In which I take a walk

Normally, I'm an indoors person. Don't get me wrong, I love nature, but I spend many of my waking hours on my laptop, comfortably protected from the weather. Plus, I spent the first eighteen years of my life in suburban Connecticut, in a small neighborhood. It's not a terribly exciting place to walk around, and there's no sidewalks on the main road if I want to go further. I also can't go out past sunset, because no one else is about so the natural assumption would be that I was up to no good. There's a nice woods behind my house, but it's not a good place to walk after dark either due to the sometimes twisty and uneven trails.

But now, I'm in Boston, which has the useful trait of being a fairly large and rather safe city. There are hundreds of streets to walk down with sights galore: buildings, a rather impressive river, lots of people, and of course trains (active subway and commuter rail, and abandoned infrastructure). I feel safe walking around most of the city, even at night; the areas near BU (Cambridge, Fenway-Kenmore, Back Bay, and Brookline) are all good safe areas.

So, I've taken to walking, both to class (even though I could catch the BU shuttle bus for a few blocks) and just for fun. The BU Campus is 1.5 miles from Kenmore to Packard's Corner, and there's lots of fun stuff a similar distance away. Brookline in particular is a nice place for strolling.

Today, I had a few errands to run. I walked up Commonwealth Avenue to the student union, then back down to Kenmore Square. I decided to walk to the Back Bay Best Buy (actually next to Hynes) to get an ink cartridge for my printer. I took the long way to Mass Ave, via Beacon Street and Charlesgate East. At Charlesgate, between Storrow Drive and an access ramp, there's a random house:

It stands alone among the Muddy River and a mix of rusting highway ramps. It's too far from the Green Line to be an old headhouse or vent (like the emergency exit on the corner of Charlesgate East and Newbury Street), and it doesn't seem to be occupied. Perhaps it's a fancy maintenance shed. Whatever it is, it's mostly covered in Ivy.

From there, I walked across the Harvard Bridge and through MIT on Massachusetts Avenue. At Central Square, I took the stairway down into the T and filled up my Charliecard. I considered walking back to BU via Cambridgeport and the BU Bridge, but that would be another 3 to 4 miles back to Hynes, so instead I boarded the Red Line inbound. At Park Street I changed to the Green Line, on an extremely crowded tram. I squeezed my way out at Hynes and strode into the Best Buy.... only to learn that they did not have the ink cartridge I sought. I went back to my dorm via Newbury Street and Bay State Road, using the convenient pedestrian underpass at Kenmore station to safely cross under Commonwealth.

Still, it was a great walk. The weather was finally clearing up after three dreary days, and the view from the middle of the Charles was spectacular. My total walk was about 3.7 miles including the bit coming back from Hynes, which is probably more than I walked all summer. Thanks to all this walking, I'm hungrier than I was when sedentary. I anticipate moving to a four-meals-a-day schedule within a week or two.

Peru.

I got back on Tuesday from a vacation in Peru. It was quite a good time.

We flew in to Lima on Saturday night. After a harrowing ride to the hotel (Peru does not believe in traffic laws or  speed limits; he who is first wins), we got to see my sister (who is in Peru on a semester abroad) for the first time in 4 months.

We spent Sunday walking around Miraflores (a suburb just south of Lima). Miraflores is borderd by the Pacific Ocean on the west, and the 300-foot cliffs are spectacular. The Malecon - a string of small parks and walkways on the edge - is a great place to walk. We also had lunch with my sister's host mom.

Monday we flew out to Cusco, the former Inca capital city. It's at 11,000 feet and gets more UV than any other city on the planet. We were late (Peruvian Airlines is not good at flying when it's bad weather) but got there just in time for our tour of Cusco. It included the Cathedral of Santo Domingo, Coricancha, and Sacsayhuamán. The Spanish colonial stuff is neat, but what truly fascinated me was the Inca architecture. No mortar (for their later works), beautifully cut stone, and it's earthquake-proof.

On Tuesday we spent the day walking around Cusco, eating Peruvian food, and buying stuff. We spent the day taking it easy to get acclimated to the altitude. We actually couldn't sleep well that night, because we closed the window. My brain actually would not let me sleep - first I got nightmares, then my mind was racing and I couldn't sleep, and then my knees hurt. I had to go outside on the patio and walk for a while to get some oxygen, and then after opening the window we all slept.

