Must Be Art Weblog

Pharmacy Soda Shoppe, originally uploaded by Must Be Art.

Here we all are at an authentic old soda shoppe in Houston Heights,
where the soda comes in cans nowadays but the service is just as surly
as ever.

Last weekend I was in Tucson for the TAPR/ARRL Digital Communications Conference. I scheduled an extra day for tourism, and ended up driving up the excellent road to the summit of Mt. Lemmon. At over 9000 feet, it’s a ski resort. There’s a chair lift that runs year round, even when the slopes are covered with grass instead of snow. I discovered another complete set of chair lift equipment, parked by the road side. Here are some photos.

It took six months, but a selection of photos from my Antarctica expedition has been posted.

A photo travelogue of the trip I took with Martha to see the total eclipse of the sun from Libya was posted two weeks ago, but I forgot to mention it here.

At long last, I’ve finished post-processing the photos from my Z4 trip in April and have posted the narrative to the web site.

Z4 Trip

Tuesday, April 20

Made it to my hometown, Orange, TX. Spent a little time driving around looking at things like the house I grew up in. It’s different now. In fact, everything there is either alarmingly different or alarmingly the same. I wonder if any of the people I knew in school are still there, or again there. I am sure some of the parents are. I stayed in a motel in the strip of motels on the freeway access road, which is very much like what I’ve been doing all across the country, but somehow it was more dismal in Orange.

Wednesday, April 21

In the morning I spent some more time looking around Orange. Had a bad hamburger (pretty much just like I remembered it) at Cody’s Restaurant and then drove on to my brother’s house in Houston, TX. BBQ at Goode Company was good as always.

Thursday, April 22 – Friday, April 23

Drove on to my sister’s house in Carrollton, TX, and played with her for a day or so.

Saturday, April 24 – Sunday, April 25

Drove on to my sister’s house in Austin, TX, and played with her and my middle niece.

Monday, April 26

My plan was to drive up to the panhandle and join up with what’s left of Route 66 in Amarillo. By the time I got on the road and consulted the navigation system in the car, it was clear that I wouldn’t be able to make it that far in one day. A little dynamic replanning and I punched in Albuquerque, which would be about the right distance for a two-day drive. I was planning to pick a small town halfway in between, on the automatically selected “avoid highways” route, but the pickings were awfully slim. I ended up taking a slight detour to stay in the teeming metropolis of Lubbock, TX. Where there’s no high-speed internet in the hotels, but at least the cellular system supports 1xRTT data connections.

Tuesday, April 27

Drove on toward Albuquerque, NM. Thanks to some lightly traveled, very straight roads, I ended up getting close to Albuquerque earlier than I had expected. So, I took a turnoff marked for Manzano Mountains State Park, near Mountainair, NM. When I got there it appeared to be nothing but campsites, so I just drove around the loop road and returned the way I’d come. (I see now that there were hiking trails too, but I didn’t spot them or see any information posted at the park.) On the way back, I took another turnoff marked for the Quarai site of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. There were some very striking-looking old adobe-brick buildings. Unfortunately I arrived about four minutes before the site closed. The ranger let me go in, but obviously I only had time for a few snapshots. The ranger seemed delighted when I took a brochure and asked about coming back in the morning for a longer visit. I hope he wasn’t too disappointed when I didn’t show up. Then it was on into Albuquerque for the night.

Wednesday, April 28

I still wanted to do some hiking, so did some research in advance this time. Studying the brochure from Quarai, it appeared that there wasn’t very much more at the site than I’d already seen, albeit hurriedly. So instead of going back to Quarai, I decided to go a bit out of my way to the north and visit the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. It has similar ruins, but lots more of them, and extensive hiking trails too. The only problem was that to get to the park you have to drive on 16 miles of unpaved road. That’s if you swing around to the recommended north entrance; it’s 19 miles from the south, along a road that’s not guaranteed to be passable.I chose the recommended route, and the 16 miles of dirt road weren’t too bad. It was wide and well-graded, though not recently. It was marked for 35 mph, which was reasonable most of the way, even in the extremely low-clearance Z4.

