Giant Robots

With the new heat from a new summer, I find myself once again playing in the water.  I discovered another great place to set up a slackline over the river.  This time it was in the city park, over a canal.

Each of many wrong steps was rewarded with a 12 foot fall into the chilly water below.















More hotel art was replaced by my own art.  This one was a little rushed because I had to change rooms due to construction, but it's still a great improvement over the wolves and full-moon painting lies behind it.

























A few days off over the last 2 weeks allowed me to travel to Bend to visit a friend, and to Portland to visit my coworker's friends.  Along the way, I visited this 600 foot waterfall.

Rain, Wind, and Grease

I've got a pretty sweet task ahead of me for the next month; there are hundreds of wind turbines along the Columbia River gorge, and I get to rappel off of a few dozen of them.  The not-so-fun part is all the grease I have to scrape off.

Up until now it has been raining a lot, but I think the storm has finally broke.  The last two days have been warm and sunny.

The view from the top of the turbines is great. Mount Hood climbs above the horizon, and the Columbia cuts deep into the valley below.  Last week, there were low clouds that passed over us while we worked, sometimes so thick that I couldn't see the ground.

During some down-time this weekend, we set up a slackline over the river, attached to one of the steel industrial structures along the shore.  It started raining, and the water was freezing cold, but we were having so much fun we couldn't stop.  When I finally returned to the hotel, I was shivering and my knees were blue.

At the hotel, we didn't really like the wall art; paintings of fat cherubs and American nostalgia, so we decided to make our own art and put it into the frames.

Now that feels more like home.

Longline

Winter is over and I have the bruises to prove it. I've been introduced to a guy who is an expert slackliner, and he set up a 315 foot line in the park last week! I've been slacklining for about 6 years, and I have trouble on anything more that about 50 feet. When you stretch your webbing out as long as a football field, the dynamics completely change. The wind whips it around and every disturbance or shift in balance causes aftershocks that reverberate half a dozen times.


The setup for a line of this scale requires industrial devices that can handle the thousands of pounds of tension which are needed to keep the line taught enough. Too loose and you'll touch the ground in the middle. Luckily for us, the park had a gentle bowl shape to keep us high enough. With six pulleys, a handful of steel carabiners, rigging plates and heavy-duty slings, we set up a 15:1 mechanical advantage that allowed the three of us to easily stretch the system to the right degree of twang.

Josh, the owner of the gear was the only one of us who cold get more than about 15 feet on it. Meanwhile Trevor and I practiced on a 100 foot line nearby. Normally a 100 foot line looks dauntingly huge, but with the 315 footer in the background, it seemed laughably puny.

Here are some photos of the fun.

Falling into place

Welcome back, my vicarious travel companions!

I'm in Santa Cruz this week for a training refresher for my new rope access job. This is such a great place to be. The air is filled with the smell of the ocean, and also of eucalyptus and pepper trees, and of millions of spring flowers. Fresh oranges and avocados are abundantly available at the countless organic food stores, which are nearly as common as excellent Mexican restaurants.



the sun is shining, the trees are lush and green, and the people are smiling, radiant, and nearly naked.

I walked down the wharf last night and watched the sea lions that climb onto the lower decks at night. They were playfully splashing and shouting their raspy barks into the darkness . These beasts are so much bigger than I had imagined, They are nearly the size of a grizzly bear. Clumsy and awkward on land, but as fast as a whip when they drop into the sea.





The folks at Rope Partner seem to really like me, and I think this is going to be an excellent job. Everything I've heard so far about the company is even better than I had imagined it would be.

Fire and Ice

…and to top it all off I stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument on my way back through Idaho. This is a place I've always hoped to visit, even thought I knew little about it.

As it turns out, there was a gigantic volcano in Eastern Idaho only 2000 years ago. It was so incredibly violent that it blew itself to smithereens. Today these smithereens occupy hundreds of square miles, expressing themselves in tall jagged columns and heaps of lightweight porous rocks that tinkle and crunch like broken glass under my feet.