On Wednesday, we got up early to take the train to Machu Picchu. Our ride did not come, and it took several minutes of me dredging up my best Spanish to convince the hotel concierge that indeed we needed a taxi right then or we would miss our train. (Peru as a country is not big on the concept of "now"). But, we made our train with a minute to spare.

PeruRail runs very nice (if slow) service; our train served a nice breakfast, and the views out the dome car were incredible. The line runs through a steep river valley for almost the whole length. We got off at Km 104 (6 Km from the Aguas Calientes / Machu Picchu stop, which is in the valley 1500 feet below the ruins) and met our hiking guide. He was an awesome guide - very funny, and extremely knowledgeable.

After waiting for the next train to meet our hiking companions - a Dutch couple. We hiked up a restored section of Inca trail to Wiñay Wayna, a huge group of ruins located at 8800 feet (2800 feet above where we started, which is a lot of climbing in thin air). It contains dozens of giant agricultural terraces (each 4 fete high, 10 wide, and hundreds long) as well as a group of buildings. It's also located on the steep side of a nearly inaccessible mountain. The Incas were awesome.

From there we joined the more famous section of the Inca Trail, which was a mostly easy climb. (except for the "gringo killer" - 50 nearly vertical steps at 9000 feet. Which I ran up, cause i'm awesome like that.) At 9100 feet we came to the Sun Gate, a narrow pass. From there, the views of Machu Picchu are spectacular. (pictures eventually)

From Intipunku we hiked down to Machu Picchu itself, then took the bus down to Aguas Calientes town, where we had dinner.

Suffice to say you don't want to know the details, but I woke up sick on Thursday morning. We didn't get up early to get tickets to hike up Wayna Pichu (which has great views of the site) but I was healthy enough later to get up and meet our guide for our tour. I can't really describe how amazing the place is; it's just incredible.

(Jim Carrey was also there, randomly. We saw the horde of photographers surrounding him.)

We took the train back to Cusco that night. We opened the windows and I slept well for the first time since Lima.

On Friday we again spent a lot of time waiting for Peruvian Airlines - I derived every possible tiling of the plane that conforms to certain chacteristics while waiting - but we got back in time to go to dinner with my sister. Pardo's makes excellent roasted chicken.

We spent Saturday walking around Miraflores. We took a tour of the Huaca Pucllana, a pre-Inca pyramid constructed with earthquake-proof design. On Sunday we took the Metropolitano (a very well-designed rapid bus system) into Lima center... and randomly ran into a parade. The Peruvian president was there. Famous people count: 2.

We also went down to Barranco - another suburb - and rode the tram at the Electric Museum. An original Breda tram - very neat.

We flew out on Monday night, got back into Newark. 757s are a wonderful aircraft, but sleeping is not a recommended activity aboard. And tray tables make for awful pillows.

Day 3 of Hiking: Presidential Range

Saturday was our biggest day of hiking. Three peaks - Mt. Jefferson (5812 ft), Mt. Clay (5533 ft), and Mt. Washington (6288 ft). (Yes, I know Mt. Clay isn't technically a peak because it's only 125 feet above the col (mountain pass) separating it from Washington. But to hell with that, it's hard to climb!)

We took the Caps Ridge Trail up Jefferson. It starts at 3006 feet, so it's only a 2800-foot climb to peak. Unfortunately, that's over just 2.5 miles. Wonderful hike - the views are amazing almost from the start, and getting to the summit is quick - but it's brutal. Free-climbing 50 feet of rocks on a 60+ degree angle is tough.

From there, we headed south. A few hundred feet below the summit is Monticello Lawn - an improbable field of grass on a flat plain, over a mile about sea level. More descent to 5000 feet at Sphinx Col, then the 500-foot climb up Clay. At Clay Col, we split up. I headed on the Gulfside Trail up Washington; everyone else took the Westside Trail around.

I booked it. 1.0 mile and 900-foot grain up Washington in 28 minutes. Tapped the signpost, bewildered the stupid tourists, started down. Down 1.5 miles and 1300 feet in 26 minutes. That's incredibly fast for alpine hiking. I actually caught my family on the way down, even though their route cut off 0.7 miles and 600 feet of climbing.

"You're slow. I just ran up Washington and I still beat you here."

We rested at the Lakes of the Clouds hut for a few minutes and refilled water. (I ran out halfway up Washington. Speed-hiking 2 miles with no water: not fun). We took the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail down. It's very steep at the top, but the waterfalls are awesome. We managed to hike 10.5 miles in the Presidentials, including 2 very steep trails, without getting rained on. Pretty rare.

