The Northward Contrail

A little too close

I'd been advised to be up bright and early Sunday morning.  There was an expedition planned.  My friend's wife was to meet us at April Bowl near Summit Lake, and she'd have one of her friends with her.  My friend and I were starting out early because we were going to take a very interesting back road there, through the wilderness.  It was a neat journey.

Now, all this would have worked if nature didn't have such a sense of humor.  For one, it was gray that morning, with a lot of low-lying cloud.  There were times we were about on instruments.  But, we overcame that much.

We got to the designated point about half an hour ahead of schedule, and we got out and started to hike up to April Bowl.  It was steep and a little treacherous at points, and there was very little visibility, but nothing I couldn't handle.  And some of the views were still nice. Besides, it was Alaska.  How was I going to pass this up?

My friend and I had hoofed it up most of the way and had paused for a little bit.  I was admiring the scenery and the clouds, taking it all in.

My friend then asked if I saw that black spot over by a white area about a couple hundred yards away.

I told him I did.

"Does it look like it's moving?" he asked.

I replied in the affirmative.   It also appeared to have a second smaller dark spot next to it.

"That's it.  We're done."

Yep, it was the Ursine Menace.  Perhaps we could have pressed on with no ill effect, but we were unarmed and alone, and no match for a sow defending her cub.  Best to get the hell out.  So we did.  (If you don't understand why, read the "Ted" chapter of Peter Jenkins' Looking for Alaska.  I'll leave it at that.)

So our little meet-up didn't happen there.  Instead, when the other half of our party arrived, we had a quick discussion and went back to Summit Lake.  That's where we had a wonderful breakfast, using a big flat boulder as a picnic table.  Homemade muffins, fresh fruit, little Babybel cheeses...it was a blissful way to start a morning.

Then it was off for more adventure, as we came back down and parked at the Gold Mint Trailhead.  We piled out and started to hike.  My friend's wife and her friend took on off, which meant my friend and I were left behind.  But we made the most of it, walking along the trail at our own pace, talking about life, and taking pictures with hearty abandon.  I was glad I'd bought the additional SD card.

 

A couple hours later, while my friend and I were back at the truck, we saw the other half of our foursome emerge from the wild.  They brought with them a craving for pancakes.  So we drove back into Palmer for a late lunch at a favorite little cafe, and sat around the table for a couple hours telling stories.  It was all fun.

You'll recall we'd picked some salmon up at the store on Wednesday. Well, I was to leave the next day, and the fish needed to be cooked or frozen.  So that night, my friend hauled out the salmon, gave it a good seasoning, and broiled it up.  A wonderful spicy orzo dish accompanied it.  And, yes, fresh Alaska salmon was everything I hoped it would be.

That night, I went to bed very happy.  The only bad spot?  Tomorrow, it would be time to come home.

Getting there

So I got up Tuesday morning of last week.  The usual "here I go" stuff was already chewing on me, all the angst and a little bit of guilt about leaving the boys at home, being so far away for so long.  I did my morning stuff and took my leave a little before noon.  Traffic was calm, at least until I got near the city.  I drove to the airport, found a place for my car, secured everything, and went on in.

Things went easily enough at first.  I had checked in online and printed my boarding passes from home, so I could just go on through security. The TSA folks were very friendly that day, unlike the last time I went through there so many years ago.  I stopped off at a newsstand for a couple cold drinks and a snack.

That's when the "goofy" started.  The appointed time came and went; no airplane.  I started to get concerned, and could see the itinerary unraveling in a string of missed connections.  Finally, it arrived about half an hour late.  There had been weather problems.  Thankfully, they were able to hustle the turnaround and get us aboard quickly.

This was a weird departure for me.  The last time I'd gone down this runway, it was in an airplane I was piloting.  But that was three years ago.  This time, someone else was driving.  Anyway, we screamed aloft with no hiccups.  Once we were at altitude, I started giving the iPod and the Bose headset a good workout.  They worked very well indeed.  On we flew, over the Gulf of Mexico.  I could see fellow passengers craning their necks, trying to see if they could see oil down below us.  (What I did see at one point was a close-up view of one of JetBlue's more recent color schemes, as an A320 whizzed past just below us.)

