that which rolls

This isn’t going to be as awesome as the title made it sound. As I’ve been going through my old pictures and moving them to picasa web albums I stumbled across these. They’re from the miniatures building the Pageant of Steam. Every time I see them, they crack me up. I’m extra amused this time because Picasa’s face recognition tool keeps wanting me to name them. The trouble is, I have no idea what action figures they are. Are they from a tv show or cartoon? Are they just generic? Does anyone recognize them? I know the context doesn’t help… I don’t think they’re from a show about a steam powered lumber mill.

From August 2008

From August 2008

From August 2008

If you want to see these guys in person you should check out the Pageant of Steam. I think they’re in the miniatures building every year. You’ve still got a few months to print directions and find accommodations. The 2010 Pageant is from Wednesday August 11 through Saturday August 14, 2010.

From Allegany State Park Weekend

We arrived at Alleganey State Park on Friday a little after 5pm, checked in at the big fancy Administration building where an exasperated lady informed me that there were electrical problems on our cabin loop (McIntosh), she said that was bad because everything is electric on that loop. “Even the heat?” I asked. “Yes. even the heat. but the electrician’s coming. Call us if you have problems.”

When we got the the cabin it looked like they were having a brown out. There were lights but they were very dim. The clock on the stove was flicking on and off in a random way and the heater had a warm spot on it but I wouldn’t have really called it a heater. We spent most of the evening, until about 9 pm trying to stay warm and wondering if it was a brown out or if that’s just the way the cabins were. Then the power came all the way on. A cheer went up throughout the campground… 30 seconds later it went back to brown out. A cry of despair went out throughout the campground. Then it was on again. Hooray… then back to brownout.

I decided to walk down to the bathrooms. People were hanging out around campfires near the cabins. A group of happy drunks were trying to sled down the road on a bench they were ‘borrowing’ from another cabin. Kids were sledding in the dark between cabins. Everyone seemed like they were having a great time. I just couldn’t get warm for some reason.

By 10pm they seemed to have everything sorted and the heat was blasting in the cabin. We had it cranked thinking we should get it as hot as possible in there in case the power went off again. It didn’t though & I nearly died of heat stroke in my winter sleeping bag in the night.

The next morning we woke up. Had a lazy cup of coffee. I discovered the awesomeness of mixing hot cocoa mix in to my coffee. I was slow to get moving. We hiked part of the Osgood trail which was right next to our cabin loop. There wasn’t enough snow for snowshoes though it was pretty slippery so we didn’t get too far. But the sun was out & everything was beautiful.

Our friends arrived a little after 1. They had their 1.5 year old & we all tried to teach him the joys of sledding. I think he liked it but when the experience of snow is so brand new, I think it’s hard to focus on just one part of the wonder of the world around you.

Leslie & I tried to buy wood for a camp fire at the administration building but their store had closed so we drove in to Salamanca, a little town with a Utica-like charm. We bought some wood and one of those cheater logs for starting fires & returned to the cabin for drinks and giant portions of pastitso (brian made it ahead of time so we could just reheat–best. idea. ever.) Then we went out and froze around the fire, wondering if it was too cold for fire to work.

Once we couldn’t take the 5 degree weather anymore we went inside and wolfed down a heap of guacamole. Leslie and I tried to sled down the hill to the bathrooms. It worked for about 1/4 of the way & then we hit sand or gravel or something lame. I was very disappointed. I had great visions of how well it was going to work. Meanwhile some people at a campfire nearby could not and openly mocked us. (Ok they weren’t mean or anything but they didn’t share my vision.)

I wish we could have stayed longer. Except for the ‘cots’.

Seriously, the beds in these cabins were designed by the devil himself. If I had been smart I would have gone to the effort of trying to stack them against the wall somehow and slept on my thermarest on the floor. Evil with a capital EVE. loud. uncomfortable. and constantly trying to throw me on to the floor.

I’d like to go back sometime in spring or fall and explore more of the park. I wonder what their tent campground is like. Is it out in the open and crammed together like a refugee camp (or Fairhaven)? Or do you get to feel a little like you’re in the wilderness? Who can say? I’ve met lots of people who rent cabins there, but never any tenters.

