Strange Bug

I found this bug in the middle of a rural road in south central Illinois on Sept 30 at 3:17 PM. I thought it was a grasshopper, but it has a long tail appendage like a wood borer would have. It also has very long antennae, and a pointed nose which is not much like a grasshopper. It measured about 3 inches long.

Old Lady in the Park

Today is Monya's birthday, so we decided to take a walk in the park. We took both of our cameras and had a contest to see who could get the best picture. I'm starting out with the one I call, "the old lady in the park" which I took in macro mode. You should take a close look at this photo. You can actually see the hairs on the old lady's legs.




Next, I'd like to show off the three turtles we found sunning themselves on the end of a log floating in Lake Washington. Many people don't believe me when I tell them there are turtles in Lake Washington. These turtles are very shy, and they will quickly duck into the water if they think you are getting too close. Notice how they were holding their heads at attention while I took their picture.




A birthday stroll in the park would not be complete without a photo of the birthday girl. We were experimenting with strobe light flash fill on a subject standing in shadow, while the full daylight scene completes the background. (Notice her brand new, pink digital camera.)




Finally, another old lady in the park. Nothing subliminal here. These White Cross Garden spiders are all over the place. One keeps hooking onto our old Volvo in the driveway, and one of these days it may not have enough power to break free. Imagine the size of a spider who will eat a whole car!

Practice Run

Since the lake swim last week was disappointing, we decided to try some different tactics this weekend. We added a Site-Line device for keeping me swimming on a straight course, and I drank about a half gallon of water to prevent cramps. I even drank some water while I was swimming. NO, not LAKE water! I brought some good filtered water in a sports bottle from home. Well, actually I did drink some lake water but it wasn't intentional.

Another change in tactics was for me to tow an empty kayak while swimming. The kayak was rigged with all the equipment needed for paddling, and a rope ladder for climbing in from deep water. This way, a rescue in the event of cramps, exhaustion, or hypothermia, could be accomplished without dragging the swimmer through the cold water as we did last week.



This photo of me drinking water was taken at about the 1-1/2 hour mark. The destination, Clarke Beach Park, is the tree covered shoreline between the tips of the kayaks.








After arriving at the park, and a short break to gear up for paddling, we took this photo of the GPS with the trip odometer showing 2.20 miles, the moving average at 1.1 mph, and the total moving time of 1 hour and 59 minutes. The wind was out of the north, so we rode with the wind and roller waves, all the way back to the Cedar River. The return trip took 52 minutes, increasing our average speed for the whole trip to 1.6 mph.




Here's a photo of me at Clarke Beach Park, all rigged up to paddle back home, and a picture taken at the Cedar River, of the intrepid paddler, Great Grumpy, who guided me the whole way.




Since this was only a practice run, and since we didn't have our official witness present to record the event, this lake crossing does NOT count as the 40th year anniversary crossing. We will have to wait until next August when our official witness is available and try it again...this time for real.

Flowers

The HeidiCoaster keeps posting beautiful photos of flowers. It makes me jealous, so I'm posting some of my own. Our tomatoes didn't produce anything, I accidentally killed my dahlia bulb, and who wants to look at a patch of spinach? So without any more explanation, here are the flowers.

Repair of 70 year old cedar gutters

Our gutters have been leaking for years. When we first moved into this house I tried to stop the leaks by applying roofing tar, as had been done to them before, but that didn't help. We were nearly at the point of tearing them down and replacing them with metal gutters, but other than the leaks at the corner joints, they actually looked like they were in good shape.

Monya did some research on the web and found a place in California that specializes in wooden gutters, and they had a web site with instructions on how to do it yourself. If they had been located in Washington State, I would have tried to hire them, but since they weren't I decided to give it a try for myself.

So here's what a typical corner joint looked like after I had chipped, peeled, and pryed the tar and old caulk out of it. Notice that there is a "V" shape cut into the joint. That's where the caulk goes, allowing a generous amount of it to expand and contract with changes in temperature.

