terrain feature to justify a trading post developing into a town and then into a city. What is here is the railroad. Saskatoon houses some large rail yards, and the city more-or-less owes its existence to the subtle grades across the landscape that railroad planners, nearly alone among people, pay attention to. So I decided to explore a bit along those lines.

A major rail route out of Saskatoon runs to the east by southeast; part of this track runs near my friends' house on the southern edge of town. It parallels Highway 16 for hundreds of kilometres, though the more-recent highway tends to stay a dozen or so kilometres from the tracks. There are rural, secondary and tertiary highways that stay closer to the tracks for portions of its length; the easiest access for me to one of these smaller roads was through the town of Bradwell.

Bradwell isn't big, but it's big enough to warrant a sign on the northern route of the TransCanada Highway for access. And it even has a few services, apparently.

It was a beautiful, clear sunny day; of course this means I spent some time driving straight into the low-hanging sun. My first glimpse of the railroad is here, in the form of a level crossing just ahead.

Rather than follow the road into the tiny town of Bradwell, I crossed the tracks then looped back along a dirt road that runs parallel to the tracks for a few hundred metres before re-crossing the tracks and running between the town's grain elevator and the railroad. Presumably this road exists because of that grain elevator. Unfortunately I didn't think to snap a picture as I cruised slowly under the loading arm hanging out from the elevator.

FLAT! I know I say this too much, but... look at it!

The main road that had been pavement going through Bradwell became dirt/gravel soon after, but at this time of year and in these conditions, a gravel road is actually easier to drive on than pavement. With little snow, frequent strong winds to blow snow away, and low temperatures, the gravel is frozen in place, and smooth ice cannot form. On pavement, snow compressed by passing vehicles doesn't blow away, and often forms quite slick ice patches.

A little ways beyond Bradwell, this slight bit of terrain broke the cue-ball surface of this part of the planet.
A pile of soil, that's been there long enough the road I was on dodges to the right to avoid it. What caused this?

This facility was hiding around the corner of the pile.

This is the Allan Potash Mine. According to the website of the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, this one mine is a globally-significant contributor to world fertilizer production.

The importance of this facility to world trade is shown here by the large number of bulk-carrier rail cars on a long spur apparently built specifically to carry the mine's output.

I have heard it said that the toxic algal blooms that frequently cause trouble on the Gulf of Mexico coast are the fault of Saskatchewan, because this province exports so much potash fertilizer to the vast agricultural fields of the American mid-west. Runoff from these farms fills the Mississippi river with huge concentrations of industrial-agricultural chemicals, which end up in the shallow near-shore waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico and cause the blooms. Saskatchewan's potash mines are not a key contributor to this: potash is K2CO3, and marine algae are limited neither by potassium nor carbonate supply (ocean water contains plenty of both); the blooms are triggered by the relaxation of the limits on their supply of phosphorus and nitrogen.

Beyond the mine lies the town of Allan, which I skirted around on Provincial Highway 763. This road passes through or near to a number of towns with unusual names. After Allan, I passed Zelma, Young, and Xena, before turning north at the town of Watrous. I was driving down the alphabetic line and didn't even know it! Look closely at a map of Saskatchewan, and you'll see the names of towns starting with sequential letters of the alphabet. From Bradwell to Watrous I crossed the end-points of two adjacent lines.

Near the north side of the town of Watrous is the Manitou and District Regional Park. Like the other Regional parks I've visited since I bought this car, this park was closed. Unlike those others, the gate was locked. Oh well, I probably would have gotten stuck in the snow had I been able to venture inside.

Continuing north on provincial highway 365, I reached the tiny resort town of Manitou Beach. Saskatchewan contains a large number of lakes sitting in isolated watersheds - liquid water has no way to reach the sea if it lands inside these basins. The resulting lakes and wetlands inside these watersheds vary in their chemical and biological characteristics - some are essentially freshwater, but many are saline to different degrees, and some contain Artemia spp. brine shrimp populations. Little Manitou lake is saltier than the ocean, and the resort here grew up from legends of medical benefits associated with bathing in or drinking the waters. There's very little such activity in winter, though.

Approaching Little Manitou lake.

I stopped in the small parking lot next to a lake-shore restaurant. I was hoping to see some indication of the possibility of driving onto the lake's surface, but I saw no boat ramps and no tire tracks on the surface - just some cross-country ski tracks. It took me a couple of minutes to clue in to the fact that no normal person drives onto a saline lake, because there's no point - there are no fish in this lake, which also eliminates the biggest reason to install a boat ramp.

Driving along the shore of Little Manitou lake.

Highway 365 crosses Little Manitou lake via a causeway near the eastern end of the lake. The field to my right is probably swampy wetland rather than either proper lake or regular prairie. The road is very close to the water level, I guess there's little variation in the height of the lake.

The terrain just north of Little Manitou lake is more parkland than open plains, with large patches of trees separating gently rolling fields.

Eventually I met up with Highway 16, and decided to follow it back home to Saskatoon. It's a pretty boring road.

Hahaha weeeee!!! Or something.

The Allan potash mine is visible from a long way away; the smoke it exhausts is visible from much further. According to Google Earth, the closest Highway 16 gets to the mine is about 6.5km; I think I took this picture from close to that point.

Sunday Drive 10: Back to Saskatoon & Spreading the Meme

2010-04-04T21:45:00.001-06:00

Saturday, January 10, 2010

I didn't keep very careful track of kilometre-age on my way back to Saskatoon from Calgary, nor was it a particularly interesting voyage – essentially nothing happened. If you don't count the near-miss I had when trying to pass. I saw a vehicle in the left (oncoming) lane far ahead of me, but because it was not showing any lights, I (foolishly) assumed it was the back end of a vehicle also travelling my way, also passing slower traffic. I was incorrect; it was the front of an oncoming pickup truck, one built before daytime running lights were mandated in Canada. My Prelude also predates that legislation, but I run with my headlights on when on 2-lane highways (and most other times, too).

Note the lack of danger, excitment, or anything at all interesting.

Rather than put up a tiny little post and call it a Sunday Drive, I thought I'd try to spread the meme a little. Despite my rather pathetic update schedule (or distinct lack thereof), I'm pretty sure I still have a few readers from various far-flung places. Of course, I could be delusional in this respect.

Most of my Sunday Drives take me on loops into the countryside with total drive-lengths of a few hundred kilometres. Since driving straight back on the same road I went out on is more boring than finding a different route, I tend to stray no further than about 150 km from my home in Saskatoon, as the proverbial corvid flies (NB: around here, the corvid in question is more likely a Magpie (Pica hudsonia) or a Raven (Corvus corax) than a common crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)).

So, taking a few other locations that I think some of my readers may call home, let's see if I can spot any places I'd visit on a Sunday Drive were I in that part of the world. Maps are from Google Maps, using the "Terrain" option.

Rockville, Maryland.
Well, this is pretty obvious, I think. Rockville is very close to Washington, D.C., where there are of course a large number of world-famous places to visit. I probably wouldn't want to drive to most of them, though, given the reputation for traffic jams and parking difficulties that Washington has. Sunday Subway, then.
But, more suitable for automobile travel are a large number of places outside of Washington. There must be some great beaches along Chesapeake bay, and I've long wanted to see that storied body of water in person. The western foothills of the central Appalachians are nearby in the opposite direction, and I'm a fan of a couple of TV shows set in Baltimore; it would be interesting to drive through the harbour area with a couple of screen shots of the second season of The Wire in hand, for example. And there surely are old American civil war battlefields around, so one could visit a re-enactment on the appropriate date.

London, Ontario.
I have relatives who live in or fairly near London, so of course if it was me, I could visit them. Of perhaps more general interest, I know there are some excellent vinyards and wineries nearby; I've been on two wine tours in my life (Okanogan Valley, BC, and Niagara Peninsula, ON), both times were great fun. There are also the shores of the great lakes Erie and Huron, plus the smaller-only-in-a-relative-sense Lake St. Clair. Some interesting Canadian history happened in this part of the country, and I expect there are a number of Provincial Parks and the like not too far away, as well. Also: the only Pilot Truck Stop in Canada is on the outskirts of Tilbury. Pilot are the best truck stops.

Coquitlam, British Columbia
Again, the list of obvious places to go is very long. Hope, at the point where the Fraser river spreads onto its floodplain from the mountain gorges, is only 134 km from Coquitlam. And I know from living in Burnaby that there are a large number of dirt and gravel roads among the hills and valleys lining both sides of that floodplain. A vehicle with better ground clearance might be a better choice in that environment than my Prelude. On the other hand, the Mission Speedway allows owners of sports cars (and wanna-be sports cars) to drive on a real racetrack (not just a boring oval) for a fee. But for no-fee just driving around, pretty much the entire Fraser valley is accessible even to an econobox.

Austin, Texas
There's a place called "Bee Cave" very close to Austin, plus a place called "Nameless" (it doesn't show up on the map at this scale, but Nameless is on Nameless Road! It would be worth the expenses to get vanity plates "NONE" and then get a speeding ticket on Nameless Road). Need I say more? Well, I will anyways. There are hills, lakes, creeks, and forests nearby, as well as a number of small towns that probably have The World's X-est Y in them. In my travels through the southeastern states, I found many interesting things in the triangles of land between portions of the Interstate network - and the way home can be express, because of those interstate highways. I'd be very surprised if central Texas was different in this regard.

Geelong, Victoria, Australia
Yes, I know somebody in Geelong now, and yes I know this person has read and commented on this blog within the past year. So it counts.
The Great Ocean Road starts in Torquay, just south of Geelong. This is one of the World's Great Roads, and is reason alone in and of itself to visit the island continent. The fact that a Nissan Skyline can be purchased in Australia without onerous import restrictions and modifications is a significant bonus; heck, the R32 is now approaching 20 years old, one shouldn't be terribly expensive. New lifetime goal: I want to drive the Great Ocean Road in an R32, R33, or R34 GTR.
Plus, the zillion other things to see in southern Australia. From the coast to the desert is only about 100 kilometres, from my estimations - prove me wrong!

Sunday Drive 9: To Calgary

2010-04-04T18:00:00.000-06:00

Friday, December 18, 2009

Start: 307427 km
End: 308073 km
Driven: 646 km

One of the main reasons I bought my car was so I could drive it to my parents’ house in Calgary for the Christmas holidays. They were willing to buy my airline tickets for the annual wintertime family gathering, but I wanted to own a car anyways, and having this trip in mind helped to focus my decision making when car shopping – while a pure sports car would have been fun, something more along the lines of a tourer would be more comfortable for the long highway drive I knew was ahead of me. Of course, all of this consideration is predicated on a somewhat larger budget than what I turned out to have available - the choices at under-$1500 are of a more coarse distinction than "sport vs. tourer".

Having driven this route before a couple of times, as a passenger and as a co-driver of a moving truck, I expected the trip to take about seven hours; I did it in a little less than that, about 6:40 or so.

Shortly after leaving Saskatoon, going west on highway 7 I encountered a bit of a traffic jam. This did give me some time to take pictures of the fantastic ice crystals that formed overnight on the twigs and branches of the road-side shrubbery.

