When The Ice Returns

This is Sardine Lakes, a pair of them. On above the other, formed by the same glacier that carved the northernmost spur of the Sierra Nevada mountains into this sharp and craggy point. The lakes aren't huge, but you can fish in them, in a boat. There's cabins, camping, picnic grounds, and hiking trails. It has been getting rain almost daily all summer long. As you can see there is no glacier left there, but it will come back. Making glaciers is a matter of "accumulation". If more snow falls and stays through the summer than melts, you get a glacier. Summers can still be warm and have an ice age. They just can't be warm enough to melt all the snow. Not at the highest elevations, like this mountain. These are visible from where I live, btw. You can see them for a hundred miles. 

The drive up Highway 49 from Nevada City is about 90 minutes. It is twisty, has blind turns and changing radius turns (those kill people because you loose grip as the turn tightens), and winds over all three forks of the Yuba River. The South Yuba, which passes near where I live, is the one that come out of Donner Pass area and it follows I-80 for a dozen miles before veering off into its own canyon to the north. The Interstate than follows the ridge between the Bear River and the American River, which also have deep canyons and lots of gold mining scars all the way down to Auburn. Highway 49 follows the locations of the various gold mines and used to be a stagecoach road. It is paved, smoother and straighter than it used to be, but it is still a very fun road to drive in a sports car, and painful in a slow moving RV or towing a trailer. There are sections, such as the one between here and Auburn, which carry lots of heavy trucks and commuters at high speed, but much of the highway is slow and two lanes and people pull over to let the more anxious pass them. We did, for a few maniacs with downhill mountain bikes heading for Downieville. There is a local hardcore sport that runs out of Downieville for cyclists. They pay a van to take them up to Sardine Lakes and drop them off. They climb up the hill over various ridges onto the west slope, stare at the view from the top, all the way to the mountains which hide the Pacific on their far side, and then power down the various trails for 20 miles, back to Downieville. It is not a good place to wreck, and proper downhill bikes are purpose built for the trip, and very expensive. 

This is a race from 2012. Bikes are getting longer and more angled suspension forks, to absorb more bumps. They also cost a few grand, so rentals are popular, and the shuttle services and bike rentals make it fun for the tourists, who also stay the night, eat at the local restaurants and provide most of the funds in this little tourist town nestled deep in the mountains. It is pretty much the only legal employment in the area, since the illegal stuff is on the south bank of the river, that being the north edge of the San Juan Ridge pot growing area. Sigh. When it starts raining hard this fall, the pot growers will be ready, harvest and process their plants, and make their annual bulk sales down in the cities. Next year will have lots more water, and lots more pot will result.

In any case, the highest parts of the northern sierra, up the mountain from Downieville is very pretty, and totally worth a visit if you live in California or Nevada. Someday those lakes will be filled with glacier again, the trees and brush ground under the advancing ice that returns to the high country first, and I'd like to write a story about the geologists assigned to studying them as they advance, then going down the mountain to one of the local towns for rest and resupply snowmobiles and 4WD trucks, probably electric by that point. Its one of those good things about Star Wars, that it gave us the concept of a scifi universe with dirt. It opened the door to filthy heroes with crap on their boots.

It was a fun day. I drove us over the Yuba Pass, and respectable speed, and descended into the Mohawk Valley below, which thanks to getting almost daily rain, was green, healthy, and filled with cows. They are not having drought there. It was gorgeous and Dad and I both want to live there. I just need to get someone to pay me to be a librarian. Sierraville, several thousand feet below the pass, is in Highway 89, at the south end of the Mohawk Valley. It has a forest service branch office, a Caltrans repair yard for the various highways going through there (serious jobs) and a small market. I did not see a library. Pity. Its got about 350 people, in the summer. And more like 100 in the winter. It ices up during the winter months, and it is about 30 miles to Truckee, which has the nearest supermarkets. We zoomed down that highway with the other traffic until we reached Nevada County, where the roads turned to bouncy thumpy crap. We also passed a crash being attended to by fire trucks, ambulance, and CHP (Highway Patrol) for some honda that had tried to cross a creek at speed, backwards, and wrecked. Not sure how they missed the bridge, but texting is never a good idea. People still do that, texting while driving. I think it is a Darwin Award, and it resolves itself. I remain a fan of Single Car Accidents. Texting crashes are just Chlorine in the gene pool. Once in Truckee, we rejoined I-80 and climbed over Donner Pass, and it rained most of the way up and part of the way down the west slope. This slowed traffic somewhat, but the road was also slippery. A good weekend. 