Total distance, as I said, was 10.5 miles. Absolute vertical was precisely 3282 feet. Total vertical... somewhere around 10000 feet.

Here's an awesomely cool map:


View Jefferson - Clay - Washington in a larger map

You'll note the computed map distances don't match real life, like they do on the other map. Why not? Different trail types. The Hight-Carter Dome loop is dirt trails, straight up the sides of mountains, and only a few bits above treeline. The Presidentials route is mostly above treeline, twisting around rocks and winding up steep slopes. The actual traveling distance is up to a quarter longer than the as-the-crow-flies distance.

Day 2 of Hiking: Carter-Moriah Range

On Friday, my aunt, uncle, and two younger cousins (ages 9 and 13) joined us for hiking. We hiked up Mt. Hight (4675 ft) and Carter Dome (4832 ft) in the Carter-Moriah Range. The parking lot was at around 1500 feet in altitude, so it was a pretty steep climb, but Nineteen-Mile Brook parallels the trail for 1.9 miles. The final climb up Mt Hight gains 800 feet in half a mile, but the views from the top? Fucking incredible.

Carter Dome, though 150 feet higher, is not bald on top like Hight. They took the fire tower down a few years ago, so you can't see a think from the top. The 1.2-mile trail down to the Carter Notch Hut drops 1500 feet (standard medium-difficult trail is 1000 feet per mile). At one point, there's a side trial to a rock outcropping called the Pulpit. From that point, it's 500 feet down to the Hut, and only about the same forward. Incredible views.

There's two small tarns (alpine lakes created by glaciers) near the hut. Water is ridiculously cold. There were people swimming. Crazy bastards. The hut was very convenient for filling up my Camelback (portable water bladder and flexi-straw, for easy drinking). I drank 50 fluid ounces (3.3 pounds) of water in the first 6 miles. That's a lot of water.

Trip back down wasn't terribly exciting. Total for the day was 10.0 miles. Absolute elevation gain was 3330 ft. Total vertical was ((4700-1500)+(4700-4600)+(4800-4600)+(4800-3300)+(3300-1500))=6800 ft.

I made a nice-looking map on Google Maps. All distances agree with the trail map, and important points are marked. We did the loop clockwise.


View Mt. Hight and Carter Dome in a larger map

I Hate Stupid Tourists

I'm still finished up some maps and stuff for my big post about days 2 and 3 of hiking. Until then, my extremely angry rant about stupid tourists, the varieties that step on rare plants and put themselves in danger. It's exceptionally bitchy, and, as was pointed out to me, extremely condescending. Which, I realize is pretty bad, but I was substantially pissed at the time. Enjoy (or don't).

Dear stupid tourists: I really don't like you. I realize that not everyone can hike Mt. Washington. But just because you took the cog railway or drove up does not give you the right to be a total asshat. The fact that your chosen method of transportation brings noise and pollution to a beautiful mountain is not a good start.


No, it's not the world's biggest observation deck. This mountain is a rare alpine habitat. If you want to walk around and gawk at the mediocre views*, that's fine. But stay on the fucking summit. It's leveled, rocky, and not a habitat. Do not even think of walking down. If you get even a few dozen feet below the summit, you will see plants. Many of these plants don't grow anywhere else. If you stray off the trails (and chances are, you don't know how to follow rock cairns), you will step on these plants. I'm a reasonable experienced hiker with a good hiking pole and excellent rockhopping ability, and I still stay on the trail unless absolutely necessary.


And, even if you can stay on trails, what the fuck are you doing attempting to hike? It's 1.5 miles from the summit to the nearest shelter, with 1500 feet of vertical drop. That's over an hour hike, over bare sharp rocks, on an exposed ridge with nasty northwest winds. Summit conditions during summer are mid 50s and 20 mph winds, on the nicest of days. In the three hours it will take you to make the round trip, it may be hurricane force winds, dense fog, driving rain, and lightning at the top. (I only wish I was making this up...) So why the fuck are you attempting to make the trip in a t-shirt and sandals, with no water, and a child who doesn't want to be there**??? People die up here, and you could be one of them. I've been climbing since 9 this morning, and I am covered in sweat, and I am wearing two shirts and hiking boots, and I have 50 oz of water, a jacket, and a poncho in my pack, plus an excellent telescoping stick. And I carried them up the last three thousand feet, you lazy fuckers.


