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To Summarize and to Wrap Up
Posted by geraldcor on 02 Jul 2010
So the final day of driving and the final day of the trip just sort of wound together. By the last 100 miles of the trip, both Sam and I were going bonkers. The landscape, as interesting as it is (just the shear lack of anything interesting is interesting) and as green and lush as Michigan is, just makes one lose their mind a little. So much corn. So so much corn that it makes me not want to eat corn. I don't know how truckers do it day in and day out, but they do. Good for them.
The final day of driving was broken up by a most wonderful lunch of a Chicago Dog from Nancy's Burgers in New Buffalo right over the Indiana, Michigan border (MI side). The best part was that we ate on the shores of Lake Michigan. The aura of the area and the vastness of the water really made it seem like a coastal town - except without the absurd salty humidity that makes my hands swell and face sticky. It was a beautiful, warm, windy day and the sky was crystal. The water is remarkably blue and clear and it seems like a wonderful place to vacation.
So we ate then we left. As as mentioned, the last miles were tough. It is rather remarkable how green and "wooded" Michigan is. When we finally arrived, we were greeted by other tenants of the student housing area where Sam is living and they helped with great deftness to unload the truck. One family even brought over a delightful casserole involving chicken, Stove Top Stuffing, corn and peas. It only mildly satisfied so we downtown and found a Korean restaurant that had a spectacular kimchi. Really good stuff. Hope to go back.
Read this next paragraph slowly and carefully. Life goal accomplished here. I saw fireflies for the first time! I have always wanted to see them and have heard legend, as most kids have, of little bugs that glow as they fly. Sure enough, as we walked through the grass on the University of Michigan campus, little green glowing lights would jump out of the grass and then fade out. Then another and another and 3 more and it made me giddy to see such a stunning display of the remarkable evolution of natural creatures. Glowing butts. Wow.
After ice cream, donut holes, and getting the Internet to work, we turned in. The next day brought projects around the house, 3 trips to [name of hardware store I forgot, but basically as awesome as ACE Hardware in SLC. (Side Note. The man that just sat down in front of me at the airport has hideous feet. As if he has spent his entire life shoeless while walking through lava rocks and glass. I can't divert my attention). Where was I? Oh yes. Today. A great burger, an assembled bunk bed, and a pleasant flight and here I am, writing away. So far it hasn't been a bad wait and I have plenty of charge on both laptop and iPhone so I'll be ok for a few more hours I think.
Here's Sam's townhouse. It's a great place.
On Through Illinois
Posted by geraldcor on 01 Jul 2010
So Nebraska really does get on your nerves as much as people say. It has some definite beauty, but it's like you're getting hit over the head by a beautiful baseball bat over and over and over. Eventually your mind just can't take the repetition. The vast tracts of corn fields really are a sight and should be witnessed by everyone on the planet. We consume soooo much corn, yet we probably one eat about 2% of it. The rest goes into manufactured processes and pig feed. It seems like that land could be used for more nutritive foods and the government should start paying farmers for putting up solar fields next to their rice or windmills amongst their spinach rather than just encourage rampant corn growing. Ah well, I don't think that is going to change any time soon, but the number of wind farms that we saw is encouraging. People really are at least thinking about the need for non-fossil fuel energies.
Once we got through Nebraska, we dispatched with Iowa with great ease and decided to stop in Princeton Illinois for the night. I slept on one of the most poorly designed mattresses ever invented. It was as if they just put fabric over springs. Who in their right mind would thing this is an acceptable design for a mattress? Who tested this and said, "Yup, this'll do."? I guess it wasn't so bad once I found the sweet spot in between springs. I enjoyed a continental breakfast (whenever I hear the work continental I can't help but think of Nina Flowers' Bacardi commercial after her second place win on Rupaul's Drag Race saying, "...in Puerto Rico when I won Miss Continental" in her excellent Puerto Rican accent) of mini donuts, english muffin and some OJ.
Oh, I saw my first firefly, but it ended up being smashed on the windshield of the car rather than flitting beautifully through the woods. Hopefully once we make it to Michigan I can explore the woods behind Sam's new house and see some in glorious action.