Every blade of grass and every twig on every bush and tree were coated in ice.

The traffic jam was caused by a serious accident. Traffic was down to one-way interrupted, and with the heavy traffic this road sees, I was waiting long enough for on-coming to clear the restriction that I shut down my engine. In addition to waiting for the on-coming vehicles to get past, we waited for about five minutes while no cars at all moved past the scene, as emergency workers needed the whole road for some maneuvering they were doing.

Once past the site, the highway was smooth and clear, and I was able to keep up a pretty good pace before stopping for a break in Rosetown. Western Saskatchewan and eastern Alberta are pretty empty places, and I didn’t take many pictures for about 400 kilometres.

Yeah, bleak and empty, for a long, long way. This is just on the Alberta side of the border, around mid-day.

One benefit of such terrain is that passing zones are abundant and long.

Minor weirdness, of course, is to be expected on long road trips. It was pretty cold out, around -25°C, so I expect this hardy pioneer was either a bit chilly or is tougher than I.

The sun was hidden or partly-hidden by high clouds for most of my trip. This made the landscape slightly less than eye-wateringly bright, even with my sunglasses on. When the sky is clear in mid-winter on the prairies, I think welding goggles would be appropriate.

As I approached Drumheller, I saw an unexpected sign: “Scenic Route”. Bored nearly out of my mind by the big, dumb highways of the northern Prairies, I immediately hit the brakes and pulled off of the main route onto this storied lane. Surprisingly enough, even though this road ran through west-central Alberta, it was slightly more interesting than the main line.

I’m not sure where my windshield accumulated so much crud; possibly it was when I stopped for lunch in Hanna, Alberta. But look, here on the scenic route, there’s a bump! Excitement!

This is actually significantly more interesting than Highway 9.

Just like central Saskatchewan, west-central Alberta has plenty of flat available.

Hills!

Corners!

Possibly my favourite road sign. Unfortunately, this was quite close to the town of Drumheller, and while I like to take squiggly roads fast, I try to avoid excessive speed in and near towns. It's one thing for me to slide off the road, ditch myself and break my car, it's quite another to slide off the road and hit something or (much worse) somebody.

Approaching Drumheller.

Drumheller is famous for the Royal Tyrrell Museum and the nearby fossil-bearing rocks. The town is full of dinosaur sculptures, including this larger-than-life Tyrannosaurus rex. Note the mittens to keep his undersize claws warm.

Once through Drumheller, the sky opened up just enough to show some colours.

I stopped for fuel only once on this trip, in Hanna. I considered stopping in Drumheller, but I decided to just press on since I knew I could get at least into Calgary on what I had, where there would be gas stations galore. In the end I decided to just go straight to my parents’ house, with just over 500 km on one tank and the needle sitting on the red mark. The fuel gauge in my Prelude is a bit weird, and only shows about the middle range of the tank. Generally I’ll get 100 km before the needle moves from pinned-to-the-full-mark, then about 250 or 300 km through the range of the needle. From Wikipedia I know my fuel tank should be about 60 L; from the driving I’ve done and keeping track of my fuel expenses, I think there’s about 15 to 18 L remaining in the tank when the needle touches the empty line. So I know I can get more than 100 km on what’s in the tank when it says it’s empty.

That night I was able to park my car in my parents’ garage, where the road-grime is especially evident. Calgary's roads were absolutely filthy.

Parka

2010-02-24T19:30:00.000-06:00

Today I recieved, after a wait of about 3 weeks, my new Canada Goose parka, style "Expedition". This is the same parka issued to United States Antarctic Program personnel, and beloved of cold-weather travellers everywhere. Normally they retail for about $600, assuming one in the correct size and colour can be found in a store - stores often seem to carry only a handful of individual parkas - but I bought mine on an eBay store for about $350. Weirdly enough, these parkas are manufactured in Canada (as befits the name) but I bought mine from a fishing store in the United Kingdom. The reason it took so long to get to me is it had to cross the Atlantic; I gather the store was able to purchase a lot of these (literally one lot, rather than the vague "a large number") at some very low cost.

The annoying thing now is the weather. It's too freaking warm! Since I ordered this parka, we here in Saskatoon have had exactly 1 day colder than -20; Monday morning was -24. But it warmed up by Monday afternoon to about -10. This parka is too heavily insulated, too extravagantly down-filled and fur-trimmed (coyote fur) to be worn in anything but the most frigid Arctic-front kind of weather.

Look at this. According to the CBC, Saskatoon is sitting at -9. And look at the rest of the week! Highs of zero! It's late February! Why am I not watching the tip of my nose freeze, die, and get blown away by the harsh North Wind?

New Computer

2010-02-15T15:15:00.000-06:00

I bought a new computer! My old home computer, an Acer 2200 Travelmate that I originally purchased in early 2004, finally succumbed to the onslaught of really nasty viruses. I picked up the third “rogue antivirus” in three months last week, an obnoxious beast calling itself “Antivirus Soft” that combined with Microsoft Windows Update in an unholy union that completely disabled the computer – it can no longer boot at all.

Anyways, in looking into the cost of professional attention for my computer, I discovered the price of laptops has dropped precipitously in the last few years. There’s a computer store not far from my home, a branch of Computer Trends, that offers repair services and sells new and factory-refurbished computers. I went down there on Thursday (they’re open until 8:00, happily) and dropped off the old machine. Complete virus removal and clean-up costs upwards of $150, but just pulling data off of an otherwise inaccessible hard drive costs between $40 and $60; they’ll drop what they can recover onto a DVD, but won’t go through the trouble of actually bringing the machine up to workable condition. I figured I’d just buy a new computer, and put what files I want from the old machine onto the new one and reformat the hard drive of the old computer. I don't know what I'll do with the old computer once I get clean and working.

So, the new beast is home. It cost only $400, which is amazing to me. From googling for reviews of this thing before I bought it, it seems like this machine was cutting edge about a year ago, and considered highly desirable about 6 or 8 months ago. Mine is a factory-refurbished individual, which is fine by me – I don’t need the newest game monster, but I would like to play some games newer than, say, 2004.

The new machine. An Acer Aspire 5532, with a 1.6GHz Athlon 64 TF-20 processor. I think processor numbers have become nearly meaningless in the last couple of years – my old computer was supposedly something like 2.0GHz, but this machine is much faster when it comes to actually doing things.

My choices were pretty good at the under-$600 range, but I went with this one partly because it was the cheapest (there were several attractive machines at around $500) and partly because it has Windows 7 and NOT Windows Vista. The salesman initially tried to convince me that Vista is a fine program and does not deserve its reputation (that reputation is: it’s complete crap); I was unconvinced. So far, Windows 7 is fine, and I was able to quickly turn off the Vista-style paranoid nanny-nagging fairly easily.

After messing about with it for a couple of days, I decided I wanted a new game. So I bought The Orange Box.

I put the “system requirements” sticker on the front of the box because it seems useful and was holding the case closed.

I played Half Life on my Playstation 2 a few years ago, on loan from Carlo. I know The Orange Box was a big deal because it includes Half Life 2: Episode 2, which was anticipated with near-feverish excitement when it was released (plus the sleeper-hit Portal). But, I’ve never played Half Life 2, nor either of the sequels, but all are included in this box! Five games for $30, not bad at all! I’m well into Half Life 2, and enjoying it greatly.

The one flaw with this computer I’ve detected so far is the shortage of USB ports. I bought a powered hub so I can simultaneously use an external hard drive (which require two USB ports because of power demands) and my proper mouse; I am not a fan of the touchpads on laptops.

Further contribution to the rat’s-nest of cables on my kitchen table.

Sunday Drive 8: Down and Dirty

2010-02-15T14:25:00.002-06:00

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Driven: not far.

On Saturday, I drove around, ran some errands, and bought some things for the car, including a better jack than the little scissor-jack that Honda supplied with the car, and a pair of jack stands. I’d owned the car for nearly two months, but I’d yet to see the underside. I also swung by Canadian Tire, and bought a new battery. When I’d had the car in to my local (very local) mechanic’s back in October, they’d told me the battery was worn down, maintaining only about 2/3 the charge it should hold.

The weather on Sunday morning dropped to about -30°C, which was too cold for the old battery, even with the effects of the battery-warming electric blanket. My car, despite being clearly intended for the Canadian domestic market when new and having been registered in Saskatchewan for at least the previous two owners, does not have a block heater. Cold, sludgy, viscous oil was too much for the old battery, and it died a slow and feeble death. I had intended to drive to the heated underground parking lot below the Agriculture building at the University of Saskatchewan (i.e. 5 stories below my office) and replace the battery there, but a non-starting car made for a postponement.

I congratulated myself on my forethought in purchasing a new battery, pulled it out of the trunk, and swapped it.

The new battery, in place. The bracket that holds the battery down is fastened with a pair of really long bolts with nuts on them that are really annoying to turn. Especially when wearing heavy gloves in -30 conditions.

The new battery worked like a champ, and I was on my way to school. Parking on weekends in the underground lot costs $3 per exit; it’s free to get in, but you need to drop money in the machine before it will raise the barrier and let you and your car out. By reputation and rumor, I think campus security dislikes people working on their cars in the lots, especially the premium underground lots. But I wasn’t about to get under my car on the frozen gravel of my parking spot, and it’s not like I was planning to change out the transmission or anything else major. I just wanted to get under my car and see.

The store had been sold out of the smallest bottle jacks, the 2-tonne model, so I’d bought the 4-tonne. This proved to be slightly too tall to fit under the lift-point of my low-slung quasi-sports car, at least at the front. The scissor jack actually worked fairly well, though it was a bit awkward because none of the various long-handled tools supplied with it fit through the rotating front of the jack; it’s a matter of just jamming a stick through the loops and twisting through ½ a turn, then pull the stick out and repeat. But I managed to raise the front enough to get the bottle jack in there, then cranking that up was much, much faster and easier than the scissor.

Never work get under a car supported only by a jack! This is an important and sadly often ignored rule. I was well aware of the 1.3-tonne mass of my car directly above me as I slid under the raised front end. The two jack stands worked very well, though I discovered I’ll need to find a way to increase the height of the lift, probably by staging the jack up with a nice big brick or a large lump of lumber. The lowest point of the engine, where the oil-pan drain plug is, was about 10cm in front of my nose – not the best position for turning a wrench. And I’ll want another pair of stands, to raise the back end simultaneously, if I ever want to do anything serious under there.

In any case, I was able to have a look around, and after I checked out the front end I raised the back (bending a piece of not-actually-frame in the process, a little) and had a look back there, too.

Front end up. This is an accurate picture – there really wasn’t very much room at all under there.

The starboard outer CV-joint boot has a nice big crack in it. The dark shiny stuff is the grease from inside the boot that normally protects the joint. Some of it had splattered around, with blobs on the inside of the wheel and on various bits of the front suspension.

My mechanic had told me my rear sway-bar end-links were rusted out and missing. He was not lying (not that I thought he was). The parts indicated by arrows are supposed to be held together by a bolt run through some rubber/plastic bushings. These are not expensive, and I understand their replacement is not a difficult procedure. When the weather warms up (i.e. April or May), I intend to do this.

