John's blog

Fall Foliage 1500 Miles from Home: Aspens in Aspen (With a Tangent on HDR imagery)

There are certain places which every photographer must visit in his or her lifetime, and certainly Colorado's Maroon Bells at sunrise is high atop that list--even more so during fall foliage season.  Indeed, there those who make the high alpine lake shore near Aspen an annual pilgrimage, to the point that the Maroon Bells are characterized by some as the most photographed scene in North America.

The Maroon Bells about 15 minutes before dawn

After a long several weeks at work with nary a moment for any interesting photography (working with the government come the end of the fiscal year always makes for busy times!), I needed a break.  The red rock country of the Colorado Plateau did have its siren call in my ear, and I might have headed out to revisit my favorite place on Earth, Bryce Canyon.  Yet with October here and its palette of fall colors that come but once a year, I decided to see something I had not before and booked a flight to Aspen, hoping to catch the aspens at their peak of brilliant yellow even as the Front Range of the Rockies picked up the beginnings of their wintry white cloaks.

Fall comes earlier to the high mountains of Colorado than it does to the Piedmont and coastal plane of Virginia where the majority of the trees are still largely green--according to my trusty copy of Laurent Martres' Photographing the Southwest, the peak of fall color typically arrives in the last week of September to the first few days of October--but I couldn't get away from work any earlier than the Columbus Day holiday weekend.  Fall colors are notoriously fickle, too, depending on factors from the amount of summer rainfall and temperatures leading up to the fall to wind and rain once the leaves turn.

Despite predictions of a later-than-usual peak for the area, I saw plenty of completely bare patches standing along the slopes as I flew over the Front Range from Denver--alongside many still-green stands of aspens, indicating a combination of less-than-optimal summer conditions and winds which had stripped bare many of the trees which had already changed colors (I'd seen the wind forecast a day before my trip--which didn't leave me very happy).  No matter: there's always something to photograph in Colorado!

I started my day in Aspen with a drive up to nearby Marble, a tiny community with only one paved road (and that recently-enough done that Tabitha, my GPS, kept trying to steer me off onto alternate routes).  A lot of the names of Colorado's towns reflect the state's mining history--Telluride, Agate, Leadville, Gypsum, to name a few--and Marble follows that tradition well as it is named for its marble quarry, from which material used in D.C.'s Lincoln Memorial came.  At the far end of town, CR3 turns into a dirt road with a warning sign that there is no winter maintenance and that only 4x4 vehicles are permitted beyond that point: good thing I rented one (and no, please don't tell the rental company, who I know forbids offroading).  This is the beginning of the road to the Crystal Mill, one of Colorado's many treasures and a perfect late afternoon photo shoot location.

Lizard Lake, approximately halfway between Marble and the Crystal Mill

Martres describes the 5.5 mile trip from Marble to the Crystal Mill as a rough but "non-technical" drive--but then, he's comparing it to some of the really challenging routes in the desert southwest.  Although I have some experience with offroading--having driven Jeep trails in the Anza-Borrego Desert among other routes--and have owned a SUV for years, I have to say that the average Joe won't want to tackle the drive to Crystal Mill and should hire a driver and vehicle in Marble.  Most of CR3 beyond Marble is incredibly rocky and demands a high-clearance vehicle with large, tough tires and deep wheel wells, and the vast majority of the route is a single lane which often includes a steep drop-off to the Crystal River far below.  I put my Chevy Tahoe into first gear and full-time four wheel drive and still felt the 45-minute drive worthy of the white knuckles I sure had.  There are stretches where it's tough to see far ahead as you top over a rise, and you dare not come to a full stop for fear of sliding on the loose rocks that continually make the ride a jouncing rollercoaster experience.  You will meet other vehicles, and chances are one or the other of you may even need to back up to find a place wide enough for the other to get by.


The Crystal Mill is worth the drive (or ride, if you're not up to wrangling your own SUV there).  Dating to 1892, the structure stands on a promontory overlooking the Crystal River and is surrounded by aspens which at their fall color peak are gorgeous to behold.  I've seen a few beautiful old mills in the Appalachians, to be sure, but those don't have quite the dramatic background of snow-capped Rockies as does the Crystal Mill.  The mill actually was a power station which provided compressed air for silver mining activities in the surrounding area.

My only complaint was that I managed to get only thirty seconds or so of sun on the mill; the skies had gone to a solid, dreary white during the drive up from Aspen and offered only the occasional gap of blue through the dense cloud cover.  That made my work as a photographer significantly more challenging; nothing makes an image more lackluster than the low contrast of grey, boring skies.  So I set up for a HDR (high dynamic range) shot, taking several bracketed exposures which I intended later to combine in Photoshop into one image which rendered the full detail of the scene and which would allow me to expose for all the rich color of the mill itself while still getting some density to the sky.

Techie side note: HDR can work well for images with significant difference between the bright (or highlight) and dark (or shadow) areas; camera sensors only capture a few "stops" (with each stop representing twice the brightness or darkness of the adjacent one) of light from highlight to shadow--typically anywhere from 5 to 10 stops--whereas the human eye sees a range of up to 15 stops.  Couple that with the fact that our eyes and brains constantly adjust to whatever we're focused on in a very dynamic process which effectively allows us to take in an even broader range of light and dark in a way a single, static image cannot, and you see the problem which HDR is designed to address.

Above, I took three separate exposures, each one full stop in difference than the next.  Given I'd set my exposure compensation to underexpose the shot by a third of a stop (to try to avoid losing the highlights on the water or in the skies), that gave me photos at -1 1/3, -1/3, and +2/3 exposure across a range of two full stops (and thus expand my camera's dynamic range by an extra two stops as well).  I won't bore you with the details of how I processed the HDR image itself as there are many more in-depth explanations available via Google.

See the skies I had to work with? Clouds are good, but images need open patches of sky, too!

The drive back out was just as rough as the drive in had been, with the sole benefit of not meeting any oncoming traffic.  I stayed in Glenwood Springs, a community right off of Interstate 70 and about an hour to an hour and a half's drive northwest of Aspen proper--where I could get a hotel room for under $100 a night instead of paying through the nose with Aspen's high-end boutique rates.  Still being one eastern time made an early bedtime more effective (a good thing as the drive to the Maroon Bells plus needing to be there well before dawn meant a very early morning).

Even though CO82 has a HOV lane (M-F starting at 6:00am) as you near Aspen, traffic was pretty light on my drive down to the White River National Forest and the Maroon Bells.  I figured even with the fall foliage a bit past its peak, a holiday weekend in autumn would find the place packed for the sunrise, yet as I pulled into the Maroon Lake parking lot at approximately 5:50am, there was only one other vehicle present.  Yes, it was bitterly cold: I'd used the Aspen forecast in determining clothes to bring, not thinking that the Maroon Bells were 2000 feet higher up in elevation than the town, and even layered, 18 degrees is darn chilly!  (Side note: arm warmers, designed for cyclists, are a great invention.)

Sunrise may not have been until around 7:15am--and it was completely dark when I arrived--but the skies began lightening not long after 6:00am, so I headed out into the elements and up to the lake shore to set up my tripod and await the magical experience of a Maroon Bells dawn.  (See the photo leading off this blog entry for the scenery I contemplated, my fingers and toes freezing, for about an hour before the sun's first rays struck the peaks.)


On a perfect morning, there will be a few clouds in the sky and absolutely no wind--the slightest breeze will set ripples across the lake and spoil that stunning reflection.  I must say, the morning of October 10 was very nearly perfect!  This really helped make up for the fact that the aspens nearest the lake shore in the shot's foreground had completely shed their leaves.

A graduated neutral density filter will work wonders here, as the first rays of the sun on the Maroon Bells (particularly with any snowfall on the peaks) will create significantly more contrast across the scene than any camera sensor or film can capture.  I went with a 3-stop filter (meaning the lightest areas of the filter let through around eight times as much light as the darkest), and even stacked a second 2-stop graduated filter in front of it for a few shots.  As with the pre-dawn shots I took and the Crystal Mill, bracketed exposures with an HDR image in mind aren't a bad idea, either.  Do note that the first golden rays will strike the peaks about 10 minutes after "scheduled" sunrise (according to the time in my GPS' almanac).

After the best moments of sunrise, it's at least an hour and a half to two hours before the sun will have crept high enough over the peaks behind and to the photographer's left to evenly illuminate the trees surrounding the lake.  I spent about half that time in my car, warming back up from the bitter cold (and cursing having only brought thin cycling gloves) while I transferred photos to my laptop, then set out along the the Crater Lake trail, which climbs above the far shore of Maroon Lake.

The trail to Crater Lake offers some great views of aspen thickets, showing off the skeletal, white trunks, and at the right time of year their brilliant yellow fall foliage.  It's not a particularly rough or difficult trail, and at under two miles one-way from the parking area isn't an all-day affair, either.  Nonetheless, even though I knew I wasn't in the same shape I had been last fall when Beth and I tackled the brutal Fairyland Canyon hike at Bryce (alongside about 20 miles of trails in and about Zion), I had to stop and catch my breath repeatedly on the ascent.  I kept giving myself a hard time--after all, I'd done Delicate Arch earlier this year on a solid sheet of ice--until I consulted the altimeter on my hand-held GPS (Tabbycita, she's named, for her big sister in my car): the hike rises over 1000 feet in the first mile to mile and a quarter, and a large portion of the hike is over 10,000 feet above sea level!  My blood is simply too thin for that sort of exertion that early in the morning.

There is a fantastic view well worth the hike not quite a mile into the route, looking back down at Maroon Lake from one of the few clearings in the aspens.  If you ever attempt this trail and feel like turning back, make sure to force yourself onward until you do make that viewpoint.

Looking down on Maroon Lake

Stop and spend a few minutes catching your breath, because from there the terrain crossed several shaded switchbacks which anytime outside the middle of summer are likely to be packed with a layer of ice.  Crampons would be a good idea in the backpack of a hiker following the Boy Scout motto, and I honestly felt the going more difficult and slick than Delicate Arch had been back in January.

Crater Lake

Crater Lake itself is a so-so sight in my opinion given the rigors of the hike to reach it, but it does offer a much closer look at the Maroon Bells than the classic shots down along the shores of Maroon Lake.  Would-be mountaineers are advised by signs not to attempt climbing the "deadly Bells" without proper preparation and experience, citing dozens of deaths by even otherwise-experienced climbers annually.

The good thing about the hike back down--besides the fact that it's downhill almost the entire way!--is that you can encourage (or have a chuckle at) all the mid-morning hikers huffing and puffing their way up the path who stop to ask you if it's "much farther" or worth the hike.

By the time I got back to the shores of Maroon Lake at nearly noon, the sun had indeed illuminated the entire basin around the lake.  Unfortunately, between several mallards and a bit of a breeze spoiling any reflections, the pre-dawn clouds having moved on and left behind totally-blue skies, and several dozen tourists posing for quick shots against the majestic backdrop, there wasn't any real chance of capturing a good image, so I set off to Aspen in search of a bite to eat.

Aspen can be very crowded, particularly during ski season as well as the peak of summer and fall foliage, but I found it surprisingly laid-back for a holiday and even found free-for-the-day parking near the city's pedestrian core.  Almost all of the restaurants along the core do seem to be dinner-only establishments, but I found a real gem in the Red Onion, which purports to be the town's oldest restaurant and bar and which dates like the Crystal Mill to 1892 and the area's silver boom.  I enjoyed a pint of local pale ale and one of the best seared ahi tuna salads I've eaten, with the tuna cooked absolutely perfectly (raw inside with a thin layer seared but not blackened) and just the right amount of lemon vinaigrette (most restaurants go way overboard with dressing!).

As I know Beth would never willingly ride out the route to the Crystal Mill and not sure I'd have such an appropriate 4x4 rental the next time in the area anyway, I decided I'd better tackle the punishing drive again while the skies were sunny and take a mulligan on the prior day's overcast grey blanket, rather than spending any time in the many quaint shops of downtown Aspen (with signs proclaiming such encouraging notes as: "Be prepared to spend money!").


The drive out to the Crystal Mill was no less punishing than it had been the prior day--at the end of it, I actually had to crank the Tahoe's full-sized spare back up as it had worked itself nearly loose from beneath the car during the trip--but I did get some fantastic color and light on the mill as my reward.  I also met a young artist hard at work capturing the scene in a painting--certainly the scene is one well-suited to artistic inspiration.  Even with the superior light of my repeat visit, I actually liked the HDR image I made the day before better, though.

