Mountain Lions and Bears
Out on the bike again, and because I am deeply in need of a break, I am taking the opportunity to update y'all from the comfort of Starbucks with an iced coffee by my side!
A couple of weekends ago, Jen and I, along with another couple of friends headed over to Alberquerque, New Mexico. We arrived late Thursday evening, and hopped in our rental car which, in common with most other American rentals that I have had the misfortune to encounter, had the wheels attached to the chassis by means of a water bed. Luckily, the roads in this part of the world are fairly straight and wide, so by 2am we found ourselves north of Durango, Colorado, safely installed in a ski condo, with only some superficial scratches on the car, and having visited the wrong side of the road but a few times.
Friday morning came around, and we got our first view of the pine forest and mountains that we were in the middle of. It's times like this that I really appreciate the alternate Fridays off; I mean less than 12 hours prior we were in Houston, now almost 1000 miles away.
We headed off up the Million Dollar Highway, so called because it cost one million bucks a mile to build. An alternative explanation is that it takes you through many old mining towns, and past old mines. I like it either way. Our first stop was Molas Lake, just south of Silverton. This was the campsite that I had stayed at whilst doing my geological mapping project back in the days of Liverpool uni. We reserved ourselves a camping spot for the next two nights, and then went to stock up on lunch materials for our planned afternoon stroll.
Unusually, this walk begins downhill. It wasn't a gentle slope either, a pleasant walk through the alpine meadows at 10,500 feet gives way to a 1,600 foot decent into the precipitous Animas Canyon along the Colorado Trail. The route gives some spectacular views of the mountains, some topping out at over fourteen thousand feet, and the Animas river far below. The Durango - Silverton Narrow Guage Railroad runs along the river at the bottom of the canyon. We arrived at the bottom of the canyon just in time to get up close and personal with one of the trains; its very cool to stand a metre away from the tracks, in a wilderness area with a steam locomotive barreling towards you! We recharged with some cereal bars, and slowly began the walk back to camp. Suddenly the canyon looked much bigger than it had done on the way down! To make matters worse, the altitude really let's you know who's boss. 10,000 is a long way up.
That evening we popped into Silverton for a beer and a bite to eat, before returning to the campsite. Just as we were at the tents, a rather large thunderstorm hit, thwarting our plan to have a campfire. It was as noisy as hell, but great to be warm and snug in a tent, listening to the rain and thunder, having violet circles in your eyes from the lightning, and being in one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
Saturday morning dawned milky blue, with a light mist that was burning off as we breakfasted in Silverton's Brown Bear Café. We drove up to Andrews Lake and set off on another route that I'd found in the past whilst doing my mapping of the area. We took the crater lake trail up a series of fairly civilised switchbacks, before cutting off left, walking over limestone and sandstone beds and into an alpine meadow where we took a break as we watched marmots playing on the sunny rocks.
After some yomping through the flattish meadows, the trail took a turn for the more vertical, and proceeded up the quartzite slabs overlooked by the 13,077 feet of Snowdon Peak. The climb took us over the 12,000 foot contour, an altitude at which interestingly I can fly a plane over only for a maximum of 30 minutes without supplemental oxygen. We passed some snow patches left from the previous winter, and through stunted forests and topped out by crossing a saddle on a ridge into a land of wildflowers and shallow alpine lakes. This made for a good lunch stop, and yours truly took a quick dip in the water, which, for the record, was very, very, very, veryvery cold. Did I mention it was chilly?
We were chased downhill by rather black looking clouds through thick forests and pink quartzite boulders, until we picked up the crater lake trail that took us back to the car. Jen by this point was struggling due to the rather mental decision to go hiking without an insole in ONE of her shoes. Apparently it was eaten by the dog. As you can imagine, this caused a little bit of an imbalance, and pretty much ruined her ankle. Doh!
EDIT @ 9pm: Jen has just asked me to point out that she is not physically inferior in any way (and that is wasn't nice of me to imply that), it was merely an "equipment malfunction" that caused the problem! I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I was very impressed with the resilience exhibited, and if it were me, I would have lain down on the ground and refused to take another step until the helicopter arrived.
