On lousy weather

I hate winter. I guess that makes me a real second rate Canadian, the fact that I'm actually a 4'th generation Torontoian probably makes me a third rate Canadian. Winter has one redeeming feature, without winter no one would have dreamed up ice skating which ultimately led to inline skating via Ice-hockey.

Sorry I had to rant. I'm just really getting sick of this second rate crappy weather, I want warmth and sunshine damnit!

Lately I find myself day dreaming about my bike a lot, maybe cyclist dreams here? The nice thing about a bike is that you can go a lot further than you can on skates, also hills and crummy roads are not the obstacle that they are to a skater. (On the other hand bike theft is something that a skater will never need to worry about.)

I keep thinking I should just go to the bike store and pick the thing up. There's actually two problems, one is I can't ride it home, all this damned white evilness on the ground. The other reason I cannot get my bike is I have no place to store it. You see, we are supposed close on the new house on March 31, except due to... wait for it... Snow, the builder has had to delay closing until April 15. The new place has a great deal more space, it also has a basement room with no windows, the ideal place to store a bike of (in this case) modest value. So I must wait until April 15 before I can even think about getting my new bike.

That said I have it all planned out, I am going to skate to the bike store, then, with skates in my skate bag I will bike home. Now I just need a home to bike to, but at least I won't need to drive my bike home which is just wrong.

On 2006 Specialized Roubaix Comp Triple

This morning I was poking around and found a picture of my new bike. Google is a wonderful thing. The one problem is its not really my bike, yet. I paid a deposit, but I still have to pay for the bike and pick it up. If anyone would like to contribute to the new charity I am establishing, we'll call this one the 'pay for Michael's bike charity'. Not to be confused with the 'pay for Michael's new home appliances charity' or the 'pay Michael's mortgage charity'... damn I really need to win the lottery.

In the mean time, don't use the Google Search in your tool bar, use the Google search at the top of my blog, if we all do that a few hundred billion times I just might have enough nickles saved up to buy a new roll of tape for the handle bars.
What a beauty isn't she?

On the Toronto International Bike show

The weekend is the Toronto International Bike Show. Sigrid (see the Blog roll on the right) and I went together. Sigrid scored a few jerseys and I believe met her new racing team, although to be honest I wasn't really on top of what she was doing. I was too busy haggling over bike prices. Ultimately I got a 2006 Specialized Roubaix (for anyone who is wondering, it comes nicely loaded with a Shimano 105 group) I also bought shoes, Specialized again (the side of the box is labeled Sport Road, not sure if that's the model), and Shimano 105 pedals. The store I bought all this good stuff from threw in a water bottle cage for good measure. Later I bought a pump from another store. Total spent, $1518. Of course since I don't have $1500 in small change under the couch I've had to pay a deposit and will pay for the rest probably next month or so. As a result I don't even have any pretty pictures, ironically I actually had a chance to take some but it completely slipped my mind until after we left the show.

Actually there's a silly story in that. I figured, as we were leaving I should get some pictures but then it occurred to me I can admire pictures any time I want, after all, when I went to Rochester last time a guy at a bike shop there gave me a Specialized Catalog. Only, that catalog is for 2008, my bike, like I said is a vintage 2006, oh well. Hey 2006 was a good year for red wines I hope its a good year for red (and black) bikes.

Previously I promised to put up pictures of the trip to Houston. Sorry, no bike, but well this is pretty fast too:
Pictured above is the T-38 Talon, these aircraft are used for training purposes, notice the NASA Meatball insignia on the tail. This photo is outside the visitor's center of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Flight Center, in south Houston TX.

Sign at the enterence to the Johnson Space Center.


Above is a toilet in the Space shuttle.


These are controls for the Cryogenic systems on the Space Shuttle, these would be of concern to EECOM in the Apollo period. In low Earth orbit I suppose the consumables are not such a major concern, worst case, the space shuttle can always return ahead of schedule. Notice the primitive push button nature of the control systems.

The flight deck of the space shuttle.

The control systems on the space shuttle, notice the Apollo era computer systems. Contrast this with a modern cockpit.

Control systems for the Canada Arm, note the maple leaf. Canadians be proud, a small part of our taxes goes to greatness.

Breakfast of champions, a meal fit for an astronaut.

A Saturn V booster with an Apollo Command and Service Module, note that each stage is physically detached from the other stages. Boosters like this one landed the Apollo astronauts on the moon, when stacked up on launch pad 39A at Cape Kennedy it weighed in at 6.3 million pounds and stood 363 feet into the air.

