Can't Wait Until Next Christmas...

... when this book comes out.  Here are a couple of teasers:

• A New Christmas Fable
• Joyous Noel!

Because this is how you get new scientists, engineers, and innovators.

About That Antarctic Station...

 Last Saturday was the BBC's mid-winter transmission to the British antarctic research station (yeah, missed it again, sigh).  Whether or not you caught it live, you can catch up with various peoples' recordings of the proceedings at The SWLing Post mid-winter tag here.

Anyway, back to the main point of this post.  The Halley VI antarctic station is a tad... unearthly looking.  Here's an interesting video covering its workings, along with mentions of several other nations' stations, and some speculation on future lunar outposts.  A lot of these ideas would work for college dormitories as well.  Interesting, forward-looking stuff that's well worth your 11 minutes.  Also, here's the Wikipedia page on Halley VI as well.

All for today.  Unless something else remarkable happens.

I probably ought to adapt this design for hurricane season around here.  Wind resistant and already up on pilings, there's a lot to build on from this base design.  I wonder how much one unfinished fiberglass module would cost?

Pirates!

While poking around Sundog Books last (very rainy) Saturday afternoon, I tripped across The Penguin Book of Pirates.  First thing, I had to flip to everyone's favorite New Orleans privateer, Jean Laffite.  The five-page mini-biography ends its tale with "He was the mildest manner'd man, That ever scuttled a ship or cut a throat;"

With a glowing recommendation like that, passing by this book was impossible.  Not sure I'd want him along fishing offshore however.

No mention of Capt. Pitcher however, and that is quite a tale.  (If you really want the story right now, here's a somewhat rambling 14 minute video.  And no, you could not give that accursed chunk of beachfront to me, not even if you threw in a lifetime supply of rum.  Because I suspect it would be a remarkably small quantity of rum to match a correspondingly short life expectancy.)

Meanwhile, Down at the Gates of Hell...

Here's a brief video over at Atlas Obscura's youtube channel outlining the various cave openings around the world that are allegedly entrances to the underworld.  Sort of interesting how people will pick out any old spooky hole that's leaking methane (lit or not) and call it such.

Personally I'll take the local version, one of the entrances into Tate's Hell Swamp, earlier shown here.  (picture recycled below)  Nice pavilions with a nice view, with charcoal grills.  Yes, that's right, here in Franklin County you can go grilling at the Gates of Hell.  In fact I've done it, and can recommend it for a lazy afternoon.

I really need to get over there with the gravel bike again before the weather gets too toasty.  Maybe after this class is finished up this Thursday.

Mountain Biking 101. Er, make that even a little lower.

Here's a great video on why now is the time to get started in mountain biking, how to find a good deal on a used one, what to look for, what's currently so weird (but good for your wallet!) about the MTB market, how to bargain and still be a nice person, etc.  He even added "buy a helmet."  Yes, buy a helmet.  Gloves too, with full fingers for off-road, he didn't mention those.  The only other thing I can think of to add is to also look on Craigslist.  11 minutes, well worth your time.

New Orleans, Oh Man!

In New Orleans on some family things last week.  I won't go into detail beyond listing places and links.  This post is going to be something like one of those funny songs where everything gets jammed together.  So... here we go!

Maspero's | Sazerac Bar | Streetcar! | WWII Museum | near Audubon Park to visit an old friend | The Avenue Pub | Cafe du Monde (the original, but too crowded on a Saturday morning, duh) so Cafe Beignet instead | Audubon Aquarium | Central Grocery for a muffuletta | Big Sexy Neon | Parkway Bakery (roast beef & shrimp po-boy?  Yes!) | French Market | and finally, when the food was all too much... a smoothie and an early bed.  Of course there were numerous other small side trips, stops, and adventures that didn't quite make the list, but trust me, if you go there you'll have many of your own.

Stayed at the Avenue Plaza hotel right on St. Charles.   With a streetcar stop right in front, there was no need to move the car for four days.  It felt downright civilized.  Location, Location, Location.

I don't think much more could have comfortably been squeezed into four days.

RSX-11

I've been saying this more and more lately.  Hmm.