The diagrams I have, both in the Haynes manual and the shop manual I downloaded from a Prelude-owners forum are pretty vague when it comes to the placement of support at the rear of the vehicle. My first attempt here on the port side placed the jack stand too close to the wheel, on a piece of metal that’s actually really thin and not intended to bear much weight (arrow). That bent just a bit before I was able to reverse the jack and try again. Here I’ve placed the saddle of the jack stand directly around a large bolt that seems to fasten two pieces of the frame together. The weight of the car is not on the bolt, it’s on the horns of the saddle on either side of the bolt. I hope that’s OK.

Not surprisingly, my old car has a few issues underneath. But the good news is these are relatively minor – neither the cracked CV joint nor the nonfunctional rear sway-bar make a big impact on driving, and are not safety concerns, and the big important things – oil pan / engine underside, brakes and brake lines, shocks and springs, exhaust and muffler – all looked to be in quite good shape. My mechanic had told me the exhaust and muffler specifically were good, and they’d replaced my front brakes (pads and rotors) and told me the rear brakes were not severely worn. There’s quite a bit of dirt caked onto everything, probably partly a result of my habit of driving on gravel and dirt roads, but where I chipped some off the frame was not rusted and the black anti-rust paint was intact. The only rust I found was on the underside of the doors; the driver’s door in particular is almost completely decayed along a strip at the very bottom. But it looks like the chassis is structurally sound.

I got out from underneath, lamented the dirt that had accumulated on my sweater (I need to get some overalls), and lowered the car back to its wheels. Then I did the final bit of work I wanted to do: aftermarket Yoda install.

Push the yellow button, and Yoda will train you in the ways of the Force.

Sunday Drive 7: Southwestern Square

2010-02-07T21:45:00.009-06:00

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Start: 306922
End: 307160
Driven: 238 km

My route: west, south, east, and returning to Saskatoon north, shown in red.

Biggar is a town that is mentioned in conversations I hear on a semi-regular basis. I don’t know anyone who has claimed to be from Biggar, but I know a few people who have spent a fair amount of time there or nearby, or who have some other reason to consider this town important. It’s the biggest settlement to the west of Saskatoon on highway 14 until you reach Unity, which according to Wikipedia may be slightly larger; beyond that, you’re in Alberta on your way to Red Deer. The town is spelled with an “a”, but is pronounced like a synonym for “larger than”.

Simply driving to and returning from Biggar seemed fairly boring, and of insufficient length and complexity as a journey to fully occupy a Sunday for me. Pondering a map of Saskatchewan that includes the weird little Star-Trek-Convention-like symbol for regional parks, I decided to drive a large square, to the southwest of Saskatoon, and visit a few other places.

The way to the west out of Saskatoon includes a split just inside city limits where most traffic turns southwest on highway 7. I remember this view, with that pedestrian overpass, from last year when I drove from Guelph to Calgary in a moving truck, stopping in Saskatoon to unload my possessions. Which reminds me, I need to write up that trip and put up the pictures.

Some fields near the highway just west of town were bright pink. I don’t know what was growing here.

A little further on, the usual mix of shades of brown, and a very long view. From my odometer, the horizon here is about 10 km away.

“Prairie Potholes” terrain. Note the small ephemeral wetland in the low position of the landscape.

It is very flat in central Saskatchewan, which just means the views from the rare hilltop can be surprisingly vast.

Biggar & District regional park is right next to the town, on the north side of the highway where most of the town is on the south side. I pulled into the park and cruised around; nobody else was there, though I suspect in the summer there would be many people around, especially on weekend afternoons.

I took a quick video from the middle of the small park. The clicking sounds are the autofocus mechanism in the camera; it was actually very quiet there.

I climbed the slope to the north, and had a look around. This is looking to the south and east.

Boba Fett also surveyed the park for signs of rebel scum….

… but none were visible, this time.

The weather was nice, a bit above freezing without much wind, but I was expecting it to get colder and I wanted to visit other places well before sunset. Biggar sits on the intersection of highway 14 and highway 4. Heading south on highway 4, the weather started to get a bit more ominous, and there were patches of snow next the highway in many places. The snow Saskatoon received in early October melted within about a week, but I guess this area did not get as warm.

More Prairie Pothole terrain, with a frozen wetland. Note also the dark band of clouds to the east.

Lightly snowy flatness.

I had to stop and circle around for another chance at this sign, I was so surprised to see it. I stopped and took some pictures to document this amazing thing. A SKI HILL, IN SASKATCHEWAN. Compare with the previous picture (FLAT) and the next one.

Looking west from next to the sign in the previous picture. Words fail me.

Another look, for no good reason. I was laughing so much I had difficulty holding the camera.

I drove through Rosetown without stopping (except at the stop sign, naturally), then turned west on highway 15. This part of the province is remarkably empty, though the towns here have names reminiscent of Canada’s imperial past – I drove past Sovereign, and a side road that leads to Conquest. Outlook sits on a high patch of land above the western shore of the South Saskatchewan River, and is the site of the longest pedestrian bridge in Canada, the Skytrail bridge that is part of the trans-Canada trail. So of course I had to stop and check it out.

The regional park at Outlook was closed, with a locked barrier preventing access to the steep descent to the shoreline. I needed gas anyways, so I asked the full-service attendant, who I assumed was a local, how to get to the bridge. He told me the bridge isn’t part of the regional park, and could be reached by travelling a few blocks beyond the street leading to the park.

The little hut that covers the western end of the Skytrail bridge. Note the roiling clouds above. The weather was less than superb, but I enjoyed it anyways.

Venturing onto the bridge, I noticed clear footprints and other tracks in the park below, despite the fact that it was closed. I guess people go jogging or walk their dogs or whatnot, even though the barrier covered the usual pedestrian access as well as vehicular.

The bridge, looking west from near the eastern end.

Looking north.

Looking south.

A pair of ravens (Corvus corax) was frolicking about the bridge, playing in the turbulence from the wind blowing around the pylons and over the deck. Like most birds, these ravens apparently know what a camera is and why I had one, and were practiced in the art of spoiling my shots.

The local pigeons (Columba livia) aren’t that bright.

SIT STILL DAMMIT!

Outlook and its bridge are downstream of Lake Diefenbaker, and the islands seen here are probably the result of the flood control afforded by Gardner dam.

It was very windy, causing considerable noise in this video. Taken from near the middle of the bridge.

This gate marks the western end of the bridge. I saw no indication that it is ever locked.

Looking back to the east through the gate.

I re-crossed the bridge (did I mention the wind? It was cold and windy) and returned to my car. A little ways east of Outlook is a grid of tertiary provincial highways with forgettable numbers that I enjoyed; highway driving is boring, these roads at least have a few curves on them.

Even my little car kicks up a fair dust cloud on these quiet grid roads.

I noticed the sun setting in my back-left quarter, so I stopped and snapped a couple of quick shots.

The sunset was pretty spectacular, so I was looking for a safe place to stop and get some pictures when I remembered I was approaching a park I’d been to once before I bought this car. Back in April, I’d rented a car because a very good friend was visiting, and we went exploring. We found this little protected area, at Beaver creek. It was closed when I got there on this trip, but not for the season; the signs indicated some serious renovations and construction. In any case, it provided a quiet turnoff to watch the sun go down.

Waiting for the sun to really light up the sky, I noticed it was turning the fields pink.

The sun was slowly sinking towards the horizon, turning the sky a brilliant range of pinks, oranges, and reds. Most of those colours didn’t come through here, but I still like this shot. My camera has a “sunset” mode, but it doesn’t seem to do much.

After taking a couple of dozen pictures of the sunset, I returned to my car and returned to Saskatoon.

Comment Word-Verification

2010-01-31T17:05:00.001-06:00

I find Blogger's word-verification system for comments annoying, but I've turned it on because I've been getting a lot of really idiotic and annoying spam comments lately. Hopefully I'll be able to turn it off again soon, once the moronic 'bots that target random posts here in great abundance shift their sights.

Rolling Role Model

2010-01-23T16:15:00.000-06:00

This woman is awesome.
http://growingbolder.com/media/technology/vehicles/romancing-the-road-259598.html#content_tabs

Long Day Hike

2010-01-23T15:30:00.000-06:00

090811

Two days ago, on August 9, several of us here at Alexandra Fjord hiked nearly the full north-south length of the ridge that borders the lowlands to the east. That was also the day the Canadian Coast Guard paid us a visit, but I did not talk about our long hike.

Katherine had work to do all day – she works very hard – so she could not join us, but the rest of us here left camp shortly before 10:00am. Myself, Ann, Sarah, Erin, and Knut quickly reached and crossed the larger, more distant river that flows near the eastern side of the valley and drains the Twin Glacier.

The northern end of the ridge, viewed from near the southern edge of the Dome. The first leg of our route is shown in red.

The ascent up to the first saddle-ridge on the lowest hill was about half-covered in arctic blueberry bushes (Vaccinium uliginosum), with a mix of granite and dolomite on the steeper slopes. The rocks were similar for the ascent to the ridge-back, and the slope was never particularly steep and formed a series of shallowly-pitched and gently rounded benches.

Once up on the spine of the ridge, a broad and nearly flat boulder garden of granite, we could not see the valley nor the ocean to the east unless we wandered close to the edge. This terrain was quite different from anything I’ve walked any distance over before, a continuous expanse of large piled boulders, with occassional low dune-like ridges or bedrock outcrops.

Part of the ridge-back, a field of boulders stretching to a near horizon. Patches were pink, others were grey, and every once in a while would be a large block of white quartz.

On top of the tallest bedrock outcrop around, a few blocks of white quartz. Were they placed here by someone, or did they previously cap this block of granite, and crumbled under the onslaught of countless Arctic winters?

The mouth of Alexandra Fjord where it opens to Buchanan bay.

The weather started quite good and got better during the day. It would have been difficult to choose better weather for our excursion. Lunch was had near the top of the ascent to the ridge, and we stopped occassionally while walking south for short breaks. It was during this stage that the differences in walking speeds in the group became apparent – Knut moved much faster than the rest of us, speeding ahead out of sight frequently, while Ann and Erin fell behind. I waffled between accompanying the slower walkers and and walking at my faster speed to explore. The speed of the group as whole, of course, was the speed of the slowest members, so moving very quickly was simply tiring.

Ann and Erin on the ridge-back.

There were occassional patches of surprisingly lush vegetation scattered on the ridge-back, with incredibly bright-green willows and tall sedges growing among brilliant red, green, and black mosses.

We gauged our progress by our apparent position relative to the glaciers and ridges on the opposite side of the valley. After a few hours of fairly easy hiking, we realized we were well south of the toe of the Twin glacier, and that a proglacial lake described to us by other people and on a few maps must be nearby.

Knut (I think) on a low wall of boulders on the ridge-back, with the Twin glacier’s parent icefield in the background.

We decided the lake must be close when we encountered this road-like meadow running down to the west from the ridge-back.