Houston looked to be coming out of some weather.  We came on in and toddled to our gate.  We'd only lost about 20 minutes in total.  Be that as it may, I thought it would be wise to hustle on over to my next departure's concourse, so it was up the stairs, onto the shuttle train, and off.  Turns out that was wise.  As I was sprinting to the gate, they'd just commenced boarding.  I rapidly bought a bottle of Diet Coke for the flight (not helped, of course, by a slightly leisurely transaction in front of me) and waited.  Finally, it was time.

Continental's seat selection system threw me a curveball at first; if you want an "extra legroom" or exit row seat, those are held until 24 hours before the flight, and you buy that extra legroom when you check in.  I didn't like the idea, but I remembered the last time I'd been on a 757-300, I'd been crammed into a space for four hours, and hated it.  I popped for the very first row in coach, and it was money well spent.  No stowage in front of me, but that was no hassle, and I liked the lack of claustrophobia.  I had two very nice seatmates, too.  It wasn't a bad way to spend four hours.  I had my tunes, I had a good headset, I had something to drink (and they supplied us with something to eat on the plane), and I'd brought some things to work on.  It's four hours from Houston to Seattle, and last year it felt like a sentence.  This year, it wasn't bad at all.

We landed at Seattle, and the nice thing was, this flight continued on to Anchorage.  We had about an hour's layover, and we had the option of getting off the plane for a bit.  This was my immediate seatmate's destination, but the guy sitting in the aisle seat stayed in his seat and we talked for a minute.  I told him I was going to get out and stretch my legs, and asked him if he wanted anything while I was out. He said he didn't need anything, but thanks.  So I took my bag with me, went landside, used the bathroom and stopped off for a quick bite, and got a quick picture or two.

Then it was time to get back on board.  When I got back, the guy was gone.  I figured he'd gone out to do what I did.  A few minutes later, they closed the door and we were pushing back.  I had no seatmates.  I had the entire side of the plane to myself.  Better than first class!

We soon screamed aloft once again.  Climbout took us directly over Boeing Field and the Museum of Flight.  I looked down and cooed at Queenie, who's still as lovely as ever, as we flew over.

I'd brought a copy of John Henry Faulk's Fear on Trial to read on the flight.  I'd had it forever, but had never had time to read it.  It turned out to be an excellent traveling companion, and I finished it on this leg.  Most of the flight, I just stretched out and let the scenery crawl past, knowing that we were headed to a place I loved but had let lapse.  A couple hours into the flight, though, I started to get those old feelings back.  The wonder of it all started to get to me.  I punched up the song beloved by astronauts, "Southern Cross," on my iPod.  (The line "When you see the Southern Cross for the first time, you'll understand now why you came this way" -- always gets me.)  I could look out at our wing, at the big Rolls-Royce turbofan working away out there, at all the beauty beneath us, at the lovely evening sky, and it was perfect somehow.  The flight was great, the cabin was quiet, and life was indeed good.

Soon I looked out and the scenery was becoming familiar.  Then there was Turnagain Arm out there, the familiar esses of the Seward Highway I've traveled so many times.  The runways at Merrill Field out in the distance.  And then, out on its own corner, Anchorage International.  We descended, turned a dramatic base past Fire Island, and then came on in.  The 757-300 has seriously good brakes, as I was reminded after we landed.

So, there we were.  I was back in Alaska after three years.  I'd been told by my friend to call him once I was there, because the parking situation was goofy.  But, sure enough, there he was, standing in the terminal waiting for me.  There was some comedy as we struggled with a balky parking garage pre-pay unit that tried to eat my friend's ticket and cash, a situation that required the intervention of a couple of people and the completion of some paperwork.  (Isn't automation great at reducing the amount of human intervention and paperwork?  I didn't think so, either.)  Finally, we could depart.

Midnight had passed already, but, with it being summer in Alaska, it was still sort of bright out.  It's a measure of my innate sense for the place that it didn't disturb me any.  The midnight sun let me get a good look at everything I'd missed seeing for so long as we drove out of town.

