Posted outside Bite Me Sandwiches at 17th Street and South Van Ness Avenue in the Mission. I know how hard it is to get a dog to heed this advice.
Weather and Water
That’s this morning’s picture, courtesy of the National Weather Service’s Pacific Southwest mosaic, of our dry season ending. Or at least so we hope. That’s rain in the lowlands and snow in the mountains, with the western, back edge of the rain outlining a cold front a front moving in from the Pacific.
After months without any real rain–I think the last thing heavier than a prolonged drizzle was in the first week of June–even a modest storm can be a surprise. Not because you don’t know it’s coming–forecasters saw this one a week out–but because of how suddenly the world goes from one state–dry, sere, thirsty–to another–water pounding down from the sky, runoff cascading down the gutters, and at least the promise of green ahead.
The thing is, we never quite know what this first rain is a harbinger of. A wet winter that brings the landscape back to life and fills reservoirs? Or another dry winter that heightens the awareness of how fragile our hold on this landscape is without the massive plumbing system we’ve built to sustain us.
Bucket of Meat Bees
Our friends Jill and Piero have a place about 5,000 feet up in the Sierra, in Calaveras County. The western yellow jacket, known taxonomically as Vespula pensylvanica and popularly as the Sierra meat bee, is their constant companion during the summer. The prevalence of these wasps has given rise to a variety of home-made solutions to keep them at bay (including some very low-tech ones). To deal with his crop, Piero has bought some traps that use some kind of chemical attractant. The wasps find their way in but can’t find their way out, and they die. When we were up there over Labor Day weekend, the traps had just been emptied into a white five-gallon bucket; there were enough of them that they covered the bottom of the bucket maybe an inch deep. That’s a lot of insects.
So Long, Moby
Moby, the van, visits Yosemite’s White Wolf Campground in August 2010.
I’m reading a book right now called “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” by Matthew B. Crawford. It makes a convincing argument that we’ve largely banished what used to be called “the manual arts”–generally speaking, skills developed using tools, making stuff, and fixing stuff–at a large cost in lost competence and career opportunity and, in both tangible and intangible ways, engagement with our world of machines.
There’s a lot more to the book than that (if you want a sample, here’s the original essay upon which it’s based). For instance, it questions some of the essential assumptions of current assumptions about the purpose of educations and the role of people in the economy. But the part that immediately resonates with me is the piece about learning to fix things yourself, and actually doing the fixing.
It’s not that I don’t know how to fix some stuff. I’ve done a reasonable amount of work on my own bicycles and have even (it’s a sensitive enough job I think of it as “even”) overhauled a bottom bracket. Once upon a time I did some of the demolition work on what seemed at the time a very ambitious kitchen remodel. Of course, the part some friends still remember is how long our kitchen was a construction zone, with no ceiling and a nice view right up through the joists to the rafters (we eventually hired folks and got some help from skilled neighbors to finish the job).
For the most part, a complicated fix is a fix that I feel most comfortable handing to someone else, especially when it comes to cars. I’m competent to check the oil (and have changed it once or twice, though, wow, it seems like oil filters are getting harder and harder to reach). I have replaced light bulbs and whole light units. I take pride in having handled my own tire chains in the slush and snow (once–and they stayed on). I know how to jump-start a car. When the Number 1 cylinder on our Toyota Echo started missing on a trip out to California from Chicago with my brother, I was able to follow the mechanic’s explanation of what was wrong (and what was needed to fix it permanently, as opposed to the temporary repair we got that’s still in place) despite his Texas Panhandle accent. But like most of us, I’ve never done a brake job or tuned up a car (is that something that’s still done?) or replaced a belt, much less removed and torn down and rebuilt an engine.
All of that became relevant in the last few weeks when our semi-beloved 1998 Dodge Grand Caravan SE (six-cylinder, 3.3-liter engine), which had performed relatively faithfully despite getting pushed hard for much of its life, suddenly developed a critical illness. For most of its fourteen and a half years and 208,515 miles, the most trouble it had given us was a transmission that balked at long mountain grades. That issue appeared during a drive up to Eugene, Oregon, in 2008, when at 70 mph on a long 6 or 7 percent grade into the town of Mount Shasta, the van suddenly shifted into a lower gear, which led to the engine turning at much higher RPM, which forced me to slow down, which led to the engine shifting into an even lower gear, which forced me to slow down even more. Luckily, I was coming to an exit, got off the highway, and managed to find a garage in town that quickly and cheaply diagnosed the problem via computer: a solenoid inside the transmission was fouled, and since the car worked fine on a test drive, we’d probably be OK (we were, except for one subsequent trip into the Sierra two years later). Aside from that, and the failure of a power steering pump once when I was driving home with a couple other cyclists after a 190-mile ride in the rain, the only real complaint I had with the car was its lousy around-town gas mileage.