Quake Misinformation for PNW

Sigh.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4356513070001/report-mega-quake-could-kill-13000-in-pacific-northwest/?intcmp=watchnow#sp=show-clips

Most of what is said in this news segment is wrong. There are mountains between the Sea and I-5. The water won't cross those, much less go very far inland. However, the damage from a 9.2 quake would stretch for a hundred miles inland. That part was right.

But we don't know that this will be a 9.2 quake. Its just as likely to be an 8.2-8.7. There could be a quite a lot less shaking energy, and a lot less damage. Oregon and Washington states both use anchor bolts on their foundations so houses won't shake loose. Broken windows can be replaced, but the houses probably won't fall down. There is no evidence to suggest 4 minutes of shaking. Most quakes are 15-45 seconds long. Not several minutes. I live in California. I've been through lots of quakes.

Prior tsunami from the January 1700 quake was 30 feet high (at the shore), and went 15 miles inland, along the tidal flats. Not 600 feet tall. Thirty feet high and 15 miles inland is not so terribly shocking, though just as bad as the ones which hit Japan and Thailand. The upside is there are excellent warning signs along every beach there and people know what to expect. They are risking their lives, on purpose, and don't care. So don't get worked up if the quake kills them. Accept other's suicides properly, with the respect they deserve. People who choose to live less than 30 feet above sea level are taking their risks. People who live higher than that are avoiding most realistic tsunami dangers. Its a DUH rating, and they even tell you this when you want to buy a house.

I would appreciate if news agencies, trying to be taken seriously, would not allow this kind of nonsense on the air.

Motorized Bicycles and Price

I live in a mountain town, with steep hills everywhere. These often have narrow roads climbing them, with trees close on either side and blind corners. You would think this would be a bad place for bicycling, but there's a regular contingent of serious hill climbers here. And drivers don't run them over. Drivers are strangely conscientious about making sure they don't have accidents with cyclists, motorcyclists, scooterists, walkers, and kids going home from school. That's a very positive thing about the locals.

If you aren't a superfit athlete wrapped in skin tight spandex, bicycling here is extremely hard, so you only go a short distance and are exhausted the rest of the day. Technology to the rescue? There IS such a thing as a bicycle motor. Legally, you can use those up to 33 cc without a license or registration.

Most of the kits sold on Amazon and Ebay are 80cc, and geared for flatland speed. This will get you arrested and ticketed for using an illegal vehicle on the roads. So what are the legal alternatives?

There is such a thing as an electric bicycle. The two different conversion kits involve replacing a wheel on your bicycle with one that has an electric hub, a controller, brake cutoff and regenerative braking system, and often you have to buy your own battery. The Chinese kits have TERRIBLE Engrish instructions and no specs are listed as to the wheel's axel width so you can't tell if it will fit your bicycle frame. Also, the batteries don't come with the bike, and so far, those batteries don't last more than about 500 days of use, and realistically need to be replaced in a year. They're getting cleverer about the design, such as all inclusive swappable wheel (totally worth stealing!) that uses your smartphone for wireless controller, but you give up your other gears on your bike if you do that. And here in the Mountains? You need those other gears. Also, these tight setups in one wheel have a small battery yet cost $1100. Um... no. Tidy design, but the price is wrong. If that were $300, it would probably sell. Just keep in mind that the actual build price, in parts and labor, for a Vespa is $175. No really. The parts are $125, and the assembly time is 15 minutes. The rest is greed and markup. This is why I despair at Vespa. They COULD Be the Honda of scooters and be on every street if they were selling for double their manufacturing cost. They'd corner the market. But they went for luxury greed and so only rich fools buy them because they don't care. This irritates me so much.