Adventure was coming tomorrow.  For now, though, it was time to get rest.  This traveler was joyous, but weary, and a comfortable bed with warm blankets awaited.  Adventure could wait.

Executive summary

I'm back from my big adventure.  A more detailed trip report is to come, but there's a lot of memories to parse and a lot of pictures to sort (and I mean a lot, too.  I bought an extra 4 gig SD card while I was up there).  In the meantime, I offer some brief observations from the last week's activities:

-- It's funny how you can absolutely dread having to start a trip like this, but once it's in motion, you lament that it has to end.  (Especially when it involves a location you love so much.)

-- Along with that, right when you get the hang of things and stop acting like a stumblebum is just before the trip ends.

-- Waiting three years between trips to Alaska is a terrible thing to do to yourself, especially if you could have prevented that lapse from happening. 

-- Next time I do this, I'm scheduling at least a night's layover in Seattle on the way home.  Maybe two.  It's good to help one decompress, especially after the kind of adventurous, fun week I ended up having.

-- But if all you have is a brief layover, there are things you can do to catch your breath.  For me, it's making a few moments to have an Alaskan Amber at the KSEA Seattle Tap Room.

-- Houston's B Concourse is an excellent example of a five-pound bag being asked to haul sixty times the material.  Aside from Shipley Do-Nuts and the fact that it's how I get to the plane that takes me to or from home, I don't have much use for it in its current incarnation.  I hope it's replaced very, very soon.

-- On the other hand, Continental's got a pretty good airline going; I've even managed to put certain things about its past behind me, and I've made it my own airline of choice for now.  I sure hope the forthcoming merger doesn't ruin things.

-- Not enough can be said about the importance of a very, very good noise-canceling headset and an MP3 player full of recordings you love.  As far as I'm concerned, the developers of the Bose Quiet Comfort 15 deserve the Nobel Prize plus infinity.  Their device helped me stay sane.

-- Most of all, this trip helped remind me that, no, travel isn't quite the ordeal I'd imagined it was once I fell out of practice.  There are pains to it, yes, but for the most part, it was just fun.  And maybe, I'm saying to myself, I should just go on ahead and take a couple more journeys soon.  Perhaps I will.  I don't know.  Some calculations must be done, but it may be possible on some small scale.

-- And, oddly enough, this year's visit didn't end with teary goodbyes.  It ended with me telling my host, "Make sure this place don't go nowhere.  I'll be right back."

Anyhow, stay tuned.  The whole trip was unbelievable, and the pictures can't even begin to approach the magic. 

Phone-y fun

While I was cleaning up the Model M, I also disassembled and cleaned up the pair of ITT/Cortelco 2500s I brought home.  They sure needed it. 

Here's the filthier of the two.  I don't even want to think about what some of that crud was.  (I probably know, but that doesn't stop me from not wanting to think about it.)  A good set of screwdrivers, carefully used, removes the outer shell and helps remove the handset innards.

Here's a naked 2500.  Yep, all them wires and circuits and such are what make it go.  Somehow, it works.  While the plastic parts were soaking in soapy water, I gave the keypad a gentle cleaning with some moist cotton swabs. 

With everything cleaned up, it was time to let the plastic parts air-dry.  Once they're dry, a few minutes of reassembly.  I scratched the daylights out of the clear window for the number tag on one of them, but was able to polish it out with a multi-grit buffing pad and some Novus polish.  You'd never know it had been damaged.

Out of all that, two reborn 2500s.  And they still work! 

:: A programming note: I'm leaving today on my journey, and won't be back until next week.  I probably won't get to spend any time on any computers while I'm away, so if you write or leave a comment, be patient.  Like my hero Jim Rockford, I'll get back to ya.

The greatest keyboard comes back to life

A couple weeks back I mentioned the bounty of discarded techno-goodies free for the taking at work.  Here's how I brought an IBM Model M keyboard back to life. (There are more heavy-duty version of cleanup methods available, such as this one, but this one is very low-tech, especially since I don't have the required nut driver on hand.)