* The views from Washington suck majorly. There's clouds on the summit 55% of the time, and haze pretty much the rest of the time. Better views are found a few miles north or south along the presidential ridgeline, or over on Mt. Hight a few miles east.


** Little kids can hike. My cousin is nine, and he was ahead of us for almost the entire ten miles yesterday. But he's intelligent, athletic, and fully capable of hauling his own food and water and using a pole. He's also eager. Forcing a young child to go on a technically difficult hike: extremely bad idea.

First day of hiking

Today, since we had to drive up from CT, we didn't have time to do a long hike, so we chose a shorter but still nice one, called Hedgehog Mountain. It was a 5-mile loop.

Going up was very nice. At 2.0 miles, we reached the summit of Little Hedgehog, with the East Ledges giving excellent views of Mt. Chocoura and others. At 2.9 was the summit of Hedgehog Mountain proper. It's a small mountain at 2532 feet, but starting from 1250 feet, the vertical climb was strenuous. The steeper down route was very quick.

My old steel-toed boots were hurting my toes, so I'm now the proud owner of a new pair of hiking boots. Also, wool socks are wonderful things. They saved my feet from massive blisters today.

I'd like to take this opportunity to be a proper hiker and mutter under my breath about tourists. We're staying in North Conway, which unfortunately is entirely overrun by stupid tourists. People who come to shop and drive up Mount Washington in their giant SUVs and such. Honestly. You can shopa t home, folks. Get off your lazy asses and hike a little.

In related news, this hotel room needs a lawn, so I can get out my imaginary cane and sit on the non-existent porch and yell at kids to get off it. Because I am a grumpy old man.

Also in related news, the people next door are like a living stereotype. Giant truck (that does not even fit in the large parking space), all the right window stickers; loud, fat, and annoying; the kid doesn't wear a bike helmet, and dumb as rocks. As in, the mom was playing a trivia game, and thought that 250mL was a third of a liter, and wasn't sure if Georgia was east of Alabama, and thought that NaCl symbolizes Calcium, not salt. (Granted, alcohol comes in 750mL bottles, which might explain things).

To quote Daria: "I don't have low self-esteem. I have low esteem of everybody else."

Hiking!

Off to New Hampshire for 4 days of hiking. Posting will be light until Sunday.

J. Random Hacker

A subset of the Jargon File is the Portrait of "J. Random Hacker". (Hacker here refers to a skilled programmer, rather than a "cracker" who attempts to damage systems). Even though I am just a padawan - I can program only in BASIC, the lowest of the low, on my calculator, I aspire to be an excellent programmer, and I completely recognize myself in the personality traits listed:

• Appearance: Intelligent, intense, abstracted, thin. That's pretty much me.
• Dress: T-shirts, jeans, sneakers. Casual and vaguely post-hippie. Likes black, not for the goth look but because it goes with everything, hides dirt, and makes dressing up (when needed) easier.
• Reading habits: a range that astonishes liberal arts majors, with lots of well-thumbed books on a variety of subjects. Fond of technical maunuals and good sci-fi.
• Interests: chess, intellectual games, wargames, music, Nethack, linguistics, theater.
• Sports: likes competitive but not-team and non-contact sports. I like tennis and skiing. Also, other things like climbing, hiking, aviation, and diving.
• Food: exotic food, often Oriental stuff like Chinese and Japanese. Also stuff like pizzas and microwaved burritos when working. Stir-fried random is good.
• Personality traits: high intellience, ability to digest and retain large amoutns of information, intellectually broad but focused, control freaks about their work but chaotic and messy elsewhere, attracted by challenges and cool toys. I also possess the rare but hacker-common INTJ (introvert-intuitive-thinker-judger) Myers-Briggs personality type. Possible ADD / Asbergers. Strange sleep patterns.
• Writing: tends to be better at writing than speaking. Bad handwriting and fond of block-printing. Tends to verb nouns (turning any noun into a verb rather than using a more general verb, which is allowed in pure-positional languages like Chinese, but not English). Tends to put punctuation after parentheses and quotes, which makes more sense than the prevailing method of putting them inside.

Marathon

Yes, it really was a marathon. 26.1 miles, a bit more actually, over 3 days.