During the violent times, liquid rock raced for twenty miles through an underground highway. Today the lava is gone and a network of scattered caves remain where it flowed. In fact, the most fascinating part my experience was to discover ice in one of these caves! I sat in the dark underground cellar for quite some time, watching water droplets form on the tip of icicles then drip off. All the while trying to remind myself that this was a river of lava.

I haven’t posted pictures here because there are too many of them. I invite you to see them at my Picasaweb site.

The West

Once again I’m drifting like a tumbleweed, and once again I find amusement in the hotel postings. This time it’s a laminated note placed on my pillow. It’s so juicy I’ll quote the whole thing:

Important Notice To Guest

For your convenience and protection, this room has been inventoried prior to your arrival. Should there be any items missing from this room or damaged you will be charged for them. This includes smoking in a non-smoking room, burning holes in the bedding, carpet, or furniture, using motel towels to clean motorcycle boots or guns, cleaning birds in the sink or tub, or smuggling a pet into the motel.

I’ll let this note set the tone of where I am… “The West”.

The purpose of this trip is to inspect some towers for work. I have about ten tasks spread out over three states, but the details aren’t important to readers. I’d like to share some of the cool things I’ve encountered along the way.

In a deep, heavily forested canyon in Idaho, an exciting road greeted me. The newly paved black highway twisted along the Lochsa River, matching its every turbulent eddy and winding bend. Like a snake I followed it down and down and down for a hundred miles.

Near the bottom, I saw a very large footbridge from the road. When I pulled over to investigate, I learned that a two mile hike leads across the bridge to a hot spring! I crossed the bridge and enthusiastically jogged the two miles to reach the warm water before nightfall. As I arrived, there were three families already bathing, two human families, and one deer family.

Next came a few days of work in some very remote and very beautiful places, and some long drives.

On one of these long drives, I found myself passing through gigantic sand dunes. It was pitch black all of the stars were turned on (even the little ones that usually hibernate). I took off my shoes and ran around in the dunes, sinking up to my ankles in the warm dry sand. Little white animal skulls emerged from their graves to watch. I made myself a sandy pillow and stared at the sky.

There is a big meteor shower on the way, so I was expecting to see some falling stars. Then at last I did. A bright orange fireball emerged and burned so bright it lit up the clouds! I was so amazed I jumped to my feet and made some sort of animal grunt. After it burned out I turned around a few times hoping somebody else was nearby and had seen it also. But of course not, I’m several hundred miles from any people.

I got comfortable again in my reclined position, and returned to my task of watching the sky. Again, the same type of fireball lit up the clouds! And another! There were two orange fireballs traveling extremely slowly and falling for at least ten seconds! I’ve never seen shooting stars like this before, I think perhaps they are coming directly toward me (instead of the typical glancing angle). Again a third time, the same intensely bright orange ball lit up the whole sky. This time I watched closely and after the orange fireball stopped burning, I could still see a tiny ember traveling along the same trajectory. It was so faint, I couldn’t even be sure it was real. I had to watch from the edge of my vision. The tiny ember got closer and closer to the ground, and then started curving in a giant “J” shape! I am completely floored.

Well, this went on until I discovered what was really going on. There were four or five military jets in some kind of excersize. The bright orange lights were their flares for distracting heat-seeking missiles. I watched as they chased each other across the whole sky in only a few seconds. They would climb straight up until they were out of sight, then dip below the clouds somewhere else and deploy more flares to light up the sky. It was a really exciting and impressive performance.

I went back during the day to take some pictures of the sand dunes, enjoy.

Corn

It's time to sum up another work-related adventure! This time I arrive in a bizarre region occupied by two polar-opposite types of people. Half the population of Peoria, Illinois is made up of the corn growing farmers. These folks are all over 6 feet tall, listen to Christian talk radio, eat Velveeta cheese, creamy peanut butter, and drink sunny delight. White folks don’t get any more square than this. Comprising the other half of the population are black people who are just as far from the center of the spectrum. They wear there pants below their knees, listen to loud rhymes about sexual anatomy and activity, drink tall cans of cheap beer and eat fried chicken. After staying here a week, I’ve found only two people who are exceptions to these categories.