Limericks From Nebraska
Posted by geraldcor on 01 Jul 2010
Some travelers on route through Nebraska
Make haste so their bladders don't blasta
Dr. Pepper contributed
To their piss distributed
At truck stops to avoid such disasta
There once was a state called Nebraska
It's seeming to be quite nasta
The air is dank
The cows are stank
And it make you wanna drive fasta
There once was a place named Nebraska
Who's state game was called strip Canasta
Every Wednesday downtown
The young folks would frown
As old geezers would really get nasta
The Road To Michigan Part 1
Posted by geraldcor on 29 Jun 2010
So my trip to help Sam move to Ann Arbor, Michigan has been a wonderful trip so far. The ride has been smooth, beautiful and full of truckstop food, Gatorade and cool ranch Doritos. We are in Big Springs Nebraska and enjoying Start Trek The Next Generation on SyFy. It's a perfect evening. Not much to say right now except Wyoming is a surprisingly beautiful and varied landscape and I can't wait for what is to come. I just wanted to check in. Oh, perhaps I should elucidate my meeting with a couple of truckers in the Wendy's.
In response to a humorous, ironic shirt worn by a woman which says More People Have Read This Shirt Than Your Blog.
Trucker1: Ha, that's funny
Woman: Oh, yeah. You should checkout (url I can't remember) they have tons of these types of shirts.
Trucker1: Oh. Well, I don't know what the hell a blog is anyway.
Trucker2: I think it has to do with computers.
Trucker1: I know that much but I don't know what the point is.
Trucker2: I think people read stuff and comment and shit.
Trucker1: I suppose. I just as soon call my wife and eat a burger.
Trucker2: Har har har.
The End.
Surprisingly like postmodern in this context isn't it.
I'm Back-Mostly
Posted by geraldcor on 22 Jun 2010
So I rode 8ish miles today on a new fork and new bars. My first pedals were a bit odd because the last time I rode I had 30+lbs. of gear over my rear axel. I was wobbling all over the place much like I did the first time I rode with weighted panniers. I quickly got my balance back and I felt great. Sort of. It is surprising how quickly one can degrade from 50 miles being a lovely afternoon ride to 8 miles sucking the life from your lungs - especially after 2.5 weeks of being all sullen and not wanting to do anything but sit.
So I rode and it was good and I love being on a bike. What happened to climbing you say? Well, my fingers just can't handle it like they used to and I have a renewed vigor for cycling so I don't climb as hard anymore. I still (try) to go to the climbing gym 3 times a week as long as I don't have any outstanding injuries, but that is surprisingly hardly ever the case. I still daydream about climbing way more than I daydream about cycling which is a good sign I think.
Also, as you can see, no new updates to the site yet. I have some stuff mostly complete, some new design features, but I'm not sure if I love them or not. Maybe I'll just release them and see what happens. Also, I haven't finished all of the back end stuff for comments and personal profiles. All in due time.
Oh look, here's my bike before it got a new fork.
Django joins and related field magic
Posted by geraldcor on 15 Jun 2010
Well call me silly. I just realized that Django's ORM is even more awesome than previously thought.
Say you have model (table) A and model B which has a many to one foreign key called BB which points to A. Execute a query on B along the lines of
b = B.objects.get(pk=1)
In our template we want to access the address field in A but our query was executed on B. We can do all sorts of joins and fun stuff, but instead, in our template (remember to pass b in the context), to display the address, we can do something like
{{ b.bb.address }}
This is possible because django renders the foreign key as an actual instance of the related model so you can just use python dot notation to walk up the dictionary that is your foreign key.
This is really a great feature and makes working with related models a breeze. I'm glad I discovered this, but embarrassed that it took me so long.
Time to work on stuff
Posted by geraldcor on 14 Jun 2010
Rainy Trees from Gregory Corey on Vimeo.
Here is a little time lapse I created using my Canon Rebel XTi, 50mm 1.8 lens and my Harbortronics waterproof time lapse case. Thanks to buxtor, I was able to use a new, freshly unearthed watertight case to house my battery. That's the good news. The bad news is that some sort of varmint chewed through a lead on my solar panel so my battery hasn't been charging for the past 4 months or so. As such, the time lapse stopped a bit short.
The results are still interesting. The warm orange glow of the city blows my mind every time I do a time lapse. One thing I would change for a windy day like this is perhaps drag the shutter for the entire duration of the lapse. You can see once the light gets dim, the trees become blurry because my aperture stays the same, but my exposure length increases up to 30 sec. It might be a cool effect to use a 30 sec exposure time during the day to have some nice blurred trees. But then again, it is kind of beautiful to see the trees pushed over by wind. Worth an experiment.