An undoctored photo I took of myself using the timer function on my camera. The rock I placed it on looked more level than it really was.

Knut and I pushed a little ways further to the south and west, and Sarah explored a bit to the west down the road-like meadow. After a bit of wandering, Knut declared he could see the described lake, and we congregated near the rocky point he had scrambled up.

The upper reaches of the Twin glacier, showing the east lobe (nearer) and west lobe just above where they converge.

What may or may not be the proglacial lake described to us previously. Certainly not reachable on this trip, it lies on the other side of a glacier flowing east to the sea (not visible in this picture) and is at least one kilometre from the furthest-south point we reached.

My companions enjoying the spectacular views.

After fretting about the time for a bit (it was after 4:00pm by this point) we finally got moving again, descending and curving to the north below the road-like meadow. Our highest altitude achieved at our southern limit was about 750m. At around 450m there is a cluster of boulder piles that I marked in my GPS as “lumpy”.

Just above the lumpy region.

The lumpy region narrowed into a series of canyons between towering piles of granite and dolomite. It was somewhat maze-like, but we managed to keep reasonably close together. This winding path descends steeper as we continued down and northward, approaching the flank of the Twin glacier below its convergence.

Sarah and Knut admiring the view from atop a near-vertical rocky slope. The toe of the Twin glacier is imediately below and to their right. Not pictured: the very sketchy and difficult descent we made just below them.

The steepest descent was as we got quite near the flank of the glacier, and terrain that must have been covered by the glacier very recently. Based on comments made by people who have been at Alexandra fjord years ago, and by glaciologists, I would not be surprised to learn our route was glacier-covered only a few decades ago.

Ann and Erin carefully descending the very steep and very loose boulder slope below the previous picture.

Ann and Erin picking their way around a salt-encrusted bedrock outcrop that I had foolishly descended nearly straight down. The rocks are all very loose, such that actually secure foot- and handholds are nearly non-existent in this area. I came close to tumbling down a couple of times, and slid on my butt more than once to negotiate particular spots.

At the bottom of the really quite scary descent, close to the flank of the glacier, we entered a tiny canyon not unlike the tiny canyon Katherine and I found on the other side of the river below the Twin glacier. Sarah and Knut had descended first, and Knut had gone ahead to return to camp. The idea was that he would be able to return to camp in time to prevent too much worry on Katherine’s part, and to get dinner started.

Ann and Erin in the tiny canyon.

Ann and Erin at the mouth of the tiny canyon, just above where its tiny stream joins the main river draining the Twin glacier.

With Knut well on his way ahead of us, we rested for a time below the canyon, on a small meadow of moss and Cassiope heather beside the river. Everyone was tired, and we all needed a bit of a break after the sketchy steep descent we’d just gotten past.

After our rest, we proceeded north down the east side of the river, on a narrow strip of valley-bottom between the ridge and the river. We had left our chest waders near the river at its delta just above where it reaches the fjord.

Walking down beside the river.

We reached camp just after 9:00pm, much later than had been planned. I was unaware, but plans had apparently been made to check-in by satellite telephone with Katherine at 6:00pm, and had included a belief that we’d be back by then in any case. Katherine had become quite concerned when we did not check in, and had not appeared some 2 hours after our supposed return time. Knut arrived and described our location and progress about 10 minutes before Katherine was thinking of heading out to look for us. Sorry, Katherine, that was a stupid mistake on our parts. While I can claim ignorance of the plans that led to this situation, I cannot claim a lack of responsibility, and I think I should have made my own plans regarding return and contact times. Sorry.

Overall, it was a spectacular day trip, and we covered around 15 kilometres of rough ground, with the gain and then loss of about 750m of altitude. The proglacial lake we saw may or may not have been the lake described to us previously, I’ve seen maps showing a lake near that position but I don’t know how much has changed with the retreating glaciers since those maps were made. If anyone else would like to try this hike, I recommend the following:
1. Make a better, firmer plan before departure. This is not extremely dangerous terrain, but medical or SAR assistance is normally very, very far away. We happened to have a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker and its helicopter in our neighborhood, but even so this was by no means a totally safe trip.
2. Stick to the plan. One of the problems we had, fundamentally, was a lack of communication. Don’t say you “might” or “will try” to call at a certain time, say exactly what you will do and when, and make sure your safety person back at camp knows exactly what these details are.
3. Leave earlier. Much earlier. Without the distraction of the Coast Guard’s visit, we might have left at 9:00am. A 7:30 or 8:00 departure would have been far superior, and might have prevented some of the rushed feeling we had during the last couple of hours when we were at our most tired and moving slowly.
4. Bring spare camera memory and batteries. The views are truly amazing. You’ll take more pictures than you think.

A visit from the Canadian Coast Guard

2010-01-23T15:00:00.002-06:00

Yesterday morning, before setting out on a long day-hike, we were unexpectedly visited by the Canadian Coast Guard, in the form of the helicopter from CCGS Henry Larson, an icebreaker currently conducting research on sea-ice and other marine matters in the High Arctic.

The helicopter shortly after touchdown. These CCG helicopters seem more powerful than the Bell 204L operated by PCSP; at least its downdraft was more disruptive.

I had to help Katherine with her injections, so rather than stick around to chat with the people from the Coast Guard, I headed out. They were loading some equipment and packages into the helicopter, a pile of gear dropped off here at Alex Fjord a couple of weeks ago.

When I returned about half an hour later I expected the helicopter to be gone, and I was lamenting the poor timing that stole my opportunity to schmooze some government employees. Nearly everybody I’ve met likes to talk about their jobs, and life on an icebreaker sounds interesting.

However, while I’d seen the chopper leave, it had left behind 3 people, and would be returning soon. I grasped the situation before I talked to these people, so I opened the conversation with some sympathy for their position – I know how utterly boring it is to wait for a helicopter.

One of the people waiting was Michelle, a scientist studying multi-year sea-ice in the eastern Arctic. She was happy talk about her job, and give me names and contact information for people in the Coast Guard or Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) who I could talk to about conducting research from such a ship. That would be highly cool. One positive little factoid she told me about was the busy season for scientific spaces on Canadian icebreakers. Not surprisingly, most scientists with projects that would benefit from the facilities of an icebreaker work in the summer; I do too. However, the ships generally return to their southern bases (St. John’s, in the case of CCGS Henry Larson) in late October, allowing several weeks of time in the High Arctic in the autumn. One avenue my upcoming PhD research might pursue is an examination of soil gas flux during freeze-up, which occurs between late August and the end of September at different latitudes in the Arctic. I can easily imagine a schedule of working full days or a few days in a row at a series of Arctic soil sites accessed by helicopter from an icebreaker. Perhaps a few weeks cruising down through the Archipelago? This is very appealing to me, not least because such ships have a number of other valuable resources besides the chopper – things like showers, lab space, a reliable electricity supply, and other scientists to discuss projects and experiments with.

After my wonderful conversation with Michelle, the helicopter returned to retrieve her and her shipmates. The ship itself was lurking out in the mouth of Buchanan bay, hidden from our view by the rocky headland to our east.

CCG Helicopter take off

My companions, except Katherine, and I quickly set out on our big day-hike shortly after Michelle’s departure. We crossed both rivers to the east of camp, and climbed up to the top of the lower hill that forms part of the barrier of the valley to the east. From the top we could see the ship maneuvering near the mouth of Buchanan bay.

Erin modelling some men’s-size-12 chest waders before crossing the larger and more distant river.

The view from part-way up, looking back towards camp.

The view to the east from the saddle at the top of the first slope. Greenland is barely visible as a shadow on the horizon when viewed through binoculars.

CCGS Henry Larson steaming into Buchanan bay. Skraeling island and Little Skraeling island are visible at the bottom of the frame.

A cropped photo taken through my binoculars. I was told by one of Michelle’s shipmates that CCGS Henry Larson is 337 feet long. I think the bridge is 4 stories above the forward deck, to give an idea of the size of this vessel.

CCGS Henry Larson steaming into Alexandra Fjord, viewed from the hilltop at about 250m altitude. I think they rammed through that isolated iceberg just because they could. I’d asked about the amount of ice breaking the icebreaker had been doing, and was told they had been crunching through quite a bit of ice already. The sound reached us clearly at our vantage point.

A view of the ship from a few hours later, after we’d ascended partway up the north face of the eastern ridge. They apparently decided to park in the fjord for a while.

We continued our hike and lost sight of the ship, and did not hear the helicopter flying around. When Michelle and her shipmates were picked up I briefly talked with the helicopter pilot, who asked me (jokingly, I thought) if there was anything we needed that he could bring us. I said something about not having had a banana in a while (this is true: the last banana I saw came from the BAS visit), but otherwise thought nothing of it – we really are in need of nothing at base camp.

When we returned from our long day hike, Katherine related a story to us. She’d seen the ship come into the fjord, of course, and watched the helicopter buzz around and a zodiac zip up and down the fjord. I think one of the scientists on board is studying tides, and there’s a buoy of some kind with a data logger, or something. Anyways, she was working inside the lab and heard the helicopter land, and waited for the engine to shut down, signalling the arrival of more visitors. The (very loud) engine kept running, so she went outside to investigate. The crew of the chopper waved her closer – they had landed very close to the buildings anyways – then pointed to some boxes they’d dropped off from the chopper, a gift for us.

The gift was about 50 pounds of various fresh fruits and vegetables. I was kind of expecting a handful of bananas, but we got much, much more than that.

One half-emptied box of food from the Canadian Coast Guard.

Another box of fruit.

They gave us bananas, apples, pears, plums, nectarines, raspberries, blackberries, honeydew melons, oranges, kiwis, tomatoes, and cucumbers, enough to feed the 6 of us on a strict frugivore diet for days, plus a litre of coffee cream, 2 big cardboard flats of single-serve yogurt, and some cheese. All of this was delivered by helicopter in a single-purpose trip from the ship.

Thank you!

Busy at Alexandra Fjord

2010-01-23T14:30:00.000-06:00

090810

The past two days have been pretty exciting, so rather than trying to write one giant post, I’ll split up the stories across 3 posts. Today has been my first chance to sit down and write about these things, mainly due to a lack of time, but the on-going electricity situation has also contributed.

It’s quite an odd feeling to be frequently concerned about one’s electricity supply – we take it so much for granted most of the time. Here at Alexandra Fjord, there are two ways to get electricity for one’s devices; typically we use the power we have to charge batteries for various electronics like laptop computers and digital cameras. First, we have a few generators. These are used to power scientific instruments, such as the FTIR at various field sites, and Katherine’s Gas Chromatograph (GC) in the lab at base camp. When a generator is running, other devices can be plugged in – under most circumstances we’d be hard-pressed to push these generators beyond their idle power output. Second, there is a photovoltaic (PV) system – solar power – connected to the household wiring system of the base camp buildings. The PV system is complicated and idiosyncratic, and is based entirely on the mind of Dr. Greg Henry: he designed it, bought and shipped the parts, assembled it, and knows its limitations. The rest of us just sort of guess. For example, right now I’m running my laptop computer off of this system, and I’m actually trying to drain the batteries a little bit because we think the batteries may be overcharged right now. I know very little about such things, but at least this way I don’t have to wait until Katherine wants to run her GC before I can recharge my camera’s battery.