Hoo boy.  Wrote a GUI-driven data reduction suite on a uPDP-11 running RSX-11 in one former life.  Anyway, there's an article over at Hackaday about a VHF packet link between a Mac and a PDP-11, allowing the grotty old game Adventure to be played over the air.  Enjoy.

In which Dixie Finishes the Florida Trail

 Over at you-know where, the final episode.  Forty solid minutes of north Florida weirdness with a side order of yellow flies and ticks.  This is what you get when you skirt along the northern edge of a place named Tate's Hell Swamp in early springtime.

Yow.  It seems like it was all they could do to get from Sopchoppy to Defuniak without getting eaten alive.  Note to self: If I ever get the urge to do the FT, start NLT 31 January, and try to launch even earlier.  If any delays push completion into April, bail.

Yes, I've mentioned this series before, here, when they started the video series late April.  It seems that they began the through-hike in mid-late February, after recovering from covid.

ps: from today's Far Side.  Note the lack of yellow flies.

Something to Do

I started playing with the search bar on Atlas Obscura yesterday, and it's a pretty remarkable tool.  While by no means does it give a comprehensive listing of local sights, it does uncover – as the site's name would imply – some fairly obscure and interesting places for a day trip.

Take for example Bude, MS.  I've blasted through there on the way to the Clear Springs mountain bike trails for decades.  It's small, but in seconds the search function dug up about 15 interesting nearby places.  None of these were mountain bike trails, admittedly, but sometimes that is a plus.  It's not comprehensive, it's just unusual.

If you're looking for a day trip, Atlas Obscura's search bar is a pretty good place to start.  If you're just daydreaming, the random location button is pretty nice too.

Here, have some related music.

Journey to the St. Marks Light

What to say, it's a historic lighthouse.  You can read about its history here, and you can read about the story it inspired here.  Nice weather, and quite a few people out on their road bikes.  Despite the narrowness of the road, traffic is generally slow and well under control.  Also, several interesting hiking trails run through there, including a section of the Florida Trail and a short out-and-back to the ruins of Port Leon.  Might get over there again before too long.  Here, have some pics:

As always, click to embiggen.  Well, so much for the lighthouse, too bad we couldn't locate the tower.  At least we didn't run into any moaning, shape-shifting horrors.

In which Dixie hikes the Florida Trail

Weekly vlog installments over at you-know-where.  Five so far, all in the 15 minute range.

They're maybe halfway through, and already the weather's hot and buggy and the alligators are starting to perk up.  Not me man, I'd be looking at depart-NLT-31Jan or push back to next year.  Not that I have any such plans.

REAL Sports Talk Radio

 146.58 FM

Details here: North America Adventure Frequency

Some discussion here: Reactions to the North America Adventure Frequency

I mean, what good is sports talk radio when you're not the one with the mic?  This is active, DIY sports we're talkin', not that sittin' on the sofa with a lite beer business.

One more of interest is 156.800 FM, Channel 9 in the marine VHF band.  You hear some stuff there.

How "Lord of the Flies" Went IRL

Better than you might expect.  Article at The Guardian: The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months  Read it, and think a little better of humanity.  From the last paragraph:

It's time we told a different kind of story.  The real Lord of the Flies is a tale of friendship and loyalty; one that illustrates how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other.

It's good to have something a little uplifting right now.

BTW and on a personal note, I've never read LotF, even though I've always heard about it.  I'm guessing that I fell into that burned-over era where the book had been in vogue fifteen years before I was reading and had since fallen onto the has-been shelf.  Or maybe after some of the excesses of the Sixties, it was a warning that people felt had come and gone.

Anyway, go and read.  You'll feel better for it.

Quick Note: Andy Serkis to do live online reading of The Hobbit tomorrow

Article at the BBC.  Of course it's for a COVID-19 related cause, read about it a the GoFundMe page.  

Starts at 10am BST – that's 4am CDT – tomorrow May 8th, and is expected to run about 12 hours.

I probably won't be up for it (I mean, 4am, come on), but maybe there'll later be a downloadable mp3.  Either way, it seems like a good and worthwhile listen.  Other than Tolkien himself, can you think of anyone better to do a live reading?