I also noticed that the glass on the Harbortronics box gives off some weird light refractions which may or may not be a problem in the future. Lens flares are one thing, but a few frames have an orange hue to them that is a little bothersome. Needs further experimentation.
I've watched A LOT of time lapse movies produced by other people and feel very inadequate. Some of their shots are so much more beautiful than anything I've ever done and I haven't figured out how they do it yet. I've got panning down. A dolly is next. A 5D Mark II is next. One part of me wants to be that good, the other part just wants to keep exploring. I know part of it is that I still just have a lot to learn with camera and processing (I do very little processing before compiling a time lapse like this. I just get so excited to see the results), but I also need to learn more about lighting, exposure, white balance - all that good stuff. Also, I need some $1000 lenses. That might help. So I will just keep making time lapses and hopefully discover something new with each shoot.
p.s. There have been a few site updates already, but upcoming changes include blog comments, personalized pages for each of us, and a few more design tweeks. Enjoy and thanks for reading.
Adventures live on of course
Posted by geraldcor on 07 Jun 2010
So, despite being incredibly sore from my junk to my head, and especially sore in my shoulder (my legs feel like a million buck though), I am beginning to scheme my next adventures. As I'm not supposed to put any strain on my shoulder, perhaps it is time to get my timelapse photography equipment out of the basement and get some more footage. It has been almost 6 months since my last shoot and it feels like I have been shirking my duties as a documentarian of the natural world. I have been introduced to some new equipment that really tickles my fancy so I am going to hopefully get that going again.
Also, I am going to fix all of the weird bugs on rccee.com and add a few enhancements so that this site will really become useful for all of us adventurers. We have our combined adventures, but we need to be able to elucidate our individual adventures whether it be child rearing, climbing, running a marathon etc. So stay tuned for a lot of changes to the site.
It actually hurts kind of a lot to type for some reason so that is all for now.
Why do I even Try
Posted by geraldcor on 06 Jun 2010
I'd like to refer you this post and particularly the point about life goals being downright failures. I have had a lot of goals go down the tubes because of dumb luck and injuries, but this one takes the cake.
I tore my rotator cuff about 10 miles into today's ride. Not only did I tear my rotator cuff, I did it in the stupidest way possible. I ran into a parked truck. So Stupid!!!
As we rode along, we saw this piece of farm equipment magically planting lettuce with three people sitting comfortably on the back. I was mesmerized, we all were, but the other's had enough sense to see a truck parked up ahead and swerved out of the way. I, on the other hand ran right into the back of it, seconds after Braden yelled out "Look Out!". I hit it going between 15-20mph and did some serious damage to my bike. That wouldn't have been so bad except my shoulder really hurt(s). We hung out for a bit and tried to decide what to do. Taylor has some friends that come from the area we were riding and luckily one friend, Dave, was available, had a bike rack on his car and was willing to drag us around. We made it to an insta-care and it became quickly clear why my should was hurting so bad.
My rotator cuff isn't as bad as it could be. It is not totally torn to shreds, rather the ligaments and tendons are just mildly torn and stretched out so it should only take 2 weeks to heal - hopefully - but until then I am supposed to keep off of it as much as possible for fear of further damage.
I am extremely upset with myself and I feel terrible that my friends put so much time and money into this trip and it only lasts a day and a half. Oh well, another goal that fate has decided to put on hold for a while. I will tackle this one again and see what bizarre injury or illness I can come up with next, but I will keep trying. Lesson learned - Always look forward no matter how outrageous the farm equipment looks.
One Day Down
Posted by geraldcor on 05 Jun 2010
One day done. 75.9 miles. We are all very beat and ready to lie around for a while. We are staying in the backyard of Smokin' Joe - the Harley ridin' pipe smokin' Christian. He has one of the biggest dogs - biggest headed dogs I have ever seen. We stopped in Farr West at the CAL ranch store and saw some amazing culture.
we walk in and are greeted by this wonderful display of the animals you are about to eat. Then, i was amazed by a line of hats so long it has a vanishing point.
After that, the riding became cumbersome. Our bottoms were done, our minds were starting to shut down and the roads were narrow and long.
Overall the ride was great and I think we all agree that considering the distance we just rode, we all feel pretty good - except for Taylor's legs which were omitted from the morning sunscreen ritual. So we are tired but far from defeated. Tomorrow will be interesting. It all depends on how quickly our bodies heal tonight during the 15 hours of sleep I hope to get.