Amazon also sells fully assembled purpose built e-bikes, for $900. Their reviews are relatively positive, but the fine details on the warranty are that the batteries aren't warrantied after a year, which is about when they need to be replaced, and good luck getting ahold of an English-speaking rep to send you a replacement $300 battery from China. There's sites which list the best ebikes, which are often around $4000. That is a LOT of money. That's the cost of a new motor scooter, and several entry level 250cc motorcycles, which get 70-80 mpg and don't require $300 in battery (or gasoline) per year, and those can go on the freeway and climb mountain roads at considerable speed.

As it stands, Electric Bicycles are a luxury item, and remain on the cutting edge. Their advantages are:

1. being nearly silent 
2. can park in your apartment or office
3. Can recharge in various places
4. Do not require a special license to ride

Their disadvantages are: 

1. Battery only lasts a couple dozen miles per charge
2. Battery needs replacement every year for $300-600
3. Initial cost is higher than motorized transport
4. Legally limited to under 20 mph
5. Weight significant compared to a regular bicycle
6. Worth stealing so can't park in public
7. Purpose built Ebikes are $3-$4K

I will note that if you have a Kymco scooter dealer, with parts on stock, a Kymco Agility 125cc motor scooter from Taiwan is $1900 and will climb the hills better than an ebike, doesn't need its battery replaced annually, and gets 80 mpg. 

If you don't have a local Kymco dealer, a Piaggio (makes Vespa too) Fly 150cc is $2900 and gets 70 mpg and has better quality than the Kymco and uses the Vespa parts network. I see these around town, being $1300-3000 less than a similar Vespa. They have less chrome. They can still be stolen, but they are heavier and thus require two people to lift into a pickup truck and hauled off at speed. These can generally be parked in public. This being Gold Mining country, the local main streets are NARROW with very limited parking and you can put these on the sidewalk legally. I would have one. Honda makes UGLY scooters made for seriously flamboyant homosexuals. I wouldn't be caught dead on one. Being straight and single sometimes limits your choices in vehicle. 

50 ccs 4-stroke is only 4 HP. This is pointless in California. 

Too Ghey for words. 

If you don't have either scooter dealer, or you need to get on and off the freeway, a Honda Rebel motorcycle, with a 234cc engine and a cruiser setup with crappy drum brakes is around $2000 used, or $4400 new with the better brakes and the new EFI 250cc engine, which is far better than the old one (the 234cc air cooled Honda has been in production for 25 years). The Rebel creeps up the hills, but it is pretty bulletproof and is slow enough to reduce self destructive acts of speed. A couple of my neighborhood teenagers have 650cc supersport bikes. Neither has died yet, but they get more and more aggressive with their riding as they gain skill and I expect each of them to die because of it. This is sad, but everybody makes choices. Choosing to die is a choice. I have to respect that. The little Rebel is a baseline choice, used, compared to the various scooters. 

Honda Rebel with disc front brake

I could probably live with this as a daily commuter, and its less expensive and more able to climb hills and deal with bumps than a scooter. There's a local guy who put a sidecar onto his. Its a bodge-job with a mountain bike wheel and heavy steel angle iron, and I'm sure I could do better, including leaning and a bias brake to help it slow down without causing the bike to wreck. Even some suspension for the bumps. Still, this is better than a scooter or electric bike, despite requiring a motorcycle license and safety gear, uncomfortable at this time of year due to the heat. It does get 70 mpg. So keep this in mind when thinking about value. I also think about the value, which is why I don't own a Vespa. If they were $300 I totally would, but not for $4500. 

Fifth Wheels

So my summer research project on RVs and Trailers continues. I'm looking at 5th wheel trailers. These are interesting because you get a mount on your truck bed and you can see the hitch link up out  your back window. They tend to be tall ceilings inside, and some even have a ceiling fan. The queen sized bed is generally in the hump over the hitch, and there's often space for a battery, more water, a generator, and storage for chairs and folding table etc. Things you want if you camp in the woods.