OK, that's all for now.  Back to it.

Book Review: Natural Born Heroes

It's a WWII mystery thriller about an against-all-odds clandestine operation.  It's an ultra-endurance intro.  It's all about low heart rate training.  Low-carb too.  Wild animals and parkour.  Shadowy sheep thieves, blood feuds, and on-the-fly nutrition in the original Land of The Gods and Heroes.  It's about being chased by 80,000 hell-bent Nazi troops when all you've got is a ragged pair of boots and and borrowed donkey.  And it's all over the place, ping-ponging between ancient Crete and modern desert hermit fitness gurus.  I don't know how it all holds together, but it does.

It's called Natural Born Heroes by Christopher McDougall, the author of Born to Run.  If you've read that, and I highly recommend it, this one leaves it in the dust.  It's just one ripping adventure after another, and it points the way for your next adventure: reclaiming the fun in fitness.

As always, consult with your local cat-equiped book store for a copy.

And no, it's not a book about biking exactly, but in the overall scheme it fits so this gets the 'bike' tag, among several others.

Yet Another Song of the Day

This'll get your blood moving:

Dwarf Cypress Forest in Tate's Hell

Here's all about a short adventure from last week: the dwarf cypress forest in Tate's Hell State Forest  I'd explain about it, but the description, pictures, and video at the link are more in-depth that I'm going into at the moment.  One thing to note however is that all of the visuals at that link were evidently done in winter, when the cypress trees are bare.  Here's a much nicer pic showing their summertime verdant colors:

Yeah, how about that?  The trees themselves seemed to all top out at around 15 feet, where they twist over and bush out any extra growth.  Go figure.

Getting there was easy in the current dry weather.  The Mustang had no trouble negotiating the gravel roads once we left S.R. 65.  Not sure how it would fare after a heavy rain however.  Just use good sense.  Not too sure about cell phone connectivity there either, it seems to be more of a CB area.  Again, exercise good sense.

BTW, Florida Hikes is a pretty nice site that shows about all the hiking in the Apalachicola area, among all the other good wild places in Florida.  In particular, the High Bluff Coastal Trail looks interesting.  All in good time – and in much cooler weather.  In the meantime, dig around there for things suitable for adventures next fall.

One more thing to mention, those backroads through Tate's Hell look primo for gravel biking.  With the closest real mountain bike trails nearly two hours' drive away, this is something to keep in mind.

Scott Crossfield, Remembered

By coincidence, last night I picked up a kindle copy of NACA/NASA test pilot Scott Crossfield's 1960 autobiography Always Another Dawn, and then this article about Crossfield popped up today on the This Day in Aviation site.  Interesting stuff so far, but I'm barely a chapter in.

BTW, Amazon seems to be putting a fair number of older books on kindle for cheap.  This one for example was just $0.99.  Oddly enough, it was nearly $4 for direct-to-kindle.  Pricing algorithms, go figure.

Ham Radio: More Than Fun & Games

Sailor Grateful for Maritime Mobile Service Network Assistance, story at the ARRL site.  The summary is that the husband of a couple sailing in the Pacific 200 miles off the coast of northern Mexico had a medical emergency.  The MMSN got them linked up with the US Coast Guard in southern California and their on-duty MD, and ultimately arranged for timely transport back to the US.

You (yes you) can tune in to the MMSN on 14.030 MHz USB between 1700 and 0200 UTC – that's 12 noon to 9 pm CDT – any day of the week on something about like this. (receive only, so no license needed)  Usually it's not quite so active as in this week's story, but then you never know.

What a way to end a ten-year recreational circumnavigation of the planet.

Chattahoochee River Headwaters

Here's a nice video, but it seems to be slightly down the way from the actual headwaters.

Here's a link to the actual spot at Google Maps.  Also, they've got a few pictures here.  Somewhat less dramatic than the video, but interestingly enough it's about 100 yards north of the Appalachian Trail, about 50 miles north of the trail's southern terminus, and only about 5 miles from parking just north of Helen GA.  Sounds like a good hike to me.  Just as soon as I can shake loose the time.