I had planned to hit the Maroon Bells for a second morning before flying home on Tuesday, putting to work what I'd learned on my first day there, but when I headed out of the Hampton Inn in Glenwood Springs at a quarter to five, it was raining, and the forecast for the Aspen area was hardly any different.  As I drove down CO82, I did watch the skies closely for any sign of the clouds breaking up--remember, some clouds are a good thing in photographs--but with a repeat of Sunday afternoon's gloomy skies and cloud cover which would stop the pink alpenglow and sunrise's magic cold, I decided to put my frequent flier status on United to work and catch earlier flights home.


Will I make the Maroon Bells an annual pilgrimage as do so many other nature photographers?  Well, it was indeed spectacular and something I'd see again, though there are so many other destinations and sights calling...  Well, next time Beth needs to come along, so perhaps in a year or two, I'll find the shores of Maroon Lake in my travels again.

Posted on 12 October 2011 | 7:23 pm

Keeping the Old Forester Going: DIY Belt Replacement

Earlier this year, I started doing a lot of the maintenance on my car myself--more out of a sense of, "if you want it done right, you've got to do it yourself," than necessarily to save a few dollars, though the latter is nice, too, given the typical mechanic charges more than double what I make per hour.  One of the first tasks I tackled was flushing the power steering system, which solved a multitude of problems--but eight months later the steering started acting up again, this time with an audible squeak I hoped was only the pump drive belt and not the pump itself going bad.

Drive belt cover removed to show the power steering  & alternator belt (left) and air conditioner belt (right)

I've got nearly 90,000 miles on my 2004 Forester XT, and though I've been pretty good with the upkeep, it's nonetheless eight years old.  The steering system had really started to squeak when I first started the car, and the steering wheel had started vibrating again along with the car idling a bit rough at times like it had before I flushed the fluid (don't get me started on how Jiffy Lube had put the wrong fluid in--yeah, I know Dexron III is labeled as transmission fluid and not steering fluid, but that's what Subaru designed the car to take and that's what should be used!).  Replacing the pump would set me back around $150-$400 in parts, depending on whether I went with the OEM or an aftermarket pump, so I figured I'd first try replacing the belt and flushing the fluid again.

I don't believe drive belts are supposed to look quite like this...

The existing drive belt definitely needed to be replaced: as you can see in the photo above, it had split along the length of the belt into three sections, and was starting to fray along one of the strands as well.  I'm actually a bit surprised my battery held a charge, given the same belt drives the alternator and obviously  wasn't working very well, as it was slipping and squeaking a good bit.  The fact the belt is hidden away beneath a cover is no reason I shouldn't have caught this sooner (nor an excuse Jiffy Lube shouldn't have noticed it during one of their services).

Getting the right replacement belt was harder than the replacement itself.  My understanding from much consultation with the Internet tubes is that the generic aftermarket belts from auto parts stores don't quite fit right compared to the OEM ones, and unlike most parts debates across Subaru forums, almost everyone agrees on that point.  I drive right past a Subaru dealership on the way to work, so figured I'd stop in and that their service department would have something like that in stock, but alas, they "were at the warehouse," already closed for the day--and come Monday, the same tech greeted me with the same line he'd given me a few days before: "Oh, I've got some bad news on those belts... they're at the warehouse."  Yep, closed for the day again, too.

The delay pushed back the repair until after I got back from a trip to Vegas with my sister (that's a long story involving a skinny ginger git from Harry Potter and worthy of its own blog post).  Facing a commute to the office with a seriously-deteriorated belt, I decided to tackle the job before going into work.

Under the hood with the belt cover still in place

For the 2004 Forester XT, the accessory drive belts are located beneath a plastic safety cover (pictured above, foreground).  This comes off with the removal of two bolts--have a ratchet with metric sizes on hand, and you'll have no problems getting it off and out of the way.

Bolts which need to be loosened to remove the power steering & alternator drive belt (red circles)

Even split and as worn as my belt was, it had plenty of tension and wasn't about to slip right off.  I could have cut it--the existing belt wasn't exactly in great shape anyway--but given the new belt installation requires getting things loosened up, there's no avoiding releasing the belt tension.  There are three bolts for the power steering and alternator drive belt (which are mirrored for the air conditioner compressor drive belt); I've circled them in red in the photo above.  The two leftmost bolts are called out in the service manual and serve to tension the belts--to adjust, first loosen the bottom bolt a few turns, as it locks the entire assembly in place, then turn the top bolt to move the alternator up or down and thus increase or decrease the belt tension accordingly.

Before you get too far and wonder why the belt doesn't seem to be getting any looser, here's something my service manual neglected to include: notice the third bolt (center right, above)?  You have to loosen it as well so that the alternator can pivot as you adjust the long bolt on the left; a half turn or two is all it should take.  I had to really lower the alternator to be able to get the old belt out and the new one in, running that long bolt nearly all the way out.

While you've got the power steering and alternator belt out of the way, you should go ahead and replace the air conditioner belt, too, as belts tend to show similar wear, and you can't get to the a/c belt without first removing the power steering one.  The tensioner is similar to the one for the power steering and is located just to the left of the air conditioner compressor (the thing with the big pulley on the right of the image above).

Once the new belts are in place, just reverse the process you used to loosen the components and relieve the belt tension in the first place.  The belts should be tightened until they displace about a quarter of an inch under firm pressure, something you can measure by putting a straightedge between the pulleys and then pushing the belt down with one finger while measuring the distance it moves down with a small ruler (easier said than done).  Don't forget to tighten the bolt which allowed the alternator and compressor to pivot down.

I did the change-out in about 10 minutes before going to work one morning, so it should be easy for anyone to accomplish.  No special tools are required--just a socket wrench--and the parts aren't particularly expensive (both belts together set me back around $25 from a local Subaru dealership).  Replacing the belts eliminated my car's squeak, smoothed out the steering system, and should be good for another 90,000 miles or so.

Posted on 21 September 2011 | 9:31 pm

Birthday Browsing in Barcelona

Normally, my birthdays are spent at home, with a cake fresh out of the oven and perhaps some steaks hot off the grill, but this year--turning 29 for the 8th time--I got to enjoy the annual celebration whilst abroad.

Beth and I had had a couple of days to get our bearings in Barcelona, with Beth dusting off her Spanish and me trying to absorb some of the local Catalan.  We'd walked La Rambla, enjoyed each afternoon and evening sitting out on a patio or courtyard somewhere with a glass of cava, a mug of cervesa, and a fair bit of vina blanca.  We'd learned the shortcut to the Metro from our hotel and could navigate the mass transit system like locals (well, almost).  But like so much else of our trip, I'd decided just to play my birthday by ear, with only a rough idea as to what I wanted to do.

After a nice continental breakfast at the hotel, we set out for a bit of shopping.  Beth wanted to track down some Mothers' Day gifts, and I'd seen a photo of a hat shop in one of the many travel guides we consulted prior to the trip which gave me an idea of how to answer Beth's question: "What do you want for your birthday?"  Yes, Sombrereria Obach is something of a tourist staple, but it's also quaint enough that I just had to stop in and see what new headwear I could find.  I ended up with a floppy cotton hat which I can roll up and stick in my pocket and which is a bit smaller than the fedora I often travel in.  Prices at the shop reflected its location just off the big tourist drag (at €55, it's one of the more expensive hats I own), but hey, it was my birthday after all!

Beth shows off her scarf from Barcelona

After a bit more shopping with stops at a scarf shop--where I exchanged the gift favor and got Beth the fashion accessory that seems a necessity amongst Barcelona natives, namely, a frilly scarf--we hopped a train to nearby Montserrat... a topic for a later blog; all I'll say for now is that Mussolini would be proud of the punctuality of the Spanish train system.

Thanks to Barcelona's latitude--somewhere between NYC and Boston despite having a much more Mediterranean climate--even in early May sunset didn't come until 8:30pm or later, leaving us plenty of time to head out on the town for a birthday dinner after getting back from Montserrat.  (Side note: On the train ride back, we shared seats for part of the trip with a woman traveling with her cat in her lap; I cannot believe how calm and laid-back the kitty was on public transportation!)  Beth had been after me to pick a good place to eat, and I spent most the train ride flipping back and forth through the Barcelona city guides we had on hand to try to narrow down our selection.

Let me stop for a moment and point out that Barcelona is considered one of the world's top gastronomic destinations, with the broader metropolitan region claiming what is rated by many critics to be the planet's number-one eatery (ahead of Keller's "French Laundry" and "Per Se" in the US and several Paris restaurants) in El Bulli.  Unfortunately, with Chef Ferran Adrià deciding to close this July, reservations are completely unavailable at El Bulli--but fear not; there are still plenty of fantastic places to grab a bite in Cataluyna.

I ended up picking a little hole-in-the-wall called "Bar Seco" on the hillside of the El Poble Sec neighborhood leading up Montjuïc based on a description in one of our travel guides--as I wanted something not too loud, not too crowded, not requiring reservations (as it was already after 6:00pm!), and which offered a genuine, local experience.  It's not too far from the nearest Metro (Paral-Lel on the L2 and L3 lines), though I will say the neighborhood was certainly more residential than some of the more urban environs we'd spent the past couple of days getting to know.

Bar Seco, street view

Bar Seco became one of the highlights of our trip!  The self-described alimentació (which Google helpfully translates as meaning "feeding" in Catalan) is indeed something of a hole-in-the-wall, with a small set of bar seating supplemented by perhaps four tables for two and in-season about the same amount of terrace tables outside.  The proprietors are proponents of the "slow food" movement, which is a sort of antithesis of our American notion of McDonald's-style fast food joints: slow food emphasizes local ingredients and flavors.  Bar Seco does that throughout their menu and their (non-dry) bar selections.

For a change from all the Cava and other vina we'd enjoyed on our trip so far, Beth and I opted for local cervezas (beer), with the unappetizingly-named "Glops"--an unfiltered dark ale--as our favorite winning out over a Montserrat brewski.  We went with the recommendation of our server on our choice of tapas, with some absolutely fantastic patatas bravas (I apologize for not recalling the local distinction of same--other than that they were the best we had the entire trip) and vegetarian-friendly sandwich fare for Beth (a bocadillo made with local cheese and fruit, along with the best veggie-burger I've ever eaten).

Though not a full dinner spread, we nonetheless filled our bellies.  For the first year in many, I didn't have a cake fresh from a box (some traditions win out over the fully made-from-scratch cooking that generally goes on at Chateau Papillon), and given our scheduled early morning departure to Andalucía, we didn't try to catch a spot of gelato on our way back to the hotel.  Nonetheless, it had been quite a good birthday indeed.

Posted on 6 June 2011 | 9:20 pm

Weekend DIY at Chateau Papillon: Toilet Replacement

Channel-lock pliers. Bolt cutters. Hacksaw. Brake cleaner. WD-40. 9/16 box end wrench. Chisel. Screwdriver. Socket wrench. Hammer. Putty knife. These are some of the tools needed to remove the old toilet in my bathroom at Chateau Papillon, thanks to the heavily-rusted flange bolts holding it to the floor. After all that, I wonder if a sledgehammer might not have done the job of all of them together and with more satisfying fun to boot.

Replacing a toilet isn't really that hard of a job--I've tackled far more challenging DIY projects at Chateau Papillon in the past.  Still, like so many home improvement jobs, it ended up taking a lot longer than I'd expected; I had figured on about an hour total to remove the old toilet and install the new one, and it took closer to three.

Why the new toilet?  It was an "impulse buy" at Costco, I have to admit.  Beth and I had gone specifically to check out a laundry sink--something I spied at a Costco in Richmond last summer but which until now our local one had never had in stock--and right next to the sink were several high-efficiency, dual-flush toilets for under $90.  That's a pretty good buy; I'd looked at similar units at Lowe's and Home Depot before, typically for upwards of $150 with several brand-name models over $280.  Couple with that the fact we'd just gotten back from Spain, where like so much of Europe the toilets are similar to the one in the store, and we were sold.

Not to mention that my bathroom's old toilet was wearing out--I'd had to replace several parts on it over the past couple of years.  Nor that it was a water-hog, slurping down around 5 gallons per flush.  I don't think it dated back to the original home construction (mid-'60s), but the toilet wasn't much newer than that, either.

First, the old toilet (pictured above) had to come out.  Turn off the water, flush, pour a bucket of hot water through to empty the bowl, and remove.  You'd think that wasn't going to be a very difficult task, but you'd be wrong.  Two flange bolts hold the toilet to the floor, and the problem with older toilets is that the nuts on those bolts are typically rusted solidly in place.  Worse, the flange bolts heads simply fit into a slot on the flange beneath the toilet, so there's very little leverage to be had: the entire bolts will just spin in place.  Enter the list of tools and materials leading off this post...