With my usual late start and the long way around to the north entrance, I arrived at the park at about 3 pm. The trails (and the road out) close at sunset. I consulted with the ranger and picked one trail that would be hikable in the time available, and would provide good views of the ruins. And then I hiked it. Took lots of pictures. Ended up taking the maximum distance route, and seeing all the optional things along the way. The trail basically scrambles up from the valley to the top of the mesa, and then skirts around the cliff edge of the mesa. It was very, very windy on top of the mesa. The weather was like an illustration of the term scattered showers, with small dark clouds blowing by. I got spattered with some raindrops, but not enough to get wet.

I finished the hike before sunset, and decided (being pretty pooped from all the climbing and fighting the wind, with too much camera gear hanging awkwardly from my shoulders) to go ahead and drive out of the park. I didn’t really want to be driving on the dirt road in the dark. I asked the Z4′s navigation system to pick a route. It wanted to use the southern route, and it was going to be much shorter than going back to the northern entrance. The northern entrance would also have involved quite a bit of backtracking along the same highway, which is never as fun as exploring new ones. So, I went south on New Mexico 57. The sign said ROUGH ROAD May Be Impassable Travel at Your Own Risk but it didn’t look any worse than the north road. I went on, knowing that if it got too bad I could always turn back and use the north road. It never quite got too bad, but it was definitely slower and rougher. I saw one other vehicle on the road, a local in a pickup I think, which quickly outdistanced me. There was no cellular coverage at all, and out in Navajo lands the population was very sparse. But I got through with no real problem. I stopped at the other end to take a picture of the Z4 under the matching ROUGH ROAD sign, but by then it was too dark to really come out. Getting back onto a smoothly paved highway was an amazing difference, even though it was a small BIA back road. (It took me a while to figure out that BIA probably stands for Bureau of Indian Affairs in this context.) I drove on in the dark, trying fruitlessly to find a decent FM radio station among the three or four I could receive out there. As per the plan, I stopped for the night in Gallup, NM. Doesn’t that name just make you want to whistle the old Route 66 song?

Thursday, April 29

A little sore from all the climbing, I did little except drive. New Mexico and, especially, Arizona have marked the more active parts of historic Route�66, and I took a few detours onto the Main Streets of various towns to see the historic road sprawl, or what’s become of it. I didn’t see any of the high-profile landmarks, though.The weather got worse, and at one point it was in the 40′s and raining. At that exact point I came to the turnoff for Meteor Crater, AZ. I hadn’t been aware it was on my route, but I have always wanted to see it, so I turned off. Paid my $12, and went in to see the crater in the 40-degree, 40-mph windy, sleetish rain. Needless to say, I didn’t spend a lot of time gawking at the crater. It’s very big, but not as awe-inspiringly big as I had pictured it. Not like landscape; more like a monumental human-scale excavation. Remarkably compact and localized, too. There was a very nice visitor’s center with good informative exhibits and shops. That was my touristing for the day; I drove on, taking the Route�66 loop north of the Interstate, and got as far as Needles, CA. It was still early, but would have been too late for dinner by the time I reached another town had I continued, so I stopped there in Needles.

Logged on (1xRTT cellular) and found out that the AMSAT.ORG mail alias system I administer had screwed itself up. Spent a while unscrewing it.

Friday, April 30

Logged on again in the morning and found another, unrelated (AFAIK) problem had cropped up on the AMSAT system. Not much I could do about it, except send a message to the guy who’d have to fix it. Logged off and tried to forget about it, since I’d be very much offline as I crossed the desert.The desert crossing was uneventful. It wasn’t even hot, only 90° F at the warmest. Nor was it windy in Glamis, where blowing sand once sandblasted the windshield and paint of my RX-7. This route leads into the mountains to Julian, one of my most favorite roads anywhere (even after driving the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive on this trip). By late afternoon, I was home in San Diego. Had some work waiting to finish unscrewing the new problem at AMSAT, but was able to do by Saturday.