The next photo shows how it looked after I filled the joint with 50 year, non-hardening gutter seal caulk. One rainy day after finishing the joints like this proved that the gutters were not leaking at all any more.

Unfortunately, there was one spot where the joint between the gutter and the downspout had failed and caused the gutter to rot. I took out about 17 inches of old gutter and replaced it with a section of fir that nearly matches the shape of the original gutter. I had to round off the ends of the fir patch and chisel out a channel in the bottom to allow the water to flow smoothly.

Then I had to drill a new hole for the downspout. I sealed everything up water tight with gutter caulk and then painted the new wood with primer. A finish coat of paint will go on soon.

7 Year Old Perspective

This morning I went through the photos that the LeGrand Mermaid took of the lake crossing event. After reading the previous post, you will realize that this beginning photo is pretty much all there was to the event. But look at it from a 7 year old's perspective.

There is the Great Grumpy on the right, the Daddy in the kayak, and the splash from the Bopop jumping into the water. I apologize for the reduced resolution in this posting, but the original shows crystal clear water droplets, backlit by the early morning sun. I love how she has Daddy in the kayak framed perfectly between the bars of the railing.

Maybe it's not such a bad thing that I didn't make it across the lake. The really fun part was having another four-generation event.

40th Anniversary Swim

Last February, while swimming laps in an indoor pool, it occurred to me that I should try a repeat of the swim across Lake Washington that I did 40 years ago, when I was 19 years old. I decided that I could do better this time, planning it for August when the water is typically warmer, rather than July. I needed to scout out a new set of launching and landing spots: Lakeridge Community Beach has been closed for more than 20 years, and I remember the lifeguards at Kenneydale Beach refused to let me come ashore that day.

I measured the distance between Lakeridge and Kenneydale, finding it to be about 2 statute miles according to Google Maps. Then I measured the distance between the mouth of the Cedar River and Clarke Beach Park on Mercer Island. That turned out to be a nearly perfect 2.1 miles.

I announced my intentions to friends and family and then began testing my swimming speed and endurance. I measured the length of the laps in the indoor pool and timed myself while swimming 20 or 30 laps, then went home and calculated how far and how fast I had been going. It was about 1 mile per hour.

Next, I had to know if I could swim continuously for 2 hours. So I swam laps in the pool for 25 minutes before being interrupted by another swimmer. Once I had stopped I discovered that I had no sense of balance, and that quickly turned into motion sickness. I had to quit my workout.

Subsequent attempts at swimming continuously only generated the motion sickness problem again after only 15 or 20 minutes. It seems that rotating my head to breathe was causing the problem.

The next problem I encountered seemed trivial. Whenever I tried swimming at a vigorous pace, I kept getting minor cramps in my feet or somewhere in my legs. I didn't pay much attention to that problem. Endurance and motion sickness had my full attention.

The scheduled day for my swim across the lake arrived, but a call from my chase boat pilot ended the plan before we got started. He would not be able to paddle across the lake with a kidney stone. We rescheduled for the following weekend, but in the meantime, since the weather was very hot, I decided to make a trial run on the lake to test the water temperature, my equipment, and the navigation and communication possibilities between swimmer and kayak.

Fortunately I found a willing alternate kayak pilot and the two of us headed out for an afternoon outing in choppy, windy conditions.

My idea to prevent motion sickness was to use a scuba diving snorkle so I could keep my head in one position. That worked quite well. My wet suit seemed to cause too much drag, so I took it off, along with the wading shoes. Holding a straight course turned out to be difficult too. I tended to wander off course quite quickly, and I could not see either the boat or the paddle under water. I made up my mind that I had to keep looking above the surface once every ten strokes or so. I swam for a total of one hour and was only slightly tired. All systems seemed to be "go" for the following weekend.

The "following weekend" was this morning. It was just cold enough that I decided at the last minute to put on the wetsuit. I am a wimp about cold water, but we had to go early so the water would be calm.