I will confess that I am a google fan. I know they are probably watching and recording my every move, but who isn’t really. I’m just that awesome.

A couple of weeks ago I was teaching a class on ‘maintaining your department site in the cms’. I told people that they could use piknic to edit their photos if they didn’t have photoshop or something like it. Few people have administrative rights on their computers where I work (probably for good reason) so I was trying to find a tool that people could use without installing anything. Piknic still fits the bill.

One of the faculty in the ‘class’ chimed in and told me about Picasa. He was clearly a huge fan. I’d uploaded some stuff to my Picasa web albums before, really just 2 or 3 pictures before I ended up using Flickr for a while. I was sort of like ‘yeah picasa, whatever’. The web albums by themselves are ok.

But then he clarified that the true awesomeness resides in the desktop version of Picasa. It’s kind of like iphoto, which I barely use because I only fire up my crusty old mac when I need to extract some ancient project from it’s bowels. I ended up downloading Picasa a few weeks ago just because. I was completely sucked in to it for the next 3-5 hours. It recognizes faces and highlights them so you can name all the people in your photos, and then pull up all the pictures you have of so-and-so. It was crazy how many people it would find who were just bystanders that got caught in my photo… I never even noticed there were other people in the photos.The tagging is super cool & will be really handy once I actually go through and tag everything. It has geolocating for your photos.

Anyway, I’m in love and am beginning the process of abandoning our old gallery. It’s beginning to show it’s age and the idea of upgrading it just sounds like a hassle. Paying $20 per year for 80 gig of hosting is pretty reasonable considering someone else is maintaining it taking care of all fiddly stuff. It’s still going to be a lot of work to track down all my blog pictures and relink them but it gives me something to obsess over.
So far I’ve uploaded the last 11 months of my photos.

I have reservations at Alleganey State Park for the weekend. If we don’t go, I’ll still have to pay for one night. I do want to go, but I have reservations or maybe just trepidation about the traveling portion of the weekend. Last year’s attempt to visit the park in March did not go well.

I’m using my lunch break to make a last minute packing list.

I really like vacations and getting away but I find I’m not as laid back about it as my parents are. They seem to be able to pick up and go wherever at a moments notice. I feel like I need to check and recheck my lists and my stuff and I spend more time getting stuff together than I should. The worrying makes getting ready for the littlest trips seem like a daunting task. My doctor says I don’t need anxiety medication though.
We’re meeting friends down there. That should be fun. I’m bringing a spare pair of snowshoes for them in case they think that sounds like fun. I’ll probably bring some games too, though I’m not sure they’re game people or at least… not as much as I am. I should take a photo of my entire game collection… and a photo of my entire guidebook collection. It would be interesting to see which one would win. My game collection is a little sad really because we don’t really get together with other board game playing people very often. They mostly sit around getting dusty.

With luck we’ll make it down to Alleganey tomorrow afternoon in an uneventful way. It does look like there might be some snow & it will be cold. At least it doesn’t look like we’re due for freezing rain. I reserve the right to chicken out if losing $90 sounds preferable to numerous terrifying hours in the car.

I’m taking a bike maintenance class at the Geneva Bicycle Center which I’m sure I will write about in the near future. Anyway, being in the shop for several hours I had the exciting opportunity to check out their bathroom. The toilet paper holder cracked me up & I had to take a picture.

From January 2010

This tunnel goes under route 31 and then straight uphill for almost a mile. From January 2010

I went for a ride on Saturday east of my house. I have avoided this area in the past because of the hills. Steep hills every way you look. They’re still tough, but they don’t bother me so much anymore. I am getting really sick of riding the same loop from Marbletown to Phelps over and over. The hills are less steep but it’s more exhausting because I’ve covered that territory so many times that there’s less of a sense of discovery involved.

A possum must have woken up from napping (I think they hibernate) and come out to see what was going on in the world. A car was passing me on the left when I saw him about to sleepily stumble in to the road right in front of me. I was worried he’d keep going  and either end up in front of the car, causing it to swerve me to go flying over my handlebars. I had just enough time to shout at him and he changed direction and headed back into the shrubs.

