If You're Going to Move to Apalachicola...

... then please look into these three resources.  

First off, read Suburban Nation (and if you can, order it from here; usually not in stock but quickly available) to understand how and why this town works so well.

Next, read Classic Cracker (again, DTB usually stocks it) to see how houses should be built to suit this climate.  Don't settle for a slab-foundation house; mold can set in when the power (and air conditioning) has an extended outage after a hurricane.  Build raised with a metal roof and wide porch and you'll be ahead of the crowd on both your power bills and ongoing maintenance costs.

Finally, speaking of mold and dampness, contemplate this map and related comments regarding where not to locate.  Namely in old stream beds.  As good buildable lots have filled up, people have recently taken up building in these.  Clue-by-four time: When the contractor crew has to use hip boots to get around the building site (and yes, I've seen it), just cut your losses and halt construction.  Your sinus condition will thank you a few years down the road.

These sorts of public service messages shouldn't be needed, but well, evidently they are.

Katrina plus 20

There's little to add after what's been written here at this blog over the past 15 years.  link to old posts

However, the Big Picture Science podcast had a decent series this summer on the topic, worth a listen:

• Hurricane Comms – kind of important, and near & dear to me
• Hurricane Season – mostly lessons learned
• Katrina and the River – the Mississippi, of course

It still galls that so much reporting (somewhat including the above-linked podcasts) is so New Orleans-centric when the actual ground zero was some 50 miles to the east, but urban areas seem to be all the news media cares about, so there it is.  Here, have a couple of pictures from the areas that shall not be reported on:

Downtown Bay St. Louis.  Notice the manholes sticking up towards what was ground level on Beach Boulevard.  It's not evident from the perspective here, but the original road level was about 25' above sea level.  BTW, the  pilings in the background were part of the train bridge across the mouth of the bay, and you know how solidly those things are built.

Here, this used to be (and now is again) a neighborhood, as well as the bridge into town.

Here's the Washington Street neighborhood.  The surf debris line can be seen across the horizontal middle of the picture.  Flooding extended well inland from the top of this picture for several miles.

Here's one more, taken from the overpass of I-10 and Hwy 603, about ten miles inland:

Similar pictures can be found from across the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and even as far as Panhandle Florida.

ps: Nice article in the Sea Coast Echo marking today's anniversary.  RTWT.

Internal Frame Rust Protection

Here's a quick tutorial on how to spray Boeshield T9 coating into a steel bike frame.  Six minutes, but if your bike's already built up and you don't want to disassemble it to do this treatment, skip to the four minute mark.  Looks dead easy.

The real trick the guy uses is an extra-long spray hose to get way up into the frame.  Look in the video's drop-down description for an Amazon link to get these.  Never seen them anywhere before.  What a great idea.

ps, Thursday 8/28: This was a far messier project than I'd anticipated.  Of course you'll have to do the job outside or at least in a workshop.  With disc brakes do not repeat do not repeat do not get any oil on the calipers and pads – which means covering them with plastic bags and taping things down securely.  Even so, be careful.  If I had to do it over, I'd remove them entirely except for the cable, bag over the entire assembly, and seal the one opening securely with tape.  Even one drop of oil and those brakes will squeal like a banshee until you clean everything and replace the pads.

So, set things up inside.  Remove the bolts needed to get the extra-long straw up into the frame, remove the wheels (got to keep the oil off the rotors!), and mask anything you've got to mask ahead of time.  Then haul it all outside, go to work, and get it cleaned up before bringing back inside.  Might want to let it sit in the hot sun for a few hours if you can before bringing back inside.  It's a mess, but worth it for a bike you might keep for decades.

GMRS Expanding Into VHF Low-Band?

Seventeen minute video here.  TLDW: GMRS (wiki link explainer) is up in the 460 MHz range.  This proposal is to grant an additional allocation in the mid-high 40 MHz range, in some old cordless phone allocations and other abandoned spots.  Power levels are TBD, but I'm guessing in the 50 watt range.  This would give improved propagation ranges and characteristics in many settings.

This is a GREAT idea!  It's the perfect solution for rural areas, where at the current GMRS frequencies signals are absorbed wholesale by pine trees.  Think of it as "high-power CB, without all the skip noise, and with half-size antennas."  For the deer hunters currently bootlegging on the 2m ham band this would be both a big improvement and a legal solution.  I'm 100% for this, and would be in with a new radio of my own if it happens.