We rewarded ourselves with a decidedly mediocre meal at the Pickle Barrel, again in Silverton, avoided a bit of drizzle by having a sunset photo opportunity at Molas Pass, and retired to the tents to do the campfire thing. We managed to get the wet wood burning quite efficiently, it turns out a bag of charcoal and a block of firestarters works a treat.
On Sunday, we scarpered earlyish, and drove down the 50 miles to Durango, where we stocked up with coffee and pastries for breakfast. Destination for the day was Santa Fe, back in the state of New Mexico. We wound our way there the long way, made slightly longer thanks to the so called Hertz NeverLost GPS (subsequently christened 'bitch'!) whom we had clearly confounded by taking it to a place with no roads that it knew about.
The others picked up a car in Santa Fe, as rather stupidly they had to head back to Albuquerque to catch a flight for work on Monday, but we all had chance for a quick walk around the pueblo and a bite to eat. Jen and I took the "low road" to Taos which, after passing through the crappiest town in the USA, turned in to a spectacular drive through red canyons lit by a hot sun that was also illuminating huge thunderstorms ahead of us. We thought the distant thunder sounded like rocks hitting the windshield, until it turned out that it was rocks hitting the windshield that sounded like rocks hitting the windshield. Unfortunately, one left a 5cm impact star as a memento.
It was a thundery Taos that greeted us that Sunday evening, and we went directly to the Cottonwood Inn, a simply stunning B&B that I'd found for the night. On the Taos ski valley road, it was excellently located for a little evening stroll and some further sunset photos high up by the ski lifts.
If you're ever in Taos, stay at this place! The owners, Shantel and Brantly, are ex Houstonites, and had the good sense to get out of the oil patch and head for the mountains. This tells you all you need to know about them! The building itself is a beautiful Adobe home, with stunning gardens where breakfast was served in the morning.
We had chance on Monday for a walk around Taos, and took the high road back towards Santa Fe and on to Albuquerque for the return flight home to Houston.
We were out of the airport by 11pm, and home shortly after. A great weekend, with a lot packed in to four days. Carpe Diem!
Oh and no, we didn't see any bears or mountain lions.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
Labels: colorado, New Mexico, Travel
Summer in Houston
Well, summer is well and truly here now, but we've had no hurricane scares yet this season. We got dumped on with a lot of rain for three days or so as hurricane dolly came onshore way down on the Texas / Mexico border, but not much wind up here.
I have taken to riding my bike a bit more often, braving the 100 F temperatures and the hummer drivers. Today I made it as far as Starbucks where I succumbed to a large iced coffee for my efforts.
Last night I went to "white linen night" in the heights. The houston heights is one of the more close in suburbs, and is a fairly old neighbourhood that is undergoing somewhat of a revival. Last night was great; almost like living in Austin, with hundreds of people out on the streets, bands playing on the pavement and all the shops open until late. A great atmosphere.
Went for breakfast this morning to a little café on 6th Street and Yale. 2 eggs over easy, wheat toast and bacon. Coffee of course, and an OJ. Got rid of the slight headache which was acting as a reminder of the night before. Another entire bottle of pimms gone. And I can't buy another because its Sunday. They call this the land of the free...
Oh, I forgot to mention that we went to see "Not the Messiah" with the Houston symphony and Eric Idle at Jones Hall last month. Very funny. And of course very silly. Basically an oratorio based on the Life of Brian movie. John DuPrez was conducting, and there were bagpipers, and even a sheep. When you see the words "and a sheep" in the promo material for a production at a symphony hall, you kinda have to buy a ticket or two.
Signing off now. Gotta figure out what outdoory stuff I can justify buying for a trip up to new Mexico and Colorado next weekend.
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Vote for Obama
I went to see Eddie Izzard at Jones Hall, downtown this week. He's in the middle of a US tour at the moment, and the place was packed for both of the Houston dates.
He was great, very very funny as expected, and provided a no holds barred approach to presenting his views on the election, and religion, two topics of conversation that you are best to avoid in republican Texas!
--
Sam Clayton
www.samclayton.net
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry.
The Great and the Good
Hey Y'all,
Well, May has gone very nicely, thanks for asking, and has resulted in my becoming a full year older, but sadly no wiser. Such is life.