A little later in to the ride I spotted this huge (as yet unidentified) fungus and had to stop for a picture.

Some kind of bolete? From January 2010

There are some energetic dogs on this route too. I guess they help keep me from going too slow. They seem to be mostly on downhill sections. I can handle downhill dogs. I don’t like uphill dogs. When it’s a downhill dog I know I can calmly outpace it for the most part. My calm state of mind allows some space for me to appreciate the dog’s excitement or territoriality.

When it’s an uphill dog & I am dying, I have many uncharitable thoughts for the dog. Usually there is some shouting at the dog, loud threats to the dog’s well being, some shouts about lawsuits at the dog. It seems like if I had this much oxygen for shouting I could get away from it. I think I get angry because I just need so much strength of will to keep going when I’m on a long climb. The dog is messing with my focus.

Oh and yes, I have seen the dog whisperer. I know shouting isn’t really the way to handle it but it makes me feel better.

Saturday was a beautiful day. While walking through the woods I saw some bright yellow honeycomb resting on the snow, a sure sign that some critter got a delicious winter treat. I’m sure the only reason this piece was spared destruction was because it had no honey in it.

No, not Knight Rider.

I was feeling fidgety tonight. I have been playing too many video games lately. Civilization Revolution has devoured my brain. A twelve step program might be in order. Having over heated and burned out the neural pathways necessary to play civilization over the past few days I thought a bike ride would be a good alternative.

It was dark so of course I thought it would be the perfect time to shoot some video. The new magic shine headlights provide almost enough light to shoot a video… but not quite.
So are you psyched to watch an extremely crappy video? I thought you would be. If it becomes too much just close your eyes and enjoy the music. It’ll be over soon enough. It’s short.
Crappy Video of a night bike ride.

I would like to do this again with some snow on the road. Then you might actually see something. Maybe. Or maybe if I pointed one of my headlights off to the right it might give you the thrilling sensation that you’re moving forward.

So tired this morning. I believe I washed my hair at least 4 times, not realizing that I had already done that. Luckily I’m pretty sure I only took my medication once.

I did pour orange juice in to my coffee instead of milk. I was thinking, maybe I should have orange juice this morning. Wires were crossed. Coffee was ruined. Brian was very kind and gave me his coffee.

I’m working on a second cup now. Trying to burn off the mental fog.

I learned about the Eddington Cycling Number sometime over the summer. Arthur Eddington was an astrophysicist and a cyclist. He came up with an interesting way to represent one’s cycling mileage. I suppose you could think of it as a sort of biking lifetime achievement number, a way represent your consistency at putting lots of miles on the bike or a way of encouraging yourself to go the long way home or explore that road you’ve never followed.

Basically your Eddington number…

“E, is the number of days in your life when you have cycled more than E miles.”

If you have traveled 21 miles on 21 different days your number is 21. If you have pedaled a distance of 25 miles on 21 different days of your life your Eddington number is 21. Once you have achieved an Eddington number of 21, no daily mileage total of less than 22 miles counts toward your next level increase.

I usually do track my miles though I understand the argument that it sort of makes you pay attention to your miles rather than just enjoying your time on the bike. But… I feel capable of doing both.

I was thinking of making up random goals for myself that I will end up ignoring & decided maybe I should try to raise my Eddington cycling number. So on my lunch break the other day I made a little spreadsheet to figure out what my Eddington number really is. (me = geek)

It’s only 21.

I thought it would be higher.

I have ridden 21.4 miles a whole lot of times because that is the distance of one of my regular commute routes. I don’t know how many times because I stopped counting after I reached an E of 21, which happened on August 28, 2008. Every ride under 22 miles after that counted for nothing toward my next E number.

I only have to do four more rides over 22 miles to make it to 22 but my goal for the year is going to be to boost it up to a slightly more awesome number in the 30’s. We’ll see how it goes.

What’s your Eddington Cycling Number? (if you’re an obsessive mileage tracker.)