We launched the kayak at 07:30 and I hit the lake at 08:00. The water was pleasantly cool, so as soon as I had adjusted to it I took off the wet suit and shoes. We struggled a bit with navigation and communication, but this time I had chosen to use my swim goggles instead of the scuba diving mask, and the visibility was much better out to the side. Of course there was nothing to see straight down. I watched for sea monsters anyway.

I think we had been out about 30 minutes when I got the first twinge of a cramp in my leg. I changed my stroke and let it relax out, as I have done for cramps many times before. Then I went back into my cruising pace. Within minutes the little warning cramps begain appearing in different leg muscles, so I kept changing my pattern, but soon it became apparent that whichever leg I switched to would immediately cramp up. We had gone just about half way to Mercer Island. The GPS said 1 mile or so.

I tried relaxing in a back float, but my legs just curled up under me. I laid face down in the water, breathing through the snorkle and had my kayak helper rub my legs. Then I slung my legs, one at a time, over the top of the boat so he could push the cramps out, but as soon as one was out, the other would cramp up again. The cramps began forming faster than we could treat them.

All this fiddling around with cramps meant I was not generating heat, and I began to get cold. We quickly decided to abort the mission and head for the nearest public beach. Kenneydale Beach was only about 1/3 of a mile away. I put on the life jacket for warmth and extra safety, and hooked my arms and legs around the bow of the kayak while we paddled ashore. Standing and walking soon had my leg cramps under control.

We recalled our pickup crew back from Mercer Island and within 15 minutes they arrived at Kenneydale Beach. I dried off and put on some warm clothes, so all was well except for the disappointment of not finishing the distance.

As I am writing this description, my legs are still stiff and sore. I have muscle strain in nearly every leg muscle from the cramps, but other than that I feel great.

I'm going to investigate the cause of the leg cramps and do something about that. Then I will begin a swimming workout regime using the snorkle, so I can be sure I can swim for long distances without motion sickness or cramps. Hopefully I will be ready for next August, when the lake water will be warm again, and I can call it a "60 year old" swim across the lake.

Shrieking Eels Don't Bite

Last Sunday, during the really hot weather, we cooled off by playing in the river. Lief and the mermaids and I floated a short trip three times, on two inner tubes. The attached video is a good example of what it was like.

It's Just Windows

What good is a computer with Windows on it?

Climbing Trees

The two mermaids came to spend the night at Monya's house last night. This morning they woke up long before noon and immediately went outside to play. Abby decided to climb the tree in the back yard. Until that point, it was just a normal day.

Suddenly, Monya heard screaming coming from the back yard. She hurried outside, and Abby began crying, "there's a raccoon in this tree...and he's looking at me!"

Monya managed to coax Abby down from the tree without furthur incident, but Abby seemed quite frightened by the experience. By the time I arrived at home, Abby was long gone, and the poor tired raccoon was sleeping peacefully in his perch.

The dozing interloper is just barely visible in this photo. He actually woke up and looked at me while I took this picture.

Weekend Visitors: Sunday

We had some more fun on Sunday. There was a fashion show, some more sidewalk art, and a tree climbing demonstration showing how to concentrate on keeping an apple in your teeth while climbing a monstrous Oak tree.

Weekend Visitors

On Saturday morning I arrived at the breakfast table to find someone was sitting in my chair, and eating my porridge.

Later, we had orange juice popcicles.

We played badminton and climbed trees.

We finished off the day by drawing lots of monster images on the sidewalk.

Knitting Help

This is the "favorite photo" Monya was searching for last week. It is dated May 30, 2004, nearly six years ago. Abby was helping me knit a yellow baby blanket which I must have given to her. Those were my early days of knitting, before my hair turned grey, and when my ring was tight on my finger. It was before her baby sister was born. She was very gentle when handling the yarn, and the little wet spots just made their way into the finished product.