Something nifty about the Model M is that there's a key within the key.  This means you can pop the keycaps off most of the keys in order to clean them or install alternate keycaps -- or even rearrange them if you prefer a Dvorak layout.  So here's my salvaged Model M with the keycaps off.  Some keys -- the shift keys, the Enter key, etc. -- don't have separate keycaps, and you can see how they mount in the keyboard.

I dumped the keycaps in the sink and let them soak in hot soapy water for a little bit.  Dawn's good not only for cleaning up poor little adorable critters that get caught in oil slicks, but it's also good for this kind of task. "D" still has crud on it.  "F" has been scrubbed with an old toothbrush.  Good, like brand-new.

Here's part of what makes the magic happen.  Sticking up from its little hole, like one of those snake-in-a-can things, is one of the springs that gives this keyboard its distinctive tactile sensation.

And here's a whole mess of scrubbed and rinsed keycaps set out to dry. As they dried, I popped the inner keys off the keyboard and gave the main body of the keyboard a good cleaning with cotton swabs and paper towels moistened with some Formula 409 (along with some Goo-Gone, to remove an ancient piece of tape that probably once held a keyboard template).  It's amazing how much dirt and grime came off.  I didn't disassemble the keyboard; its internals were okay, so all it really needed was a good external cleaning.  It made a huge difference.

And a couple hours' effort is rewarded with a keyboard that looks like new again, ready for another 20 years' service.  Think you'll be able to say that about most keyboards?

In the air again

Next week I'll be traveling again, going back to Alaska.  And, again, I'm feeling that strange thing I feel when a trip looms: it's anticipation and excitement, but it's also dread and inertia.

It's not like I hate the place I'm going.  Far from it.  I love it up there.  Every time I go, it's absolute sensory overload.  Everything's bigger, more beautiful, more spectacular, more jaw-dropping.  I love the people up there I spend time with. 

But, oh, I hate the travel to get there.  It's not the flying.  I love flying.  Trips to Alaska, at certain points, are like flying in space, especially when you catch the red-eye and look out the window at the dawn.  It's lovely.  And, thanks to some circumstances in the past, I've been able to fly there first-class, and that's been pretty neat.  But this time, I'll be in the back of the plane.  I got a heck of a deal on a ticket, so there's no way I could pass it up.  Even then, though, the cattle-car nature of modern flying in coach class is what I hate: being crammed into a seat with little leg room for six-plus hours, not really being able to recline, not being able to do much of anything, basically being at the mercy of your seatmates for everything.  It's bad enough, but when you're sort of long-legged and have just a tiny touch of agoraphobia, it gets even more fun.  (I wonder if the yield-management people ever try their own product, especially in the back of the airplane, and especially if they have to go to the toilet.  Getting out of your seat in coach class with two other people sitting beside you?  Just not possible.)

I'll be doing what I can to alleviate the misery.  I've tried two other sets of noise-canceling headphones in the past, but while they're both good, they haven't delivered the shut-out-the-world feeling I've wanted.  So I finally plopped a few weeks ago for a set of them big-time fancy Bose Quiet Comfort 15 headphones.  They cost a lot, but, man alive, those things are eerie-quiet.  With that, an iPod full of favorite music and old-time radio broadcasts, a good book to read and a book of New York Times crossword puzzles for solving, I should be able to make the most of it.

And, if all else fails, I always fall back on what gives me hope each time I take these long trips: knowing that every mile that ticks by is a mile closer to being there, and knowing that before long, I'll be looking out the window at those huge mountains that have become so familiar over the years.

I'll get through it.  And I know it'll happen as it always does: the wonder of being there will outweigh the minor miseries involved in the journey.

(That said, when I finally make that trip to New Zealand -- which is going to happen, because promises have been made to certain parties -- I'm popping for the higher-priced enroute accommodations.  I don't care what I have to mortgage to do it.  It'll be worth it.  Otherwise, I don't see how I'll be able to spend that long on an airplane.)

Treasure!