Quite a few of these trailers ALSO have a rear-facing camera on the back of the trailer which links to a display you hang in front of your rearview mirror in the truck so when you glance at it, like normal, you see what a rearview mirror would see. So you can back up safely. And see who is tailgating you. Its really clever. Many modern RVs have this. It is also worth pointing out that you can put one of these next to the hitch to help line it up for lowering it onto the "ball", latching it down and driving away.

It has been pointed out by fiberglass trailer owners that their trailers basically delaminate in the sun. After 5-10 years they are falling apart and have crappy resale values. I have seen many examples of this problem. It is caused by the plastics binding the fiberglass together being chemically changed by UV light hitting the plastic skin. UV is energetic and plastics are petrochemicals, a type of oil. It evaporates/oxidizes in strong sunlight. We even learned to avoid exposing artificial fiber clothing to UV light because polyester can literally fall apart after a session of welding. We wore cotton or canvas or leather, all treated with fire retardant in my welding class. If you opt to buy a fiberglass trailer, it looks like serious maintenance needs to be done on its skin every year or two, to delay the breakdown problem. Re-skinning one seems very expensive.

Compare this to an Airstream which is still good on the outside after 50 years. They do require SOME maintenance, but its a lot less, and they have a good suspension so they last really well and are easy to tow. The reason for this is the curved aluminum sheeting (which is stronger and watertight) and simple design with good insulation and few moving parts to fail. They don't have sliders, and they use a steel frame underneath so they are really strong. I would seriously consider a Flying Cloud 23FB model for myself. It is big enough. I'd want to expand my kitchen a bit, however. I don't enjoy eating out that much and like to cook. Having a good sized fridge matters to me. Tow this with a midsize pickup, with a turbo V6 or V8 engine and I'm good to go. I could see working the summers at high Sierra or Eastern Sierra mountain towns needing a librarian for the summer. It could happen.

Compare that simple Airstream to the "slideouts" of a modern fiberglass RV. They offer a lot more space. While I can agree that putting a heavy fridge on a slider is a really dumb idea, you can anchor them down in the kitchen and move something else instead. They drastically increase the surface area for heating and cooling, and places for potential leaks, unfortunately. They are summer-only, and only in mild climates. Not too hot, not too cold. Not year round. This is a downside. Perhaps you keep them closed when it is raining, like the top on a convertible.

I suspect no answer is perfectly good, and if I spend any time in one I will start designing a better one, and once I run out of functional modifications, build one from scratch that IS right, with the weight in the right places, a good suspension, proper tough skin, good truss interior frame, excellent insulation, proper heating and cooling for -20F to 120F. I would use the right materials. I notice that nobody builds out of carbon fiber, or better yet phosphated silica thread, which is considerably stronger and more resilient, as well as being cheaper than carbon fiber. It is made from sand and requires no nanotubes (which are expensive to make). Read the paper on it, because it is IMPORTANT to the future. Honestly, we should be using this stuff in every vehicle. Its great stuff. Really strong. You have to cut it with a torch because it gouges steel scissors, snips, and shears. A shell made of that would be fantastic.

The whole point of this exercise isn't just for the classes I'm taking that use this research information. Its also for my own future, because I just don't count on the people I work for now, for free, to pay me. It isn't in their budget, or character. Volunteers never get jobs. And non-volunteers don't either. It is a closed system. So I am looking beyond them, and getting work experience, and seeing a future where being able to move to the good library budgets is easy. A sensible answer is reduce my stuff further, experiment with the bare minimum size built from plans or rehabbed to tow behind a truck I can afford, and see how it works out. Maybe after experimenting a bit with long term stay motels or month-to-month rental apartments, though I have come to hate apartments for all their noise and petty theft. And motels are just as bad. Ergo, one of the above options are already better, provided you park them in the right places. I think a lot of us are going to see this as a valid approach to our ever-worse economy. There has been no recovery. Things aren't getting better. And the Communists keep voting in more communists to keep those of us who want jobs and can't get one (thanks to age in my case) out of luck. That's how things are. I can't change it. Not even by voting. There are too many communists here making my vote meaningless. Gotta show ID to cash a check but not to vote. How's that work? Oh, its corrupt and evil. Sigh. So I minimize and I move it along. You try and stay ahead of the evil, or barring ahead, away from. Mobile lifestyles are for more than a great view.