Speaking of my camera, here’s a picture of CCGS Henry Larson just offshore of our base camp, taken yesterday.

Sunday Drive 6: Hague Ferry

2010-01-17T20:15:00.001-06:00

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Start: 306573
End: 306780
Driven: 207 km

As I was preparing to depart on this drive, my phone rang. My boss’ wife, Chantal, had successfully offloaded responsibility for their children on her husband, and was apparently suddenly at a loss for what to do with this bonus of free time. I invited her on my drive, and went to pick her up at home.

I had been planning to drive to the north-east from Saskatoon, to a regional park near Wakaw, about 100 km away. Chantal thought this a fine idea, and we headed out that way, taking highway 5 east until the north-north-east-running highway 41. Both of us were surprised to learn that highway 5 is College drive inside Saskatoon; we each cross this road every day going to and from campus, but neither of us had realized how far to the east it extends – all the way to the Manitoba border.

The landscape near Saskatoon to the east and north is even more flat than is normal for this province.

On my previous drive, I’d seen a sign indicating one of the ferries across the South Saskatchewan River was closed, so I had assumed all ferries had closed for the winter. Not so, however, as we discovered the sign for the Hague ferry, further downstream from Saskatoon, was apparently still running. With nothing to lose (except a short drive through the countryside, which we were already engaged in), we turned down the indicated route, which deteriorated to loose gravel very quickly. However, it also approached the river quickly, and we turned down the small winding gravel road, past some people walking their dogs, to the ferry waiting area – a slightly widened patch of dirt road.

The view downstream from where we waited on the east bank. There was some ice in the river, but no large pans or chunks.

There was a large flock of Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) on the river just upstream of the ferry crossing. As the flock drifted in the current, occasionally the birds would fly upstream a few hundred metres; this seems like an energy-intensive method of keeping position.

The ferry was on the other side of the river when we arrived. There were no vehicles aboard as it came towards us.

While we waited, another couple of cars showed up, then we boarded the ferry. I managed to avoid any ferry-boarding faux pas this time.

Chantal took my picture on the ferry, looking upstream.

I took a short video during the crossing, watching the ice bump into the ferry.

The ferry took less than 5 minutes to cross, and we were off again on Saskatchewan’s collection of backcountry dirt roads. We were not entirely certain of our location or where we were headed, but in this part of the province a car will reach a major road within a few kilometres regardless.

We saw a lot of this. I probably drive too fast on this stuff. In my defence, it’s hard to judge what is a safe speed in the complete absence of curves or other vehicles.

We crossed back over the South Saskatchewan on the Gabriel bridge, on highway 312.

Rather than attempt to visit Wakaw on this trip, we elected to head back to Saskatoon so Chantal could be home in time for dinner with her family. Driving east on highway 312, we saw:
- A forest
- A lake with islands in it
having just been on a ferry. IN SASKATCHEWAN. Mind blowing.

We also saw a coyote, who paused long enough for me to get my camera out, but then ran away as I started clicking.

A photo of me, driving down highway 42 back to Saskatoon.

Space Battleship Yamato

2010-01-16T11:30:00.000-06:00

There is so much wrong with this idea, but so much more that is AWESOME.

Update!

2010-01-06T09:35:00.002-06:00

Sorry I haven't been updating around here. To let everyone know I haven't abandoned the blog, here is the result of a quiz.

Created by Oatmeal

Actual updates to follow, when I get sufficiently motivated. Soon, I expect.

Dr. Rob E. Roughley

2009-11-23T20:25:00.000-06:00

I received an email today, informing me that a man I was proud to call a colleague and fellow traveller in this business of science has died. Professor R. E. Roughley was not someone I knew well, but I did benefit from knowing him as much as I did, and I am saddened by his death.

Rob was an expert on water beetles, particularly of the family Dytscidae, which is a group I worked on for the time I was based in Guelph. Rob provided excellent advice on methods of capturing, identifying, and generally working on these beetles and other small animals commonly found in the numerous small lakes, ponds, streams, and rivers of North America. His advice was always useful, and I can think of many instances where his help turned my fieldwork, collecting aquatic animals, from hopeless to bountiful.

We shared a glass or two of whiskey while we were both in Churchill in the summer of 2007. I raise my glass now to his fond memory. Goodbye Professor Roughley, you will be missed.

Sunday Drive 5: Burnt-Out Clutch

2009-11-22T18:00:00.000-06:00

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Start: 306249
End: 306573
Driven: 324 km

I set out in the early afternoon, heading northwest from Saskatoon up highway 12 on the advice of a co-worker at a party the previous evening (the Roughriders won). Anyways, I was told there is an interesting bridge and some terrain that includes more than flat wheat fields about an hour from town in that direction.

Near town, it’s the now-expected flat prairie.

Approaching the North Saskatchewan River and the Petrovka bridge.

I pulled over at a driveway near the bridge and took a few pictures.

For whatever reason, several shoes were nailed to the top of some fence posts here at the edge of the property adjacent to the Petrovka bridge.

The proud tradition of prominently displaying rusting farm junk is alive and well in Saskatchewan.

Looking upstream.

I crossed the Petrovka bridge and continued northeast along highway 40, intending to re-cross the river via the ferry at Wingard, but the ferry was closed, presumably due to ice conditions or water level. Finding myself with plenty of time and no particular destination, I turned northwest for Emerald Lake regional park.

Some farmers were active in their fields on the north side of the river, harvesting hay or wheat, I think.

This facility, which I think stores either fertilizer or pesticides, is visible from a long way away.

The road to the regional park is about 30km of gently rolling dirt and gravel. Many of the adjacent fields were pastures for cattle.

Corners and trees and hills, oh my! I had fun driving too quickly on this road.

I think the speed limit along here is 40km/h. I was going faster than that.

Beef!

The regional park, like so many others, was closed. However, this doesn’t mean the gate was locked, rather it means I didn’t have to pay to check things out.

Emerald Lake from the small beach.

Boba found no rebel scum at Emerald Lake, but did enjoy a chance to frolic on the beach.

I checked out my map, and determined that secondary highway 792 continues to highway 12 near the town of Shell Lake. 792 is a fun road, so I kept on it. After a few kilometres I reached a paved road, which from my map I thought was highway 12. It was actually highway 3, and I reached Shell Lake after a few minutes, and turned south on highway 12. I really want a GPS unit for my car.

Parts of highway 12 are good…

… but much of it involves following a debris-throwing pickup truck at slow-and-variable speeds.

I had intended to drive straight back to Saskatoon on highway 12, thus driving the full length of that short road. But I got bored of the straight-and-narrow, so I impulsively turned west on secondary highway 781 just before the Petrovka bridge, intending to return to Saskatoon by highway 16 instead.

781, like I think the majority of the “grid” roads in Saskatchewan, is gravel surfaced. Zipping along at probably unwise speeds, I noticed my engine was revving much more than it usually does. At 100km/h in 5th gear, I’m used to seeing the tachometer at about 2000 rpm, not swinging up to 5000 at random intervals. I slowed to about 70 and geared down, thinking there was something wrong with the higher gears of my transmission, but the engine continued to alternately race and slow, so I pulled over on a gentle uphill slope. I thought maybe the wheels were slipping a bit in the patches of softer and deeper gravel scattered over the road, and that this was causing the engine to work much harder. The temperature gauge was comfortably in the safe zone, but when I stopped I could hear some fluid boiling somewhere in the engine bay, so I thought perhaps the gauge was not working and I’d overheated the engine. My previous car, the Minivan of Doomed Love overheated frequently, once to the point that the entire vehicle was shaking from the violence of the boiling coolant in the radiator, so I tend to assume the worst when it comes to engine temperatures.

I got out and popped the hood, to discover a wisp of smoke from underneath the middle of the engine – and nothing untoward happening around the radiator. I could smell a bit of burnt clutch, which has been normal for this car. Between the age of the car, the previous owner’s advice about the age of the clutch, and my own less-than-skilled driving, a faint smell of burnt clutch has been normal operating procedure for this car. Still, smoke was not a previous feature of the transaxle. I thought maybe I’d simply overheated the transmission, sticking with the hypothesis that the drivetrain was working much harder on gravel than it does on dry pavement, so I checked the fluid level (right where it should be) and left it to cool off for about 10 minutes.

I closed the hood, got back in, and started the engine. Reassured by the lack of error and the quiet state of my warning lights and gauges so far, I put it in gear and tried to move off. No go. I tried reverse, I tried starting in 2nd, but nothing worked. The engine revved just fine, exactly as if it was in neutral. The clutch pedal felt fine, so I think the clutch was being pressed against the flywheel, but there wasn’t sufficient friction to get the entire car moving. I couldn't even stall the car, putting it in any gear and releasing the clutch pedal resulted in no change from the engine.

Time to call CAA. I’d had a bit of cell phone reception when I’d first pulled over – I’d been able to check my voicemail, to discover that my supervisor had provided an update on the invitation to his house for dinner: show up by about 5:00. As it was now 4:30 and my car was immobilized some 80km from home, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it for dinner. For whatever reason, my phone reception evaporated, and I wasn’t able to use my phone to call for help. As I’d had reception, then lost it, I thought I might be on the edge of a tower’s range, and that perhaps I’d get reception if I walked to the top of the slight rise I was on. Before I reached the top, only about 200 metres away, a pickup truck pulling a trailer coming the other way stopped beside me.

The very friendly locals, a middle-aged couple out visiting their daughter, were happy to loan me the use of their phone, on Sasktel. Sasktel is the provincial crown corporation for telecommunications, and competes aggressively with Rogers and Telus. They also apparently have by far the best rural network, and I had excellent reception on the borrowed phone.

The friendly locals predicted a 15-minute phone call with CAA, apparently based on experience – this was neither their nor my own first experience with a non-functional car at the side of a lonely highway. I thought this was needlessly pessimistic, as I knew where I was (they were able to confirm my location) and the problem was pretty clear – car no go, need tow truck. Sadly, the 2 calls I had to make did take about 15 minutes. It seems that CAA doesn’t like it when one moves between provinces. I was transferred between the Saskatchewan and Ontario offices a few times (including the failed transfer that necessitated me calling again), I gave both my old (Guelph) and new (Saskatoon) addresses multiple times, but eventually it was confirmed to me that a big orange truck was on its way from Saskatoon. Fine, can we do this address-change malarkey some other time, when, you know, I’m not on a borrowed phone at the side of a nearly-empty road? I can’t really complain, having that phone number in my pocket makes a huge positive difference, regardless of the bureaucratic weirdness.

I thanked the friendly locals and returned to my car, mentally calculating the truck’s arrival in about an hour. The sun set shortly thereafter. A few other locals stopped on their way past, but after I thanked them for stopping and told them of the expected arrival of the tow truck they were happy to continue on their way. After dark, one told me to turn on my 4-way flashers because I was nearly invisible at the side of the road even with the dome light on. The 4-ways include a clicking noise and noticeably dim the interior light when they come on, but I thought that less annoying than getting rammed in the dark by some local’s ½ ton pickup.