I tried penetrating oil, WD40, and even brake cleaner (which consists mostly of very light, very volatile hydrocarbon solvents), and though I did thus manage to dislodge quite a bit of rust, that was it.  I had the most success gripping the tops of the bolts with some really big channel-lock pilers and using a box-end wrench to twist the nut in the opposite direction--though this really crushed the threads on the ends of the bolts.  Unfortunately, one bolt was so rusted that the end simply snapped off when torqued--and of course it wasn't the end between the toilet and the floor that broke.

Next came a chisel; I figured if the bolts were that fragile, I might be able to snap them off beneath the nuts.  This meant some rather awkward hammering, as I didn't want to slip and shatter the toilet itself into a million tiny fragments of porcelain.  That didn't get me very far, and next up was a hacksaw.  The problem there was that my toilet was crammed back into a nook, giving me all of a couple of inches of space and a completely useless angle to use the saw.  I gave up on the saw, but perseverance paid off in the end when I managed to get a pair of bolt cutters onto one of the two.  This gave me enough leverage to twist the entire toilet free without further work on the second bolt, as I was able to rotate the toilet around the flange enough that the bolt head aligned with the slot used to originally install it (sort of like the wide part of an old-fashioned keyhole).



Notice, too, that the old toilet tank had leaned right against the wall and collected a nice bit of moisture, as well as some mildew where the original wallboard had apparently never been painted at all.  Taking care of that required a scrub brush, some bleach, and a couple of hours of drying time followed by several coats of paint--thankfully, we still had part of a gallon of the "Miami Mist" color on hand.

Everything finally prepped meant it was time at last to install the new toilet.  New flange bolts into the flange: check.  New rubber seal and wax gasket: check.  Remove the rag in the sewer pipe: check.  With Beth's help, I got the new toilet in place, gave it a little twist (to seat the wax gasket properly), and secured it to the floor.  Note that I absolutely slathered the new flange bolts with WD-40, as I expect I'll need to move the toilet at least once when I get around to a total bathroom remodel in a couple of years and retile the floor and walls.  Hook up the water, fill, and flush: nice.  No leaks.


The dual-flush on the new toilet uses only 1 gallon of water for the "light" flush (and though it may be a bit grotesque of me to say so, I do typically follow the Southern California dicta of letting yellow mellow to save water, too) and 1.6 for the "heavy" flush.  While some high-efficiency models are prone to clogs and otherwise problematic, this one seems to work like a charm so far.  (We'll see if the dual-flush mechanism on top of the tank confuses anyone the next time we have guests over...)

The old toilet, thoroughly cleaned, ended up on the cub for Habitat for Humanity to pick up, bound for a new home no doubt.  A little disappointing, I must say, not to take drag it out into the woods for a consultation with a shotgun, but, like the new toilet upgrade, a more environmentally-friendly choice.

Posted on 4 June 2011 | 1:35 pm

Getting Our Bearings in Barcelona

At one end of La Rambla, Christopher Columbus gestures the explorer's vague but determined "thataway."  At the other stands the Plaça Catalunya. In between: an opera house, art museums, street vendors, living statues, and tourists, tourists, tourists finding their way through the Catalan capital city's most famous walk.


Our flight arrived shortly before noon, giving us plenty of time to head over to our hotel, get settled and cleaned up, then hit the city for our first immersion in Spanish culture (or, I should say, Catalan culture; Barcelona may be a part of Spain, but it is first and foremost a part of Cataluyna--with a separate Romance language that reads to the uninitiated like some cross between le français and Español, or Castillian).  Though we were staying out in the Forum neighborhood--a mishmash of modernisme architecture, contemporary corporate-consumer-antichic, convention center, and overdeveloped beachfront--Barcelona's public transportation is excellent and got us to the city center in short order via a 5 minute walk and 20 minute Metro ride.  And though Barcelona is deservedly described as an eminently walkable city, the 3-day Metro passes we picked up for around €12 were well-worthwhile investments.  (One other thing of note: Barcelona's Metro is similar to the London Underground more than to the Washington, D.C., Metro from our home in that transfer stations are apparently two separate stations connected by a few flights of stairs and a kilometer or so of tunnel.  I'm much more used to walking 100 meters and taking an escalator to switch lines--I'm glad we took a cab from the airport instead of trying to take rail and bus!)

In the Plaça Catalunya, but not the more humble Font de Canaletes

We began our promenade down La Rambla from the Plaça Catalunya, though somehow we missed the most of the plaza itself--apparently taking the Metro exit closest to the street instead of the square.  I suppose over 10 hours of flying and nearly 14 of total travel is a lame if honest excuse for that oversight.  That was too bad as we missed the Font de Canaletes, the fountain whose waters guarantee he who drinks them will return to Barcelona.  For what it's worth, I don't think it takes a mystical sip from an antique fountain to ensure that we'll one day visit the city again--Barcelona is certainly one of my favorite cities from even our brief stay.


The street itself is named for the Arabic word for "intermittent stream" or "riverbed" (n.b. I'm relying on my guide books and Wikipedia here--Arabic is unfortunately not a language I know enough even to curse in) after the drainage paths around the old city walls of the Barri Gòtic.

Predatoralienstatueguy

Even on a mid-week afternoon a bit ahead of the real tourist season, La Rambla is busy!  Fortunately, the street is limited to pedestrian traffic--I can't imagine if a la Bangkok the narrow thoroughfare had cars, motorcycles driven by the terminally insane, tuk-tuks, and the occasional lorry or two trying to plow their way through the crowd.  The press of people alone is more than enough for the agoraphobic ambulator.

Posted on 12 May 2011 | 9:48 pm

Notes for the Frequent Traveler, Part 1: Lounge Hopping for Our Spain Trip

The frequent traveler lives by airline lounges and what amenities each offers: showers after a long international flight, perhaps? Free snacks and booze? Which has the best views of the comings and goings out on the tarmac?  Where is the best place to check e-mail, unwind, or catch a couple of hours of shut-eye before the next flight?  Is there even a reason to trek over to the lounge instead of just sitting at the gate?  No doubt the infrequent air traveler won't find much of interest in this blog post, but for those of us who love to travel, these are weighty matters indeed!

Beth and I put these issues to the test during our recent trip to Spain, which involved flights from our nation's capital; Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany; Barcelona, Spain; Málaga, Spain; and Brussels, Belgium.  So how did the lounges stack up?





First off, we paid a visit to the Lufthansa Senator Lounge at Dulles (IAD) on our day of departure, despite the fact we were flying United across the pond.  A somewhat little-known yet open secret is that the IAD Lufthansa Lounge is a Star Alliance Gold lounge, meaning that any traveler who holds gold status with a Star Alliance member airline can visit it in connection with a Star Alliance flight (for a real shocker: domestic flights, too; I've had no problems visiting when flying United to St. Louis or Seattle, for example)--not just those flying Lufthansa.  The lounge is over in the B Concourse, but it's almost right across from the train station, making it an easy trip from check-in at the main terminal.

Beth enjoys a Beck's in the IAD LH Senator Lounge

The Lufthansa Senator lounge is a welcome alternative to the United Red Carpet Clubs as it is generally far less crowded (excepting the times around the morning ANA flight to Tokyo or the later Germany flights) and offers food--and no, the RCC's selection of cheese cubes, crackers, and celery sticks does not count as food.  It's also much brighter, cleaner, and more more modern.  Really, the only downsides are the hours--it opens around 8:30am (the RCC opens at 6:00), the Germans uncharacteristically take a siesta around lunchtime, and the lounge closes earlier than the RCC--and the trek over to your United flight in the A, C, or D Concourse, which means leaving the lounge at least 45 minutes prior to scheduled boarding.  The wifi isn't free, either, and although IAD offers airport-wide free wifi now, the signal quality inside the lounge was so poor I found it nearly worthless.

Just be sure to allow yourself plenty of time to catch the train loop back to the main terminal, A, then the train to C or shuttle to D (or to walk to the shuttle station at A or the far end of B): I'd leave the lounge no later than 45 minutes before your flight boards, earlier if flying internationally (as you'll have to do a document check at your gate).

There are showers downstairs in the Business Lounge--which Star Alliance Gold passengers should be allowed to access regardless of their class of travel, as the Senator Lounge is technically the more "prestigious" of the two.  I've never had the chance to try them out, though, since Washington is my home airport and there's really no need for me to shower given I could have at home.

Unfortunately, due to ABC laws in Virginia, the Lufthansa lounge isn't self-serve when it comes to bier, wein, schnapps and the like--which may come as a surprise to the seasoned international traveler used to pouring their own.  Attendants can be hard to find; I've noticed they will occasionally open the mirror behind the bar and glance out quickly, so you can either catch their eyes then or go over and knock at the kitchen door.

Finally, over the past couple of years, the Senator Lounge's food selection has fallen off a bit in quality, and it can be more crowded than it used to be.  Still, it's leagues ahead of the Red Carpet Clubs, as you'll soon see.


Beth and I left the Lufthansa Senator Lounge about an hour before our flight, and the train (B to Main Terminal to A to C) followed by the long walk from the  station (you see, C/D Concourse is "temporary," and has been for 20+ years--and the train station is where the MWAA eventually plans the real C/D concourse to go) took us a good 15 minutes.  That still gave us time to visit the United Red Carpet Club closest to our flight: the C7 location.

Anyone who's visited the IAD Red Carpet Clubs knows why the lounges play second fiddle to the LH Senator Lounge.  They're all poorly-lit (located at tarmac level, e.g. in the basement) and are typically too hot and are ridiculously crowded--the past few trips to Europe, I haven't been able to find a seat anywhere in the lounge!  Nor do they offer any real food: mornings mean bananas and toast (maybe), with the rest of the day offering cheese cubes straight off a 1970s party tray coupled with crackers and celery and carrot slices.  At least the Red Carpet Club went to free booze about a year ago (dispensing with the often-argued "chit" system where international travelers were supposed to receive two drink coupons)... but the gratis selection is limited to a couple of cheap beers on tap, house wines, and bottom-shelf liquors.  Still, the house wines are usually okay.

The lounge does offer free wifi--members automatically get it, and Star Alliance Gold or international  first or business passengers can request a one-time T-Mobile voucher card--and it typically works far better than the free wifi in the airport (though when the lounge is busy, performance predictably drops).  You can also talk to flight agents (Beth and I did our EU-bound document check at the club, for example, instead of waiting at the counter at the gate).


In Frankfurt, the Star Alliance traveler has plenty of options, as the airport is a hub for Lufthansa.  As we were connecting onward to a Schengen-zone destination (Barcelona), that meant first going through passport control (immigration) and then clearing security again, but we still had plenty of time even with as confusing a layout as FRA can be.  We ended up at the Lufthansa Business Lounge near gate A26, as we were departing via A29 for Barcelona.

Beth with an espresso in Frankfurt

The Lufthansa "lounge dragons" (a play on the fact that they, like most airline lounge attendants around the world, stand guard like dragons before a moat and often have less-than-sunny demeanors if you're trying to sneak by them) have the admittance process down to a science, using a barcode scanner on your boarding pass.  The downside is that you thus need an onward Star Alliance flight (switching to another alliance or terminating at FRA means no lounge for you).  If you're flying business--as Beth was--or first class, the lounge scanner sends you right in.  I, as a Star Alliance Gold member flying onward in economy class, had to also present my Star Alliance Gold membership card (United 1K or Continental Platinum for me) before the computers would allow Fraulein Lounge Dragon to let me pass.

The Schengen-zone Lufthansa Business Lounge, like many of the Frankfurt lounges, can be very crowded--feeling almost like a domestic Red Carpet Club in the US.  We did manage to find an open table, though, near the buffet area, and settled in for some much-needed espresso, juice, pastries, and, in my case (despite it being around 8:30am) a big, delicious witbier.  One other comment: like apparently so many European airports, Frankfurt (including its lounges) seems to be kept at sauna temperatures by management.


In Barcelona, there are two sets of lounges available in Terminal 1's Schengen area, where hub carrier Spanair operates: the Sala VIP Lounge, and right across from it, the shared Star Alliance Lounge.  (Spanair doesn't have its own flagship lounge for some reason.)

There was a lot of talk a couple of years ago when the new terminal (T1) opened--when Star Alliance passengers shared the Sala VIP Lounge--that the new Star lounge would be absolutely posh, with such things as Playstation 3s, massage tables, and a golf simulator.  Apparently, some contractor pocketed all the funds for those things (I'm joking, I hope), because they're either not well-marked or simply aren't there.  The lounge is pretty spacious, anyway--though granted we were there at 6:00am prior to our flight down to Málaga, so the time of day could have something to do with it.  Food selection wasn't great--certainly not on par with what I expect of international lounges--but the pastries and a café were fine to start the day since we left our hotel earlier than they had breakfast available.

