Dear Broken Christchurch

Sorry blog followers-- I haven't had reason to post in a long time. Life in Denver has been great-- Conan's well, I'm in month nine of a fabulous relationship, the cats are entertaining in that psychotic way that only cats can pull off, and in general life is good. I've been slated to deploy to the ice for a five-week stint, but frankly doubted that I would actually go. Population at McMurdo has been high, and only essential personnel are allowed to go. It looked so doubtful that I slacked on a lot of my pre-deployment paperwork and prep work-- I was pretty confident that I'd be bumped in favor of more essential activities. The days ticked down, and I realized that I'd better get it together! The last week in Colorado was insane, making preparations for Conan's boarding, paying bills, and all the other crazy stuff that happens when you're about to go off the map...

Mimi is watching the house, Conan is in good hands with a friend in Boulder, and (I hope) I managed to take care of all the loose ends before leavin' on the jet plane.

The trip down is always a grinding, laborious process, taking days of layovers and trying (often unsuccessfully) to sleep on planes. I don't need to go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that I ended up exhausted in Christchurch, New Zealand, with a day to kill before the night flight to the ice. Downtown Christchurch was devastated by last year's earthquakes, and I was more than a little reluctant to see the worst of the damage. Ice folks by definition spend a lot of time in "Cheech", and the city is near and dear to us. The people there are awesome-- Christchurch is one of my favorite cities anywhere. I knew it would be traumatic to see whole blocks of familiar buildings reduced to ruin, but I needed to see it.

As luck would have it, the day we had available to walk around was Sunday-- the only day when the "Red Zone" in the Central Business District was open for the general public. A fenced cordon leads all the way down to the front of the cathedral-- the heart of town. The cathedral itself is pretty much completely destroyed, but the crumbling ruins haven't been razed yet. A huge metal framework holds the front wall up, preventing it from toppling into Cathedral Square.

The damage is amazing, but it wasn't as emotionally wrenching as I expected it to be. Since the cleanup efforts have been going on for months, most of the rubble has been removed. Still, it's eerie to stand on a familiar street corner, trying to find bearings when so many of our familiar haunts are just... gone. So many buildings are gone that it is a completely different place.

The Cashel Street Mall was recently upgraded with granite paving stones, and trolley tracks running down the middle. Evidently most of the buildings along the mall were damaged beyond repair, and were razed long ago. In their place, freight containers have been stacked up, and turned into (quite stylish) replacements for the missing stores, cafes, and shops that died in the quakes. Painted in bright colors, the containers make an odd, European-looking hodgepodge of funky urban post-apocalyptic design. I like it.

The Kiwis are the most amazing people I've ever run across. They just keep their chin up, no matter what. I think a lesser folk would have curled up in a corner, crying. They talk about the devastation like it was a particularly rainy weekend. It's inspiring.

There's a Maori saying, "Kia Kaha", which roughly means, "stay strong". Kia Kaha, Christchurch.

Homeless Camping

I get every other Friday off of work, which made this Labor Day weekend a four-dayer. Mimi had her daughter this weekend, so I thought it would be a good time for an epic road trip up to Montana to clear out my storage. Just me and Conan. When I went to winter on the Ice in '08, I crammed everything I owned into a rented two-car garage in Livingston, Montana. When I settled down and bought a house here in Denver, I still didn't really have room for a lot of that stuff, so I've been continuing to rent the garage. I have two tiny 1972 Honda AZ600 project cars stored there, and I've been meaning to get them home so they can find new homes. They are so small that I can actually tow one behind a passenger car on a tow dolly. I moved them (one at a time) from Prescott, AZ to Livingston using a Subaru Forester, back in '05.

We left my house in Englewood early Saturday morning, and made really good time to Billings. There was almost no traffic at all-- surprising for a Labor Day weekend. I picked up the tow dolly in the Billings Heights, and got to Livingston around 8 PM. It never even occurred to me that it would be hard to find a motel room... Livingston was 100% booked. Exhausted from driving all day, Conan and I were homeless. I suppose it was an option to go on to Bozeman and try to find a room, but we decided to camp out. Luckily, my storage garage has a lot of empty space, and tons of futons, sleeping bags, and linens. We made a cozy (if a little dusty) little nest on the garage floor, and killed the rest of the evening going through stored junk, getting ready for the trip back. Conan was in dog heaven, surrounded by the smells of his puppyhood. (I got him as a puppy when I lived in the Livinston house.) Luckily, I had thought to bring a small head light, so it was pretty easy to get around in the pitch-dark garage. The weather got down into the the 40s, but we slept quite well.

Turns out the only one of the two cars I could get out has seized brakes, and couldn't be towed. The other car is so buried that it would have taken too much time to extract it. I decided to return the dolly unused, and just fill my car with the most useful stuff it could hold. I'll have to return for the TBC (Tiny Blue Car) with some better tools to fix the brakes at another time.

No visit to Livingston is complete without a visit to the best dog park in the universe. The "nature" pictures are shot from the dog park. With great views of the Crazy and Absaroka mountains, the dog park is a recovered old landfill, right at the confluence of Fleshman Creek and the Yellowstone River. It's beautiful, and it's Conan's favorite spot. The weather was perfect, too. About 75F, and (freakily) not windy. For all its beauty, Livingston is almost always crazy windy.

Back safe at home now, another epic adventure complete.

Wonderful Weekend

I haven't gotten to visit the Rockies as much as I would have liked this summer. Domestic duties, along with my LGC (Little Green Car) project and some professional advancement stuff, have left me yearning to spend more time in our beloved mountains. I recently acquired a '94 Mazda Miata, which has proven to be a total hoot to drive around-- a super fun car to drive in the mountains.