I was invited (plus one) to a British Airways reception the other week here in Houston to "celebrate the move of the Houston flights from Gatwick to Heathrow". The great and the good of Houston were there, along with Willie Walsh, CEO of BA who talked much about how excited they were to have this move happen, how he was sorry he kept losing all our bags, and how the Houston flights will only move into T5 later this year when all the glitches have been ironed out of the systems. Right.
They had put in a lot of effort with this event; for about 150 attendees (I'd estimate) there were a couple of BA chefs from the London lounges cooking up some awesome food, plenty of drinks to be had, a mockup of the new Club World (business class) cabin and seats which I was lucky enough to encounter on my trip to South Africa last year.
In the corner was a flight simulator hooked up to proper controls of the new Boeing Dreamliner (787), so of course I had to have a go on that. Sadly, I have to report that the first time I brought the plane down on houses just outside the airport boundary (no power to the engines), and the second time I surfed along the runway at 170 knots thanks to the throttles refusing to reduce power at all. I assume Boeing will work out these kinks before they send people up in the real Dreamliner... Those airport protesters might have something genuine to complain about if the real plane keeps landing on their property...
The next shindig we were invited to was in honour of BHP Billiton's sponsorhip of the Beijing Olympic Games later this year. All the metal for the medals come from BHP Billiton mines, and probably most of the materials used to build the stadiums (and the rest of China come to that) too. The final of the Mens Gymnastics Championships was being held here in Houston, and BHPB made a big thing of it by having over 300 people down at Reliant Park. Multi-olympic medal winners Mary Lou Retton and Peter Vidmar were guests, and took part in a great Q&A session in the BHP Billiton room before the event, as well as taking time to explain to us how the scoring works, and what were were looking at. The event was very enjoyable, and was basically being used to select the USA Gymnastics team for this year's olympics.
BHPB impressed me with food and drinks flowing freely all evening.
Work continues well - currently a lot of activity at our operated Shenzi Development with wells drilling and new information coming in all the time which makes for a very interesting and exciting time.
I've booked tickets home for the end of June, early July (yes, with BA!), and will be heading up to Scotland as well as London and North Wales most likely on the schedule.
Posted some more pictures on
www.flickr.com/samclayton.
Labels: Houston
May.
I have just realised that it appears to be May. This is a good thing in some ways, but does herald the beginning of the end of the good weather, and rings in the 100+ F temperatures and high humidity of the Houston summer.
I was 'volunteered' to be a captain for the first ever BHP Billiton dragon boat team a couple of months back, and I am pleased to report that the team, many of whom had never been in a dragon boat more than once prior to race day, did us proud by coming 3rd in the energy cup, and 5th overall out of 30 teams. Nice job! We'd been kitted out in BHP "thunder from down under" t shirts and Aussie style hats for the event which went down very well with the locals. It did turn out that "thunder from down under" is also a group of male strippers from Australia performing in Las Vegas (if you're interested!), but as we'd already printed the T-Shirts... Ah well. Best laid plans...
I spent yesterday at an Aussie mates stag do which went off very well. We kidnapped the poor chap, and drove off up to a paintball park near Tomball, close to the airport I fly from. It appears that the Saturday lunchtime crowd in Texas burger joints are a bit bemused when you bring in a guy in pink fluffy handcuffs and a pillow case over his head, Guantanamo Bay style.
I'd not been paintballing for ages, and it was great fun running around sniping at people through the forest. Those little paintballs don't half move though, and you certainly know about it when they hit you!
Took the diamond DA 20 out for a spin last Sunday evening. I love that plane! It's so small that its almost like wearing an aircraft, and is just an extension of your body. Its very sprightly and turns on a dime; you can knock it on its side and pull awesomely tight turns without pulling the wings off. This is of course a good thing.
Its a great priviledge to be able to just take off and fly over the "great nation state of Texas", taking a look at cars passing below, flying low along the Brazos river, and watching the sun go down off your wing.
--
Sam Clayton
www.samclayton.net
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry.
Flickry Goodness
Hello.
Just a quick one to say that I am putting my good photos on flickr.com.
The address is
http://www.flickr.com/photos/samclayton/.
Please tell me what you think!
Austin and Helicopter Crashes
Morning all!
Well, Terminal 5 opened today at Heathrow. That
went well didn't it? Hopefully they'll get it sorted before the Houston flights move there from Gatwick at the end of April.