I understand there's free wired Internet access, but the wifi is pay-only. We only had a few minutes in the lounge, anyway (with a 6:50am flight out!), so I didn't really worry that much about it.  A little food in our tummies and some caffeine to start the day is all we needed, and we avoided paying the ridiculous €2+ for vending machines at the airport.


We started to stop by the Sala VIP Lounge in Málaga on our way back to Barcelona, but it was a dark omen when there was no Star Alliance signage outside the lounge.

I presented my United 1K card and boarding pass and asked the agent at the counter if they honored Star Alliance status, and she explained that Spanair wasn't willing to pay the airport and lounge for passengers to use it.  She did say that they'd let me in (as a Star Gold flying Spanair), but that as it wasn't a Star Alliance lounge, I couldn't have a guest.  Beth was willing to see me on inside, but I demurred and thus we both bypassed said lounge.

Beth enjoys some Trappist-brewed  Leffe in  Brussels

Beth and I finished up our trip with a connection in Brussels, Belgium, and we completed our lounge tour with a stop at the Brussels Airlines Business Lounge after shopping several chocolate vendors in duty-free.


Belgium is known for both its chocolatiers and its brewers, and I certainly didn't let the morning hour dissuade me from sampling the Leffe ales (I had both a brown and a blonde to start my day--how's that?!) the lounge had on hand. Granted, InBev/Anheuser-Busch produces said beers and does so in quantity (InBev is headquartered in Belgium), which would typically preclude any kind of quality, but we're definitely not talking Bud Light, either! These "abbey beers" are very similar to some of the Trappist ales I've tasted and made for a good morning indeed.

I do have to say the espresso machine let me down a bit; the stuff it put out would be strong by coffee standards in the US, but we're talking Europe here. Judging by those more stringent specifications, the stuff was little more than muddy water. Food was only so-so, a bit above the Spanair lounge but still little more than a few croissants and a dish of snack mix (well, the lounge dragon's counter did have a bowl of gummi bears, too). Beth accidentally poured me a grapefruit juice, and I found that as an adult I found the stuff palatable--last time I tried it I was probably 10 and had triple the tastebuds I do today.

The biggest downside was that the lounge lacked its own bathrooms--or if any were in evidence, I couldn't find them. There were some shared facilities in the hall outside the lounge, shared apparently across the Star Alliance and OneWorld lounges--but which made the average US shopping mall bathroom look like something from a penthouse suite at the Four Seasons. I'm used to even the domestic Red Carpet Clubs having bathrooms a notch over the rest of the airport, if not full shower facilities to boot.

Still, the beer alone made the stop worth it.

Posted on 11 May 2011 | 10:05 pm

Updated Chateau Papillon Bird List

It's that time of year: Spring migration, and time to keep an eye and ear to the skies for any new birds for the Chateau Papillon list.  Although we haven't added any "life birds" via the yard in a while (not since the Red-breasted Nuthatch last September), April and May have nonetheless contributed three new birds to the yard list.

Male Eastern Towhee on the fence at Chateau Papillon

All of our work naturalizing the yard and making it as bird-friendly as possible is paying off, and I only expect us to see more new species ahead--we're only at three warblers so far, and we ought to be able to chalk up a dozen or more in time.

Spring has brought the early arrival of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds as well, forcing us to dig out the nectar feeder a couple of weeks before we usually would, along with several "old friends" passing through, including a large flock of Purple Finches, several Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, and a Northern Catbird.  The springtime evening breeze carries the calls of the Barred Owl from the woods behind us, and of course our friend the Pileated Woodpecker pays frequent visits for our suet.

Sally asking for a meal worm handout

And, of course, Harry and Sally--our resident Eastern Bluebirds--are hard at work on a clutch of four eggs.

We stand now at 59 confirmed species in the yard; maybe we can make 60 before the end of springtime:

1. Blackbird, Red-winged
2. Bluebird, Eastern
3. Bunting, Indigo
4. Cardinal, Northern
5. Catbird, Grey
6. Chickadee, Carolina
7. Cowbird, Brown
8. Creeper, Brown
9. Crow, American
10. Crow, Fish
11. Cuckoo, Yellow-billed
12. Dove, Mourning
13. Finch, House
14. Finch, Purple
15. Flicker, Northern
16. Flycatcher, Great Crested
17. Goldfinch, American
18. Goose, Canada
19. Grackle, Common
20. Grosbeak, Rose-breasted
21. Hawk, Cooper's
22. Hawk, Red-shouldered
23. Hawk, Red-tailed
24. Heron, Great Blue
25. Hummingbird, Ruby-throated
26. Jay, Blue
27. Junco, Dark-eyed
28. Kingbird, Eastern
29. Mallard
30. Mockingbird, Northern
31. Nuthatch, Red-breasted
32. Nuthatch, White-breasted
33. Owl, Barred
34. Parula, Northern
35. Phoebe, Eastern
36. Robin, American
37. Siskin, Pine
38. Sparrow, Chipping
39. Sparrow, Fox
40. Sparrow, House
41. Sparrow, Song
42. Sparrow, White-crowned
43. Sparrow, White-throated
44. Starling, European
45. Swallow, Tree
46. Thrasher, Brown
47. Thrush, Wood
48. Titmouse, Tufted
49. Towhee, Eastern
50. Vulture, Turkey
51. Warbler, Palm
52. Warbler, Yellow-rumped
53. Waxwing, Cedar
54. Woodpecker, Downy
55. Woodpecker, Hairy
56. Woodpecker, Pileated
57. Woodpecker, Red-bellied
58. Wren, Carolina
59. Wren, House

Posted on 1 May 2011 | 4:03 pm

A Question of Light: Mesa Arch at Sunrise (Or, Sometimes It Pays to Be Late to Work)

It's often said that the majority of nature photographers are late to work--and the intent of that statement is not that we're out taking pictures and then heading into our "day jobs." No, the best light comes during the so-called "golden hours" surrounding sunrise and sunset, and that means getting up, dressed, grabbing a bite to eat (and more importantly, a mug of coffee), trekking into the field, and getting gear set up for those fleeting moments, all at times that honest folks are still sawing logs and making drool puddles on their pillows and too-often in temperatures which drive sane folks to hike the covers up over their heads instead of hiking out into the countryside.

The iconic monuments of the desert southwest are no exception to this rule (indeed, many stand as exemplars of the golden-hour), and my destination on this late-winter morning, Mesa Arch in Canyonlands National Park, stands near the top of the mandatory dawn locales.  Sunrise turns the bottom of the arch completely and brilliantly orange-red with reflected light from the red rocks below.  Fortunately for the morning-challenged (a demographic into which I solidly fall), Mesa Arch involves neither a particularly long drive nor hike. It's perhaps 30-40 minutes from Moab and at most a 10 minute hike from the road, mostly across level ground, too.  A flashlight is helpful, but pre-dawn illumination should be good enough if you watch your step but still keep up a good pace--I had no problems at all.

Turret Arch through the North Window -- Arches National Park

Visiting red rock country, I didn't have a concrete plan for my first morning on the ground after a drive along the Colorado River and sunset at the Fisher Towers.  I had considered visiting the Windows district in Arches National Park for sunrise for the classic shot of Turret Arch through the North Window--which I'd photographed last spring with Beth but came away with a photo I wasn't entirely pleased with due to the late-breaking sun and the shadows across the bottom of Turret Arch.  That, too, is a fairly close drive from Moab and not a tough hike (though positioning for the traditional composition does require climbing about 40-50 feet up some steep slickrock formations, as well as crossing an area which may eventually be made off-limits to protect the cryptobiotic soil).  But I'd skipped Canyonlands on my previous trips to Utah, and Mesa Arch would be something new.

Mesa Arch at "Sunrise" -- Too bad the sun didn't put in an appearance!

I was a bit surprised to find several cars in the parking area when I pulled in well before sunrise, at about 6:30am.  For the most part, I'd nearly had the Moab area to myself in the off-season, and I hadn't encountered another vehicle on the drive out to Canyonlands.  Either some folks had actually camped out in the park (not likely given the overnight temperatures!), or had gotten up really early for Mesa Arch.  At the end of my short hike, I found about a half dozen photographers set up already, apparently part of a group expedition.

Now, as a photographer, I not only respect others' shots but the use of parks by anyone else out enjoying nature, be they hikers, birdwatchers, climbers, or joggers.  I unfortunately discovered that respect isn't a universal value, though, given how a couple of the members of the group really monopolized the viewpoint of Mesa Arch.  Typically, there's room for all; for example, when photographing the Towers of the Virgin at Zion National Park last fall, I found myself in the middle of a photography seminar perhaps fifteen strong, but was able to take a spot that yielded some quite nice photography without disrupting anyone else.  Here, one lady in particular kept moving closer to the arch as dawn approached, using a wide angle and interposing herself into my composition (along with those of a couple of other photographers from her own group who'd set up to the left as I had).  Worse, she just camped out in the photo; she could have filled a fairly large memory card with images in the time she spent blocking the shot for the rest of us.  I dunno, but my photographer's ethic says I don't spoil the enjoyment others may be getting out of nature just to make my own shot work.

The grey, cloud-cloaked dawn left me with the last laugh, so to speak.  The large group checked their watches a few times, grumbled about sunrise having come and gone with no glimpse of the sun itself, and eventually gave up and left.  A late-arriving couple, one foreign hiker, and I were all who remained, lingering in the hope against hope that perhaps the sun would at last show.


Finally, the sun did indeed peek above the low clouds, still low enough to the horizon to render that wonderful, reflected light up from the canyon walls below onto Mesa Arch.  I can only imagine what a proper sunrise would have done--what a fantastic spectacle that must be, and surely a requirement for a later trip back to Canyonlands--but unlike the early birds who left, defeated, I did get a glimpse of what Mesa Arch is supposed to look like in the right light.

Posted on 22 February 2011 | 7:57 pm

Silicone Intercooler Pipes for the Forester

In trying to track down a minor fuel leak under my hood, I noticed what appeared to be a very timeworn hose--and though large parts of said hose were hidden away from sight, its purpose was clear: the hose led from turbocharger to intercooler, and I can't imagine having that hose fail while driving would lead to good times.  So after a bit of research, I ordered not the cheaply-built OEM plastic pipe but a snazzy silicone set which would stand up to the temperatures of a turbocharged engine better and look good at the same time.  Replacing the turbo hoses would involve my first real bit of mechanical disassembly under the hood and give me some good practice for future maintenance.

The intercooler with its fancy new silicone Y-pipe installed

Between the appropriate Haynes repair manual and Peaty's excellent instructions over at the SubaruForester.org forums, the process wasn't too difficult and something any amateur mechanic could tackle--the hardest part was working the old hoses loose and getting the intercooler out without bending any of the delicate metal radiator vanes (you can see some bent vanes in the photo above--not due to my handiwork, I can assure you).

The original intercooler pipes--cheap plastic covered with foam wrapping

I made sure to clean the fittings well--they had a little bit of cooked blow-by oil on them from the turbocharger, but not as much as I'd feared.  Still, there was enough oil that it makes me wonder if I might need to replace the turbocharger itself in the next couple of years; I'll definitely give it a good once-over when I have the intake manifold apart when the weather gets a bit nicer.  I did after all have the engine throw an AVCS-related code a couple of years ago, most likely due to an oil filter screen dropping down into the AVCS body--and in the process, the turbo could have starved for oil a bit and taken on a bit of excess wear.

While I had the intercooler off, I also gave the engine a treatment of Sea Foam straight in through the throttle body, given it hadn't had an upper cleaning for at least 20,000 miles (if ever--I asked for one at my 60k service, but am not sure the mechanic actually performed it or not).  On the 2004 Forester XT, there just isn't a vacuum line which feeds all four cylinders equally, so applying the cleaner straight into the throttle body is a necessity and cleans the throttle butterfly, too.  Surprisingly, the Sea Foam didn't yield quite as much smoke as I'd expected--some folks describe the effect as a spy-gadget smokescreen as atomized carbon deposits make their way out the exhaust--maybe the mechanic had actually done an engine upper cleaning after all.

I went with the Samco intercooler hose set for the 2006-and-newer Subaru Impreza WRX (part TCS332).  Samco doesn't make a Forester XT-specific hose set, but two of the three pipes in the WRX one are directly compatible with the 2004 FXT: the Y-pipe (the replacement of which had started this whole exercise) and the short coupler between the intercooler outlet and the throttle body.  The third hose, the blowoff valve recirculator hose, won't work in the 2004 Forester XT due to being the completely wrong shape, but my original BOV recirc hose looks fine.

Putting the intercooler back on wasn't too hard--the hoses were significantly easier to reattach than they had been to remove.  After a bit of idling in the driveway to make sure nothing was leaking, I took the car out for a spin.