I am including this picture to give an idea of scale. Recall at launch the entire assembly weighed 6.3 million pounds, by the time the command module splashed down in the Pacific eight days later only 11 thousand pounds were left. The command module is the rusted part just above and behind me.

One of the massive F-1 engines that powered stage 1 of the Saturn V missile, each engine developed an average of 1.5 million pounds of thrust, but at full throttle could produce almost 1.9 million pounds of thrust.

The bottom of the Saturn V missile, there are 5 F-1 engines, they are powered by LOX (Liquid OXygen) and kerosene. (Besides lamps, kerosene is also used in jet engines, to my knowledge the Saturn V stage 1 was the only booster to use kerosene.)

The F-1 Engine, the white note on the engine reads:

A cluster of five engines like this one provided the power for the first stage of the Saturn V launch vehicle during the Apollo-Saturn test flights, manned flights to the moon, and the launch of the Skylab orbiting laboratory into Earth orbit.

The engines were powered for 2-1/2 minutes lifting the Saturn V to an altitude of about 41 miles and a speed of about 6000 miles per hour. Each engine weighed 15,650 pounds and developed a thrust of 1,500,000 pounds.

An F-1 Engine, not far from a Redstone MRBM (Medium Range Ballistic Missile) with a mercury capsule on top. It was an arrangement like this one that made Alan Bartlett Shepard the first American in space on the flight of Freedom 7 on May 5, 1961.

On returning home

Today, after completing the post below this one Lesley and I did almost nothing. Dallas is a city, like pretty much every city in Texas (with the possible exception of San Antonio), that is not worth a tourist's afternoon.

We returned the two two books we bought, one on New Mexico, we will go back, but probably armed with a Lonely Planet, and one on Texas - not going back there again thank you. We spent much of the afternoon in a book store, I read some of Confessions Of A Political Hit Man, as anyone who knows me might expect, I was unsurprised to learn that Jack Abramoff is a slime (that he is a Jew like me is embarrassing). Republicans are hypocrites (go ahead, each of those three words points to a Republican who slammed President Clinton then got themselves into a good old fashioned sex scandal). And that Washington Politics is so poisoned - I blame the Republicans - that anyone who wants to run as a Republican probably ought to just turn themselves in to the authorities and skip the intermediate steps of running, flinging mud at the other guy, and getting elected.

After the book store we returned to DFW, where I am pleased to report that I survived another experience with the helpful people at the TSA (Transportation Security Administration). The TSA are the lovable bunch who make you take your shoes, belts, sweaters off, then remove your coins, cell phones and or Blackberries, laptops, and bags.

I have a really idiotic question to ask, does anyone, besides perhaps Michael Chertoff, honestly believe that the evildoers are going to pull the same stunt twice? Its not as terrorizing the second time and that's the whole point. Osama Bin Laden cannot win an outright war against the United States, but he can scare Americans into surrendering their basic rights and freedoms... ooops, guess what, Bin Laden, he won the War on Terror. Don't believe me? Take a drive through Texas and then decide.

It took 60 years but the United States went from the Greatest Generation to the generation of shop till you drop... the economy.

On Texas and San Antonio

A few details I forgot to mention yesterday. We left Houston and drove, without air conditioning, for something in the neighbourhood of 300 km. By the time we got to San Antonio keeping my eyes open was becoming difficult. Driving is mentally draining, not physical work in the slightest, but staying alert for three hours at time is very exhausting, sort of like trying to sit through a baseball game.

We arrived at a hotel that Lesley decided was (from outside appearance) in acceptable condition (it turned out the inside was in pretty bad shape). I checked in, at which time the woman at the front desk asked for ID, I showed her my driver's licence and remarked that she had probably never seen one of those (Ontario driver's licence) before. She looked at it a while and said:

• "Oh you're from Cah-ni-dahh"
• "Yeah"
• "There was a guy from Cah-ni-dahh here just a few days ago, but he didn't have this on his licence. [rubbing the top part of the licence, as if to erase, where it reads "Ontario"] His started with a.. uhm, M I think."
• "Manitoba?"
• "Yeah that was it, Man-it-ob-ah."

Canadians rest easy, the Americans have heard of us!

The following morning we went out for... brunch, yeah that's it brunch. I declared that as I was in Texas I wanted Mexican food, we can have proper Asian food anytime but if I'm within spitting distance of the border I want Mexican at least once.