Anyway, I went to do my HUET training in Lafayette, Louisiana a couple of weeks ago. HUET stands for Helicopter Underwater Egress Training. This is mandatory training for all those who travel offshore in helicopters, and was a lot of fun!
Because helicopters are nasty things that shouldn't really fly if you actually sat down and worked it all out, they have a tendancy to crash all over the place. When flying over water, they tend to dump you in the drink upside down, because some engineer thought it would be a great idea to stick the engines on top, thereby making them float upside down pretty well. This is just one reason you should always be deeply suspicious of engineers.
I drove the 3 and a bit hours east along I-10 to Lafayette, and stayed overnight in a very 1980's Hilton. The morning saw me in class for a couple of hours, getting a skim through different types of helicopter, how to jump off oil rigs, why you shouldn't work in the North Sea and other exciting and deeply reassuring things.
After a relaxing, and not at all nervous lunch, we changed and went to the pool, where we were duly strapped into a mockup of a helicopter fusalage, and dumped upside down into the water. If you got out, you passed.
Well, actually, it was a bit more gradual than that. We climbed in, and whilst the helicopter was held a couple of feet above the water we were told and shown how to jettison the doors and windows. The helicopter was lowered into the pool, and we had to unbuckle, and swim out of the openings - a piece of cake.
The next run saw us dropping in with the doors and windows in place. The idea was to wait until the inrush of water had stopped, remembering to take a breath before it came over your head, jettison the door, keep one hand on the exit and unbuckle with the other before swimming clear.
The next run was fun. In we went, but immediately rolled upside down. Water was pouring in - remember to take a breath - feel for the door latch - where is it where is it - it's by my knee it's by my knee - pull, hand on exit, unbuckle and swim clear... Phew! It sounds simple, and really is, but it's amazing how disoriented you get when underwater and upside down and strapped in. You know really thet the door latch is still by your knee, but your mind tells you that for some reason it is now moved, just because you're upside down...
Here's the place we did it, if you'd like photos!
Following this run we did some more, but this time you had to wait (still strapped in and upside down) while the person next to you jetissoned the window and exited before following them. The window just pushed out with a good shove - but it only works if you're strapped in. If you do what I did and try to open the window after unbuckling yourself, you simply push yourself away from the window as there is not much to brace against.
After the drowning, we spent the rest of the afternoon floating around in the pool, inflating life rafts and jackets, learning how to climb in them, making floatation devices from your overalls and all manner of interesting things.
The water in the Gulf of Mexico is nice and warm (~80 deg F year round) so you stand a great chance of survival if you get out of the burning twisted pile of helicopter that's just screamed into the sea at a million miles per hour.
Anyway, on to more benign stuff...
Went over to Austin with some freinds a week or two later. Had a nice time in the Sunny weather doing a little wondering about Hamilton Pool, just outside Austin where there is a nice green natural pool in the limestone which is a good place to swim in the summer. Just took some pictures this time though, and spent a while trying to photograph turtles, but always just got a little too close causing them to plop into the pools.
It was very nice to get that feeling that summer is around the corner, with the Hill Country spring breeze, pleasant temperatures, blue sky and fresh smell - perfect.
Labels: HUET, Louisiana, Work
And after a short intermission...
... I am back.
Where have I been you ask? Well, since last posting, I've been to the UK for a week in Leeds (unpaid!), The UK again en-route to South Africa for a field trip to the Lainsburg area, and then back to the UK for Christmas which was spent in fine style up in North Wales.
In between the transatlantic hops, I went over to Phoenix for fun, and also managed to scam a trip to San Francisco for the AGU conference where I co-presented a poster on the Virtual Seismic Atlas, coming to a web browser near you shortly.
I came back to Houston in January for two weeks of wrapping up before moving jobs within BHP Billiton; I'm now up working for the Shenzi Subsurface Team (http://www.google.com/search?q=shenzi+bhp+billiton) which is proving to be fun, challenging and mighty hard work in about equal measure.
Of Weddings
I'm 38,000 feet over Massacheusetts as I type this, bound from Gatwick to Houston aboard British Airways flight 2027. We've still 3 hours left to run, so following a nice afternoon nap I thought I would have a chat to you all.