The man in the room next to mine is in his upper 60’s, and in poor health. His most defining characteristic is the stoma in his neck from a tracheotomy. He has to cover it with his finger to speak, but his raspy, quiet voice is barely understandable. Regardless of his condition, he has a lot to say. In fact, I haven’t been able to get anything out of my car without engaging in a discussion that lasts at least 20 minutes. I don’t understand much of what he is saying, so I just guess and reply with my own comments. In the end, conversational coherence probably isn’t as important to him as the conversation itself. He doesn’t seem to have much going on in his life and likes my company.

The other character I interact with is the Indian hotel owner. He only takes payments in cash, and conducts business through a thick glass window, with a hole at the bottom. When I approach, he removes the small piece of wood which keeps the refrigerated air inside the lobby, and the smell of incense billows out at me. I glance up at the screen saver scrolling Hindi gods across his computer and pass my money through the window. Our encounters are brief, but he’s friendly and eager to make sure I’m enjoying my room.

The work I’m doing involves fixing the instruments on a tower which is on a wind farm. This wind farm has hundreds of turbines spread throughout thousands of acres of corn fields. Every day I drive 40 miles through corn fields to get to the job site. Once I reach wind turbine number one, I walk through about 300 feet of corn stalks to get to the tower. The corn is taller than me, so I can’t really see out. I have to orient myself toward the tower and march through the thick leaves for several minutes, hoping I can maintain my bearing well enough to reach the tower.

And now the fun part of the job begins. This particular tower is two hundred and sixty five feet tall. From the top, I can see clear to Nebraska (It’s corn all the way there). After the day is over, I sit and watch the lightning bugs flash their yellow lights at the setting sun. I drink fresh apple juice from a nearby orchard and look for foxes and raccoons.

I’ve been busy in the field with work until today. This evening I walked down to the river and was lucky to come across a free jazz concert. There were only about 20 people in the audience, so I felt intimately connected to the musicians and their music. I was treated with nearly an hour of live music as I watched the full moon rise behind a gigantic cage-bridge. An old fashioned paddle boat made its way by too.

I conclude with a commentary about bridges. After the concert, I found a quiet place along the river and stared into the water for a while. In the foreground was the large steel bridge, adorned with beautiful architectural features; strong iron beams united by rows upon rows of perfectly spaced round rivets, artistic blue lights highlighting the angles, and massive pylons stretching down into the water. This bridge announces boldly its presence, and its might.

In the background was a newer, sleek concrete bridge. It was drafted on computers by engineers from top schools, and run through simulations of floods and earthquakes. It costs less to build and is probably more reliable. It’s utterly boring. I’ve noticed that for the past decade, the iron cage-bridges across the country are systematically being replaced by these passive concrete structures. This is a tragedy. Not only are we losing the architectural beauty of the old style bridges, but we’re also losing connection with our environment. The Iron bridges have such presence that passing over one is a distinct experience. The newer concrete bridges, however, are crossed without even noticing. This is where the crime occurs. Crossing a river is a significant event, which we’ve all become complacent to. We can cross rivers with such ease that we do it without even realizing it’s happening. These old iron cage-bridges stand as a reminder that without bridges we’d be stranded. They allow the river to be recognized as a significant feature of a journey. I suggest having reverence for every river crossing, and to appreciate the ease at which it can now be done.

corn on the cob.

Exchange

After the sun went down and the temperature dropped back into the double digits, I took a walk to a nearby pond. “Taking a walk” isn’t a very relaxing activity around here because of the no sidewalk thing. So I scurried through the dirt paths of broken glass and paper plates and dodged around the guardrails and breakdown lanes accompanied by the clamor of diesel trucks and ambulance sirens until I reached my pleasant little pond. It wasn’t really all that spectacular, but I stared into it for a while and pretended that I couldn’t hear the traffic. As the sky darkened I watched as frogs and turtles stuck their heads out to sip the air while a dozen bats dipped down to sip the water.