But last month, the van suddenly overheated one morning when Kate was driving it to school. We had it towed to the garage that had been taking care of it the last five or six years. I figured that the water pump had finally quit. But the news was worse: a cracked head gasket. Fixing it would require taking the engine apart and installing a new gasket (and hoping that the head hadn’t warped as the result of the overheating that probably cracked the gasket). It would be a big-ticket item to fix–minimum $1,500, probably, and more than we figured the car was worth (though checking now, the Kelley Blue Book price on our wreck is $2,500).
Our first thought was to donate the van to some worthy organization. I like the one up in Marin County that’s working to save the last wild coho salmon stream on our part of the coast. But Kate had another idea. A family at her school needed a car. The mom, Mirian, volunteers a lot, and the dad, Carlos, is a competent and confident mechanic. They came over and took a look at the van, and Carlos thought it would be no sweat to get it running again. He also wasn’t put off by the long list of minor maladies we’d been living with–a cracked windshield, a windshield washer that no longer works, a rear vent window that no longer opens, one pretty significant dent where I backed into a tree, paint peeling from the roof, and the fact the car has its original transmission, which is at double its predicted life. He took in the list of problems one by one and smiled–he’d fix them.
I admit I had a moment, just a moment, where I thought, “Gee, maybe I ought to be able to take this on.” But the truth is–“Shop Class as Soulcraft” notwithstanding–getting this car back on the road would probably be a project that for me would last for years, anyway.
So today, Carlos came with a tow truck and took the van away. I went out and shot pictures of the departure, the end of our Grand Caravan Era. The van, which we nicknamed Moby when we bought it (because we also had a Ford Escort, nicknamed Toby), had made one cross-country trip; Eamon and I drove it to Chicago in June 2004 to help my dad move (we left at 5:30 on a Saturday morning and made it into Chicago at 10:30 Sunday night). I drove it up to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, back in 2007 with my friend, Pete, so we could test-ride the bike circuit used by the Ironman triathlon there (Pete did the race in 2008 and 2009). The van made more than two dozen trips back and forth to Eugene (1,025 miles round trip) when Thom was at the University of Oregon; we hauled stuff up there for his move-in in 2005 and back down when he graduated in ’08. Kate was driving the van on an excursion to Carrizo Plain back in May 2006 on the trip where she encountered and wound up adopting Scout (aka The Dog); he was initially too weak to get up into the car by himself. The last big trip we took in the van was in August 2010, when we went car camping in the Sierra (including a night in the Yosemite high country, pictured above) and did some extended bushwhacking along some Forest Service roads).
It’s gone, and hopefully it has more miles and adventures ahead for Carlos, Mirian, and their family.
Mudville
Two shots from last night’s A’s game. The local nine was overwhelmed by the Detroit Tigers and Justin Verlander, a pitcher who seemed completely in command of the game–though the fans had several little two-out-type rallies to get excited over. I’m in the habit of counting the outs a team has left in a game: 12 when they go to bat in the sixth, nine in the seventh, and so on. I took these shots when the A’s were down to their last four or five outs and trailing 6-0. Most of the crowd seemed to accept that the miracle of the night before, when the Athletics ripped the game away from the Tigers in their very last at bat, probably wasn’t going to be repeated.
After the final out, the crowd booed the Tigers briefly as they began their celebration for the cameras on the infield. But after a few seconds, the whole place started to cheer and chant “Let’s Go Oakland!” That’s what’s happening in the shot below. The players hung out near the home dugout for five, maybe even 10 minutes. I hoped they’d take a lap around the Coliseum, but maybe that would be seen as showing up the Tigers and maybe they were dealing with a disappointment that was much bigger than the fans were going through. One by one, they walked off the field. When we made our way out of the stadium about 20 minutes after the game, a lot of people were still lingering, apparently trying to hang on to the last glimmer of a season that surprised and pleased just about every fan who made it to the ballpark this year. As we left, a couple of the A’s drummers were giving a final spirited performance before the Coliseum is locked to baseball for the winter, the infield is sodded over, and football takes over for the rest of the year.
Journal of Arcane Baseball Research
Update: The Giants won, and that means they're the first team to come back from a two-nothing deficit at home to win a five-game series with three straight wins on the road. This was the second five-game series (the history goes back to 1969) in which a home team didn't win a single game (the first was Texas-Tampa Bay in 2010, when the Rangers clinched at the Rays' dome).