There's been a great technology purge at work.  A lot of stuff that's been in storage for many years was pulled out and dumped into a vacant classroom.  Whatever we want, free of charge, as long as we got it the hell off campus by a certain date.  Well, they didn't need to invite me twice, that's for sure.

Last week wasn't just about test strips and phone calls.  Nope, one day I stopped in to have a look.  I didn't expect much, and there was some stuff up there I could find no use for, but...man, somebody was ditching an IBM Selectric II.  And a couple slide projectors.  And two Cortelco 2500 phones.  Sold. 

The next day, I stopped in for another look.  A colleague had put a pristine Selectric I up there for disposal.  I chortled with joy as I instructed it to come home with mama.

Then Monday I was by for one last look.  Almost as if it had grown there overnight, there was an IBM Model M keyboard, the best keyboard ever constructed on this planet, and free for the taking.  I grabbed it, along with a few other obscurities.  

Some of this stuff may turn out to be junk.  Some of it is useful just for the curiosity factor.  And some of it works (the Selectric I, for instance, just needs a minor tune-up and it should be goin' like sixty again, and I imagine the Selectric II will be fine once the gunk is blown out of it).

Still, man, for a techno-history junkie...treasure!

The seat of your pants

A few years ago when I was going through flight training, one of my favorite things to do was quietly experiment with energy management.  For instance, we'd be practicing approaches, and it was a point of pride for me when I learned how to give it just the right amount of throttle to get it done.  It added another challenge to something I already enjoyed, and when it worked (which it almost always did), it was a real gas.  (Pardon the expression.)

My quiet interest in energy management probably comes from my days on the go-kart when I was a kid.  When I was seven, my parents gave my brother a go-kart for his birthday.  I got to drive it a lot, and ultimately inherited it when he got too old for it.  I drove the heck out of that thing, too.  I used it, abused it, cracked its frame and broke its axles numerous times, wore out too many tires and clutches to count.  By the time I sold it, it probably had more repair welds in it than original metal. 

But I figure it was good for me for several reasons.  First, by driving the hell out of that go-kart, I figure I got my wild oats sown early on.  It let me get my bootlegger turns, wide-open runs and all that other business out of my system.  Second, it let me practice, again and again, basic driving technique.  The transition to a full-size car wasn't that difficult.  And, best of all, it gave me a way to experiment with different techniques of driving.  I could, for instance, play with giving it just enough throttle to where I wouldn't have to brake the thing when I got where I was going.  This, too, paid off when I started driving real cars.

About a year or so back I had to take the car in for service, and the brake pads were due for replacement.  I'd gotten 80,000 miles out of the original set.  It's all due to energy management.  I've developed a sense of where I want to end up, and I've driven my car enough to know how far she'll coast if I come out of the throttle.  So I've developed this practice of, whenever traffic allows, letting up and letting her coast as much as I can before gently applying the brake.  I'm able to do it now without really thinking about it, because it's become second nature to me.  (Which is why it amused me when I started doing basically the same thing in the little Cessna, once I'd had enough time to get accustomed to its envelope.)

So that's why I look back on those days on that little go-kart and I see that it was more than just a way to convert gasoline into noise.  Other times, though, I look back on my days on that go-kart, and how I drove the hell out of it, and I wonder what kind of racer I would have become (and how much I should be thankful that I never really injured myself while driving it).

Obscurity quest!

It seems I'm not happy unless I'm hunting down some trifle that 99% of the rest of the world would never give a second thought to.  But fleeting ephemera?  That's my forte.  Be it a commercial no one else remembers, or a funny sound effect, or a piece of incidental music that's stuck in my brain, or the name of some bit player or announcer whose face or voice keeps popping up, I'm not happy unless I'm trying to get that information or find out more.

A recent episode is a case in point, and perhaps says more about me than I'd like to admit.  Ever since I found this clip several months ago, I've been haunted by that music.  I remember it.  I remember when CBS used to close special sports broadcasts with it, that sort of vaguely melancholy coda.  The hunt was on.  I downloaded the video, listened to it over and over, all that sort of thing.  A few months later, I found out it was something by Dave Grusin called "Rising Star," a theme from the film The Electric Horseman.  For many years it was a somewhat popular piece of background music for various purposes on television and radio.  I'd never seen the movie, so I didn't know that's where it came from, but at least the riddle was solved.