The trip to the UK for Tom and Lindi's wedding was great, the wedding itself was a fantastic success, with both the main characters showing up on time and in great form! After months of sustained rain in the UK, the weather relented and we had a superb day, with completely clear blue skies, and temperatures in the upper 20's (that's in Celsius for you Yanks...)
The day before the wedding, after trying on the fancy dress provided by Moss Bros., we headed to the local pub for a beer or two, and thence to the rehersal at the church where we were instructed in the minutiae of the service itself. It involved a lot of ushering people around, moving to certain places, in a certain order with certain people. This was very complicated. I was mosty worried about getting up to the pulpit to give a reading without tripping over my own feet, the pew, the kneeley mat things, the flowers, the steps or the bride.
After the rehersal, we headed to the pub (yes again, but we were told to by the God bloke (Canon I think)). Dave (best man) spent a while scaring Lindi with potential material for his speech, and Lindi scared him back by informing him he was to be Master of Ceremonies, a duty until this point, unallocated.
A couple of beers later, we headed back to The Swan, where the Clayton Brothers were staying, along with the Garveys (The Germans!). We sat outside enjoying the superb weather and more beer was consumed until midnight, when an early night was had by all to prepare for the big day on Saturday.
After leaving breakfast until the last minute (10 to 10!), I stuffed myself with bacon sandwiches (that's decent bacon for you Yanks!) and had a bit of a wander round the little village we were staying in. It was all very English, with a village green, pubs, a church and narrow roads with tunnel-like vegetation closing you in. There was even a Foot and Mouth outbreak barely 10 minutes away just to complete the picture of rural England.
Labels: england, Travel, wedding
Houston to Laramie - A pilot's view.
Hooks Ground, Seven Juliet Alpha runup complete, ready for departure.
Seven Juliet Alpha, roger. Taxi to and hold short of One Seven
Left Approach and contact Tower on 118.4.
Hold Short 17L Approach, going to tower point four, Seven Juliet
Alpha.
Hooks Tower, Seven Juliet Alpha ready to go, holding short 17L
Approach.
Seven Juliet Alpha, cleared for takeoff 17 Right at Echo.
Cleared for takeoff, 17 Right at Echo, Seven Juliet Alpha.
I taxied onto the runway, centered the aircraft, and increased the throttle to the stop. Ease back at 44 knots, climb at 58 knots. Positive rate of climb, flaps up. Turn to the right, 90 degrees, and again to head north west, bound for Laramie, Wyoming, over 900 miles away.
The weather had been very bad in Houston for weeks, with almost continuous rain and storms, and I was very close to cancelling the trip to Laramie for Chris and Andy's wedding, and buying a commercial airline ticket for the trip. However, I thought I'd see if I could sneak out of Houston around the storms, as the weather promised to be fine once I reached the Dallas area, only a couple of hundred miles to the north.
I climbed up to escape the lowest clouds at 2,000 feet, and then wound my way around the biggest storms, but had a fair bit of rain to deal with. I was consious also of the Prohibited area, P-49 that is over Bush's ranch at Crawford, TX, as I was not cleared to overfly that. The weather pushed me to within several miles of the place however!
I flew over Waco, and Lake Whitney and fuel consumption placed me within reach of my first stopping point at Wichita Falls' Kickapoo Downtown Airport. What a great name! I dived under a low bank of stormy weather, and then came out into the sun, the first I'd seen in weeks! I entered on the left downwind keeping a sharp lookout for the jets training at the Shepherd Airforce Base, and landed on runway 17.
Whilst my aircraft was being refuelled, (279 nautical miles down), I checked the weather and called for a briefing of the hazards that would lay along my route to the next planned stop of Liberal, Kansas. Duly appraised of weather issues (very scattered storms a fair way from my intended route and no flight restrictions), I climbed back in the Diamond DA-20 and took off once more.
I climbed up to 6,500 feet, and headed northwest once more, leaving Texas for Oklahoma for the first time. I was heading into an area with a fair bit of military traffic, so thought I would call the local approach control for a bit of help in looking for other traffic that may affect me.
Altus Approach, Diamond Three Nine Seven Juliet Alpha with request.
Diamond Seven Juliet Alpha, go ahead.