Day 1, Friday: Got up around 8; had breakfast at our hotel (Woodwards resort). The weather was very good so we decided to climb Mt. Adams. The 3 miles or so below the tree line on the Airline and Valley Way trails went fairly easily; we saw a moose (for the first time on a trail) about 1.5 miles in.
We made treeline about 4000 feet up, with rather nice views to the north. I actually ran out of water (I have a 50-oz Camelbak bladder in my pack) a little above treeline, so we went an extra 0.2 miles to the Madison Springs hut. I was very fortunate that the hut was so close; else I would have had to share with my parents and drink rather less. We reached the summit, which had rather nice views but was very buggy, and started down.
We ate lunch at Thunderstorm Junction, with a huge rock cairn and the Appalachian Trail crossing. We then started down the Lowes Trail, going over a sub-peak called Adams 5 (There's the main peak Adams and the sub-peaks Sam Adams, Quincy Adams, Adams 4, and Adams 5; collectively the Adams Family) and into the treeline.
Unfortunately, the Lowes path below the treeline was wet and slippery; multiple times only my hiking stick saved me from breaking a leg or ankle. The trail that it connected to, the Link trail, was long and very wet. My stomach and left knee were rather painful at the end, but I made 11.5 miles in about 9 hours including a 4500 foot elevation gain, probably the highest in the White Mountains (the trails to Mt. Washington start rather higher than the Appalachia lot for Adams).

Day 2, Saturday: We felt rather better when we got up and decided to do Mt. Eisenhower (4761') via the Edmands path. It starts at about 2000' and comes out of the treeline 2.9 miles and 2000' of elevation higher. The trail was easy, not too steep, and not too wet, plus around 3800' there are nice views through the trees to the north and a few small waterfalls. It comes out onto the Crawford path on a small col with great views and we ate lunch there. The last climb to the summit was easy and quick. We went down the other side of the peak and around the east side for a 1.2 mile loop, then back down the Edmands path, for 7.0 miles total.

Day 3, Sunday: I was pretty sore from saturday and literally rolled out of the car. We only intended to go halfway up Mt. Chocorua to the Champney Falls, which I had a grand time exploring and climbing, but we decided to go for the top anyway. It was an easy trip to the top, and the views from the bald summit were amazing. 7.7 miles round trip.

The total for the 3 days was 26.6 miles - almost exactly the length of a marathon. We plan to come back next year and hike Mt Jefferson (third highest in New England; we've already done Adams and Washington, the top two) via the tricky but short Caps of the Ridge trail.

Vacation

As far as I know, this'll be my last post before going on vacation. It'll put me below my post-a-day target by the time I get back, but that's tolerable since I'll have hiking and the Nike Apache to blog about.

Also, a new poll: do you prefer Nike Apache or Nike-Apache?

Update 1/3 is installing. Do not power down or unplug your machine.

Not gone this time, just kinda didn't have much to blog about for a few days. Now I do, and everything will be divided by topics. This post: everyhting that doesn't have a topic.

1)UGA... CAU GCU AUG AUG GAA CGU ACU AUC AUG GAG! Go find an RNA codon table, then come back and laugh at me.

2) I'll be off hiking in New Hampshire from thursday night till sometime sunday. That means not much internet access. I will likely not be able to blog during that time. I also won't be able to do much with rocketry or electronics at that time. I might do some programming or scale model prep / design in the car, but that's about it. Instead, I will be spending time in the alpine zone above the treeline, where you can see for a long way, and the air is fresh and cool, and where you can see lots of stars at night. I will recap, of course.

3) I have discovered the Arcade Fire and Neon Bible. Epic. Via youtube, I have also discovered the Katamari Damacy song, and why the Animal Collective really does sound like a bunch of squirrels on acid.

4) A few of my low-work experiments are going well. My salt is almost 3/4 through drying up, and the carbon rod I inserted has some nice cubic crystals. The bolt head I put in some water is producing an immense amoutn of rust. The biology experiment I referenced a while back is also going back.

5) 'Intervention' is pure unmitigated awesome.

Skiing!

I got to go skiing today up at Wachussett Mountain in Massachusetts. The conditions weren't great - slush; thick, nonpowdery snow; thin base coat; closed trails, etc, but it was fun and we got 18 runs in. I really love skiing; there's just something about being (somewhat) out in peaceful nature and feeling free to go fast and jump and whatnot. I figure the only comparable experiences would be weightlessness and maybe alpine hiking; I've done the latter and hope to experience the former.