• Miles logged: 7373
• Temperature range: 28 to 90 F
• Elevation range: -160 to 7350 feet ASL
• Gasoline prices: $1.80 to $2.90 per gallon, name-brand Premium
• Gas mileage: 27
• Average speed: 41.5 mph
• Messages waiting on answering machine: 22 (memory full)
• Pounds of paper mail waiting: 18

Friday, April 16

Headed for the Sun’n Fun Fly-In after all. Ended up in Gainesville, FL for the night. A couple of my college suitemates came from there.

Saturday, April 17

Arrived at the Fly-In in the early afternoon. It’s huge. I managed to locate the Express Aircraft booth (actually a tent outside with two Express planes parked outside it) and hunt up Roy. Chatted with him and hung out until the evening, then tagged along to the Express dinner at the Red Barn Steakhouse, where I had an excellent porterhouse. Despite the Sun’n Fun rush, I was able to find a nice hotel room in town.

Sunday, April 18

Roy provided me with a vendor badge, so I got back into the Fly-In for free. Spent some more time hanging out with Roy, and some more time wandering the extensive exhibits. The crowd was very thin both days, but especially Sunday — even most of the flown-in planes (both personal and exhibited) were already gone, even though the convention lasts through Monday.

Mid-afternoon I headed north and west, and stopped in Chiefland, FL.

I’ve been staying more or less at random in different chain motels, and I’ve reached some tentative conclusions. Hampton Inn is generally a cut above, and has high-speed Internet access if such is feasible in that area. Best Western is ubiquitous but generally sucks.

Monday, April 19

Another day of packing on the miles, albeit sticking mostly to the “avoid highways” routing scheme offered by the Z4′s navigation system. Tonight I’m in Biloxi, MS.

I’m driving around with no license plates. California doesn’t issue temporary plates, but most of the states I’m driving through require them. The BMW folks would have given me a South Carolina temporary, but I figured California legal would be good enough. I’ve been pulled over three times so far, twice by park rangers and once by a local deputy sheriff. Each time they have looked me up, told me I really ought to have a plate, and let me go.

I’m sure my license plates are in my mailbox in San Diego by now. Fat lot of good that does me here.

Oops. I was going to journal into this weblog as I went along. That hasn’t
worked out. Sorry.

Here’s a brief summary. I have about 10 gigabytes of photos to process, and
the laptop screen isn’t really suitable, so expect pictures to trickle out
after I get back to San Diego.

Thursday, March 26

Flew from San Diego to Greenville-Spartanburg airport. Picked up by the
hotel in a BMW 5-series, very luxurious even in the back seat. Dinner on BMW
in the hotel restaurant; fair. Stayed in the BMW-supplied Marriott in
Greenville, SC

Friday, March 27

Delivery day! Breakfast at the hotel’s buffet, then BMW shuttle bus to the
Performance Center with several others who are also picking up cars. After we
sign the waivers of liability, they break us up into three groups to do the
activities in various orders. I am designated to take delivery of my car first,
then get the factory/museum tour, and finally take the driver training. The
delivery associate has all the literature and keys and so forth neatly laid
out on a table next to the car in the special delivery bay. She goes over
everything with me, and then I drive the car out of the bay and into the
parking lot. Move my luggage into the trunk, and that’s the delivery.

The factory tour is next, but the Performance Center is about a mile
from the factory. So everybody in my group grabs a Z4 from the parking lot,
gets a quick lesson in how to drive the SMG transmission, and we convoy
over to the factory. It takes about an hour to walk through the factory.
There are a lot of robots hard at work there, along with
fewer people than you might expect. Many of the robots are working with no
human supervision at all. They have built-in quality control checks, and
if they start detecting a problem they automatically page the engineer in
charge of that station, and display boards throughout the factory floor
give a concise summary of what problems are holding up the line. Other
display boards show how well they’re doing compared to the target quota
for the day (96%). If they run behind, it means overtime. Unfortunately
we weren’t allowed to have cameras on the factory tour, so no photos.