The completed installation

I do need to work on the vanes on the intercooler a bit; bugs and even some small pebbles (!) sucked in through the hood air scoop have left their marks on the delicate metal. It's a painstaking task with a safety pin, though, and something I don't want to do when it's near-freezing outside.

Next up: maintenance on some of the oil supply lines to inspect (and in two cases completely remove) poorly-designed filter screens from inside the banjo bolt union screws.  One of these already caused a "check engine" code on my car a couple of years ago--thankfully without doing apparent damage to the oil control valves--while another can critically starve the turbo of the oil it needs to spin at 100,000+ RPM.  I've still got plans to take apart the intake manifold and fix the cold-weather leaky fuel line problem affecting so many Subarus, but that's a task for warmer weather and a long weekend.  After that, I may install the OEM turbo boost gauge to see just what sort of output I'm getting from my stock turbocharger.

Posted on 6 February 2011 | 7:30 pm

Escaping Winter ... With Winter? Red Rocks Revisited and a January Trip to the Colorado Plateau

Winter in the Washington, D.C., area can be a bit dreary--come mid-January, I'm typically ready to hit the road and escape the chill for a few days (all the while dreaming of a snowbird home on the Gulf coast). So it may come as something of a surprise that my first trip of 2011 took me not to a tropical destination but instead to the high desert country of the Colorado Plateau.

Of all the places I've traveled, the red rock deserts of southern Utah and western Colorado left me the most breathless (and not due to the altitude, mind you).  Beth and I visited southern Utah for the first time last spring with a short weekend holiday to Goblin Valley and a visit to Arches National Park, then returned in the fall to take in two of the other "great circle" national parks in Bryce Canyon and Zion.  As beautiful as the parks were, I wanted to see them again with some snow on the ground in the midst of winter.  Too, all of these magnificent parks have come a long way since the days of Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire and can be quite crowded in the peak spring and fall seasons, but winter can be a magnificent, near-solitary experience.


As Beth wasn't able to come along, I didn't want to tackle the longer trip to Bryce Canyon (necessitating a drive up from Vegas for United flies like me--though SkyWest has now resumed one daily flight from LAX to St. George, Utah, which would make it a much nicer trip).  So I decided on a flight to Grand Junction, Colorado, and a fairly short drive down to the Moab, Utah, area, to take in Arches in winter, along with visits to Canyonlands National Park and finally a stop at the Colorado National Monument.

My trip down from Grand Junction to Moab gave me the chance to take Scenic Byway 128, a wonderful stretch of highway that runs along the Colorado River.  (When Beth and I visited Arches last spring, we took the more-modern US 191 down from Interstate 70, as we were coming from the west after our trip to Goblin Valley.)  My flight timing and the drive's duration meant I'd have only one real stop for the evening's "golden hour" of sunset light, and I'd chosen the Fisher Towers for my first real photographic opportunity of the trip.

In his Photographing the Southwest, Laurent Martres calls the Fisher Towers the "reddest rocks you'll find at sunset."  Although I personally think Red Canyon near Bryce takes that honor, I have to say that he's not far off the mark with respect to the Fisher Towers, either.

There's a spot Laurent describes where you can climb down from one of the many pull-outs along SB 128 to the Colorado River and capture the Fisher Towers, La Sal Mountains, and the Colorado River all in one shot.  It took me several different stops and a bit of walking around before I found the exact spot he described.  I'll let the curious buy Mr. Matrtres book (which is fantastic, along with his subsequent volumes covering Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona), but it is as he described quite a steep, slick hike down through the brush and out to a rock perched in the river itself.

Winter is definitely a good time to photograph the Fisher Towers with the added interest of snow white dusted across the intense reds that draw the human eye like no other color can--but timing is still tricky. The best time would be early winter, after a bit of snow but before the Colorado has iced over (as in my photo above, an icy river doesn't yield the kind of stunning reflection you can capture in slightly warmer weather).  You need to take this shot an hour or more before sunset, as the river itself will quickly fall completely into shadows well before the Fisher Towers are at their prime red glow.  A vertical crop on a decent medium telephoto would work quite well when the river offers up a reflection--note I used a horizontal and cropped out most of the river here given there's only so much interest to be had in the river's ice.


Another benefit of wintertime for the photographer is that the work day is shorter; during our spring trip, Beth and I were up before 5:00 am and into the field before 6:30, and though we could have spent the hours of harsh mid-day light catching a cat-nap in the car, catching both dawn and dusk meant putting in a 12-14 hour "day."  During the winter, sunrise comes as late as 7:30 and sunset as early as 5:00--and the angle of the sun is steeper, extending the "golden hour" and helping give even the middle of the day some okay photographic conditions.

Day one under my belt, I checked into my hotel for the night, ready to tackle the photographer's workday of o'dark-thirty the following morning after a stop at Zax, a Moab restaurant specializing in pizza and with a nice selection of local brews on tap, Mormon tastes in alcohol and teetotaling notwithstanding.  Beth and I stopped there last spring and barely squeezed in ahead of a tour bus--in the midst of winter, I had the place nearly to myself.

As for the weather? Despite all the snow in my photographs, it was actually significantly warmer 4000-feet up on the Colorado Plateau than in D.C. during my trip, with daytime highs near 40 (about 20 degrees higher than back home). Guess I did escape winter for a few short hours after all.

Posted on 5 February 2011 | 1:28 pm

Weathering Another Winter (Or: Wishing for Sunshine and Finally Buying a Generator)

Last year, we had an awful winter in the D.C. area, with not only one massive "Snowmageddon" but a second "Snowpocalypse" dumping over two feet of snow apiece on us.  Somehow, we made it through both without losing power, though during the second storm, Beth and I seriously considered a generator as tens of thousands of people in the area suffered outages. Though this year we've managed to avoid snowfall totals like those, what we've ended up with has been bad enough: heavy, wet snow and ice which has struck hard at our new plants and those still recovering from last winter.

This most recent storm had been projected to be a heavy bout of rain up until about two or three days out, when the computer models all began to converge upon a significant snow event.  Even then, many remained doubtful we'd be hit hard (a sentiment which carried over into the actual storm even as it slammed areas to the immediate west).  Local schools made the right call and cancelled the day before, when we'd only had a dusting of precipitation.  Unfortunately, the Office of Personnel Management for the feds decided only to dismiss two hours early--putting tens of thousands of federal employees and contractors on the roads right as the storm arrived.

As I left the office, it was raining, but by the time I got out of the parking garage, the precipitation had changed over to sleet.  When I got to Fairfax Circle--about halfway home along my commute--we'd already gotten over an inch of snow.  The sheer energy of the storm created thunder and lightning--an eerie, almost frightening event known as "thundersnow" which though fairly rare I've now experienced three times in the past year.  Visibility fell to a couple dozen feet, and even jam-packed with an early rush hour's traffic, the roads quickly accumulated several inches of snow.  The last mile or so of my commute was a nightmare, thanks to the elements and drivers who had no business being on the roads: folks with no headlights on (!); people who drove in the middle of the road even with oncoming traffic; cars like the Mitsubishi Eclipse I saw spinning out trying to make it up a fairly gentle hill or even the SUVs whose owners seemed to think 4WD gave them license to drive like fools; and, worst of all, those bad drivers who made things worse by abandoning their cars in the middle of the highway.  During the hour and a half it took me to go seven miles--and in that I was lucky; some folks had 10-13 hour commutes in what has come to be known as "carmageddon"--we got over three inches of snow.  Finally home for the evening, I settled in with Beth and the Pupsters.

Our oriole feeder after a January ice storm

Sure, it's pretty for a few hours, but when the weather is bringing down trees all around the neighborhood, it's not fun anymore.  Nor is it fun to see the gardens over which you've toiled long spring and summer hours over  demolished by the elements: last year, we lost an American holly in the front yard when the snow snapped it in half (we've since resurrected the stump, which put out new growth over the year), and our inkberries and several other plants sustained heavy damage and many broken branches.  "Here we go again," I thought as snow came down at up to two inches an hour.

Even venturing out into the snow three times during the storm, Beth and I were hard-pressed to protect our plants.  We gently brushed and knocked the dense, thick snow from limbs and foliage and hoped for the best.  The new American holly out front, along with an English holly that made it through last winter intact, both had been weighed down so badly they risked snapping their trunks in half, and our scraggly, barely-recovered inkberries had been splayed to the ground.  Our red-twig dogwoods--species well-adapted to snow, being native well into Canada--for the first time had broken limbs, too.  Evergreens of any sort had been crushed by the snow.  Worst, every one of our river birches were bent completely to the ground, sustaining several snapped branches.

"Ms. Kooki, perhaps you're unaware it's snowing and that we want to play outside?"

Despite all the plant damage and several times when our power flickered off for a second or two, it seemed like we'd make it through the evening without losing our electricity.  The snow finally let up around 10:30pm, having dumped a layer of sleet topped by about eight inches of snow on us.  As I mentioned earlier, we'd considered a generator last winter but managed not to need one, and then missed out on the sales-tax holiday on them in May (for hurricane preparedness).  We were not to be so lucky this time around.

Shortly before midnight, the power went out and stayed out.  We discovered the next morning that a huge tree had come down near the entrance of our neighborhood, blocking the road and snapping several lines--not to mention a half dozen more minor breaks just in our immediate area.  Given the extent of the damage, we'd likely be without power for days--Dominion's Web site (which doesn't work with Chrome, making it impossible to report an outage from my phone) estimated they'd have it back up the next night, but I knew from experience they were being incredibly optimistic.  The house had held heat fairly well thanks to all the energy improvements we'd made--after a night of 20-degree temperatures, we were only down to 63 degrees inside from 69 the evening before--but it was only going to get colder.

So Beth and I headed to Costco before they opened on Thursday and lined up outside the entrance along with a dozen or so others--about half of us with flatbed carts and clearly intent upon the same thing: generators.  Within five minutes of the doors opening, Costco had sold out!  Several customers helped each other load the heavy boxes onto each others' carts, and after picking up a few other necessities, we headed home with our new generator and six gallons of gas to fuel it.


We had to shovel a path and dig out an area where we could run the generator, then assembly took some time out in the cold, snowy yard: I had to put together the generator's frame and wheels,  fill its oil reservoir and attach exhaust components, connect the battery, and drive and wire ground stake.  By the time I had everything set up, I had to go into the office, as the OPM had not closed the federal government despite the weather and widespread power outages, and the facility I work at was open.

Dominion's estimated time to get our power back up came and went as expected. I unfortunately let Beth talk me out of wiring up the furnace blower motor to the generator, instead using it to power just our fridge, a lamp, and an electric space heater we set up in the living room.  We spent the evening playing cards and listening to music on my iPod, then bundled up for a chilly night ahead: a day and a half into the blackout and temperatures inside had fallen to 54 degrees.  Multiple blankets, thermal underclothes, and even a true three dog night as all the Pupsters piled onto the futon with us... but it was not a comfortable night, as I had to get up several times to tend to the generator outside.

During the "break in" period for a new engine, you have to change the oil after about five hours of use--and check the oil level repeatedly.  And of course, you have to top off the gas so that it doesn't run dry.  Each of these operations requires disconnecting the appliances et al being powered, shutting off the generator, then powering it back up and reconnecting things afterwards.  I also was hesitant to run the generator basically non-stop for more than seven or eight hours, particularly given how it was brand new.

Friday morning meant another day at the office, a shower by flaslight first, and on the way out of the neighborhood I saw that Dominion had yet to even attempt to move the giant tree which the storm had brought down.  Worse, one of our neighbor's trees had dropped a limb onto our power lines, though it hadn't actually snapped them.


I left the office early, came home, and decided enough was enough with the upstairs temperatures down to 50 degrees and the basement pipes likely in danger of freezing up.  I finally had time to re-wire the furnace blower to run off of the generator.  Though I didn't feel like investing in a $280 transfer switch at Home Depot, I did completely disconnect the furnace from the power mains so I could just plug the furnace into the generator and not worry about overloading the generator or damaging the home's wiring.  Some people do that--plugging a generator into an outlet with a double-ended cord may be convenient, but that's a mistake and a fire hazard.

You know, gas heat works really well when you have electricity to blow the hot air around--within hours, the house was back to livable conditions.  (This of course ensured Dominion would have the power back on within another five hours or so, about two and a half days of blackout.)  After we got back from dinner with some friends, Dominion had finally come and cut away the branches on our lines, too.

I can only hope we're done with winter--Punxsutawney Phil be damned. But we're ready for the next bout of winter if it comes, shiny new generator and all.