Snow White

Monya was looking for a favorite old photo of Abbey today, and she found this one of the "Snow White" phase. Abbey would pretend to eat the poison apple and then fall asleep. My job, as the Seven Dwarfs, was to cover her up with the gold-lined glass case (made of gold colored ric-rac). Then her Daddy would play the part of Prince Charming, who would kiss her and wake her up.

This photo was taken on her birthday in 2005. She was wearing her brand new "Dorothy" dress from the Wizard of Oz, that Monya made for her.

Bird Songs of Western Washington

With the arrival of Spring I have been hearing lots of bird calls during my morning bike commute. There are lots of Robins, House Finches, and White-crowned Sparrows, but more exotic birds are also beginning to make themselves heard. In this past week I've heard the call of a Bewick Wren, Varied Thrush, Osprey, and a Bald Eagle.

I would like to be able to record individual bird calls, and once even attempted to build a sound amplifier that could be focused on an individual bird in the distance. The attempt was a miserable failure because it was difficult for me to shape anything into a thirty inch diameter parabolic shape.

Uncle Jim, a research physicist, helped me by demonstrating how a perfect parabolic shape could be generated using a spinning container of liquid. He told me I would need to figure out how to capture the shape. That's where it ended until recently when my friend Sasi, a chemical engineer, told me how to capture the shape of the liquid, and turn it into a solid that can be used as a template for building parabolic sound amplifiers.

What makes this especially important is that most recordings of bird calls don't sound anything like the bird you hear in your neighborhood. That's because they were recorded somewhere else, and birds have very different sounds depending on where they live.

For example, a White-crowned Sparrow in Western Washington doesn't sound anything like a White-crowned Sparrow that was recorded in Illinois. It is only vaguely similar to one that was recorded in Oregon. Even the distance between Tukwila and Bellevue is enough to make a noticeable difference in the call of these birds.

So maybe I need to begin making recordings of the Bird Songs of Western Washington.

Look, I'm a Snail!

Yesterday Monya and I watched Emma while Lief did some shopping. She was quite the handful since I was too lazy to clean up my mess before she arrived. I had to keep her attention away from some dangerous items I had left out, like wood carving knives. As usual, she found my conch shell and asked me what was inside. She didn't go for the ocean sound, so I told her a snail used to live in there.

Before I realized it, she was on her hands an knees asking me to help her put the "snail" shell on her back. Then she told me, "look, I'm a snail" and she began crawling very slowly across the floor.

Today I described all of this to Lief and told him how delightful she was. He agreed, but he said, "in small doses."

Annual Hail Storm

Last Monday, March 29, we had a violent hailstorm. I didn't realize that it was nearly an annual event until I remembered Lief's April Fool's Day prank from two years ago. That was March 31, but this year our hail storm happened on March 29.

About 1/4 inch of hail stones accumulated on the ground, and it was very noisy coming down. I took these photos while the last of the hail was still falling.

Lost

Once, when I was about four or five years old, I ran ahead of the family while we were returning from a walk through the Arboretum. I missed the turn off the trail where the car was parked and quickly found myself horribly lost. At first there was panic, then the resolve that they had gone home without me, and I would simply have to walk home alone. But that's another story. Here's what happened yesterday.

I was riding home from Bellevue on the bicycle trail when I spotted a little boy about four or five years old, on a tiny bike, going in the opposite direction. It was one of those miniature bikes with knobby fat tires and a cast iron frame weighing more than the child who was intended to ride it. I went past him and very quickly became aware that there were no adults nearby. The rascal was all alone! The memory of panic from my youthful experience made me fear for that mischievous child.

So how could I, as a total stranger, stop the straying urchin and convince him that I could help him find his parents? I had no idea who his parents were. Was he supposed to be with an older sibling? Maybe a babysitter? All I knew was he shouldn't be alone.

I needed to find a responsible adult, but I could see a long distance and there was absolutely nobody in sight. That scalawag was approaching a busy intersection filled with impatient commuters who might not even notice such a tiny child. I decided to stay with him and work something out.

I said, "Hi there, is your mom or your dad around here somewhere?"

He motioned back up the hill and said, "My mom is back there."

