An Evening Sail

It has been much too long since I posted. This is a (true) story I wrote back in 2002. First of three stories.

Thursday I went out after work (temperature on land was above 90 degrees) with the one and only lessee, Joe, on Serenity (my sailboat). Had stiff winds when we left - highest I saw was 19 knots. Had full mainsail and jib up, and we were hauling ass out there. Got her up above 6 knots. We headed N, tacking upwind. Got across the little bay (you know - to the other side of the water over by the north end of Bainbridge Island), and the wind dropped off to a measly 8 knots.

So, just to see how it would work, we put up the asymmetrical spinnaker (sometimes known as a geniker, or a drifter). That's a lot of sail! Headed mostly downwind - straight for downtown Seattle, aimed right at the Smith Tower, and she performed beautifully. We were doing 5+ knots. As we got closer to Seattle - sort of back where we came from - the wind started picking up. Once the winds got around 12 knots, Serenity got real squirrelly. If I let her bow come up at all, she'd catch the wind and try to turn into the wind. Normally, you'd think that would be good - into the wind spills the wind out of the sails and lets the boat come more upright. However, when you're heading downwind to begin with... into the wind puts you more broadside to the wind. With that much sail out there, she really heeled under those conditions. I was afraid at one point I was going to lose control - the helm didn't respond and I was just about standing on the side of the cockpit. (Who needs drugs when you've got that much adrenalin?) Hit 6.5 knots at one point. That may be the fastest I've ever had Serenity moving.

I wore a short sleeved T-shirt, shorts, and boating Tevas the whole evening. In the middle of the sound with a 15+ knot breeze, I considered adding a sweatshirt. Then we'd get close to the shore and the wind felt like a blowtorch coming off the land. It was great!

As we got close to Seattle, the wind tapered a bit (and so did I). We were almost dead square in front of the incoming Bremerton Ferry, so we moved north a bit so as to not block the dock. We were going to drop the Geniker, but decided to leave it up until the ferry passed us - it is a beautiful rainbow-colored sail - for the enjoyment of the ferry passengers. Then we headed north again back to the Marina. A very successful evening.

Seattle signage not very clear!

While waiting for the bus in Seattle on Third near Pine yesterday, I noticed this sign, and wondered what the hell it means!

The top part seem clear - from 6 to 9 in the morning and 3 to 6 in the afternoon buses come here. I'm trying to catch a bus here, so that's a good thing. 

But what's this "EVERYDAY" stuff? I think of the word "everyday" as an adjective, although dictionary.com says it can be a noun (it has three definitions for use as an adjective and one for use as a noun). Synonyms include "workday" and "common". To me, "everyday" means "common". As in, "Today I'm wearing my everyday shoes." 

So is this where the Common bus stops? (The Fancy bus must stop somewhere else.)

Then there's the bottom portion of the sign. Wow. Seattle, are you sure? It's clear that your car will be towed. But when? Apparently, just "all other times". So does that mean you won't be towed from 6 to 9 in the morning and 3 to 6 in the afternoon? (And, is that Every Day? or just the Everyday Days?)

At least they have a phone number you can call if this is confusing. 206-684-5444. (But don't bother - it wasn't helpful.)

A few fixes for the Kawasaki Versys

I bought my Kawasaki Versys new in 2009. It's been a great motorcycle, but it didn't take long to discover a few things that needed improving or a few problems to be solved. Here are three of the fixes I've done.

• The mirrors were terrible. First, they're too short (or not set far enough out). When you look in the mirrors, all you see is your shoulders. And they vibrate like crazy, making it impossible to see details of what's going on behind you! Early on I bought a couple of mirror extenders from http://www.motowerk.com/. That fixed it so I could see traffic behind me and not just my shoulders, but the vibration problem still was there. The solution for the vibration was to replace the mirrors. I picked up a pair of Aprilia mirrors locally for about $24 each (a real deal - way less than Kawasaki wanted for mirrors for any model motorcycle). 
• After the first season of riding my Versys it developed a terrible buzz/vibration coming from somewhere up front. Reading the forums, it was apparent this was "normal" for this bike. I found that pressing on the cowling around the headlight reduced it (which was one of the commonly mentioned buzz points). Again, at the recommendation of several riders on the forums, I took all the cowling off and put a thin self-sticking foam insulation (picked up from the local hardware store) everywhere the cowling touched or almost touched the frame or another piece of cowling. Buzz fixed!
• The reset button in the instrument cluster is another failure point. Very frustrating to not be able to reset my trip odometer or set the clock! Again, the forums identified the problem (or multiple problems) - and had a solution. Take the instrument cluster off the bike, dismantle it enough to get to the bottom of the circuit board, and then use contact cleaner on the switches. It looks like they're enclosed and the contact cleaner won't get into the switch, but apparently it does get into the right area and doing this solved my problem. A year later, and the switches still work reliably. 