It turns out that San Antonio was built along a river, called, if I am reading the map correctly, the San Antonio river, there are a number of picturesque shops and restaurants along the side. If you are thinking tourist trap, well yes it was, but it was pretty, and if you were driving from Houston to say, El Paso, stopping for a walk along the San Antonio river would make for a pleasant change.

After the San Antonio river we went to the Alamo. Now I've been told that the Alamo has special meaning to Texans that the rest of us cannot understand and I will concede that is probably very true. First it was painfully obvious that the Mexicans were the evil invaders who were being held at bay by the brave and gallant soldiers, who are to a man, heroes. Second it was made painfully apparent that I was walking on a shrine, as if I was prancing up and down the Church of the Nativity or perhaps the site where Moses encountered a burning bush. Everyone talked in a hushed whisper, besides Lesley and myself no one was under the age of 60. Clear instructions were posted that we were not to touch the walls, evidently the walls are sacred.

Frankly the entire experience was creepy. Maybe because Canada never fought for its independence, maybe because Canada is a nation of compromise where we use words rather than guns to establish a national direction, but this borderline nationalism that I see in the United States, and veneration of military, it is of great concern. How can America lay claim to any moral authority, when its citizens have understanding of only the sword? Yes I am sure the guys who fought at the Alamo were brave, perhaps even gallant, but this deification, its not healthy.

After the Alamo we started driving North to Dallas, stopping on route at a massive outlet mall. I bought some fudge then took a nap, Lesley was overwhelmed and gave up after just a few stores. While I was buying the fudge the woman in the store complained about the cold (the temperature had dropped to about 10 degrees). I told her:

• This is not cold, where I'm from is cold.
• This is cold.
• No, cold means snow and sleet and freezing rain, this is not cold.
• Where are you from?
• Canada.
• I could never live there, I just could not survive that.

The legend of The Great White North continues!

As we drove it started to rain, rain turned to snow that melted on contact that turned to snow that accumulated. We arrived in Dallas at around 8:30.

Lesley decided she wanted fresh fruit, I decided that I could use something that wasn't processed and didn't have corn syrup added for sweetness. After extensive searching, I found a banana, Lesley found a cup of soup and and ice-cream sandwich. I miss Toronto, I miss fresh fruits and vegetables. (Heck even preserved fruits and vegetables.) When we asked the guy at the front desk where we could get some fresh fruit he pointed us to a Sam's Club. I miss the corner fruit stores that dot so many residential areas of Toronto. Texas is a state where everything is a suburb, there is almost no downtown and apparently no fresh fruit either. To any Texans who might read this, I'm sorry, but I've already been to Los Angeles and your cities bare a striking resemblance to a city everyone already agrees is totally dysfunctional.

The weather here is an awful lot better than in Canada, but I am still glad I live in a place where, cold means, real cold, not 10 degrees above zero, maybe its the cold makes us realise that the past belongs in the past and should not be a guide to the future.

On Houston

It occurs to me that yesterday I said I was satisfied with a fuel economy of 9L/100km, which is actually pretty bad for highway standards, except (and this will piss off everyone in Toronto who might read this post in the next few days) we needed the A/C (Air Conditioning). I'm so used to sub zero temperatures that when we arrived in Texas to 25 degree heat we had to run the A/C. Ironically, in Toronto an August day of 25 degrees would be almost sweater weather, but right now its sandals and T-shirts!

You don't really realise how bad A/C is until its mid July and you are sitting in stop and go traffic, its 35 degrees and and the A/C is just blasting away - our car has climate control so it automatically goes to full blast just to sustain 21 degrees inside the passenger compartment. Every time the traffic moved there would be no pickup, first gear felt like second, or maybe even third. That one time it hit home, if you can drive with a window open you can really save gas for better things. Last night on the drive from Houston to San Antonio I stopped for gas, not because we were close to needing it, but because I needed a break from driving. According to my Atlas of distances, the drive we made last night was 322km for which an entire quarter tank (about 20L) of gas of used. So I want to know, if a V6 270hp engine can get that kind of mileage (about 6.5L/100km) why can't every car do that on the highway? Is it such an outrageous standard? I don't think so.

Anyway yesterday was Sunday March 2, we woke up, well I woke up, I typed the post that you can see below, from March 1 and showered, twice in fact (I like showers), I even shaved off my side-burns, I ate breakfast. Then Lesley woke up, it was almost noon Eastern time when she got out of bed.

Then, wait for it... we drove! The sad fact is you can't even cross a street in Texas without driving. When I get home I am going to walk (or bike or skate) everywhere for the next month, and I don't care if its snowing, hailing, sleeting, or just plain raining! Anyway we went to the South end of Houston to the Visitor Centre of the Johnson Space Flight Centre.