Posted on 29 January 2011 | 6:00 pm

The Magical Effects of a Power Steering Flush (DIY for $7 or Less)

My car is getting old, and an older car means more maintenance. Worse, it's a turbocharged import, meaning work on it isn't cheap--my last major scheduled maintenance cost over $2000. So the fact my car had started having a few issues and my desire to put another 82,000 miles on it before even considering a newer model has driven me (no pun intended) to teach myself some basic and not-so-basic maintenance. The first success: flushing the power steering system--a task easier than changing the oil yet which had a big payoff!

Winter weather is rough on cars, and I'd been prepared to dismiss the slightly-jerky steering on my way to work each morning as a side-effect of the chilly temperatures. My car had also started idling a bit roughly, but hey, it was after all seven years and 82,000 miles old. Oh, and that vibration in the steering wheel around 45 mph? Probably tire wear or alignment, right? And the shops I took the car to checked all the fluids, didn't they?

Yet when working on a completely separate issue (more on that later), I noticed the power steering fluid was a yellow-orange color, when everything I'd read had stated the Forester's fluid should be red. Hmmm...

Jiffy Lube wanted $100+ to tackle the flush-and-fill on the power steering system. I can only imagine what a dealership would have charged! (The average price seems to run around $100, from what I can tell, with a range between $80 and $150.)  Enter a trip to my service manual and the Googles.

Confusingly enough (though stated so in the owner's manual and on the power steering fluid tank), the 2004 Subaru Forester XT's power steering system takes Dexron III automatic transmission fluid--not power steering fluid! I'd been considering flushing the system myself for a couple of weeks when I finally stopped at an auto parts store on the way home from work one day and picked up a couple of quarts of the stuff at a total cost of under $7.  Obviously, it pays to use what the manual actually calls for and not just look at the shelves and labels!

Though the full flush procedure involves a somewhat-tedious process (not one I expect the big-brand service centers actually complete, mind you--there's no way they do so along with everything else in a 20-minute service), there's a simple trick that does the job almost as well and with a fraction of the effort. Here's what you do:

1. Drive the car a bit to warm things up, then park on a reasonably level surface and shut off the engine.
2. Siphon out the existing power steering fluid straight from the reservoir (you could drain it by removing a hose, too). I used an all-purpose siphon hose, but a lot of DIY'ers claim a turkey baster from the dollar store works well, too.
3. Fill the power steering reservoir to the appropriate level (should be marked on the reservoir) with new lubricant.
4. Start the car, then turn the steering wheel all the way to the right and then all the way to the left several times.  This will help circulate the new fluid and remove air from the system.
5. Stop the car, and repeat steps 2-4 several more times.

The first time I flushed the system out, the fluid was a dark orange.  It wasn't gunky or burnt, but it certainly wasn't right, either.  After one flushing, the fluid still came out orange, even though what I'd poured in was deep red.  I repeated twice more, with each change of fluid coming out more and more red.  Overall, I didn't even use a full quart of fluid in this process.  You may need to repeat the process weekly if your power steering system is really dirty--after a week, though, my fluid is still nice and red.

No, it's not a true, full flush of the power steering system, but I can guarantee the typical big-brand service center doesn't do that, either, in the 20 minutes of "while you wait" work, either.  It got the job done for me, though.

What's amazing is that this simple bit of work, accounting for perhaps 10 minutes of this car maintenance novice's time, has had a huge impact on my car!  Gone is the jerkiness in the steering in the morning.  Better yet, gone is the rough idling: I suppose the fluid was dirty enough it was causing the power steering pump to strain a bit.  (Now, whether or not that means I have to change the whole pump out sometime in the not-distant future is an open question; if my fluid was bad enough to cause that much strain on the pump, might it not have done damage to it, too?)

I didn't even use the second bottle of Dexron III yet, so my real cost was $3.50.  That's a savings of at least $96.50 over what I'd have paid someone else to do it, and the process required no tools (well, the siphon, though I could have gotten by with a $1 turkey baster) and 10 minutes or less of my time.  And it had a noticeable effect on my car's everyday driving--nice!

After such a simple fix as my improvised power steering fluid flush, I feel empowered over my car, no longer in thrall to the mechanic's shop for anything short of a total engine overhaul.  Yes, I know my accomplishment was nearly effortless (an oil change would be more work, actually), but baby steps, baby steps!

Next up is a barely-more-challenging task: I'm replacing the stock intercooler hoses on my car with some fancy silicone ones from Samco.  No, I'm not out to make my car over into some modded race machine; I simply noticed the stock hose was a bit scruffy and ragged looking when under the hood. Wouldn't do to have the hose that delivers hot air from the turbo to the intercooler to split... and why pay over $100 for the cheap plastic and rubber OEM hoses when a similar outlay gets something much more temperature-resistant and with improved airflow (read: more horsepower)?  More on this next weekend when I should have the parts on hand.  (Way) further down the road will be disassembly of the intake manifold, as I need to pull it to get at the source of a minor fuel leak (again noticeable only on freezing-cold mornings like the power steering issue was), which most likely lies in the lines supplying the injectors or in the injector O-rings given everything else I've checked.

Obvious disclaimers: I can't be responsible for any damage you do to your car or yourself or others if you work on your own car. I simply want to share the simple process which worked for me! Be safe, and do your homework before attempting any maintenance on your vehicle.

Posted on 28 January 2011 | 10:09 pm

Birding Kaeng Kracharn National Park: A Day Trip with Tony "Eagle Eye" & Co.

Although the primary purpose of my trip to the erstwhile Kingdom of Siam was for dental work, I couldn't let such a long trip to such a wonderful birding location go without an excursion to add a few birds to my life list.  So I booked a day trip to Kaeng Krachan National Park with expert local bird guide Tony "Eagle Eye."

Kaeng Krachan is Thailand's largest national park, encompassing around 45 square kilometers near the border with Burma (aka Myanmar), and is about a 3 1/2 hour drive from Bangkok; it's home to over 300 species of birds, almost all of them potential "life birds" to me (meaning I'd be seeing them for the first time in my life).

As every birder knows, the day often starts before dawn, and facing a long drive from Bangkok meant an even earlier one: Tony picked me up at the hotel at 4:00am local time, and together with his wife and his brother as a driver, we set off for our day trip.  We made a stop for coffee and some breakfast along the way at a 7-11 (yes, they have 7-11s in Thailand), and the sun was just starting to come up as we neared Kaeng Krachan.

The mountainous forests at that hour are alive with sounds that I as a birder from the United States (with a smidgen of birding in the Caribbean and Europe under my belt) to be totally novel, like something out of a movie.  On familiar turf, I rely on birding "by ear" fairly heavily, helping me know which birds are hanging out in the trees and brush... but in Thailand, I was on completely unknown ground.  (I did, later in the day, recognize what had to be a woodpecker's short, high chip--that was nearly the only familiar bird sound of the trip!)  Noisier than the birds were the many gibbons, which made an unearthly racket.

A Dusky Langur

Speaking of the various primates we saw--including, I think, the noisy Black-handed Gibbons--were some Dusky Langurs, one of which I caught on film as it perched right above our car.

From the very start of our morning birding, Tony was an incredible professional.  He'd have his spotting scope out and set up before I even had begun to guess at where the birds in the dense forest canopy were.  Now, I know I'm a middling-good birder at best and have frequently found myself awed by the birding skills of friends like expert Florida birder Adam Kent (and his wife Gina), but I have to say that Tony really, really impressed me with his birding.  We'd be driving along the dirt roads through the park, and he'd signal a stop and almost immediately have a new bird in sight, no matter how thick or dense the forest above us--and he knew them all by ear and name.  I'd studied my copy of Birds of Thailand before the trip to at least familiarize myself with the sorts of things I'd see, but I would have been all day flipping pages without Tony.

As all of the birds would be new to me, I didn't have a list of particulars I just had to see (though to be fair, I kind of did want to see a Flameback, as the similarly-sized and appearing Pileated Woodpecker is one of my personal favorites back home).  So, pretty much from the outset of the trip, I was chalking new life birds on my list--as I explained to Tony, even the most common of birds would be exciting to me for this first time birding in southeast Asia.  Indeed, I recall my first visit to California, when I saw a Western Scrub Jay for the first time and was just mesmerized by a bird which is as common there as the Blue Jay is back here in the eastern US.

An Emerald Dove

In most parts of the United States, we typically see only two or three dove species with any ease, and the most common, the Mourning Dove and the imported Rock Dove (aka the ubiquitous park bench pigeon) are indeed so ordinary so as to be not worth a second glance.  I've indeed never been much interested in doves, outside the one time a Mourning Dove tried to nest in the tree outside our window in Vienna.  Yet in Thailand, the dozens of dove species struck me as beautiful and unique.

Mountain Imperial Pigeon

A White-browed Scimitar Babbler (I think!)

The dense forest coupled with the grey skies of the day made photography a bit of a challenge, necessitating high ISOs (I ended up putting my Canon 50D in "auto ISO" mode, where it could range up to a noise-plagued ISO 1600 if needed) and quick reflexes.  I do have to say that my Canon 300mm f4L coupled with 1.4x teleconverter--my normal "poor man's" birding setup as I've never had the spare change to pick up a 500mm or 600mm lens (any generous patrons out there?!)--wasn't quite up to the challenges of autofocusing in such conditions.  If I could have spared the extra 120mm of focal length, removing the 1.4x teleconverter would have probably helped a lot, as it noticeably slows autofocus on non-1-series Canon bodies.  Actually, I think digiscoping might have been the way to go, given what a great job Tony did getting the scope onto the birds.  But, I got a lot of "record" shots and a few real keepers, too--I was pretty happy overall with my day of bird photography.

A Bulbul--I think it's a Flavescent Bulbul

After a great morning of birding which included spotting a pair of Great Hornbills--massive birds which can weigh up to 9 pounds and which are best described to the non-birder as looking a bit like a Toucan--and some impressive Greater Racket-tailed Drongos among the many other species we saw, we stopped for lunch near a stream.  Tony provided lunch and had brought along a nice selection of fresh fruit, including apples, oranges (which in Thailand are green-skinned), grapes, and some persimmons from China.  We had packets of steamed rice to combine with chicken, egg, or a vegetable mix Tony warned was quite spicy when I reached for some (and it was--but I adore spicy food and had in fact had some super-spicy kaeng khiao wan or green curry for lunch the day before).

Butterflies at a Mineral "Lick"

Appropriate for someone coming from Chateau Papillon, nearby was a spectacular sight: dozens of butterflies gathered at the edge of the water, apparently collecting minerals from the red clay soil (that red clay was too-familiar as well for someone living on the piedmont-side of the fall line in Virginia).

We birded in the lower elevations alongside the streams and rivers throughout the afternoon, and as Tony had promised earlier in the day, we indeed did get to see some Greater Flamebacks--a group of five of them, all told!  Although I didn't get a photo of these beautiful woodpeckers (they were so deep in the foliage it was a challenge making them out at all), getting to see them was in and of itself a wonderful treat.  (The photos in the linked Wikipedia article above really do not do them justice.)

Red-bearded Bee Eater

One of the noisier birds of the day was the beautiful Red-bearded Bee Eater.  I can't describe its sounds, other than to say that much like the Carolina Wren, the bird's volume is far greater than its body size would suggest.

Tony patiently pointed out the locations of several species I had a hard time spotting in the forest, using a green laser pointer to help steer me in the right direction.

Tony "Eagle Eye" (Thanaphat Kinglek) and his wife

In contrast to the morning, the afternoon was fairly quiet--though as I said above, we did see several great birds in the afternoon, including another hornbill, this time an Oriental Pied Hornbill. Though my photo wasn't the best I could have taken, it was again a great spotting for a Thailand birding newbie like me.

Posted on 4 December 2010 | 8:32 pm

One Night in Bangkok, One Afternoon at ... the Dentist?

No, I didn't take singing lessons from Murray Head, but my first night in Bangkok is behind me now, albeit a day late due to the vagaries of modern air travel.  The primary purpose of my trip is a visit to the dentist.

That's right, the dentist.  Back in 2006, I had the shock of a $7500+ dental bill for a few onlays; fast-forward to this year, and my current dentist (different guy, obviously!) gave me the bad news that those platinum-priced onlays were failing and needed to be replaced with crowns.  After a $1800 dentist bill for just two crowns at that dentist (and mind you, that's after my insurance paid $900), I wasn't quite ready to fork out another $3600 for four new crowns!  Factor in that I'd used up my dental insurance for the year already, and we're talking a $4500 expense.

Rewind to 2006 for a moment, when after hearing of the ridiculous cost of those onlays, several friends suggested my money would have been better spent on a trip to Thailand--one of the world's premier "medical tourism" destinations thanks to the quality of their medical system plus the exchange rate between the baht and dollar--where I could have paid for the same work, a flight, and a week at a five-star beach resort to recuperate and still have had several thousand dollars left over.  I kind of laughed at the idea then, but the frequent traveler in me coupled with sticker shock over necessary dental work had me seriously thinking about going to the kingdom of Siam.