The driving lesson was a little rushed but fun. Each person was driving
a car similar to the one they bought, so I had a Z4, but with SMG instead
of the manual stick I bought. We had a little road course run, some
skidpad work to demonstrate the amazing computerized skid control features,
a rapid lane change and some panic braking. All pretty much designed to
build confidence in the car’s ability to save your ass in a pinch.

That was the day at BMW, over at about 4 pm. I got back into my new
Z4 and told the navigation system to take me to Kristy’s apartment in
Savannah, using the “avoid highways” routing preference. And
boy, did it ever avoid highways. It took me on a great backroads route,
one that would have been nearly impossible to navigate solo without a
lot of prior planning (and luck). But with the nav system, easy as pie.

It was still a little late by the time I got to Kristy’s, but we
still went out for a drive before even unloading the car.

Saturday, March 28

Kristy gave me the grand tour of the Photo building at SCAD, where
she spends most of her class time. Then we took in a great exhibit of
photos of jazz musicians at the African American Cultural Center. Back
at the apartment parking lot, I tried to install the magic iPod adapter
which is supposed to work with the Z4. I got my hand
chewed up by wedging it into cramped spaces with sharp corners, and we
both got bitten by a bunch of small flying things too small to be
mosquitoes, and the damn thing never did work. Sigh. So maybe I got a
dud unit. The manufacturer has yet to return my email. Dinner and a
trip to Walmart to get a wrench I needed to try one last thing with
the iPod adapter. We whiled away the evening with Kristy’s portfolio.

Sunday, March 28

Tried again with the wrench, no luck. Lunch, and then bid Kristy
adieu and told the navigation system to take me back to Greenville.

Monday, March 29 – Tuesday, March 30

The BMW two-day car clinic. Let me put off describing this in detail
until another time. After school on Monday, I wandered around downtown
Greenville shooting photos. On Tuesday, I went up to Paris Mountain in
Greenville and hiked one trail before running out of light. Stayed over
in Greenville.

Wednesday, March 31

Headed toward Cherokee, SC to find the southern end of the Blue
Ridge Parkway. It started to rain. As I climbed into the mountains
on the route chosen by the nav system, the rain turned to sleet, and
then to snow, with fog. The chosen route was supposed to join the Parkway some
miles north of the end, and backtrack down the Parkway to the end.
But the Parkway is closed in this weather. In fact, the signs on the
road I just came up suggest avoiding that road during this kind of
weather, too. Now they tell me. I continue over the ridge on the same
road, driving carefully in really crummy conditions. Eventually the
road descends out of the snow, through the sleet, and the rain lets up.
I wander around a little on the far side of the Parkway, and end up
stopping at one of the string of motels in Maggie Valley, where the
season will be starting in a few weeks.

Thursday, April 1

The weather is still lousy. The clouds still enshroud the ridge,
so I don’t even try to go up there. I go around to Cherokee for lunch,
but skip the tribal museum and knickknack shops. Back in Maggie Valley
I tour Wheels Through Time,
a motorcycle (American iron only) and automotive museum with a rather
impressive collection. Many of the vehicles are kept in running condition,
which means that the whole place smells like a garage.

Driving around after that, I end up in Waynesville, and find the
weather has broken and it’s sunny. I walk around downtown Waynesville,
shooting various scenes including a hillside cemetery. When the light
fails, I return to the Maggie Valley motel.