IF it happens.  Let's see how things roll out over the next couple of years.

Gravel On

As hinted at a couple of weeks ago, I've been bike shopping.  Here's the result:

Nice picture from Lafayette Park.  Toward the background you can actually see the humidity.  I ended up with a Surly Straggler, just because that seemed like the best all-round gravel and hell-raising bike available at a somewhat local dealer.  Which is appropriate, considering how much it's going to be ridden on the dirt roads in Tate's Hell.  28.5 lbs – and that's with chunky Mallet pedals installed.  Pretty light for a steel off-roader.  The ride is playful and ground-hugging, and way more comfortable and in control than my old aluminum Specialized.  Well, fifteen years of refinement of exactly what a gravel bike should be will do that.  The Avid BB7 brakes were somewhat of a mystery at first, but this video cleared things up.

Further additions... not just yet, beyond maybe an under-seat bag to hold keys while riding.  I'll keep the VHF antenna mount and the blinker off the old bike to possibly install later, but for now I think I'll leave it plain & minimalist.

Just a Bunch of Baofengs

Wednesday's exercise at the FSU Marine Lab (setup mentioned on Monday) went well.  With a total of five organizations, well, nobody's radios talked to each other.  Except for... a bunch of FRS's, which FCEM handed out like so much Halloween candy to various reps from the five organizations.  For the maybe half-mile ranges required, this was plenty.  Anyway, here's a colorful picture of the bunch recharging:

I don't care what radios you have, have a bunch of FRS's at hand and ready to go.  As a backup, they can't be beat.

Set them all on one channel and hit the lock button.  "How do I use this?"  "Push the button on the side and talk."  Easy.

Protip: When it's time to wrap up and you need your radios returned, announce over the air that the keg is cold & ready and one of your people just came back with a bag of Subway sandwiches.  Trust me, they will be retuned PDQ!

I Sense a Pattern Here

Bay [St. Louis] named among Gulf Coast's top '7 Towns With a Slower Pace of Life' at The Sea Coast Echo.  Scroll to the bottom for the complete list, then click through to the original article.

Hm, and I've lived in three of the seven, Ocean Springs being the third.  Two others are fairly close by, and I've been to them but a re-visit  is long overdue.  The remaining two are way over in Texas; might or might not get that far.

There are of course many other small towns with the same slower pace of life, some of them even slower than these.  I'll keep those to myself however.  Wouldn't want them to get overcrowded the way some on this list of seven have.

Mid-August Monday

Prepared for Wednesday's emergency exercise at the FSU Coastal & Marine Lab with FCEM today, mostly getting gear (expectedly) set up and (unexpectedly) repaired.  With that complete and the hurricane situation looking alarmingly stacked-up but for the moment mostly out of my problem zone:

I then set out for parts unexplored, namely nearby Bald Point State Park.  It's the western point at the mouth of Ochlockonee Bay, and the farthest eastern reach of Franklin County.  Nice and quiet place on a hot Monday afternoon.  Will have to go over there and poke around some more.

Not a great swimming beach, but beyond that it's a pretty nice place.

My Monday So Far

Yeah.  Just like that.

Trader Joe's Found

It was reputedly impossible, however on the fourth attempt the Fabled Land of Joe was discovered.  Evidence:

I didn't really need anything, but there it was and I wasn't about to pass on the opportunity to turn in when it presented itself.  Picked up a bag of dried apricots and was on my way.

Sure, my pith helmet is now a little sweat-stained and the machete needs a sharpening, but at least Trader Joe's has been found.  Next up on the list:

• La-La Land
• Oz
• Flatland
• the other side of a Möbius strip
• inside of a Klein bottle

Wait, what was I doing up north of I-10?  Searching for a gravel bike that (a) fits me, and (b) is in stock so that I can test ride it.  It's going to take a few more weeks while store stock gets shuffled around but this one is a strong contender.

A Little Non-Local Color

After a relatively quiet hurricane season thus far, the Atlantic basin is tuning up a little:

Hm.  Nothing local yet, but still all the alert colors we don't like to see.  Welcome to Monday.