So now all I needed to do was get a copy of The Electric Horseman soundtrack.  Easy enough, right?  Not quite.  Seems the CD is long out of print and commands a fortune when it does turn up.  No way I was paying that for one song.  On the other hand, the LP is plentiful and inexpensive.  One visit to a website and a couple of clicks later, and the LP was on its way.

The ablum arrived last week, and I took it to our turntable and gave it a listen.  Something sounded strange, though.  It sounded more stately than I recalled.  I was going to digitize it, anyway, so I fired up Audacity and made a digital recording from the turntable. 

Then the wheels turned in my head.  In Audacity, I sped the recording up about 8% or 10% and listened.  Yep, that was it.  So now I have two versions of "Rising Star" in my iTunes collection: the "as issued" version, and the "1983 Talladega 500 closing credits" version.  

Sometimes I get the feeling that my life is some social scientist's case study grant proposal waiting to happen.  (And Heaven help me if I ever find out there's a good, in-the-clear recording out there of the theme music from the CBS Apollo 11 coverage.)

Now what?

I used to be involved in preservation efforts.  My heart's still with those efforts, even if what I've learned has jaundiced my views. 

Saving something historic is noble and worthy, and I'm all for it.  Anyone who's put as much of their life into it as I have would have to be in favor of it.  The problem is, it's complicated.  It's even more so if it's something mechanical.  And large.  Add even more complexity points if you want it to work as it originally did.  If it's made of metal, add even more complexity.  If it floats...oh, brother.

Sometimes I look around the Internet and see these groups that are trying to preserve historic vessels.  That's dear to me, and I applaud them for doing it, and of course I hope they succeed.  But sometimes I wonder if they really know what they're getting into.  A ship is difficult to preserve.  It can be done, and done very well, but it takes a lot of planning, a lot of resources, and a lot of cooperation from the government and the local business community.  And a lot of money doesn't hurt, either.  The stories are too numerous of the efforts that didn't take, for whatever reason.  And, a few efforts I've seen, I would love to see them come through, but I seriously wonder if they're feasible.  Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, something could have been done, but time and events haven't been good to the properties in question.  Restoration to some acceptable standard for display and reuse would cost upwards of a hundred million or so.  

What I particularly love are the people who want to see certain things saved, or certain aircraft back in the air, or you name it...but it's obvious they're daydreaming, and/or spending someone else's money to do it.  Would it be nice to, say, see a squadron of F-102As performing on the airshow circuit?  You bet.  The F-102 is probably my favorite of the Century Series.  (Not quite as elegant as the follow-on F-106, but lovely in its own way.)  But you're talking about half-century-old airframes that would require renewal, ancient avionics that aren't so easily replaced with newer systems, older-generation jet engines that aren't exactly fuel-efficient...that's not to mention the costs of training pilots to fly the things and getting people who know how to work on the aircraft (and, let's not forget, the knowledge base on the Deuce, contained in the brains of those who used to maintain them, dwindles by the day), doing all the paperwork and certification (and how many casual airshow fans really know what goes into all the paperwork the FAA requires for most anything?), and getting all the required licenses, permits and waivers and so on.  Already you've spent millions upon millions upon millions before you've even taxi-tested the aircraft. 

So, yes, it would be nice to satisfy the fans of the classic iron by having an old rare airplane like that zoom from the history books into a low screaming pass down the local runway.  But where's the money coming from?  Are the fans willing to pony up to help make it happen?  Or is it a daydream to be played out with the money of some imaginary benefactor? 

Please don't mistake me as someone who thinks preservation is a stupid idea.  Believe me, if I had the resources, I'd be funding preservation efforts right and left, and you'd see some really important ships and aircraft and buildings and other big structures being restored.  The problem, though, is that I don't.  And, I've been there.  And while I understand the impulse the observer or admirer may have to say "they oughta save this," it all comes down to resources.  As the line goes from The Right Stuff, "No bucks, no Buck Rogers."