Here are a few words of advice for space flight nerds (not meaning that as an insult, I totally geeked out when I finally saw what I wanted to see). Don't go to the Visitor Centre, I know, if you haul your rear end all the way to Houston... don't go. Trust me, the drive to the Visitor's centre requires driving South on I-45 to exit 25, then going East on NASA road for about a kilometer or two to the big sign at 1601 NASA road. You make the left and enter a parking lot where you pay $5 to park, then you pay $18.50 to enter the actual centre where there is... well not very much. A mock-up of the Space Shuttle's crew compartment, a model of the new Ares Booster, photos of every flight crew from Alan B. Sheppard right to the most recent Space Shuttle. (Yes there are references to the horrible things that happened in Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia.) Every Shuttle mission patch is on the wall of the food court (the food looks frightful). And they have some real space suits, including Pete Conrad's dirty pants from his EVA on Apollo 12. You will have to watch From the Earth to the Moon to get that joke though. There is a gift shop, that is horribly over priced, but other than that, the Visitor's centre is a good way to feel ripped off.

Here is my advice to space flight enthusiasts, you are on NASA road. East bound, at Point Lookout Drive you are supposed to make a left onto the parking lot of 1601 NASA road, don't. Keep going one more light to Saturn Lane, then turn left. Now make a quick right to the guard booth, ask them if you can see the big rocket. They will point you to a parking lot and a long building. Parking is free, enter the long building and be dazzled. There is, on its side separated at each stage, a full 363 feet Saturn V (that's 5, not the letter) booster from the top of the escape rocket to the bottom of the mighty F-1 engines. The booster includes the Command and Service module although the LEM is not included. So it is basically another Apollo 8, but on its side, without the fuel.

If you enter by the parking lot you can start at the top of the Emergency escape rocket, walk down to the bottom of the F-1 engines and then exit the building. You can see a number of other photo worthy remnants from the early days. A full blown Redstone Missile with a Mercury capsule on the top, just like the arrangement that carried Alan B. Sheppard into the history books. An entire exposed J-2 engine is also outside, remember a modified J-2 engine will be the driver of the new Constellation Project. There is even an H-1 engine like the type used in the Saturn 1 missile. But the thing I found most remarkable was the F-1 engine even had a serial number, it brings home how real everything is. These aren't mock-ups, these could have been the machines that landed Neil Armstrong on the moon, just of quick of which came out of the factory first is the only reason this F-1 is in Houston and not at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean.

Once you are done with NASA, go to the Museum of Fine Art in Houston. They have a Monet and a few Picasso's. Skip the photo's and contemporary stuff, its not worth seeing, frankly its kind of scary. But be warned, as you travel about, if the speed limit is a suggestion in Quebec, then it's an insult in Texas.

Anyway I will have some pictures, but I forgot the SD card reader at home and for some strange reason I cannot copy and paste through the USB port. (I need to reinstall Winblows.)

On Texas Medium!

Lesley and I decided, some time ago, it would be fun to go camping in New Mexico and maybe see the Grand Canyon and slip in the Hoover damn for good measure. Plans evolved and it became a flight to DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth) with a quick drive to Houston, then San Antonio, then New Mexico via El Paso. Then we got hit with budget. Specifically, because the new upgraded, appliances were delivered this week to our new house we have a $10 thousand outstanding on the Visa bill. We have changed our return date from Friday to Tuesday and will turn back towards DFW after we see San Antonio. New Mexico, the whole reason we came will have to wait. But at least I can lay claim to seeing the place that created George Walker Bush, the man who lost the 2000 election yet still became President, to the detriment of a nation. (I also get to be in Texas just as the Obama v. Clinton grudge match hits full blast on the airwaves.)

Speaking of Politics for a second, we are at a modest hotel in Houston as I write this, not far from what was probably once called the Houston Intercontinental Airport. It is called the George Bush Intercontinental Airport. I have a real issue with that. Just as the depression started to hit real hard, President Hoover and the United States congress authorized construction of a damn on the Colorado river not far from the small town of Las Vegas Nevada. Originally called the Boulder damn, it was renamed, during the term of President Hoover, to the Hoover damn. When FDR became president in 1933 one of the first things he had done was change the name back to the Boulder damn, you just don't name things after sitting presidents, its the height of arrogance to do that. (Yes the name was changed back to Hoover damn many years later, I think after Hoover died, but the point is, you want to honour a president wait the 4 or 8 years for him to leave office and then honour him, or, hopefully not next year but, her.)