"Don't you think you should go back there and stay near your mom?"

"No, I want to go home."

"Where is your home?"

"Down that way," he said, pointing ahead toward the rumbling congested intersection. I began freaking out! I absolutely could not let that small fry go through the intersection alone.

"You need to be with some people who can take care of you."

"There are people at home."

I needed to give him a reason to go back. I cajoled, "Those people at home probably want your mom to be there too. I'm worried that your mom is in trouble and she needs our help. Shall we go back there and find her?"

He thought about it and replied, "My brother is with her. But he goes too slow."

"I'm certain your mom needs help and we need to go help her."

"Hey, there's my mom now!"

I looked up to see a woman on a bike coming down the trail with a frantic look on her face. Sometimes a frantic look like that can be a good sight to see and this was one of those occasions.

[The lecture from the mom is omitted here.]

I can rest in peace knowing that somewhere in the world is a toddler who did NOT get run over by a car. The little tyke will probably forget this experience. In the future he will NOT tell a story about how scared he was when he lost his mother.

Home Made Bread

Today I baked my first loaf of home made bread. The recipe came from my son James, and I watched him make this type of bread about three times before I was brave enough to try it myself. The ingredients are wheat flour, water, and salt, with olive oil and corn meal as a surface coating. It makes the most wonderful bread, and it doesn't have any dairy products in it. I ate more than half of this loaf for breakfast on Christmas morning.

Bharathanatyam

Last week my friends at the office introduced me to the traditional Indian form of dance called Bharathanatyam (bah-`rah-ta `na-tee-um). We found some photos and videos on the internet and then practiced some poses. Here is my first attempt.

The second photo shows several of us doing a difficult composite pose. I thought it might be called "a Grecian urn" but we were told by the photographer that we simply looked like sky divers.

If you're thinking it looks like we didn't get much work done that afternoon, you would be right. We were celebrating a 33rd birthday and a beta software release.

Fall Leaves

Inspired by a recent entry on BLief, I timed my trip to the office the other day such that I could travel by daylight, and take some photos of the wonderful fall leaves. I missed the best view by two days and a wind storm, so this photo shows only what is left on the trees. It's still worth capturing.

Shrimp Palak Masala

Here is a wonderful recipe that I made up, using a combination of techniques I learned from some Indian friends. You could substitute chicken or other protein for the shrimp, but then you would have to change the name of the recipe.

Ingredients
onion 1 whole fresh onion
red bell pepper 1/4 to 1/2 of a large pepper
tomato sauce 1 can (15oz)
water 1 can (15oz)
sliced almonds 1/4 cup
garlic 5 cloves chopped fine
fresh ginger root 1 tsp chopped fine

seasoning mix:
garam masala 1 tblsp
coriander powder 1 tblsp
turmeric powder 1 tblsp
red chili pepper 1 tsp

Basmati rice 2 cups
olive oil 3 tblsp
frozen shrimp 1 cup
fresh spinach (palak) 1 large bag (4 quarts)

Instructions
Chop up onion and bell pepper into medium large chunks and set aside.
Chop up garlic and ginger root and set aside.
Combine seasoning mix and set aside.
Rinse rice in cold water, repeat until rinse water is clear.
Add four cups of water to rice and bring to boil, covered, then simmer for 15 minutes (or put it in the automatic rice cooker)

Put olive oil in large (4 qt) saute frying pan and heat to saute temperature.
Saute onion, turning frequently until it begins to turn translucent.
Add tomato sauce, then add bell pepper, almonds, garlic, ginger and seasoning mix. Stir to combine the ingredients.
Rinse the frozen shrimp in cold water until ice crystals are washed off the surface, then add them to the mix in the saute pan.
Watch mixture in saute pan for boiling. When it boils, turn the heat to simmer.
Rinse and inspect the spinach.
After the saute pan mixture has boiled, add spinach and cover. Check the mixture frequently and stir the spinach into the sauce as it shrinks.
When all the spinach has shrunk and is mixed in, the sauce is ready to serve.