The nearest farmhouse to my stranded position. One of the people who stopped told me that Jim, the owner, was mostly likely at home and was very friendly should I decide to seek shelter.

The weather was unseasonably warm, a few degrees above zero, so I wasn’t too worried. In addition, while my car was incapable of movement, the engine and all electrical systems were working, so I ran the engine for about 10 minutes to warm up and keep the battery happy. I was using the dome light to read a book I’d thrown in the backseat on a whim a few weeks prior; I was very happy to have it, and the blanket I’d also stashed back there.

Just after 7:00pm the tow truck arrived. Huzzah! The driver told me he’d had some trouble finding me, and had called my phone to ask for better directions, but no matter, I was rescued after really only minor discomfort. He was a friendly sort, and told me stories of other rescues and vehicle salvages he’s attended over the past few years. Apparently, highway 11 for the 30 kilometres south of Saskatoon is the road with the highest number of deer-strikes in Canada, particularly around this time of year. The combination of evening rush hour coinciding with sunset and hunting season making the deer a bit jumpy results in many deer venturing onto roads just as traffic levels are peaking. The good news is that most deer-strikes do not result in serious injury (to the humans), but there are an alarming number of elk (Cervus canadensis) and moose (Alces alces) strikes every year, too, which are often more dangerous to the drivers.

He got my Honda hooked up, and we were off back to Saskatoon. Back to highway 12, then down into town. The drive took about 45 minutes, and he deposited me and my car at the transmission shop that’s only 2 blocks from my apartment, just before 8:00. He’d recommended that particular shop, having taken many other tows there in the past, and the fact that it’s so close to my home is just a nice bonus. And the tow was free, even though it was 110 km (I think my basic membership normally includes a first-25-km-are-free restriction) because apparently a truck from Saskatoon was the closest available. Yay!

I can’t say enough good things about my CAA membership, despite the phone-run-around-weirdness. My day would have been really ruined without it, as it was I experienced only an inconvenience, not a crisis.

I called Steve when I got home (reception is fine in town, of course), and told him of my adventures, and that I wouldn’t be coming over for dinner 3 hours late. Rather than the excellent fish supper I’m sure was prepared, I grabbed some McDonald’s.

The next morning I dropped by the tranny shop and said “that’s my Honda”. I told them of my experiences as they related directly to the transmission, and asked them to call me with a quote when they’d had a chance to look at it. It took until Thursday afternoon, partly because of the Remembrance Day holiday on Wednesday, but they put in a new clutch, a new slave cylinder, and a pair of axle seals for me. For slightly more than the purchase price of the car. Oh well, this wasn’t really a surprise.

Sunday Drive 4: Driving a Stick

2009-11-22T15:15:00.000-06:00

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Amanda is a friend in the department, working on a Master’s in Soil Science. She used to drive a Honda with a manual transmission, and told me she’d like to make sure her stick-handling skills have not been degraded by the most recent few years driving an automatic. So she dropped by on Sunday afternoon, and we went for a drive.

We didn’t have any particular plans, except to run through the transmission a few times with her at the wheel, so we started out heading west on highway 16.

Like elsewhere near Saskatoon, west of the city is flat and open. The landscape looks pretty much the same from the passenger seat.

Amanda is enjoying the handling and gear shifting on my old Honda. Her skills had not degraded at all, as far as I could tell.

After driving west for a bit, we haphazardously chose a smaller road running north, and got off the main route. We were just outside city limits, so there was still a fair bit of activity around, even on a Sunday afternoon.

There were big yellow machines around these short cliffs, leading me to think this is some sort of mine. There are big potash (K2O) mines in Saskatchewan, but I think most of those are deep shafts, not surface scrapes.

More flatness. We have a lot of this vital resource around here.

I like the clouds in this picture.

Re-approaching Saskatoon from the north, on a tertiary “highway”.

My colleagues in the Faculty of Agriculture and Bioresources, where I work, would probably ridicule me for not recognizing the one still-green crop growing here.

I dropped Amanda off at her home after we’d been driving for about an hour, then rumbled around the south western part of Saskatoon for a bit, squinting into the low-hanging sun. Sunsets in this part of the world can be quite spectacular, and I’ve been meaning to get some photographs for a while. However, my car at the time was missing the license lamps (small white lights that illuminate the rear license plate) and I’d been told by a neighbour that the police like to pull over cars for minor offences this time of year. Apparently, this is the season when people are putting their nice summer cars away and bringing out their winter beaters, and the police want to keep the really old and broken cars off the roads. I’ve been told they’ll inspect rust levels, too, and impound cars that are considered too far gone. I don’t want to give the police any excuse to pull me over and decide my car is unsafe, so I’ve been avoiding driving at night until I can fix the license lamps. But I still found some industrial backgrounds to take a couple of shots of my car.

I think this is an active grain elevator, during the week. I like the way the lighting from the setting sun makes my car look more silver than blue.

From the other side, with the sun shining through the windows.

The sun was low enough that the slight camber of the road, the water-shedding peak in the middle, was sufficient to cast a shadow across the eastern (north-bound) side.

The full moon was striking over the twilight-shrouded road.

I returned home just after sunset. I took this picture to demonstrate that Boba Fett continues to accompany me on my adventures. No rebels were captured in the making of this picture.

I'm on TV!

2009-11-17T22:00:00.003-06:00

As I described previously, in late July of this year we were visited by a crew from Global Television at Alexandra Fjord. They spent about 2 days filming us and the suroundings, and they said this footage would be edited down to make one of a number of roughly 60-second vignettes to be broadcast before the evening news.

Well, I guess they kept their word. Here's the bit I'm in.

Full disclosure: I'm realistically faking it in the parts I'm in. While those are reasonably accurate portrayals by me of my day-to-day activities at Alexandra Fjord, I didn't actually write anything in my notebook there, and I didn't actually collect any data from that chamber at that time.

And Anne would probably kill me if I mentioned that she was none too pleased about being asked to look at a specimen of Eriophorum with a magnifying glass, nor would she be happy if I reiterated her (much repeated) point that no self-respecting botanist would need to use such a glass to examine any plant of that genus.

Sunday Drive 3: Lake Diefenbaker

2009-11-14T20:25:00.000-06:00

Sunday, October 25, 2009

As I was heading home on Friday evening (October 23), I ran into 2 grad students in the department, and asked them about places I might enjoyably visit in nearby parts of Saskatchewan. Following a bit of discussion, they agreed that Gardiner dam, at the north end of Lake Diefenbaker, would be worth the hour or so drive each way. Apparently, it’s the largest earth-filled dam in Canada, and is the reason the lake exists. Sounds good.

At home on Saturday I perused some maps and websites, and discovered something I find a bit exciting: Saskatchewan operates a dozen free ferries. Why would there be ferries on the prairies? River crossings, of course. This website lists 13 ferries, 1 of which is not free – one must pay and book in advance to cross Wollaston Lake. Of the remaining 12, only 1 is not a river crossing: Riverhurst ferry crosses Lake Diefenbaker near its middle. There’s a bit of a grey zone here in the definitions, since Lake Diefenbaker is really only a particularly slow patch in the South Saskatchewan River, and was formed by Gardiner dam. Previous to the dam, the town of Riverhurst was quite a bit further from the waterline, and the river there was probably not very different from the river 100 km in either direction. Still, I like ferries, and that website looks remarkably like a checklist, to me.

Google maps, while usually accurate in its directions, seems to lie rather pessimistically when it comes to estimating travel times. Planning a route that would take me across Gardiner dam from east to west, south down the west side of the lake, across at Riverhurst, then back north up the east side of the lake Google maps informed me I should plan for about 7 hours of driving. Taking this advice to heart, I arose rather early on Sunday, and was heading out of the city, Starbuck’s grande latte in hand (literally: I still have no cupholders) by 9:30am. For me on a Sunday, that’s horribly early. But I had early dinner plans to meet that evening, so needs must and so forth.

The landscape due south of Saskatoon is what my colleagues in the Soil Science department refer to as “prairie potholes”, with hummocks. The hills are not tall nor steep-sided, but they are numerous.

I exited the city by highway 219, described on my PDF map downloaded from the provincial government as “thin membrane surface (no shoulder)”, which rapidly deteriorated in quality from aging municipal blacktop to roughened rural asphalt to gravel-strewn construction site.

Astonishingly, the highway crews were hard at work on a Sunday morning. I had been blasting down the highway, cheerfully ignoring the orange reduced-speed-limit-construction-zone signs because I’d assumed nobody would be working that day. Wrong! I carefully drove through the many-kilometres long construction zone at a sedate 60km/h, mindful of the enormous dump trucks pacing me on both sides of the driveable road.

Saskatchewan is supposedly the land of the living skies. I experienced a wide range of weather on my drive.

Secondary highways in central Saskatchewan are pretty empty, at least on Sundays. I travelled for dozens of kilometres at a time without seeing any other vehicles.

I reached the dam by about 10:30, and proceeded happily across it. Highway 44 crosses the South Saskatchewan on the dam, the road was simply built right across the top.

Approaching Gardiner dam from the east.

Lake Diefenbaker on my left….

… and the South Saskatchewan on my right.

As requested, I took a video as well as still photos.

These big towers apparently are involved in controlling the flow of water through the hydroelectric turbines buried within the dam.

I stopped at the small provincial park office / recreation area just on the west side of the dam, but of course there was nobody else around. This is a significant tourist area in the summer, but in the cool and windy days of late October, everybody else stays home or something.

There’s a sandy beach area along with a restaurant and some other facilities. Nobody else was around save a few pelicans.

I was well ahead of Google’s pessimistic schedule, so I took the time to drive down the gravel access road behind the dam, to take a few more pictures.

Coteau Creek Hydroelectric station generates a modest amount of power for the province.

I’m not sure why this little gravel road was built, but I found it useful for getting down to a decent position for photography. Maybe that’s exactly what it was for.

On my way back up to highway 44, I noticed the wind was blowing steadily from the north, forming a strong updraft where air rushed up the north slope of the dam. This small hawk was taking advantage of the conditions to hover, apparently effortlessly, and search for prey. I sat and watched for a few minutes, and it barely moved at all.

The weather cleared up as I continued west and south, and the landscape became stunningly-flat as expected in this province.

A ferry terminal sign in the middle of the prairies! Though, to be fair, I certainly wasn’t expecting Tsawwassen.

One kilometre to go!

There was an enormous flock of white birds on the middle of the lake. I never got close enough to see what they were, but I did see a few pelicans closer.

The ferry itself was pretty small, though I think this is the largest in this province. It crawls across the lake, about 3 kilometres, on a cable. I followed a truck/trailer combination up the loading ramp, straddling the cable where it lays on the ground. Apparently, this was a mistake, and I was instructed to back up, and try again on the right side of the truck. The ferry is long enough for one full-size semi trailer + truck combination, with room for 3 lanes. Fortunately, the minivans behind me in line probably knew what to expect, and made room for my ignorance. Then we cruised across, at a couple of km/h.