Anyway a summary of events so far is in order.

On Friday, February 29, we were supposed to leave Toronto via Air Canada flight 1048, direct service to DFW, departing at 18:55. It snowed, hard, the flight was cancelled which was alright with me. We were stuck in the afternoon rush-hour disaster and had not even made it to Avenue Road and St. Clair by 17:30 when Lesley got through on a cell phone to Air Canada and found out about the cancellation.

Saturday, March 1, things went very near picture perfect, as far as a trip to Texas can go picture perfect. Our flight even pushed off from the gate a few minutes early. Now DFW airport is a HUGE airport, I mean you might have seen Terminal 1 in Toronto and think, that's pretty big, especially if you have to walk all the way from the metal detectors to one of the distant gates, but that's just peanuts compared to DFW. DFW is, by traffic volume I think, the third busiest airport in the United States and the largest airport by floor space. It also occupies places in the top ten for size, World wide. You would think, an airport of that magnitude would have little trouble slotting our dinky little 73 passenger airplane in, but no, we had to wait a good twenty minutes on the tarmac seat-belts fastened - for reasons that escape me, since we weren't moving - while the plane that occupied our gate loaded up and got out of the way. Yes we had landed and we were safe, but its still frustrating to be trapped in a plane like that.

We rented a car, obviously, ended up getting a Rav-4. After a quick lunch (breakfast at noon?) we bought a tour book of Texas and another for New Mexico then we drove from Dallas to Houston. The drive is about 400 km, and used about 36L of gas, which, when you factor in getting lost trying to escape DFW and the mind boggling lack of road signs, 9L/100Km is pretty good fuel economy, especially for a V6 engine. I'd be curious what kind of gas mileage I could get back home, where I actually know all the roads.

Texas is an ugly state. Yes everything is bigger in Texas, the vehicles (our Rav-4 was one of the smaller things I crossed paths with on the highway), the food portions, the people. But here we are in early March and the afternoon high was more than 25 degrees, yet the grass is brown and the trees are barren. The whole thing reminded me of Toronto in November, except in November its never 25 degrees, sadly.

On the radio, as well as the billboards, there were numerous chances to cross paths with Christian Evangelism. Thanks to the fact that it is 2008 it was even easier to listen to campaign ads, the fact that Mr. Obama has spent twice as much on media buys in Texas as Mrs. Clinton is very obvious too. (Still at least in the ads I heard there was no attacking of the other guy, but the part where the girl in the Obama ad said he is cute, sorry I thought we were working out President of the United States, not Prom Queen.) If I listened to country music, (no I don't, but I was scanning and landed on a country station during commercials) I could have heard more of, "John Doe a true conservative, supports tax relief and executing baby killing abortion doctors, running in the Texas 54'th Congressional district."

Before we arrived I had an image of a state filled with very polite gun toting slow talking oil barons. Instead I found a good rule of thumb for drivers on the freeways. Take the posted speed limit, say 70 miles an hour, and ignore it! Or multiply by 10, - use the larger of the two values when in doubt. Mind you I'd pay good money to hear that Texas drawl.

We got to the hotel around 5pm, it was small, but for the price, not bad. Lesley decided she wanted Chinese food, naturally Texas has a large Chinese community, they live in Texan city of New York, in the North East part of the state. (I was actually sort of craving a burrito, oh well maybe I can get one from the large Mexican population in Toronto, in little Mexico, just south of Little Italy.)

There is actually a China Town in Houston, in the South West corner of town. Now we are in the North, mid section. Google Maps, suggested we use a ring road called the Sam Houston Toll Road. Now I've used toll roads plenty of times, I even have an E-Z Pass in my car for trips to New York or Boston, but the toll roads in Houston are brutal! To cover a about a quarter of the ring around Houston costs $4.50, but its not a get a piece of paper when you get on and pay when you get off deal like in New York, oh no, that would be too easy! Instead it's line up every so often at a toll plaza and cough up another $1.50. There's no lineup if you have an "E-Z Tag" but hey it's a rental car, nobody told me about E-Z Tags and why is the line to pay money so damned long? Can't Houston afford to hire more Toll both workers? With an 8.25% sales tax you would think, but then this is the same place some of the most corrupt and incompetent elected officials came from.

It occurs to me, this entire entry talks about driving, but then, this is Texas, what else is there to talk about? Today we are going to the Johnson Space Centre, named after the last good politician from Texas, then we are going to see some fine art. Hopefully the next entry will be a little less about driving and a little more positive too.