Previously:
"Arcane baseball research." Is there any other kind?
That fine point aside, the San Francisco Giants have a chance for a rare playoff achievement today: They could become the first team in baseball history to lose the first two games of a five-game playoff series at home, then go on to win the final three games on the road. In fact, the Giants are only the fourth team to force a fifth game after losing the first two games of a five-game series on their home field. Here's how that history breaks down:
Teams that forced a fifth game in five-game series after losing first two at home*:
2-3 configuration (two at home followed by three on the road; 1969-1998, 2012):
- 2012 Giants (vs. Reds; series tied 2-2).
- 1981 Brewers (vs. Yankees; Yankees won 3-2. at Milwaukee).
2-2-1 configuration (two at home-two on road-one at home; 1999-2011):
- 2001 Yankees (vs. A's; Yankees won 3-2; fifth game at home).
- 2010 Rays (vs. Rangers; Rangers won 3-2; fifth game on the road).
Other teams that lost first two at home in five-game series (and result), any configuration:
- 2010 Twins (vs. Yankees; Yankees won 3-0).
- 2008 Angels (vs. Red Sox; Red Sox won 3-1).
- 2008 Cubs (vs. Dodgers; Dodgers won 3-0).
- 2007 Phillies (vs. Rockiers; Rockies won 3-0).
- 2006 Twins (vs. A's; A;s won 3-0).
- 2006 Padres (vs. Cardinals; Cardinals won 3-1).
- 2004 Angels (vs. Red Sox; Red Sox won 3-0).
- 2002 Diamondbacks (vs. Cardinals; Cardinals won 3-0).
- 2001 Astros (vs. Braves; Braves won 3-0).
- 2000 White Sox (vs. Mariners; Mariners won 3-0).
- 1997 Mariners (vs. Orioles; Orioles won 3-1).
- 1996 Dodgers (vs. Braves; Braves won 3-0).
- 1995 Rockies (vs. Braves; Braves won 3-1).
- 1984 Royals (vs. Tigers; Tigers won 3-0).
- 1981 Royals (vs. A's; A's won 3-0).
- 1979 Reds (vs. Pirates; Pirates won 3-0).
- 1979 Phillies (vs. Dodgers; Dodgers won 3-1).
- 1976 Phillies (vs. Reds; Reds won 3-0).
- 1974 Pirates (vs. Dodgers; Dodgers won 3-0).
- 1970 Twins (vs. Orioles; Orioles won 3-0).
- 1970 Pirates (vs. Reds; Reds won 3-0).
- 1969 Braves (vs. Mets; Mets won 3-0).
*100 5-game series since 1969; approximately 52 with 2-3 configuration. Twenty-five teams have started a five-game series with two games at home and lost both those games. Prior to this year, one won the series 3-2; two lost the series 3-2; five have lost 3-1; 17 have lost 3-0.
Streetside Escape
Spotted yesterday on Mariposa Street, just up from Harrison: a van mural depicting, among other things, the famous 1962 escape (or possible escape) from Alcatraz. I love the three happy-looking stick men in the raft and the figure of the guard in the background. Also the legend, “Stay Free Yo.” It looks like local taggers have been adding their bit to the art. Also visible here: allusions to the Golden Gate Bridge 75th anniversary earlier this year and occasional forays into the bay by passing whales.
Cat at Work
I recently heard a story on NPR about how Berliners use lampposts as “virtual totem poles of information.” In some parts of the city, the posts are covered by layer after layer of flyers and personal announcements. One that attracted the reporter’s attention said, “A HORRIBLE ACCIDENT HAS HAPPENED.” It turned out a woman had lost one of her favorite stiletto shoes. A guy who collects samples of the Berlin notices describes them as affording “a deep insight of the soul of the city. These are real treasures that need to be documented, because it’s part of our everyday life culture.”
There are places in Berkeley (and elsewhere nearby) where lampposts and telephone poles and have been converted into conduits of information (or requests for information). Notices reporting yard sales and lost pets are the most common. Sometimes the inquiries are more unusual: a guy looking for a lost belt buckle, a neighbor berating the thief who broke into their car. Occasionally the postings become more elaborate. The person who lectured the break-in artist, for instance, augmented the note with the charger for a flashlight that had been stolen.
Pictured here is a uniquely elaborate example of the Berkeley street notice, over on Sonoma Avenue. The sign reads: “Bentley, our cat, loves to hunt, and brings us garden gloves he finds. Please take those you own with our apologies.” The best part is the improvised mini-clothesline with the stray gloves pinned to it.