As for the costs of a trip, hotels in Thailand are cheap by US standards.  Bought at the advance-purchase rate, a night at a five-star resort hotel like the Millennium Hilton is around $100 (and I've paid nearly double that for a Hampton Inn stateside this year).  Dining can be had for $10 or less per meal for some tasty cuisine.  And airfare isn't ridiculous; I paid a bit over $1000 for my ticket, but that was to get an upgradeable fare which would let me fly in business class instead of economy.  So add up airfare, hotel, meals, and the dentist, and it's still less than what I'd be paying stateside.

Needless to say, weighing the cost of those crowns in the US vs. a trip abroad came down on the side of travel.

After doing much research on clinics, I settled on Thantakit, who despite having a somewhat cheesy Web site (though you should see a few of their competitors--definitely seems like the Thai medical industry hires Web developers who studied site design circa 1995), came highly recommended by both personal experiences of frequent travelers I know as well as with good online reviews.  They are a bit pricier than several of the ubiquitous dental clinics in Thailand--on par with the top-line hospitals in Bangkok--but even at that and a worsened exchange rate with the baht, cost less than half what my out-of-pocket would have been even if I hadn't used up my dental insurance for the year.

Posted on 3 December 2010 | 7:32 pm

Stranded in Seattle: A Brief Travel Interlude (And Why Trip Insurance Is Only Useful When You Didn't Buy It)

My trip had begun uneventfully enough with a pleasant breakfast flight to Seattle (trading, in the process, the dreary, wet late fall of east coast Washington for the dreary, wet late fall of west coast Washington), a trip to the Seattle Red Carpet Club, and then a glass of champagne onboard my connecting flight to Tokyo-Narita airport.

That's when things went south, and not, unfortunately, with me onboard and in the air.  "You may have noticed the plane is fairly warm," the flight attendant announced.  (Actually, after opening my air vent, it had seemed fine for once.)  "We're having some problems with our air conditioning, and we're going to have to have everyone leave the plane while we try to fix it."

Uh-oh.

On the way to the Red Carpet Club, I was already on the phone with first United--getting "protected" onto the next day's flights and investigating alternative routings (none available, unfortunately, other than an awful, knee-breaking economy-class booking through Vancouver and Taipei) and trying to clean up the mess made of my hotel reservations.  E-mails off to several folks in Thailand to give them heads-up that I might be delayed.

Monitoring UnitedCargo.com (a far more reliable indicator of flight status than the normal airline web site), I saw flight 875 pick up a 30 minute delay, then 45... then saw it marked "DECISION," meaning that they'd set a time at which the airline would decided whether or not to fly the plane at all.  Ugh.

While I was on the phone with the United 1K international reservations desk (thank goodness for 1K--no wait on hold, and the agents I spoke with were able to give Anglo names like "Jason" without having to mute the phone and snicker, struggling to maintain a poker face from a cubicle in Bangalore) trying to nail down my flight options, I saw the flight go from "decision" to "departs 3:30pm"--only two hours late, but potentially tough on my connection in Tokyo, which was scheduled right at two hours.

Back at the gate, the airline announced they were just waiting for the crew to board, and we'd be on our way.  (Argh!)  The crew finally showed up--why they hadn't just disappeared to the lounge or employee ready room, I'm not sure--but then we got more bad news: the plane's auxiliary power unit (APU) was busted.  Among other things, the APU provides power for onboard systems should one of the plane's main engines fail.  Although Boeing, the plane's manufacturer, was just up the street a bit, we had to instead fly to San Francisco, where United has a maintenance base and where we'd switch planes for one with a functional APU.  (For those wondering, it's safe to fly non-ETOPS routes without an APU--hence the plan to fly to SFO--it's just when you get out over the ocean and more than 60 minutes from any airstrip that you need the insurance.)

But--

But the plane had been loaded with enough fuel to get us to Tokyo, which would put us way overweight for landing in San Francisco.  Obviously, United didn't want to circle SFO and burn or dump fuel, wasting nearly 80,000 pounds of black gold.  Worse, after some checking, apparently Seattle didn't have the necessary tanker pumps to offload fuel safely on the ground, so after a few more minutes, the flight cancelled.  (I'd already seen on UnitedCargo.com that the flight had gone to a scheduled departure time of 10:30am by then--meaning the next morning.  Sigh.)  Off to the Red Carpet Club to pick up hotel and meal vouchers for the night, and to debate whether or not to have the airline simply send me home, declare a "trip in vain," and refund me the cost of the ticket.

The SeaTac Marriott is a decent enough hotel, though I had to pay for internet access--too bad United didn't put me up at the Hilton, where I've got mid-tier status.  Speaking of Hilton, I had to make a new hotel reservation at the Bangkok Hilton, as thanks to the lost day, my plans to fly down to Phuket and stay at the Hilton there, do some birding in the mangrove forests and jungle and along the coast in the land where The Man With the Golden Gun was filmed were now toast.  Not getting to bird in Phuket was disappointing, but the whole point of my trip was dental work (making many of the expenses partially or wholly tax deductible to boot)--fortunately, I was able to reschedule my dental visits before leaving Seattle.

This is where trip insurance would have come in handy.  My non-refundable hotel fares could have been reimbursed, as could my Thai Air flight to Phuket which I'd now undoubtably miss (neither all that pricey, but still frustrating to be out).  Of course, had I spent the $100 or so in insurance, you can bet nothing would have gone wrong on my trip in the least...

I'd have liked to have spent the afternoon and evening exploring Seattle itself--a city I've been to previously only in the form of its main airport.  However, the importance of tying up loose ends for my trip (and dealing with a 9-hour time difference in the process) outweighed my sightseeing needs, and the weather in Seattle coupled with the fact I left my jacket at home not expecting to need it (Thailand is sunny and 80-90 degrees this time of year) kept me holed up at the Marriott.

Finally, the next morning, everything was ready to go, with two UA 875 flights now scheduled to operate from SEA-NRT.  Ours would go out first, at 10:30am, with the regularly-scheduled flight to follow at 1:30pm.    The only loose end remaining was my flight to Bangkok, for which I'd lost my confirmed business class seat due to the rescheduled flights and was now waitlisted (with the check-in agent very discouraging about my chances: "It's completely full.")  I won't bore you with the intricate inner mechanisms of how upgrades work on United, other than to say that between my top-tier status (1K) and the fact my rebooked flight to Bangkok was artificially showing now as being "full fare" (instead of discount) economy, I should stand a decent chance of being at the top of the list, should a business seat open up.  Well, that's to find out in Tokyo, 10 1/2 hours away once we're airborne.

Onward to the land of Siam...

Posted on 3 December 2010 | 10:00 am

Culture Shock Is...

Culture shock is:

Getting off a plane after 22 hours of being up in the air (and 22 more in airline delays), arriving midnight local time, and having to look at a paper to see what day it is when my watch, my body, and the local time announced by the pilot all give different answers.

Realizing that the looking at the local papers to find the date doesn't help, because you don't read the language.

Getting off a plane in a country where you not only don't speak a word of the language, but don't speak a word of the entire language family.  At least in Europe, some knowledge of a Romance language goes a long way.

But if Anna Leonowens could do it, I suppose I can, too.  (Yes, that is a hint as to where I've traveled.)

More of this travel adventure to come...

Posted on 2 December 2010 | 12:20 pm

Chateau Papillon has an "English basement," opening out onto the backyard with one of those ubiquitous sliding glass doors.  Or perhaps I should more correctly say had one of those sliding patio doors; one thing that had nagged us since moving in back in 2008 was the door's poor operation, and the fact that even fully open, it was just an inch too narrow to easily get the bird cages out or to bring things like appliances in.

The solution, obviously, was a nice French door, which we could swing out on both sides.  So, when Lowe's ran a 15% off special order doors sale earlier this fall, we went in and picked out a fairly basic Energy Star-rated model sized to replace that leaky, finicky old sliding door.

Installing the new door was actually very easy; the hardest part was getting the old one out.  I'd done such a job caulking the old door last year that the metal flashing around it was quite loathe to come loose, and I managed to destroy my caulk remover in the process (as well as the metal flashing--but we'd no real thought of salvaging it).  With advice from uncle E.C. and his contractor's expertise coupled with physical labor from my dad and sister Brooke, we got the new door in place with the only snag being some 1/4" cedar planks I had to remove around the opening.  Fortunately, the sill was pretty level, and the sides fairly plumb, requiring very little shimming and adjustment--for proper alignment is absolutely critical when installing any door, much less a French door where anything out of square will result in poor operation and often a gap between the two doors instead of a weather-tight seal.

I got the new door insulated (with low-expansion spray-foam) and caulked, as well as locksets installed and keyed to our existing house keys--a nifty feature, that.  There's still work to do; the inside needs some case molding, and the outside a fascia board along the top as well as possibly some casing along the outside edges.  Too, the strike plate for the main lock needs to be aligned better, and the handedness of the lock swapped (as the levers appear "upside-down" as installed).  But so far, so good!

The old door will be going to Habitat for Humanity, assuming they want it, as we got it out without any significant damage.  Now, if we'd only managed to get the door ordered before the submission deadline for the second round of Virginia energy efficiency rebates, we'd have saved about $100 more on the cost of the door.  Nevertheless, we made good use of our energy rebates, between replacing our furnace and a/c unit, buying a high-efficiency washing machine, and getting a home energy audit (the fruits of which, in all the caulking and other insulation work I've done, are seen in each month's energy bills).

Posted on 26 November 2010 | 8:30 pm

A Meal for Thanks

Thanksgiving marks the start of the holiday cooking season for me, and much like Christmas, means an entire day spent in the kitchen--but with rewards well worth it when all the loads of dishes have been done and the leftovers stowed away in the fridge.  And Thanksgiving truly makes for a meal of thanks when shared with family.

This year's menu included several new dishes along with traditional favorites; without further ado, here's what we served at Chateau Papillon for Thanksgiving 2010:

Home-baked garlic, herb, and cheese bread--the first dish I prepared, as I fired up the oven at 8:30am to warm and proof the dough, with the loaves going in around noon.  Other than needing to measure the ingredients by weight, this is an easy bread for any kitchen, and one which can be tinkered with to no end (for example, I change the herbs, add cheese, and replace some of the flour with whole wheat flour)

Fresh green beans, blanched and served in olive oil and salt.  This was the quickest dish to prepare; just snap the ends off the beans, dump in boiling water for 5 minutes, strain, and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt (kosher salt's big flakes work best).

Sweet potato casserole.  This was one of my "experimental" dishes for the year, despite the traditional theme: in addition to the mashed sweet potatoes, I added a banana, a half pound of cream cheese, a beaten egg, brown sugar, a bit of flour, and seasoned with vanilla, curry powder, garam masala, cinnamon, freshly-ground nutmeg, and allspice... all topped with some marshmallows.  I have to say that it came out fantastically well--the banana and the curry really worked.

Stuffing: the only mostly-store-bought course, as I used a blend of dried cornmeal croutons and cranberry stuffing mix, with the added flavor of a splash of chicken broth and Irish whiskey.  (Everything is better with a little Irish whiskey.)

Baked apples: layers of butter alternated with Granny Smith apple slices, each topped with cinnamon, allspice, Chinese five spice powder, and a dash of cayenne pepper--and with ample brown sugar to keep it sweet, and just a splash of Meyer lemon juice to keep the apples from browning.

Skin-on mashed garlic and goat cheese red potatoes.  Nothing else to be said, really--just good eats.

Brined roasted turkey.  I only get real, homemade oven-roasted turkey twice a year, and look forward to Thanksgiving for the eleven long months after Christmas.  This year, I brined in a mixture of apple cider, kosher salt, brown sugar, candied ginger, black mustard seed, cloves, allspice berries, and peppercorns, then stuffed the turkey with apples, onion, cinnamon, along with some rosemary and sage straight from the garden and a bit of thyme from the supermarket--and a few springs of our curry plant.


The turkey drippings went straight into the saucier my mother-in-law P.A.T. gave me earlier this year, stirred into a butter-and-flour roux with a bit of salt, pepper, thyme, and a splash of Irish whiskey (remember what I said about Irish whiskey a minute ago?).  This was hands-down the best gravy I've ever made.  Let me share a secret to gravy making: start with a roux--melt 2-3 tablespoons of butter and whisk in 2 tablespoons of flour, then cook the resulting paste briefly.  The darker the roux, the more the flavor... but the less the thickening power, so for something with a lot of flavor to begin with like turkey gravy, cook only until the butter develops a nutty aroma.  Then, gradually whisk in the turkey drippings, season, and keep whisking until thickened--you'll let it come to a boil and cook on for a few minutes, then cool.  No canned gravy at Chateau Papillon, and no broth needed with such fantastic turkey drippings.