Mid-lake.

At the other side, I was off first, and I pulled into a small driveway just above the ferry terminal to take in the view.

The truck I’d tried to follow onto the ferry, accelerating with his load up the hillside away from the lake.
The bridge of the ferry is about 3 decks tall, and is just visible here above the line of cars waiting to cross in the opposite direction.

Beyond the Riverhurst ferry lies the village of Riverhurst. I stopped, but there’s almost nothing there, except apparently “smorg” on Sundays, where I think the majority of the local residents were. Other than my fellow ferry-passengers, whom I let get well ahead of me, there was pretty much nobody around at all. The road, once you climb beyond the hills coming up from the lakeshore, is epically flat, straight, and empty.

Flat. It’s flat in the southern part of Saskatchewan. Very flat. Flat flat flat.

I stopped along that flat road for a break, and I still like the way my car looks.

Continuing along, I passed under a large collection of flocks of geese, flying in broad V’s across the prairie, towards the lake. They are distinctly dark-bodied, and there were far fewer than the vast flocks of white birds I saw earlier.

Taken straight up through the sunroof as I was driving along highway 19.

I drove up the east side of Lake Diefenbaker, where the highway runs a few kilometres distant from the lakeshore. I came across a smaller dam, which the highway runs under rather than across – there’s a rail line across the top of the dam.

Approaching the Qu’appelle dam, which is apparently co-responsible for the creation of Lake Diefenbaker.

Under the Qu’appelle dam.

Highway 19 curves up around Qu’appelle dam, and there’s a scenic viewpoint / rest stop overlooking the dam. I stopped there for lunch, and admired the scenery for a few minutes.

Qu’appelle dam viewed from the east.

Highway 19 crosses a rail line just after my lunch spot. When I saw this bridge, I immediately thought of the idealized terrain that model railroaders construct in fine detail.

Continuing north I passed a very long train stationary on what I think is that same rail line. I didn’t count the cars, but there must have been at least 100.

More flatness.

Highway 19 meets highway 15, which then intersects the main route between the 2 biggest cities of Saskatchewan, highway 11. It was here that I really missed having cruise control. My foot started to cramp from holding the gas pedal in one position (flat flat flat means very little throttle variation) and my leg was sore from constantly leaning against the center console. So, I stopped for fuel and had a bit of a stretch after being on highway 11 for only a few kilometres.

Highway 11. Ho-hum.

I got home much sooner than Google maps had led me to believe. I guess Google is very pessimistic about driving times, though I think the distances at least were accurate. I’ve now driven south from Saskatoon 3 weekends in a row; next week I should pick a different direction.

Monday Rant: Falcon Tube Racks

2009-11-12T13:25:00.002-06:00

Here's an esoteric rant for you: I can't friggin' find a test-tube rack that holds either 15mL or 50mL Falcon tubes, and it's pissing me off because I know I'm not the only person in the world who would use such racks.

These are Falcon tubes:The BD website describes these things as the "workhorse" of the Life Sciences lab... everybody I know uses hundreds of these things, for all sorts of purposes. They don't goddam fit in standard test-tube racks, because of those big, fat screw-on caps. Normal test-tube racks have the positions arranged in a square layout, with very thin barriers between the positions. The lids on these tubes overhang the edges of the positions, and two tubes next to each other squeeze against or on top of each other. It's annoying. Plus, the bigger size is apparently much larger than any other tube that people would be using more than one or two of at a time, so standard test-tube racks usually don't even have positions in them large enough to squeeze these guys into.

You can order these tubes in styrofoam racks, which adds a bit to the price when buying them, and because the tubes are disposable most of the time we don't bother - we just buy them in big bags, sans racks. The styrofoam racks tend to fall apart pretty quickly in any case, and some websites say "do not freeze in racks" without frickin' explaining why. Argh!

I've spent too much time today, in the blocks between the end of something and waiting for somebody else so I can move onto the next task, trying to track down a rack solution for our hundreds of Falcon tubes. The only thing I've found is a hideously expensive coated-wire rack that holds 8, 16, or 36 of these big tubes - for about $80 for the largest. At any given time, I've got between 200 and 500 Falcon tubes in use, distributed between a couple of freezers and whatever random patch of bench space I happen to be using. At the moment, all of my 50mL tubes are just jumbled together in the freezer, completely disorganized, and my 400 or so 15mL tubes are squeezed awkwardly into about a dozen unsuitable racks. It's annoying, I need a better system.

Why can't I buy a cheap plastic rack in hexagon arrangement that will fit in my freezer?

Sunday Drive 2: Pike Lake Provincial Park

2009-10-24T21:45:00.000-06:00

Pike Lake Provincial Park
Sunday, October 18, 2009

My supervisor, Steve, recommended I visit Pike Lake Provincial Park when I told him about my plans for weekly exploratory journeys around Saskatoon. It’s not very far away, and according to the website it’s a popular family get-away destination.

I needed to pick up a tiny part for my Prelude – I’d lost the cap for the power steering fluid reservoir. My neighbour, who owns an Accord of similar vintage, recommended a junkyard to the south and west of Saskatoon. I found it without difficulty (it’s well signed), and wandered between the rusting hulks for a few minutes. There are 2 old Preludes and 1 old Accord in this particular junkyard with parts in common with my Prelude, so I was able to find the reservoir cap, and they charged me nothing for it. I’ll probably come back sometime to get some other parts – I’d especially like to replace the seat-belt buckle on the front passenger seat. It works as it is now, but it’s tricky to get the belt unbuckled.

Valley Road, near the junkyard. The neighbourhood is a mix of turf farms and berry farms, for the most part. This road is remarkably flat and straight. I think it runs in a near-perfect straight line for about 8 kilometres.

This being central Saskatchewan, there are some grain farms around, too.

Pike Lake Park is at the end of highway 60, about 30 km south of Saskatoon’s west end. It’s a little odd to be driving along at 100 km/h and then suddenly have to stop at a park gate. As at Blackstrap the previous week, though, the entrance office was closed and nobody was around asking for money. I gather that during the summer, it costs about $7 per car to visit for the day.

There are a couple of campgrounds, which were behind closed gates, and a central green space adjacent to the lake and swimming pool area.

The swimming pool facilities. Pike Lake itself is behind these buildings, beyond the screen of trees in the background.

There is some playground equipment clustered near one parking lot bordering a large lawn spotted with trees.

Pike Lake was clear and smooth, with some ice on the surface near the down-wind side.

The geese more or less have the park to themselves.

I saw one other vehicle there, a minivan in another parking lot. I think I met the dog of the owners of that minivan, as a medium sized pit-bull-like dog had a bit of a sniff while I was walking around.

On my way back to my car I found Boba Fett. Here he surveys a patch of sandy desert terrain. I’m pretty sure there are no sarlaccs in this part of Saskatchewan.

Sunday Drive 1: Blackstrap Provincial Park

2009-10-18T17:45:00.000-06:00

Last week I decided to start a new blog series, then of course I procrastinated for 6 days before actually implementing it. This is the first post in a series I’ll try to put together about every week, that I call “Sunday Drives”. Basically, on the weekends I’d like to drive my car around, just to explore and to enjoy driving for fun. There are plenty of places to see within an hour or so of Saskatoon, and visiting them gives me an excuse to practice driving my car.

Blackstrap Provincial Park
Monday, October 12, 2009

A little way south of Saskatoon, Blackstrap “mountain” rises majestically above the prairie, to the lofty height of 45 metres. Yes, around here this qualifies as a mountain. On the Thanksgiving holiday Monday, I decided to visit this alluring mountain, and try out the full range of gears on my Prelude on the highway. We’d had some snow just the previous Thursday, with sub-zero temperatures continuously through the weekend, so this was also potentially a chance to try out the handling on a bit of ice.

The view from above my steering wheel, driving east on highway 211 towards the park.

I passed fields of hay, baled and just about ready for winter, I think.

The entrance to the park is guarded by hut, and a nearby administrative office. There’s a sign describing the prices for visiting and camping in the park, but I guess at this time of year there’s so little traffic they don’t charge. Maybe for camping, but there was nobody in the hut or administrative building when I was there.

I parked at the admin. building, to see if there was somebody there I should give money to, but no-one was about.

There’s a small plastic floating dock near the admin. building, which I wandered out onto for some pictures. There are apparently freshwater crayfish in the lake, as I saw several disembodied clays and one carapace on the dock. I guess the birds and/or aquatic mammals have been eating them.

I drove through the park, pausing to check out the various waterfront access areas along the way.

Driving through the first campground.

Somebody stuck a chairlift on Blackstrap mountain!

And a rope-tow!

I poked around for a bit, then left the way I had come. I saw one other car in the park, out near the maintenance area, but no other people.

The view from the causeway crossing Blackstrap lake.

On my way back to town I paused briefly at the Saskatchewan International Raceway, but nothing was happening there. I suspect the race season is over for this year. There was no ice on any of the roads, just a bit of compressed snow through the campground, so I'll have to wait to see how the Prelude handles on the slippery stuff. But I got to work it through all 5 gears on the manual transmission, and I only stalled it once, early in the day running around Saskatoon before heading out.

1988 Honda Prelude 2.0Si

2009-10-12T22:15:00.001-06:00

I bought a car, Honda Prelude that’s more than 20 years old. Why would I do such a thing?

Of course it started snowing right after I bought the car. Fortunately, those are winter tires already in place.

I missed owning a car. I like to tell people that I miss my old van, but I don’t miss paying for it. That car was a financial disaster, a money pit that sucked my wallet dry. I don’t intend to repeat the experience. My personal financial situation has improved since then, for one, but more importantly, I won’t allow this car to take quite so much of my money.

The purchase price was $1300, and insurance for a year is a bit less than $700; SGI never got the memo about my clean driving record, so my insurance rates will go down a bit once I sort out that paperwork. The car has a 5-speed manual transmission, which I’m enjoying more than I expected to. I’ve always driven automatics before, but I was taught how to drive a stick long ago, and while I’m not good at it, I can do it without too much embarrassment. So far, I’ve stalled it twice, once on Saturday after I bought it, and once on Sunday just driving in traffic. I expect to get much better at this basic skill in short order.

I don’t intend to drive to work, I walk as it is and it takes me between 20 and 25 minutes, even when it’s -30C. We’ll see how dedicated I am to this non-automotive-commute concept I am this winter, but parking is fairly obnoxious and expensive at the University of Saskatchewan. My across-the-hall neighbour also works on campus, but I doubt I’ll carpool with him unless I get really lazy and wussy in winter.

This car is for fun and adventure. I wanted a car that was different, and not about the practicality. There aren’t many 3rd-generation Preludes around, and I’m told especially not in this colour. The van was a purely practical vehicle; I had a lot of fun with it, but its primary purpose was to solve transport and logistics problems – 7 seatbelts or 2 cubic metres of mobile storage space are powerful options in many situations. This little car, however, is all about the drive, not what’s compressing the springs. It’s not precisely a sports car – on my budget, anything truly fitting that category is unattainable or undriveable – but it is a “sports compact coupe”, a low-slung 2-door with an engine just a bit bigger than it precisely needs to be, and suspension set up for taking corners a little quicker than is absolutely necessary.