I needed a break from a brutal schedule of studying for a professional certification. Saturday was blocked out as "mountain time with the girlfriend". Mimi and I picked up some tasty picnic stuff and headed out. (Garlic olives, greek yogurt, fresh strawberries, blue corn chips, and bean dip. Yum.)

Stopped in Georgetown, Minturn, Leadville, Fairplay,and Buena Vista, and got back to my place around eight.

We've had some hot, dry weather in the Denver area for the last month or so, and rain is always welcome. We got hit with some serious late summer thunderstorms in the afternoon, and got the top up just in time to keep from getting drenched in Leadville. Had a xococotl (spicy aztec cocoa) while we watched the storm move through.

It didn't rain much at all (if any) down here in the city. Bummer. Still, all in all, it was an epic day.

Miatacross!

Well, as I've said in previous posts, I've gotten hooked on autocross racing. I got a tip from the nice racer who let me race his Honda a month or so ago, and picked up a '94 Mazda Miata. That is quite the hot ticket for racing in the "E Stock" class, and the cars are relatively inexpensive to get into. I found just the car, put on the market for a very fair price, and jumped right on it. I took it down to Pikes Peak International Raceway last weekend and drove my second race-- first in my own car.

We hit some snags on the way to the race, and ended up getting there about ten minutes after registration closed. The venue is about two hours from my house, and it's just hard to get out of the house at 6 AM... The most important thing in a race is to walk the course beforehand, and memorize it. Well, I didn't get to walk it at all. I did talk them into letting me register, but I drove it blind. DNF'ed (Did Not Finish) on the first lap-- I missed several gates. There were several slaloms, and it was just a sea of random cones at first. I studied the course map, and did better on the next three runs. I still have hard tires on the Miata, and that was a big handicap. The same guy who let me race his Honda has some half-used race tires that he doesn't need, so he's going to let me use them up. Woo Hoo!

Love my little Miata, and I can't wait to get more practice! Woo Hoo!

Racing!

I raced my first car today! I've been toying with the idea of running my LSC (Little Silver Car) in autocross events, and I've gone to a couple of races over the last month. I decided to give it a try. I picked up some half-used racing tires from Craigslist, and picked up some old steel rims. (I didn't want to thrash the tires I drive to work on every day.) For more information on autocross racing, see http://www.scca.com/contentpage.aspx?content=55

I got up early (for Sunday), and loaded up my racing wheels. I got to the track just in time for registration. It was all a little intimidating, but the race workers made me very welcome when I told them that I was a brand new guy. This is only the third race I’ve attended, and my first race as a driver. Shortly after registration we had an ‘all hands’ meeting, and we scattered to our various cars and duties. Everybody gets a work assignment—I was a corner attendant in corner three. The idea is when a racer displaces a cone, I put it back, and communicate any penalties to the appropriate folks. I was out in the hot sun for a long time, and really got burnt.
I hadn’t arrived in time to put my racing tires on, so I had to hurry and take care of that right after my work assignment. The heat was oppressive, and I had to really rush to get my car into the tech inspection area. I took shortcuts, and tried to switch tires using my VW jack, rather than using a floor jack. That turned out to be a bad corner to cut, as I ended up slipping the car off of the jack, breaking a bolt in my brakes. I didn’t have time to get it fixed before my turn in the third heat, so I put my stock wheels back on, and headed over to the grid with my helmet, hoping at least to get a ride or two. In trying to get my wheels sorted out, I had completely exhausted myself in the heat. It was over 90F out, and humid for the front range. It was pretty brutal.

I told my tale of woe to a couple of my fellow racers, and one of them offered to let me drive his car in the third heat! The car’s number was #1, and the guy’s class was “X” for Expert. It was an early-90s Honda Civic. It turns out that range of Civics is very competitive in autocross—it’s a good combination of handling and power for the slow, tight autocross course. I managed to change my registration so that I could drive his car. I had walked through the course twice in the morning, and by the time I had struggled with breaking my car, I had pretty much forgotten the course layout. It was very challenging to push a totally unfamiliar car to the limit on a course that I had never seen from a car. I think I did okay. Al (the car owner) rode along, and gave me tips. Like, “hey, the course is over THERE!”.
Great folks there—I’m sure I’ll be doing more racing soon. The whole scene was great—everybody was enthusiastic and helpful. I not only had a car offered for me to drive, but a woman I met in the morning was done with her car after the second heat, and offered to let me drive it, too! Wow. This stuff is fun.
I made it home okay on my damaged hubs, and will be getting that taken care of ASAP. I think I made the right decision in opting not to test my questionable brakes in competition. Lessons learned: next time, change tires early!
 

It LIVES!!

Sorry to those followers of my blog who followed my adventures flying around Antarctica in helicopters and all... These days my life is quite different from that. A couple of months into a relationship, I'm busy, and happy. I have continued to be plagued by the habit of rescuing needy mechanical objects, with the intent of bringing them back to their intended glory. Six months or so ago, I adopted a wayward little Honda car, and have spent quite a bit of time giving it CPR over the last couple of months. Today it traveled under its own steam for the first time since 2004! I'm having a local shop square up some of the work I have been doing on it. It's so tiny, it's quite challenging to work on. They have the benefit of a lift and complete shop, so they can do in a short time those things that took me forever. I wrote to my girlfriend this morning, "I drove the Little Green Car!! I drove the Little Green Car!!". No helicopters or penguins, but life is good.