There are more things on my list I'd like to do, but these were the frustrating little design flaws that were easy to resolve. (I hope Kawasaki is listening.)

Gary

You're kidding, right?

Auto tabs in Washington used to all expire on December 31 every year. I remember my dad getting the new tabs in December and thinking the DOL was completely crazy when he read the instructions, which were similar to these on the back of my recent tabs:

Especially “DO NOT APPLY IN FREEZING WEATHER!”. We lived in Colville. In December in the 1960’s it rarely was above freezing. There was snow on the ground. We had an unheated garage. I recall watching him use a blowtorch to warm the license plate up to get it warm enough so the tabs would stick!

Five days, 1364 miles

Over the Memorial Day weekend I went on a little trip...

Map of my 5-day Memorial Weekend trip

If the map looks like I wandered a bit, you might be right. I had a few goals in mind, but I mostly looked at the map each night and decided on a direction for the next day.

I had planned to take a few extra days after Memorial Day and ride down the Oregon Coast. However, as the time to go got closer it became clear the weather was going to be cool and rainy. So I looked at the weather maps, and saw that eastern Washington looked more promising. Slight chance of showers, and temperatures up to mid-80s, depending on where... I was also concerned about the heavy traffic on the roads and availability of camping sites. But that didn't stop me.

I had Friday off, so got everything packed up and loaded onto the motorcycle (a 650cc Kawasaki Versys). Yes, this was a ride, not a drive. At a friend's suggestion, I left town early (before 6am) to beat the traffic across the pass. There are no alternate ways across the pass - just major highways, like I-90 or Stevens Pass. Before Cle Elum I exited I-90 and took side roads, aiming for Ellensburg. However, Highway 10 was closed for construction, and the detour took me on 970 and 97. About 10 miles north of Ellensburg on Highway 97, I saw this:

Scene from Highway 97 about 10 miles north of Ellensburg

Highway 97 is the Blewett Pass highway, and I decided to ride over Blewett Pass. But I needed gas, so dropped down into Ellensburg to fill up. Then headed north over Blewett Pass. Went on up to Highway 2, then U-turned and came south, going over Old Blewett Pass. Nice twisty road! I'll post some video when I get time. Once again into Ellensburg, I took the Canyon Road south to Naches. That was another nice road, and I don't believe I've ever been on it before. From Naches I headed west up 410, hoping for camping. I figured if I didn't find a campground, since this was National Forest Service land, I could head up a road and camp anywhere I could find a flat spot. I got lucky at Little Naches campground. This small campground has about 20 sites, and 4 were empty. Grabbed one before someone else could... (and two sites never filled up that night). When I got up the next morning about 7:30, the thermometer on my bike said 39°. No wonder I was a bit chilly. I didn't leave camp until it warmed up to 50°, which was around 10:00. 

My campsite at Little Naches campground

The next morning (Sunday) I headed further west on 410 just to see the road, then turned around and headed SE. Went through tri-cities, Walla Walla, and into Oregon. When I rode to Crater Lake a couple years ago I found some nice camping east of Weston on the Weston-Elgin road. Air temperature dropped quickly as I went over the 5100'+ pass, and there was lots of snow along the road. I didn't want to camp near there. I continued riding until I dropped down into the lower elevation at Elgin, OR, and the temperatures were back up around 70. I camped at the Elgin Hunaha RV Park, and had the large lawn tent-area and adjacent bathrooms all to myself. For only $1 more than the NFS campground I had running hot water and a hot shower. Temperature the next morning was again in the 30s. I've ordered a warmer sleeping bag...

Monday morning, at the suggestion of the camp host, I headed to Enterprise, OR, then north to Clarkston, WA. That road is one great twisty road with great views along the way. Thoroughly enjoyed the ride (rode parts of it three times to go back and get some photos). My tires' chicken strips got narrower on this road! And it ends up in this great twisty grade down into Asotin, WA. Unfortunately, I was having so much fun riding it that I didn't take any photos. I think that is a reason for another trip there. 