Engineering For Affordable Transportation

Hybrid cars like the Prius are all well and good, provided you understand there isn't enough lithium on Earth for every potential driver to have one. Lithium is in too short supply. There isn't enough of it. If its the only option for vehicle batteries, it will be fought over, like Gold, and people kill for Gold. At some point, having a Lithium Battery is going to be like having a Gold Watch and walking through the ghetto at night, drunk. You will get rolled for it. You might even die. Having a lithium battery will become a bad idea in a public place. It becomes a motive for crime.

People buy the Prius because it gets around 55 MPG on flatland. Here in the mountains? Its more like 30 MPG. You can do that with most passenger cars today. Smaller cars, which don't have the weight of the battery, do better because it really is about Power To Weight ratio. Every Top Gear test car has proved this. Lowering the weight is as good or better than increasing the power. The fastest cars are both light and powerful. Richard Hammond jokingly refers to this technique as "add lightness". You can do this at home by removing the other seats from your commuter car, which generally reduces the weight by around 80 pounds. Sometimes a bit more. It depends on what the seats are made from. I pulled the seat from my BMW in order to use it to deliver newspapers, back when I was a college student, and this dramatically improved the power to weight ratio and my fuel economy and handling. Few people are willing to remove a seat because they might carry other people in their cars, even if its really just a solo commuter vehicle, so they don't get to experience the benefits.

I had a coworker who endlessly complained about his daily commute fuel cost but wouldn't do this step. "Where would I put the seats after I take them out?" he complained. "In your garage with your other boxes of useless junk." Idiot. This was the same guy who said that murdering people would be okay if you "did it for your family". Uh-huh. He was a devout Xtian, btw. Muslims aren't the only murder-hobos. I find this attitude prevalent in the Bay Area, btw. The place is filled with potential or current murderers. I think drinking water full of birth control pills and anti-psychotics, which doesn't come out with mandated water treatment techniques, has created Reavers from the general population.

So I'm glad I don't live there anymore. Yuck. The water I drink isn't filtered through anyone's kidneys first.

What this means is any serious attempt at sustainable transportation requires vehicles without these fancy batteries. It was discovered decades ago that a 400 cc 4-stroke engine is the best balance in power to weight ratio for a 2-wheeled vehicle, a motorcycle in particular. This gets you around 70-80 MPG depending on how hard you push it, and will run a 250cc bike frame, which is light, compared to a 650cc bike frame, which is 100 pounds heavier. This detail is important. Motorcycle manufacturers opted not to produce a 400cc bike, instead increasing the compression of a 250cc bike, requiring you to run the most expensive gasoline, 40 cents a gallon higher price, or deliberately decreasing the performance of a 650cc bike, or worse, "sleeving" the engine into a smaller displacement and adding weight in the process. This was a legal loophole, since many countries, including Canada, have special lower insurance rates for bikes under 400cc. In reality, this isn't a real 400cc. There are some being make, but they are pricey.

Suzuki Dr-Z 400 thumper. Offroad bike (dual sport street legal), heavy frame, good suspension, but heavy. $7000
KTM Super Duke 390 cc. $8000
Honda SS400 (air cooled, 1970's technology)

Kawasaki had a 450cc in the 1980's. It was steel and weighed 500 pounds.
Honda also offered a 450, same weight problem.

Honda currently has a 500cc sport bike, which is basically a commuter. Good fuel economy, complaints about power, however some bikers ALWAYS complain about power, right up until they die. This article is not for them. The 500cc bike is also nearly 500 pounds. That is heavy.

There are also some 300cc bikes.

Kawasaki has a 300cc Ninja. This bike wins awards but the engine noise would offend my neighbors and annoy my ears. I don't like it for that reason. The BZZZ! would get old after a few minutes.