Altus Approach, Diamond Seven Juliet Alpha is a DA-20 with Uniform at
6,500 feet 16 miles southeast of Altus, northwest bound for Lima Bravo Lima,
request flight following, traffic and workload permitting.
Diamond Seven Juliet Alpha, Roger. Squawk 5253.
Once I'd been identidied by the Squawk Code on their radar, I flew through the Altus Terminal Radar Service Area, and was handed off to Kansas City Center. As it was Friday evening, there was little traffic in the skies, so I had a pretty uneventful journey with no advisories from air traffic control. The weather was calm, with blue skies, and just the hot sun beating down on the aircraft, a mere dot above the Oklahoma, North Texas, Oklahoma again and finally Kansas plains. I flew over rivers, Interstate highways and county roads with trucks all but invisible but for the plumes of dust thrown up behind them. There were scattered ranches, and grain silos that would catch briefly in the sun as I zipped over with a groundspeed of anything up to 148 knots (170 mph), thanks to a nice tailwind from the south.
By 7pm I was approaching Liberal, Kansas, and made a great approach to landing on runway 17. I headed inside, once again called the briefer for weather, checked the radar and decided to call it a night as my next planned stop, Longmont at the foot of the Rockies was another 2 or so hours away and wouldn't be reachable in daylight. Whilst I am happy flying at night, I decided that mountains, dark and an unfamilar airport may not be the best combination.
I secured the aircraft for the night on the Kansas Plains, and was collected from the airport by a local motel, and taken downtown for the night, installed myself in a basic but comfortable room and pretty much just hit the sack. I'd spent the day at work, and the late afternoon and evening flying over 500 miles from Houston - all in all an action packed day.
I woke early in the morning, and was back at the airport by 8am and in the air by 8:30am, resuming my north-westerly progress towards Wyoming. The ground over which I was flying, although flat, had risen to over 3000' elevation, so I was flying higher as a result. Gradually, on the horizon, I began to make out a hazy image of higher ground - my first glimpse of the rockies. So quickly that it was a shock, the plains and ranchland gave way to towns and suburbs of Denver, and I once more had to content with busy airspace, restrictions and locating a safe routing under the Denver airspace for my landing at Longmont. I took a wide circle approach to landing due to the skydiving activity over the airport, and placed my plane down at 9:45am local time (I had gained an hour due to time zone changes).
The Rocky mountains reared up from the Colorado Plains above the airport providing a fantastic backdrop to the busy skydiving and small aircraft flying in and out. The Sun was hot, over 33 C at the plane, giving me a bit of sunburn whilst waiting for freinds to drop by - they'd spent the night in Longmont. It was fun to show everyone around the plane - it always causes comment as the Diamond is so small - just a two seater - but has a surprising number of interesting buttons to play with, and good performance to boot, something I was glad of when it came time to take off from a high airport in the middle of the hot Colorado day.
Takeoff time came, and I waggled my wings as I departed on the final leg of the journey to Laramie, now only 75 miles away. The hot sun had caused storms to begin building over the mountains, so I bounced through the rising air, gaining the necessary altitude to safely get me over the mountains and into the Laramie basin. The airport came into sight, and I overflew the field to remind myself of its layout, and landed on Runway 3, and taxied to the ramp for the final engine shutdown. I had arrived. 803 nautical miles direct, a little further thanks to storm avoidance, but I was there, over 7,000 feet higher then I had been when taking off from Houston.
Labels: flying, wyoming
Spam Spam Spam Spam
Well, Spamalot is playing in Houston at the moment, so on Friday, 6 intrepid Yanks, Aussies and the token Brit (me) went down to the Hobby Center on the edge of Downtown to experience the silliness that is Monty Python. As the promo material says, Spamalot is "a new musical lovingly ripped off from the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail".
It was fantastic! Started off with the Finland song, and then a lengthy discussion about how the coconut that King Arthur uses in lieu of a real horse came to Britain in the Middle Ages (African Swallow perhaps??) Sir Robin (the not quite so brave as Sir Lancelot) was introduced complete with minstrel troupe (Singing "Brave Sir Robin ran away, he shat his pants and ran away...")