The Arctic 2012: A View from Above
One of the Tweet-worthy current events items I’ve come across in the last couple of days is news that climate scientists say the Arctic ice pack has reached its lowest extent since the satellite records began in 1979. The National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado says the Arctic sea ice appears to have reached a season minimum this past Sunday, September 16, of 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles). That’s half the average seen in the years 1979-2000 (and above, that’s a graphic from the NSIDC showing the sea ice extent for September 19).
What does it mean? Here’s a decent summary of the basic thinking from today’s PBS NewsHour:
The ice is younger and thinner than it was in the 1980s. Of the ice surveyed this summer, the majority was one to two years old and three to five feet thick on average. That’s down from 10 to 13 feet thick in 1985.
Losing sea ice also has immediate impacts on Arctic wildlife. Walruses that normally rest on the ice while hunting ocean fish moved ashore by the thousands last year. Arctic seal populations have already declined as a result of disappearing ice. And a 2009 United States Geological Survey estimated that by 2050, the world could lose two-thirds of its polar bears as their ice-dwelling food sources disappear. The ice is also home to delicate microorganisms, which, if lost, could upset the entire Arctic food chain, Meier said.
Ted Scambos, senior research scientist at NSIDC, said that changes in the Arctic’s ice and snow are making the Arctic warmer, which may mean major weather and climate changes for the rest of the planet. Sea ice reflects the sun’s rays, which helps regulate the planet’s temperatures, especially during the summer. Losing the reflective ice surface causes temperatures to rise. If the North Pole is not as cold as it used to be, that has the potential to change wind and weather patterns throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
“But a wider impact may come from the increased heat and moisture that the Arctic is adding to the climate system,” Scambos said in a press release yesterday. “This will gradually affect climate in the areas where we live…We have a less polar pole–and so there will be more variations and extremes.”
Having read some of the accounts of the sea ice retreat yesterday, I went looking for images of what the Arctic looks like. A favorite resource: NASA, which publishes a bunch of cool images of various Earth features every day. One of the services, called MODIS(MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), includes daily mosaics of the Arctic snapped by NASA satellites. Every time I see these images of Earth from space, the thought that seizes me–or maybe it’s more of an emotion–is what an incredibly beautiful place this planet is.
Looking at the Arctic day to day, I wondered whether I could turn the images into a “movie.” Well, I could, sort of. I downloaded 185 days worth–from March 20 through September 20–then turned them into a slideshow, saved that as a movie, and uploaded it to YouTube. Here it is:
I will say up front that while the view is breathtaking, the Arctic weather screens the view of precisely what’s happening with the ice. It’s not as stark as you might expect (and of course, this is just one season we’re looking at; there’s nothing here to give a comparison to how this scene unfolded 30 years ago).
One note of orientation and explanation: The North Pole is near dead center in the images. Greenland is clearly recognizable at the lower left; Iceland is at the lower center, and Scandinavia and the northern coast of Russia are at the lower right. Siberia dominates the right side of the map (these images show weeks of heavy smoke from fires there). At the top margin, the Bering Strait, where Siberia nearly meets Alaska, is just left of center. Alaska appears inverted at the left, with the Gulf of Alaska at the top left corner.
One more video: This year’s Arctic ice melt as presented by NOAA’s Environmental Visualization Laboratory:
Journal of Airliner Seat Photography
One thing you notice when you spend hours staring out an airliner window in flight is other airliners streaking past. Sometimes you’ll see them headed in the same direction, flying roughly parallel to your path. Mostly, you see them go flashing by in the opposite direction (last week, we saw four in the space of about 30 seconds).
In the shot above, taken July 26, I was on an American Airlines flight headed west from Chicago to San Francisco. The local time, somewhere over Utah, was about 8:20 p.m. Suddenly, I spotted a jet heading north/northeast that appeared to have crossed below and ahead of us. It was there and gone in a few seconds, but I had my camera in hand and shot several frames before it disappeared.
Looking at the pictures afterward, I tried to make out the words and logo pained on the aircraft. After searching for a few minutes, I came up with an answer: Air Berlin. My educated guess, thanks to the airline site and looking for records on FlightAware.com, is that this was Air Berlin Flight 7499, about 46 minutes into a direct from from Las Vegas to Duesseldorf, and that our position at this moment was about 50 miles northeast of Price, Utah.
Below is a cropped image of the airliner, an Airbus 330. And below that is the original image–which among other things makes it clear how late in the day it was–before I started fiddling with it digitally to identify the plane.