Friday, April 2

The weather looks a bit improved, but still iffy at altitude. I go for
it. It turns out the end segment of the Parkway is always closed this year,
due to some tunnel work in progress. I drive back and forth on the cross
roads over the ridge, looking for where the Parkway opens. Answer: nowhere.
Apparently they are a little conservative about opening the Parkway as
soon as the weather breaks. After a few zigzags, I give up and head for
lower altitudes. End up at the Wildlife Education Center, which is the
center for a number of nice trails at mid-altitude, where it’s sunny and
mid-50′s. Hike the Cat Gap Loop trail, 4.4 miles and 1000 feet of elevation
gain. By then it’s getting dark, so I head for Asheville, which according
to the tourbooks is the cultural center of the whole area, such as it is.
I try to find an interesting downtown hotel, but end up with one on the
fringe of downtown outside the walking zone. The cellular data connection
works in the evening, but barely.

Saturday, April 3

By morning, the cellular data connection doesn’t work at all. Waste
time on the phone with Verizon tech support, but they can’t help. Arrgh.
I backtrack to Dillsboro, SC to catch the weekly run of the steam
locomotive on the Great Smoky Mountains
Railroad, from Dillsboro to Bryson City, and back. I reserved a seat
in the enclosed Crown Coach, since I figured the weather would still be
nasty, but the weather was gorgeous the whole way. So I spent almost all
the trip in the open car, shooting the scenery. More on that when I get
home and process the photos. Back to Asheville, find a different hotel
that offers high-speed Internet access.

Sunday, April 4

I finally find some open Parkway, northbound to Mt. Pisgah. I hike
a few trails on the way up, and eat lunch at the Mt. Pisgah Inn (lousy
food but with a great view, except that it’s still mostly obscured by
fog). Unfortunately the Parkway is only open as far as the Inn. Past
that a short segment near the summit remains closed, so I have to
backtrack again and go around.

Monday, April 5

Found the Parkway open north of the Pisgah summit, and hike some
more. One hike takes me to the gate where the summit is closed, and
while I’m there getting ready to turn around the rangers come and open
the gate. So when I get back to the car I can continue backtracking
to the Inn to complete my coverage of that part of the Parkway. Then
I continue toward Mt. Mitchell, the highest point east of the Rockies
(and thus another likely candidate for a Parkway closure). Sure enough,
the part of the Parkway that goes to the summit from the south is
closed. The Parkway information line says that Mt. Mitchell is still
accessible by a certain numbered road. I never did find that numbered
road, but I followed signs to Mt. Mitchell and got there somehow. You
can drive to within a couple hundred yards of the summit, where the
parking lot has been snowplowed enough to be accessible. I hiked up
to the summit, where it was windy and cold. Photos to follow. Then
on the way down I took the “easy” one-mile Nature Walk
through the forest. Judging by the footprints in the snow, I was only
the second one to go that way since the snow fell. A mile is a lot
longer in the snow. Drove back down the non-Parkway roads and ended
up in Boone, NC, where the tourbook led me to the Broyhill Inn on
the campus of Appalachian State University.
I thought there would be some cool campus atmosphere, but it turns out
the Inn is way up on a hill away from everything else.

Tuesday, April 6

Rejoining the Parkway and continuing north, I visited
Grandfather Mountain,
a privately held nature park. Photos.
Crossed the mile-high swinging bridge, which is a little scary, and which
leads only to some rock outcroppings you can climb out onto, which are
much scarier. I shot a 360-degree panorama from the outcropping, but
putting it together would be too painful on this little iBook, so you’ll
have to wait for that one. Back on the Parkway, I found
a few miscellaneous trails to hike before stopping for the night
in Jefferson, NC.

Wednesday, April 7

More of the same: random trails on the Parkway. There’s nothing to
eat on most of the Parkway, so around lunchtime I have to wander off at
some crossroad and see what I can find. Today I find Stuart, VA, including
the official designated Lover’s Leap there. More photos. I end up in
Roanoke, VA for the night.