The French Taunters were there too ("Your father smells of elderberries") and John Cleese was the voice of God ("Stop bloody apologising, I hate it when people bloody apologise all the time. And don't look up my skirt.") Tim the Enchanter showed up, along with the Holy Hand Grenade ("One shalt pulleth the sacred pin, and counteth to Three, Three shalt be the number to which thou shalt count. Four shalt not be counted to. Five is right out. The number of the counting shalt be three, and then thou shalt lobbeth thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thine enemy who shall be blown into tiny pieces... Now the congregation shall stand and sing 'Get Your Hand Off My Knee You Dirty Old Bastard'")
Brilliant - a great night out. I think it's on in New York and London too, so go and see it if you haven't already.
Also on the subject of Spam, my Google Email software tells me that I have had 2579 Spam messages in the last month. Amazing.
Labels: Houston
and bang goes the Mountain...
Hello Ladies and Gents.
Well, I got back from Seattle OK - and now I have to tell you all about it!
If you don't like words, all the pictures are in the gallery
here.
So. To start at the beginning... Drove myself up to IAH ('Intercontinental Airport Houston' I believe) and parked in the cheapo parking lot (only 6 bucks a day - pretty good for airport parking!). On to the shuttle bus that took me merrily to Terminal E for check in for Continental, the USA's least worst airline. I had crammed everything into a carry on bag, so already had my boarding pass (printed at work) so proceeded to get undressed for security as is the norm nowadays. I was airside in just a couple of minutes, so now I had over an hour to kill before boarding.
Thanks to my contribution to Global warming in the past year, (Chile 3 times, Round the world once, and back to Europe - oh - I don't know - 6 times) British Airways had rewarded me with their 'Person Most Likely To Create a Grape Growing Industry in Britain' card, otherwise known as the Gold Tier of the BA Executive Club. This is rather splendid, as I was informed in the glitzy literature that accompanied the aformentioned card that it could be used to get in to BA lounges regardless of who I was travelling with that day. I decided to give this a try, and wondered through to terminal D where I found the BA lounge had been commandeered by China Airways. Never one to be put off that easily, I entered anyway and was duly directed to the bar where I partook of some Gin and Tonic, and some nice sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Not to shabby. I also collected up all the british newspapers I could find (they'd come in on that day's BA flights) and fed them into my already overstuffed bag.
So the hour of waiting passed rather nicely (stuffing newspapers into bag), and so I boarded the Continental Jet to Seattle, 4 and a half hours away. Due to the 2 hour time difference, it was 11:30pm when we reached Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and I headed straight for the Hertz rental area. BHP has a deal with Hertz, and therefore if you make a reservation on their website, your name simply appears on a display screen, and you just go to the numbered bay next to your name. There you find your car, with the keys in the ignition and the contract all signed and sealed hanging from the rear view mirror. Very quick and simple - I was driving out of the airport within 20 minutes of landing, and spent the next 20 minutes driving in circles to find the hotel thanks to my trusty GPS having the wrong address in its database. Ah well.
Saturday dawned with an overcast sky (Seattle gets millions of inches of rain a year), but undaunted I headed south and then Northwest bound for Olympic National Park. I crossed over the Tacoma Narrows (site of the infamously wobbly bridge that wobbled itself to destruction in a great example of resonance), and passed through thick forests of evergreen trees for much of the route.
Finally, Olympic National Park hove in to view (what the hell is hove anyway - I'm not even sure its a real word???) , and I wound my way upwards to over 4,000 feet (I think). We hit the snowline, which made for a nice walk through the forests, with meltwater streams rushing off downhill. There was a lot of spiky mountainy snowy foresty stuff going on, which made for a great contrast to Houston. These mountains are not volcanic - just your common or garden 'plate crashing into plate' type.
Next stop was the fairly remote northwest corner of the USA (apart from Alaska of course), but halfway there the car dropped out of cruise control and the 'check engine' light came on. I pulled over, and checked that the engine was still there, and it was, so I carried on for a bit. The light resolutely failed to turn off however, and I was a little concerned about heading further away from civilisation in a car that may well cease to provide motive force. In desperation, I looked in the manual that said that I should return the car to a dealer immediately, not drive it anywhere, and not tow it anywhere either. With this particularly helpful bit of advice in my head, I proceeded to drive it 150 miles back to Seattle at 70mph. Still keen on a little bit of touristing, I cut off the rather large detour through Tacoma, and took the ferry across Puget sound to Seattle. This was quite good fun, and I was rewarded with 40 minutes of fat tourists with cameras taking pictures of each other. I joined in a little with the photo taking bit, but drew the line at the getting fat bit.