Honda has also released a slightly larger engine for its CBR250 called the CBR300, which is really just a CBR286. So this is a minor displacement improvement and an exaggeration. I continue to be unimpressed by Honda's commitment to motorcycling performance and fuel economy. They should build a scaled up engine, a proper EFI 400cc thumper. The technology for this is both available and cheap. Make your engineers do some work this year, Honda. Soichiro may be generating power for Tokyo with his spinning coffin, but you owe it to his memory to stop being useless. Your F1 team is an embarrassment to motor sports. They haven't even finished a race this season. A multi-million dollar advertisement for poor reliability. Honda has done better. Re-release the CB350, the old steel airhead bike, with a modern EFI engine and oil cooler, the old twin, steel, upright UJM.

Classics never go out of style. This is the bike I would have. A Honda CB350 with the front disc brake conversion. Properly maintained, this is a 60 mpg bike for less than the cost of a Vespa, and it is highway capable. Don't think I'd like it on the freeway, but for short bursts, it is probably okay. Suzuki released something like this, which is not sold in California because CARB is insane, called the TU250X.

This bike has EFI rather than a carburetor, and is very clean running, even when cold. The EFI also gives it more torque at lower RPMs. This bike really needs to be sold here. They would sell a lot of them because its is priced at $4300 new. It is very popular in SE Asia, since it is made in Thailand. This is a good commuter bike, and riders say it will go 45 mph all day long. It is possible to change out the final drive sprocket to increase this speed, but your wind resistance becomes a real drag above 40 mph and at 50 is seriously noticeable and the need for cowlings and a windshield totally spoils its looks. If you want to go fast, get a proper sport bike like a Ninja or something more powerful. And write your will. But this article is not for racers. It is for commuters and weekend riders using back roads and taking their time to see the sights and ride below 45 mph. Slow travel has its value. You can hear the birds sing and have time to turn your head, or easily stop and look at something. This is why I like scooters. They are slow enough to be like riding a bicycle. These bikes will go faster, but they can also go slow and they won't go out of style and you don't have to dress like a Power Ranger.

Morning Rain

Thunderstorm last evening. Sky was fantastic this morning. 

 This is my kind of morning sky. Love it. 

10 minutes later it started raining with huge drops. 

I kept walking. It is nearly 80'F at dawn. 

 Rain all over the street. Drying fast. 

 10 minutes later and the sidewalk has mostly sucked up the water. 

 The thunderstorm drifted down the mountain to the West. 

It probably drifted over Marysville eventually. 

Rainbow. 

Summer Research Projects

I am taking two internet researching classes for credit towards my Librarian degree. In one, I am compiling a list of fuel efficient vehicles, which is more complicated than Googling "list of fuel efficient cars" because I'm also including bicycles, e-bikes, scooters, and motorcycles, as well as expensive electrics and hybrid supercars like the McLaren P1 and Porsche 918.

It is worth pointing out that Jay Leno has entertaining car reviews, and owns not just a garage full of around 70 cars, but also has a staff and a CNC to fabricate repair parts since half of these cars are quite old and long out of production.

The other thing I'm researching, for the second class, is RV living. I posted on that. As a burgeoning librarian, I can tell you that volunteering at a library is teaching me that quite a few librarians are nice people with normal views... but not all of them. Same with the towns libraries are sited in, and the sort of people who wander in might not be the kind you want to deal with long term. Living in an RV means you can drive away from stupid people, and take jobs while living on a campsite or trailer park temporarily, till the job is done. And drive away from badly funded libraries rather than work too hard for too little, as most librarians do. From what I see, library budgets are dependent on tax revenue from property taxes, and those lag on real estate booms and collapse when those bubbles burst, as they often do. When they bust it is time to leave. Owning a house in a state where bubbles pop every few years is a bit silly. You need a house for at least two years or the taxes murder you financially. This describes California far too accurately. So moving via RV or trailer makes sense so long as you work as a librarian. It becomes too nasty a job if you have to take a pay cut and hours cut and then be expected to volunteer for all the events, unpaid. No thank you. I'll leave bad jobs behind. That's what working for the last 20 years has taught me. Don't stick it out. They just stick it to you if you try.