There's a list of things I'd like to fix or improve about this car. It needs a good once-over by a professional mechanic, soon, but I alreadyknow it needs a cooling system flush, an oil change, and some work on the power steering system (there's a leak of fluid somewhere). The timing belt is famously a weak point in these cars, so I want that replaced in fairly short order, too. These are all jobs I could theoretically do myself, but I don't have a garage or many tools. Some things I will do myself include just generally tidying up the trim, both outside and inside. There are a few pieces of plastic that hang from the body or are not tightly screwed in place, for example. One job I can do myself, I think, is fixing the heater blower - currently, the fan only blows on the 3 and 4 settings, not on 1 or 2, and it's pretty noisy. I suspect it needs disassembly, cleaning, and a check of the electrical connections.

I’m going to take this car out for drives, as regularly as I can manage. I want to explore, especially in central Saskatchewan, where I live. I want to go camping, and just generally get out there and see what there is to see. This car will let me do that.

More pictures, just because.
I like flip-up headlights for no good reason.

Solo Walkabout

2009-10-06T21:30:00.001-06:00

090810

Two days ago, on August 8, I had a whole day in front of me and nothing pressing in need of doing. I’d just finished helping Katherine with her morning 15N injections, and at about 9:30am I decided I’d like to do a little exploring in the Alexandra Fjord area. It was a clear day, without too much wind, so I packed a lunch and some cold-weather gear (just in case) and set off to see the lower slopes of the Dome and the west side of the valley.

My goal for the day’s adventure, a traverse at near-constant altitude across the east slope of the Dome, from south to north. My route is indicated by the red line.

Rather than cross any rivers by myself, a dangerous and uncomfortable task, I planned to walk diagonally south and west across the valley away from base camp until reaching the north-flowing small river that supplies are our drinking water. This would be the same river that Katherine and I crossed on our previous excursion. Then I would follow the river upstream as it curves to the south and east, ascend the Dome to the first major bench, and traverse along the Dome at this height until I felt like coming back down and returning to camp.

The north half of the drinking-water river, viewed from a spot not far from where Katherine and I crossed it nearly 2 weeks ago.

There has been little erosion in the 12 days since I last passed this way. The bootprint on the left is from that previous trip, on the right freshly-formed.

The cottongrass (Eriophorum sp.) was in full display.

I nearly stumbled into this tiny side-channel of the river.

Moving southwest not far from the river, I crossed a broad, nearly-level plain littered with large glacial erratics – boulders deposited by a retreating glacier. There are lots and lots of such erratics all over northern North America, remnants of the last great ice sheets some 15000 years ago. One such large erratic is the basis for the name of a brewery in Calgary, Alberta. The difference here on Ellesmere Island is that the glacier that left these erratics behind is still very much in place, and has a name, in this case the Twin glacier.

An antler was resting on this multi-tonne behemoth of an erratic, and the white was visible from much further away than the distinctive shape.

The view from atop the erratic in the previous photo, looking north back towards base camp and the fjord.

The terrain forced me closer to the river, and for a while I was following my companions footprints, retrograde. Here is a footprint made by one of my companions when they descended from Katherine and my camp on the Dome on July 9, a month ago.

The north half of the river emerges from a canyon known as “Helm’s Deep”, descending swiftly through a channel of boulders and steep walls. I had no desire to chance the river’s current, but I wanted to see into the canyon, so I climbed a short distance alongside the rushing river before I decided "enough of this!" and scrambled up the north wall of the canyon. That scramble was probably the most tricky thing I did that day, a careful half-crawl up a steep and crumbly slope of granite boulders, soft gravel, and loose sandy soil.

The view to the south from the rocky point above the north wall of the Helm’s Deep canyon.

Another view from the same spot, looking northeast.

My altitude where I paused to take the above photos and drink my coffee was 186 metres, according to my GPS. This number would appear again and again on my GPS screen as I traversed the bench of mixed granite and dolomite that forms this part of the Dome. I was trying to stay at roughly the same altitude, periodically turning on and checking my GPS, and while I strayed a bit, up to about 200m, down to about 170, for some reason by far the most common reading was exactly 186m.

The view of base camp from the bench. The “Willow” and “Wet Sedge Meadow” OTCs are visible below and to the left of base camp.

“Cassiope” OTCs.

“Dryas” OTCs.

“Vaccinium / Fert” OTCs.

The terrain of the bench was a mix of polar desert and wetter patches of tundra. The differences between the two ecosystems are very apparent when they are so closely juxtaposed.

Polar desert.

Tundra, at least by my estimation.

I continued along the bench until I got hungry, then stopped for lunch on a prominent boulder or protrusion of bedrock. I like having a spectacular view during my meals.

The view from near my lunch spot towards base camp. The light-coloured pile of rubble on the left partially covers the granite block I sat upon to eat.

I continued around to the north slope of the Dome, where the structure gradually changes from a dolomite-dominated series of benches to a granite-dominated series of vertically-running channels and shallow, steeply-pitched canyons. This granite structure is much more difficult to traverse laterally, besides which I thought I should be heading back towards camp because I was scheduled to make dinner that evening.

The view north from the north slope of the Dome. Several of the icebergs had large melt-pools on them.

I was struck (not literally) by this precariously-balanced boulder on my way down the north slope.

The boulders here were very loose and unstable, so I wasn’t able to get as close to this boulder as I’d like.

I did get close enough to include my hand for scale.

Below the north slope of the Dome there is a narrow strip of wet and boggy tundra, covered with a mix of sedges and black mosses. This is apparently the home of a couple of pairs of parasitic jaegers (Stercorarius parasiticus), and I met one. I spent some time verbally berating it, thinking it was a juvenile with low muscular endurance, because it repeatedly flew only a few metres, then landed, then flapped around and took off for another short flight. On later reflection, it’s more likely this was an adult faking injury to lure me away from a nest. This late in the season it seems improbable that there are any non-flying juveniles or eggs around, but this behaviour is probably an instinctive response to a potential predator.

The fake-injured jaeger I followed and verbally abused for a bit.

I walked along the shoreline to the west, up towards the top of the fjord, and freaked myself out a little bit with some bearanoia: I was carrying no deterrents, not even “bear banger” firecrackers, and I knew I was in primo polar bear habitat. Fortunately, I encountered no bears.

It was very quiet, and there was little wind, perfect conditions for sound to travel far. I could hear a marine mammal periodically surfacing, so I walked down a short way and saw a pair of walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) diving and surfacing.

A cropped photo taken through my binoculars of the pair of walruses. They sit low in the water even when resting on the surface, so the distinctive tusks were only rarely visible at all, and then only the uppermost parts.

On my way back to base camp, I must have passed right through two jaeger territories, as I was dive-bombed repeatedly by 4 different birds, including the fake-injured dark-coloured individual I’d previously yelled at. Turnabout is fair play, I suppose.

VIDEO: Jaeger attack 1

VIDEO: Jaeger attack 2

Their attacks were quite spectacular, and I did get a bit of an adrenaline charge as these quite large birds (larger than a crow, similar to an average sea gull) wheeled in the sun and feinted towards my head. My camera was rapidly running out of battery power, so I tried to quickly escape the jaegers, but their territories are rather large and I was attacked off-and-on for about 10 minutes.

I got back to camp by about 3:00pm, more than enough time to get started on dinner. Overall, a very satisfying jaunt around the western side of the Alexandra Fjord lowlands.

Wildlife

2009-10-03T14:00:00.001-06:00

090806

This morning I completed my last bit of work for this field season, after finishing my last bit of field work yesterday morning. An hour of data-entry and proofing this morning, and I’m done work until September. It’s a pretty nice feeling, not surprisingly.

Everyone else here still has much to do, of course, so I’ll be helping out where I can; I expect to do a fair bit of cooking and cleaning over the next 10 days or so. Katherine’s work in particular continues for 6 more early mornings, and I’ll be able to assist her with some of her other tasks as well.

Not a great deal has happened in the last few days, but I did see a couple of interesting things.

I tracked a bumblebee (Bombus sp.) back to her underground home while running the FTIR at the Cassiope site the other day. She disappeared under this little bit of Cassiope tetragona a couple of times, so I think this is where her babies are sequestered. Rather than an act of pleasant maternal care, I might have stumbled upon a grim struggle of life-and-death, however – I later saw a smaller bumblebee nearby. There are 2 species of Bombus here, and the larger one is a nest parasite of the smaller, so what I may have seen was an act of parasitism, as a Bombus hyperboreus took over the nest of a hapless Bombus polaris. Still maternal care, but with a dark zero-sum-game aspect to it.

I saw a quite large bumblebee while I was running my soil gas probes a couple of days ago, and I took a video of her crawling around on my equipment.

Yesterday morning a group of 5 possibly juvenile walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) were feeding and roaming around in the shallows very close to shore below base camp, and the tide was very low. This allowed us to get very close to these animals, animals that I consider the ne plus ultra of proof that one is in the High Arctic, at least at the same level as seeing narwals (Monodon monoceros).

Another shot of the walruses.

I also took a video of the walruses

The tide lifts and drops icebergs on the shore; at the second low tide of yesterday in the afternoon, I exposed pretty much an entire roll of film on these few, mainly because of the interesting light, shadows, shapes, and colours in and around the ice. I’ll post those picture after I get my film developed.

My watch died sometime during last night. The timing is fortunate, as I no longer need it for my fieldwork. RIP, faithful timekeeper.

After I wrote the above, at around 3:00 pm, a group of kayakers arrived. This is a tour group run through a private company whose name I have forgotten. This kind of High Arctic tourism is not cheap – the copilot told one of my companions that the total price tag for all 11 passengers was in the order of $110000, or about $10000 per tourist.

There was some kerfuffle because they were transporting some equipment back to Resolute, and their gear was partly mixed with ours, but this was sorted out without too much difficulty. I know perhaps the least of anyone about what belongs to whom, so I stayed out of that discussion.

As per their usual routine (I gather), the kayakers set up their tents close to our outhose. This was annoying to my companions, but it really didn’t bother me any. Most of the group took off in the late afternoon for a bit of a hike – I saw them through my binoculars about ½-way up the Dome – so they really didn’t cause as much disruption as my companions thought they would.

There’s an interesting social dynamic at work here. We (my companions and I) have settled more-or-less into a reasonably stable social situation. There’s plenty of grumbling about such-and-such a person doing something wrong, or not working as hard as another, but it’s pretty minor. The arrival of a group of strangers, who have purposes highly different from our own (work vs. play, bluntly) and are almost entirely much older than us (I was the oldest person here, at 31; these tourists all appear to be retired, and one or two look older than 70) has thrown all of us for a loop. I feel like I have reacted the least to this arrival, but it’s hard to tell. It’s generated some topics for (ranting) discussion, at least. We seem to have become rather hermit-like, to varying extents.

They’re planning to depart for their 10-day tour tomorrow, so the disruption is temporary.

The tents of the kayakers, just below our outhouse (hidden behind our food-shed).