So, back in Seattle, I went back to the airport and swapped out the car for another. This time they gave me a Subaru Mega-Guzzler XLT which had only 96 miles on the clock. I took it out for a test drive to the
Northlake Tavern and Pizza House which had been reccomended to me by a workmate in Houston. I spent the drive back swerving across multiple lanes of Seattle's freeway system as I was playing with the Satellite Radio system - never had the opportunity before.
Sunday saw me head south, and away from Seattle towards Mount St Helens, the real reason for the trip. This mountain blew it's top about 7 days before I was born
Fifty-seven people were killed; and 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km)
of railways and 185 miles (300 km) of highway were destroyed.
--Wikipedia
Trees were laid flat up to 17 miles away. For those that don't know, it's lava dome that had been steadily growing collapsed in a landslide on it's northen flank, causing a huge relese of pressure, analogous to taking the cap off a hot car radiator, just with more lava involved. Apparantly, if you'd been standing on the ridge where the visitor centre is today, and held up a metre square frame, 60 tonnes of rock would have flown though it.
Every Second.
For Three Minutes.
That's a lot.
Thanks to the high peaks, the crater itself was largely shrouded in cloud, but I took a walk for a couple of miles along the ridge towards Spirit Lake which was partially filled in by the mudslides and pyroclastic flows from the volcano. The land even now looks very harsh, with thick layers of ash cut deeply by streams and rivers. You can see a layer of dead trees - big ones - 150 feet tall some of them - that are buried by a couple of metres of debris. Quite amazing, and all very recent. The volcano is still active of course, and a new lava dome is growing as we speak.
The walk took me along the first ridge that the blast would have hit - about 5 miles or 3 seconds away from the crater. The ridge is pretty well blasted, with fallen trees and very hummocky ground that was basically formed by the debris being deposited on the lee side. It was pretty cold too, with the snowline not far away, making me glad I brought a decent hat and gloves! As it was almost exactly 27 years to the day that Mt St Helens last erupted, the amount of snow was possibly similar which explains the huge amount of meltwater that would have been caused by the eruption that in turn created massive mudflows that washed down rivers, destroying bridges and property many miles away.
I spent the night about an hour away from the Volcano, and on Monday thought I would head around it's south side for a different view. This time the drive was very different, travelling through thick forest all the way, and winding my way up roads for hours! Unfortunately the spur road to a viewpoint 5 miles from the crater was still closed due to snow, but I got the odd glimpse of the peak in the breaking clouds. The mountain is surprisingly steep - just like you'd expect a decent volcano to look!
I ended up in Mount Ranier National Park on the way back to Seattle, I had roughtly planned to drive through the park, but it turned out all through roads were closed as several sections had been washed away due to the huge amount of rain in 2006. These are not little dirt roads by the way, but fairly reasonable paved highways. Therefore I went on a shortish walk around in the forests, and wondered down to Silver Falls in the southeast corner of the park. The river was full, carrying meltwater, but even so it was flowing in a canyon that had a good 5 metres from rim to river. It was therefore pretty amazing that a footbridge crossing this canyon was still in the process of being repaired, as it too had been damaged by flooding. An incredible amount of water was involved!
It was time to head back to the airport for my 5:50pm flight, and the journey out of the mountains was uneventful. Dropped off the car, checked in and found a BA lounge in which to sit and wait.
We took off under clear skies, and had the most incredible view of Mount Ranier off our left wingtip about 10 minutes after takeoff. The pilot announced it's imminent arrival, and said that it would only be 10 miles off our wing, and as we were still climbing up to cruise, although we were already at 13,000 feet, the peak would be higher than us, topping out at 14,410 feet. It was pretty amazing to see such a huge mountain so close! Got some good photos though! You could see the entire volcano, with some stunning views of the snowfields and glaciers.
Arrived back in Houston just before midnight local time, and the plane promptly had it's windows cloaked in condensation as we touched down thanks to the killer humidity! Nice. Home and in bed shortly after 1am for a short week back at work.
Labels: Travel, Washington