Serving Instructions
Spread a layer of rice on a dinner plate and add the sauce on top of the rice.

Sunrise in Bellevue

This past week we experienced the autumnal equinox of 2009. I enjoyed watching it so much that I decided to bring my camera the next day. Of course, since I had my camera the clouds obscured the sunrise. So I took time-lapse video of the clouds and waited until the next day to capture the sunrise.

The sunrise video is fairly crude, but not bad considering the camera was duct-taped to the window. The light level changes dramatically so my amateur efforts at adjusting for it are obvious.

Grape Harvest

Today, Sep 20, I picked the rest of our grapes. None of them were green, or even red. The inside of the grape is green and the skin is dark purple. They taste good when eaten fresh, but the skins are bitter and the pulp is chewy. And there are lots of big seeds in them. So we're making grape jelly out of them this year.

Lots of the grapes had already fallen off the vine to the ground. Some of them shriveled up and looked like dehydrade raisins on the vine. So this is a late harvest. I want to remember that for next year and be ready to pick them sooner.

The attached photo shows my picking setup. Each bowl like this was about 64 ounces, or one batch of jelly. I picked eight batches today and one last week, so our total harvest was 36 pounds! I read the other day that 2009 has been an exceptional year for grapes, and our vine seemed to be happy too.

I think these are Concord grapes, but I'm not absolutely certain.

Lief's New Bike

Last Sunday Lief and I went for a five hour bike ride, to break in his new bike, in endurance mode. I brought my camera so we could get some photos of his new bike, and play around with motion photography...the kind where the subject is in motion. We ended up with some rejects due to improper camera settings. Then Lief surprised me by picking out one reject that has an artistic appeal.

So here is Lief on his new bike, and me following on a cloud.

SharkBite Plumbing

Monya saw an episode of "This Old House" where they described a new type of plumbing connection. It's called "SharkBite" and it works sort of like the Chinese finger trap toy. You simply slide a pipe into the fitting and it holds. No clamps, no solder, no sweat! It works with copper, or Pex, or even PVC (not that I recommend PVC). Best of all, if you make a mistake, there's a little plastic ring you can use to disconnect it, so you can reconnect it again later. No parts are consumed in the disconnect/reconnect.

It took me a whole day to remove the iron, PVC, and Pex combination shown in the first photo. Most of that time was extracting the iron pipe from the wall. Then it took four hours of measuring and fitting to assemble the copper/SharkBite combination in the wall, and about 30 minutes to measure, cut, and assemble the Pex/SharkBite combination shown in the second photo.

SharkBite fittings are a little expensive, but they don't leak, and they snap together with a click, saving a ton of time. This assembly job would have taken me three days and a call for help from a sweat-joint expert (Dad) if I did it the old way.

The ony drawback is that SharkBite fittings do not hold the pipe rigid. So our bathtub and shower fixtures wobble. I left the wall open on the back side so I can still do something about that if I can think of how.

Bowl of Tomatoes

The other day I picked a second (or third?) batch of small but delicious tomatoes from Monya's tomato patch. It is a wonder that we got any tomatoes at all since the only thing anybody did with them was apply water. There was no pruning, no tying up, and no pest removal. We didn't apply any bug repellent or fertilizer of any kind, so I guess these are organic tomatoes. I can only credit the excellent location, in full sunshine, against a southwest facing wall.

Fashion Tennis

When I was a kid, we were lucky to have our $1.50 tennis racquets. We wore whatever we had, like cut-off jeans, on the tennis court, and we considered ourselves fortunate if we could keep the ball inside the 15 foot high fence surrounding the court.

These days, you must dress fashionably, with a color-coordinated outfit, and matching pink tennis "shoes" too. Emma shows us how it's done...guardin' the net.

Big Sister is more the action type, although she is also very fashionable. She actually reminds me of a high school girl I used to watch on the tennis court about forty-three years ago. That girl was fashionable too, with very quick reflexes.