Travels and Thoughts

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Travels and Images

WEEK 43 2005

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Saturday 29 October 2005

Saturday - did my walk in the morning, but without the backpack, which is drying. Eight miles, and my feet hurt. The other day I did find some blister pad things, which are a thin gel layer surrounded by an adhesive, that supposedly will help. I tried them out on my heel, which is losing skin, and they seem to work. Though I think pulling the pads off removed as much skin as the walk would have done.

Nonetheless, the hike is a go. We'll just walk slow.

Went over to R's for dinner. I've posted pics of his Halloween setup's before, here and here. R is concerned, you could see it in his face, hear it in his voice. There are fewer kids every year. Even the annoying too-old teenagers are lesser in number. And Halloween is his favorite holiday.

Friday 28 October 2005

Friday - messing about with work stuff.

Trying to set up the Riemann Shock Tube problem for one of the solvers, to check on propagation and dissipation properties. Basically I have to read in the three dimension grid, get the nodal coordinates and assign them values based on their x-position, and write out a file with appropriate unknowns that the solver will accept as a "restart" file. It's not working quite right - everything goes to NANQ after the first step. I've tried playing with the boundary conditions - symmetry wall versus standard wall, so it's not that.

It's turned sunny and warm again, after a couple of dreary days.

Speaking of dreary, I was at a local used book store, The Bookstop, looking for something new to read during the hike. And what are the odds that I would run across "Home is the Sailor", by Robin Lee Graham (and Derek Gill), which is, as the cover proclaims, "The Uplifting Sequel to the Bestselling Dove". Dove was last week's book #40. This is the 1984 Bantam paperback edition, not the 1983 Harper & Row hardbound edition and so, for a $1.35, I bought it.

Off to the Grand Canyon in a couple of days. If our middle aged knees can take it my friend and I will afterwards do some more hiking in the Havasupai Indian Reservation. Today I got some "Nature's Miracle" cleanser, to try to get the cat pee out of my pack. Stupid cats.

Morning Sun.

Thursday 27 October 2005

Thursday - well, that was an expensive series. A whole DOLLAR gone, twenty five cents at a time. Dad emails to say that he fell asleep and "awoke to unexpected wealth".

Guess that says it all.

Wednesday 26 October 2005

Wednesday - feeling better. Went to AAA yesterday, got the truck partially registered ( i.e., paid the car tax), and with a one day operating permit; today I smogged it and then went back to AAA and got the tags. So that's done for a couple more years.
Discovered that a tube of suntan lotion had exploded in the truck's glove compartment. Yuck.

Went over to my friend's place, got lunch, and we looked at their pool pump system. They've an old diverter valve that's frozen in the summer solar heating mode. Really frozen - the metal handle broke off at the valve casting. That particular type of valve is hard to find, so we can't just replace the handle and interior casting, which was my first suggestion. We can either hack a big chunk of glued together pipe and valving out, and replace it, or we can add more valves downstream, rather more easily.

Tuesday 25 October 2005

Tuesday - biking. It's a surprise what ten days off a bike does - I could really feel it. It's cooled off here in the last few days, I wore long pants and a sweater biking for the first time in quite a while. And gloves.

Felt terrible in the afternoon, feverish, and so on. Better, but tired, in the evening.

I admit, I fell asleep during the game. Stupid Astro's. This doesn't look good.

Monday 24 October 2005

Monday - did a short walk, five miles or so, with about 20 pounds of gear in the pack. Owww. My feet hurt, but there are no blisters. My shoulders also hurt - I should have started working with the pack earlier.

My friend D is determined to attempt the Grand Canyon, so off we go, on November 1st. The weather is supposed to be pretty nice at the bottom.

Not feeling too good this evening. Coming down with a slight flu bug or something.

Sunday 23 October 2005

Sunday - back in Lancaster. The cats look fat and happy. The accursed White Sox won again, so now I'm down fifty cents, including the special 'Oregon Quarter'. Argghhh.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: I took a long walk in the hills to the southwest of Martinez, bringing Peg with me. Since there weren't any cattle present I let her off the line, and she had a good time rolling in manure and whatever.

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