Oregon highway 3 north of Enterprise

Monday night I ended up at the Lyons Ferry Marina KOA near Palouse Falls. Another place where I had the tent area to myself, and a hot shower once again, for a few more bucks ($19.15).


Tuesday I went up the road a short distance to Palouse Falls. I visited here two years ago on a trip to Crater Lake. This photo is taken from the visitor area with a super-wide-angle lens. Everything is so big and close it's hard to get it all in with a regular lens.

Palouse Falls

The Palouse river below Palouse Falls is  also very spectacular-looking. This time of year the green really adds to it. I took a little dirt road just outside the park entrance a half mile or so to get the next couple photos. 

Palouse River below Palouse Falls

Any trip is really just an excuse to take photos of your motorcycle...

After Palouse Falls, I headed toward Grand Coulee Dam to see the Laser Show. I was close to Grand Coulee Dam earlier in the trip, but wanted to avoid the Memorial Day crowds so didn't stop at that time. I went on the Dam tour and watched the laser show. I was unable to get a good photo of the laser show. They weren't spilling water over the dam yet - maybe in another couple weeks. I may go back to see that.

Grand Coulee Dam

After spending the night in the National Parks' Canyon Springs campground, I headed home, stopping only for a few dozen more photos along the way. 



And one other stop on the way. Went to the motorcycle shop to order new tires. The ones on the bike now had over 9,000 miles, and were completely worn out. Need new tires so I can plan a new trip.


Gary

Bloomsday 2012

One more Bloomsday completed. That makes 34 for me, but who's counting?

A perfect day for it. And a perfect weekend visiting friends in Spokane and enjoying the weather and viewing the Spokane River, which is close to the highest I can recall seeing.

I did better than I had a right to expect - 1:10:12 official time. That's 9:24 per mile. I'll take it!

Gary

Hurray for Backups

On Sunday I went for a motorcycle ride. Not that this has anything to do with the subject...

When I returned home and tried to open a file using Excel on my computer, I got a "File not found" error. I know the file is there - I had just edited it a few days before. The file is on a network drive on a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. I checked, and sure enough, that drive showed as not connected...

My NAS is a smart piece of hardware, specifically a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, that runs a flavor of Unix and contains up to four hard disk drives (mine has three 1.5 Terabyte disk drives) in a RAID array for redundancy. Failure of any one disk drive will result in no loss of data. Additionally, I have a couple of USB drives connected to the NAS, and every night while I sleep, it backs up all new and changed data to these drives. I periodically swap one of the drives out and store it "offsite" in case of disaster, like fire or theft, so I have a copy of my data that's not in my computer room.

I crawled under the computer table, and found the NAS completely dark. And it didn't want to power up. Unplugging it and plugging it back in got it to where it would power up. Whew - must have been a power hit that knocked it out, I thought (although it's plugged into a UPS, so that doesn't really seem likely). A few minutes later I came back, and found it working its way through the file system check. However, there was this faint unmistakable smell of hot electronics in the air. I touched the NAS, and it was very warm to the touch - unusual, as this unit normally runs cool. And the hot electronics odor was very strong around it. Figuring I was watching a catastrophic failure getting ready to occur, I pulled the plug. Then got down and used my nose to isolate the failure area.

The smell was clearly coming from the NAS, around the power supply. I pulled the disk drives out of it, checked the fans and vacuumed the dust out. It was dusty, but not bad enough to stop the airflow. To cut to the chase about the NAS, I found out I had a five-year warranty on it, and I purchased it just a bit over four years ago. 45 minutes on the phone with Netgear on Monday arranged a replacement, which is on its way to me.

But, back to editing my file. I now have around 2 Terabytes of data that is inaccessible. :-( That's "2" with 12 zeroes after it. 2,000,000,000,000 bytes. That's a lot of missing data. But remember I said that the NAS automatically backed up to a couple of USB drives every night? And I haven't touched this file for a couple of days. The backup should be current. I plugged one of the backup drives (they're formatted as Windows disks) into my computer, and copied that file from the backup drive to my C drive, and was able to edit it with no hassle. Hurray for backups. Now I only need to remember to put that file back where it's supposed to be when I get my NAS back up and running...

Hurray for backups! Did I already say that? Double Hurray for backups that actually work!!