Chubb Mom made a course of her grandmother's rolls--yes, we already had bread, but rolls are a tradition, and I insisted.

For our resident fish-eating-vegetarian, I baked some Chilean Sea Bass--a course we've had three times in the past week (!!) but nonetheless an absolutely fantastic dish, and one of the simpler ones to make.  Put the fish, skin-side down, into a baking dish, top with mango sea salt and a few pats of butter, and roast at 390 degrees for 35 minutes or so until nice and golden on top.  Voila!

Finally, for dessert, I took advantage of Costco having both Meyer lemons and Cara-cara blood oranges.  In one of the more involved dishes of the day, I  baked a homemade graham cracker crust: I used a package of stale, broken grahams, tossed in the blender with some vanilla sugar and an unhealthy bit of butter--then pressed into the pie pan and baked for 10 minutes or so.  Ten or twelve lemons juiced and zested went into the custard base, along with a half dozen eggs, a lot of vanilla sugar, cornstarch, and some butter for richness... all then put over the bain marie until thickened sufficiently to go into the crust and bake until set.  After it cooled, I topped with homemade whipped cream (heavy cream, vanilla sugar, and Grand Mariner liquor) and blood orange segments.  The orange wedges made a big difference and added a light, juicy texture to each otherwise-heavy bite.  In the end, the pie tasted a bit like a good key lime pie, taking advantage of the Meyer lemon's cross between lemons and tangerines.

My mom put together no-bake pumpkin turtle pie as well at my dad's request, using a store-bought (blasphemous!) graham cracker crust, canned pumpkin, Cool Whip (I offered to fold in my real whipped cream--to no avail), vanilla pudding, caramel sauce, and pecans.  I did, however, manage to slip in some extra seasoning, including Irish whiskey (!), allspice, and Chinese five spice powder.  I couldn't find the mace, or that would have gone in, too.

Overall, I used the better part of six sticks of butter and did five (soon to be six) loads of dishes as I cleaned up as I prepped and cooked throughout the day.  But it was worth it--Thanksgiving does come only once a year, after all.

Posted on 25 November 2010 | 9:58 pm

Millennia on Display: The Splendor of Bryce Canyon

This past Spring, Beth and I made a too-brief visit to southern Utah, where we spent less than 72 hours exploring Goblin Valley and Arches National Park.  That one visit was all it took, though, to inextricably hook me on the red rock desert landscapes of the region, and I couldn't wait until we had a chance to return and see more of this spectacularly beautiful part of the world.  Even the unforgettable experiences of seeing Delicate Arch at sunset and hiking through the hoodoos of Goblin Valley under stormy skies had not prepared me, though, for the sheer majesty and deep, soul-moving beauty that is Bryce Canyon.

We arrived a bit after sunset after a day at Zion National Park (the drive up taking longer than expected due to construction delays), and though I'd hoped to beat the setting sun there, even the sight of the shaded amphitheater full of hoodoos was enough to bring a lump to my throat.  There simply are not words to properly express what I felt upon that first glimpse of Bryce Canyon; it was a uniquely moving, almost spiritual experience that took my breath away.

Sunset Point along Bryce Canyon's Rim

Viewed from above, the canyon drops off sharply from its edges, a vertical distance of over 1,000 feet--yet so much of the canyon is not open space, but rather is filled with towering rock formations: fins and hoodoos, arrayed in a splendor of pink, orange, red, and white stone.

Beth stands near the edge of Bryce Canyon

About 4 miles into the Fairyland Canyon hike

Posted on 20 October 2010 | 8:16 pm

Transforming Chateau Papillon's Landscape: Building a Wildlife Sanctuary & How You Can, Too!

Videographers Alison Fast and Chandler Griffin

Not too long ago, I blogged about some of the steps Beth and I have taken to make over our yard at Chateau Papillon into a more natural landscape and a habitat attractive to all sorts of native wildlife (and intend to expound upon those topics, later, too).  We signed up for the Audubon at Home program and made our yard wildlife-friendly--and now, we're playing host to the National Audubon Society and volunteering our yard to appear in a video they're producing about how everyone can work to help birds year-round from their own homes.  Even if you're not a first-responder scrubbing clean the oiled birds of the Gulf after an environmental disaster like we recently witnessed, you can indeed still play a very important part in providing healthy habitat for migratory birds.

Posted on 22 September 2010 | 11:46 am

Weekend Scones & More Cuisine de Chateau Papillon

Poppyseed Cake with Caramel Orange-Apricot Rum Glaze: YUM!

Posted on 19 September 2010 | 9:15 pm

Transforming Chateau Papillon's Landscape: Building a Wildlife Sanctuary (Part One)

Here at Chateau Papillon, we've been hard at work on the outdoors as much (if not more so) than the indoors.  When we first moved in, the lot was something of a blank slate, outside of the wonderful mature trees surrounding the yard.  We waited through the frustrations of a short sale largely due to the yard's potential, as it backed up to Fairfax Villa Park and offered the certainty of attracting a large variety of birds and other wildlife.  Since moving in, we've planted dozens of native trees and shrubs, have reclaimed large sections of drab lawn into more naturalized habitat, and have chalked up a list of 54 different bird species to-date.  So when the Northern Virginia Audubon Society announced the "Audubon at Home" wildlife sanctuary certification program, we thought to ourselves, "We're already 95% of the way there!"

Our Habitat Certification Sign!

The Audubon at Home Wildlife Sanctuary program encourages everyone--from schools, businesses, and churches to individual homeowners--to treat their property like a wildlife habitat, by taking steps to naturalize, bring in more native plant species, and provide food, shelter, and nesting habitat to our most important and needy species of native wildlife.  The program stresses environmentally-friendly landscape management practices, from reducing and managing runoff to cutting back on pesticide and fertilizer usage, all of which are important but often-overlooked adjutants to caring for native flora and fauna.

We recently completed our certification, and looking back, have come a long way at Chateau Papillon in the just-shy-of two years we've spent here.  Though I could fill up several posts with just the "before & after" shots, a few do bear inclusion for comparison's sake today:

Backyard, in June, 2008 (before)

Ile du Papillon?  Spring showers make for puddles and rivers in the back yard.

Posted on 17 September 2010 | 11:10 am

Richard Nixon: Portrait of a Socialist

Ranting that our country is hurtling toward "socialism" is the current bugaboo of the political right--and, indeed, given socialism by definition lies on the left side of the political spectrum, one can understand their opposition to such philosophies by their very nature.  Yet for all the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair by Tea Party demagogues over our imminent collapse into some quasi-Marxist state, I have to ask: is the agenda of the current administration and Congress actually all that "socialist," or has the political right merely moved itself so far to the extreme end of the scale so that everything else looks to be to the left of Stalin by comparison?

Photo from National Archives via Wikimedia Commons

Without delving into each specific issue in detail, I offer this observation: one Richard M. Nixon, the 37th President of the United States and a stalwart of the Republican party, pursued and implemented policies across his administration which are far more to the left, and steered the country on a path certainly more "socialist," than President Obama, Senator Reid, or Representative Pelosi (the unholy trinity in the eyes of the right) have ever dreamt of.  Even bathing in the blood of the puppies they've sacrificed to achieve their demonic goals, those three latter-day Stalinists pale in comparison to the achievements of Tricky Dick--who last I saw had an (R) in parenthesis after his name, not a (D).  Nor are these policies cherry-picked; they represent some of the biggest and most lasting achievements of President Nixon's time in office and cover broad swathes of policy from the economy to the environment to foreign policy.

Take, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency, which to modern conservatives is an anathema to the free market principles they advocate and an agency that exists solely to obstruct the consumer-minded engines of productivity that are this nation's corporations.  The current GOP senatorial nominee from Nevada has called for the EPA's outright eradication on numerous occasions, and the words of the recently-erstwhile GOP nominee for Vice President sum up the conservative zeitgeist, labeling it the "Economic Prevention Agency."

A quick consultation of the history books (references few seem to keep on hand these days) will reveal exactly who proposed and signed into law the EPA, and it wasn't some liberal, starry-eyed socialist like FDR or Lyndon Johnson.

Let's not stop with the EPA, the Clean Air Act, or the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.  Nixon didn't just steer us toward socialism by becoming a friend to the environment.  No, he embraced such leftist notions as workplace safety and the welfare of the nation's employees with the creation of OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.  And--the horrors!--he pushed his socialist, anti-business agenda to protect babies and small children with the creation of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, with its regulations over swimming pools and cribs and corporate-profit-damning product recalls.

The list of "socialist" agencies and regulations crafted and implemented under Nixon's watch is a healthy one, unless you're one of the demagogues lathering up crowds against "the gubermint" and its efforts to seize your tax dollars and  turn them into handouts.  Taking the US dollar off the gold standard, long a complaint of conservatives?  Check.  Imposing a national speed limit (n.b. something I can't forgive, myself)?  Check.  Increased spending on Medicare, Social Security, and food and welfare programs?  Check.

Since taking office, President Obama has caught much grief over even the suggestion that mega-bank executive salaries might be excessive, and that those banks who received taxpayer bailouts ought not spend our public moneys on throwing yet another party in Vegas or Bermuda.  Yet Nixon exercised authority and implemented national price and wage control boards, freezing pay raises and dictating product prices across the country.  Obama is a socialist, say the neoconservative punditry and body politic, for even hinting that rewarding utter failure with lottery-payout-sized bonuses seems askew.  Yet Nixon exercised control nationwide over salaries and prices, which quite arguably stands as one of the most socialist (and authoritarian) measures ever taken by the US government with regards to the conduct of private business.

And let's not forget "Obamacare," the castrated-by-compromise effort to help ensure every US citizen have access to adequate health care and current favorite invective of the right.  Nearly forty years ago, President Nixon called for national health care, a plan which would have mandated employer-provided insurance as well as a federal plan anyone could pay into and join.  (Ironically, Ted Kennedy was one of the leading opponents of Nixon's health care reform plan.)  Nixon failed to achieve his vision of universal, national health care, indeed, but one wonders what those Republicans shouting "socialist!" and "keep the government out of my health care!" today would have thought of an obviously more ambitious (and yes, socialist) plan coming from one of their own.

Lastly, rhetoric from the right today constantly demonizes President Obama for even entertaining the merest daydream of using diplomacy rather than the sword that is the US military might to deal with our nation's enemies.

Yet who is remembered for being the only President who could go to China, and whose efforts resulted in a real detente with not only with China, but to a thawing of relations with the Soviet Union as well (who feared a potential Sino-American alliance might arise out of such diplomacy)?

Yes, that socialist, Richard Nixon.  And don't forget, Tea Partiers, that Nixon cut defense spending significantly (from over 9% of GDP to under 6%) and got us finally out of that quagmire in Vietnam.

You'd think from the current rhetoric from the right that Nixon was a panty-waisted pinko whose sole goal was to transfer corporate wealth to our commisar enemies.  Yet in his day, he was a Republican opposed vehemently by liberals at every step of the way.  It's simply a sad statement of how far to the right the Tea Party, neoconservatives, and even mainstream Republicans today have moved from where their party once stood.

Posted on 12 September 2010 | 8:13 pm

Chateau Papillon Bird #54: Red-breasted Nuthatch

It's fall migration season, and that means the chance to see all sorts of birds winging their way southward.  Beth added bird #54 to Chateau Papillon's list this afternoon with the sighting of a Red-breasted Nuthatch who had stopped to visit our feeders.

I got an e-mail from Beth asking where the Sibley's guides were, followed by an excited, insistent note that she'd found a new bird for the yard.  When I got home from work, I grabbed my camera and came out to sit and birdwatch with the hope of seeing what would be a life-bird for me: I've listed the smaller, similarly-marked Pygmy Nuthatch before from a west-coast trip--and of course the much-more-common White-breasted Nuthatch--but a Red-breasted would be a new bird for me.

The early evening provided some great birding, with appearances by a Pileated Woodpecker, several Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, an Eastern Phoebe, and all sorts of the "usual suspects" of the backyard scene.  And yes, I did get get to see the Red-breasted Nuthatch several times, and even snapped a couple of decent photos despite the dwindling light.  The evening was not without casualty, though; while I sat and waited, some feathered friend far above decided to make a deposit upon my shoulder.

Posted on 10 September 2010 | 6:44 pm

Hiking in Chugach and the Return Home (Part Four of my Alaska Adventure)

Posted on 27 July 2010 | 10:13 pm