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.

David Drake, RIP

Announcement at his web site.

Articles at SFE, Wikipedia, and yet another essay at Tor.

I'm a big fan of his Hammer's Slammers series, plus a few other bits and pieces.  Someday I'll get to some of his other universe series.  Hate to see the man go.

High Bluff Trail & Yaesu FT-70d

In the gap two weeks between the opening few days taste of deer season and the For Reals Months Long Deer Season, I grabbed a quick hike today on the High Bluff Trail between Eastpoint & Carrabelle.  It was kind of impromptu: load the 22L pack with the day's supplies & go.  Beautiful weather, topping out around 60F under bright blue skies.  The trail was a little wet, maybe 3" at most, so I just bulled through and have my boots in front of a fan drying now.  The foliage was... well, it's what we've got here in NW FL.  Beautiful fall colors, no not really, but at least the turkey oaks can show a change of season.

I took along the FT-70 HT.  I'm getting used to it, and really starting to like it.  I kept it scanning the 2m & 70cm calling channels, the sports talk channel (the real one), and the local 70cm SARNET repeater.  Here's a short list of observations re the '70:

• The stock rubber duck antenna is convenient.  With the '70 on the pack strap (belt clip in a too-small cell phone pocket), it rides at the right height and the stock antenna doesn't poke my face or bang against my hat brim.  Perfect.  If only it performed better; more on this below.
• It was set up to scan the first three of the channels, but I wanted SARNET in there as well.  It's simple enough that I figured out without a manual.  Button's right there on the bottom row.
• Receive from the repeater – being 20 miles away – was patchy in the dips, but very steady on the hilltops.
• Transmit was somewhere between "no way" and "scratchy but useable" depending upon elevation.  This is no real surprise, as the repeater puts out about 10 dB more power.
• Solutions: (A) use the 16" long Comet whip antenna, gain maybe 6 dB, and live with it banging on hat brim; (B) previous, plus an 18" tiger tail ground wire, and gain maybe another 3 dB; (C) rock on with the rubber duck antenna for listening, then stop & hang the N9TAX antenna in a tree if I need to transmit.  Personally, I like Option C.  Also, when hiking Wright's Lake trail the duck'll do fine, being only 2 miles from the repeater.  Convenience for the win.
• A couple of feet of paracord (pictured) makes a first-class leash in case the clip fails.
  
• In real-world practice on the trail, I had to turn the speaker volume down and the mic gain up.
• The battery was already low, so I brought along a spare.  Didn't need it, but it was good to have along.  Li batts are light, too.  Remember, when not in use, pop a 70's battery out to keep it from running down.  Works great, these will hold a nearly full charge for... I haven't found out yet.  At least six months.
• The FT-70d has all but replaced the FT-60 as my go-to trail radio.  Still keeping the '60 though, because I'm thinking about branching off into satcoms.
• More on the FT-70d: manual programming, chirp programming, splits, battery management.
• As always: Do and Learn.

All for today.  Got to go finish unpacking, cleaning, & stowing gear.

You Know What Today Is

More from the air side of things at This Day in Aviation.

In Which Many of the Humans are Even Worse Than the Zombies

I'm referring of course to the Mike Massa & John Ringo Black Tide Rising series follow-on novels, The Valley of Shadows and River of Night.  Holy smokes, are these books ever grim.

OK, here goes:  Start with a weaponized rabies virus.  Then, taking off with one of the side-characters from the first book, Under a Graveyard Sky, this tells the story of what went on at top levels in NYC as the zombies took over.  A live attenuated virus vaccine is developed by a clandestine in-house lab at "Bank of the Americas."  (Hm, kind of a thin literary disguise there, but I suppose it's enough to fend off lawsuits.)  Of course a ready source of viruses to attenuate is needed, and there are all these damn zombies full of it just wandering around attacking people, so why not use what's at hand?  Ethical questions aside, of course.   However, the bank security team doesn't have the manpower needed to collect enough zombie bodies, but hey, the local mafia's pretty good about delivering bodies when times are good, so they cut a deal.  Then the police and NYC emergency management want in on the vaccines, so now everybody's in cahoots.  It's shaping up to be the start of a beautiful (if shady) relationship, but you just know that somebody's got to get greedy and sour the arrangement.

In the second book, the NYC survivors (ultimate badasses all, plus a mafia moll along for the road trip) are on the run to a series of safe houses and ultimately to a BotA refuge / alternate financial headquarters site, where they hope to help reboot civilization.  Unfortunately, some of the double-crossers from NYC have gotten there first.  Along the way it devolves into a Mad Max-style race against a warlord and his scavenger gang en route to the BotA refuge and a nearby TVA dam site.  Meanwhile back at the dam site, just imagine how much of an anti-zombie and anti-raider defense a team of demented engineers can muster with the electrical output from a giant hydropower dam.  Bad guys behind, some really bad people ahead, and something called the "Big Bad" – what's bunch of zombie-killers gonna do?  Yep.

Bad, bad people.  Some really good, good people in the story too.  As with the original four books, these read like eating tasty spiced potato chips, but they leave an even worse aftertaste.  It's all mostly leavened by the grim humor – the "Russian lesson" in the last chapter is, um, to die for.  Then there's an epilogue recap in a few pages from a new-minted E-4 character's notebook that's pretty funny.  Little touches like those finish out the whole thing on a good note.  Be warned though, these two books make the original four book series seem upbeat in comparison.

So, read, or don't read?  I dunno.  If you can laugh at awful situations and even worse people, maybe.  The Valley of Shadows has enjoyable elements of a detective/police/crime drama, watching them circle around and learn to work with each other against the zombie threat.  River of Night is more down and dirty, think Road Warrior kind of stuff.  Again and as with the original series, it reads like eating spicy potato chips: hard to put down and possibly sickening.  Your call.

ps: Don't forget the four follow-on anthologies.  Those are definitely less grim, possibly more fun.

Happy Last Day of Hurricane Season!

Actually have a lunchtime party celebrating the first day of Not-Hurricane Season to attend tomorrow.  Though the day is somewhat arbitrary, it's still a big damn deal around here.  Not a bad year, other than Idalia, which was pretty bad if you were in the path.  In any case, Happy Last Day of Hurricane Season!

This Needs Widest Dissemination

From today's xkcd:

As usual, click through to the original for the mouse-over gag.