Thursday, April 8

Up to Peaks of Otter on the Blue Ridge Parkway, where I spend the night
and hike some short trails near the Lodge. No phones, no cellular service,
no TV, and the machines are all out of Diet Coke. By me this is roughing it.

Friday, April 9

The weather doesn’t encourage me to do the summit hikes at Peaks of Otter,
so I hit the road. But I do find some more trails, including the Fallingwater
trail to a nice waterfall. End up in Buena Vista, VA. I did not ask a local
to confirm the guidebook’s claim that it’s pronounced byew-nah.

Saturday, April 10

I drive the final segment of the Blue Ridge Parkway and begin on Skyline
Drive, which is to say on Shenandoah National
Park. One of the hikes I pick for today is the Bearfence Mountain summit.
The trail is only 0.8 miles long, but a section of it is a rock scramble. The brochure
says “This hike is for the sure-footed and those not afraid of heights.”
The sign at the trailhead uses sterner language, but concludes “The climb
is not dangerous if caution is used.” I pay enough attention to these
warnings to leave the big camera in the car and only wear the little one on
my belt, and set off onto the trail. It started out easy, and snuck up on me,
until pretty soon I’m clambering over rocks I would have considered impassible
except for the clearly marked trail blazes, patches of blue paint leading me
over boulders and skirting narrow ledges, up and around to the very tippy top
of the huge pile of rocks on top of the ridge. I almost turned back a couple
of times, and then it seemed easier to go on through the loop path. I didn’t
fall, but I sure scared myself. A good hike.

Not too far past that is Skyland Lodge, the highest point on Skyline Drive
and the only year-round lodging. I checked in and spent the night, along with
a mess of Easter weekenders.

Sunday, April 11

Unfortunately the weather was crappy again, so I had to skip all the rest
of the great trails on Skyline Drive. I finished out the drive to the northern
terminus of Skyline, and then headed toward Dulles Airport to visit the
Udvar-Hazy Center, a
new facility of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum with room for lots of
aircraft and spacecraft they’ve been unable to display in the main museum,
including the Space Shuttle Enterprise, a Concorde, a U2, a SR41 Blackbird,
and many others. An amazing collection. When the museum guards kicked everybody
out, I headed toward Washington on the theory that non-airport hotels would
be cheaper, and ended up in Fairfax, VA. Not sure if the theory worked, as
hotels there were also pretty pricy.

Monday, April 12

Smithsonian day, and raining. Instead of fighting the mass transit system
in the rain, I drove downtown and paid a fortune to park in one of the
underground garages. Got soaked walking to the museum anyway. Visited the
Natural History Museum (good) and the American History Museum (better).
Lacking much of a plan beyond this point, I ended up sleeping in Silver Spring, MD,
with the idea of visiting the AMSAT office in the morning.

Tuesday, April 13

Visited with Martha at the AMSAT office for a while, then went back downtown
to visit the main facility of the Air and Space Museum. It’s less crowded than I
remember it; maybe they removed some stuff when they opened the Udvar-Hazy Center.
The hands-on science exhibit showing aeronautical principles is far and away the
best “Exploratorium-style” display I’ve ever seen. Lots of really cool
stuff to try. When the guards kicked everybody out of that museum, I put the
navigation system into “fastest route” mode and dove south to get out
of Dodge. Ended up in Fredericksburg, VA.

Wednesday, April 14

Spent a couple of hours in the morning getting caught up on computer work
for the AMSAT web site, and barely got out by checkout time. After lunch, it
was still rainy and cold, so the goal for the day was to cover some miles.
Still not sure whether I’m headed for Texas now or going to the Sun’n'Fun
Fly-In to drop in on the Express Aircraft booth, but for now I’m heading
south. Ran out of steam in Lumberton, NC, where I sit typing this when I
should be sleeping.

The whole Performance Center delivery process went smoothly and was a lot of fun. More when I get a chance to write it up, but for now here are some pictures of me with my new car, taking delivery.