wiredfool

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The little red toy has turned 50. While stuck in a traffic jam. The pic is from 520, The rollover was in the exit from I-5.

This weblog won’t be updated for a while. But I’m not going to mention the ‘h’ word. Rather it’s the ‘v’ word, and during the vacation I’m going to try to stay away from computers. For a whole week and a half. Wonder how well that’s going to work.

And a related link

This from the garden. The one on top was a little harder to pull up than normal.

I think this is just from having too many nutrients in the soil, which can make carrots excessively hairy or branch out. But it’s still odd. These are about twice as big as the seed packet said that they’d get. (That’s a quarter next to them. The packet said 4″)

And they’re very good. Especially when grilled. The cherry tomatoes are just starting to get ripe. I’ve got one bigger tomato starting to get there. Just in time for my vacation.

But there are a lot of tomatoes out there. And half of them I didn’t even plant. They came up on their own from last years fallen fruit.

Or: 4 people, a big bike (Honda Valkyrie) and a small car (Miata) cover 500 miles of Washington roads, 4 campsites, and several Llama farms.

The bike has just about as much storage space as the car, enough for 2 sleeping bags, pads, a tent and some extra clothes. However, it’s a lot harder to eat when you have a full face helmet on.

Our route took us up and over the North Cascade Highway, so we stopped to check out one of the power dams that provide power for Seattle. It looks like there’s enough water up there. No Llamas though. Apparently they’ve been moved due to cougar attacks.

We caught the tail end of a very leisurely motorcycle club heading up to the dam. We wasted quite a few corners at the posted yellow sign speed. While Miatas and Motorcycles are pretty well matched for touring, the car can take tight corners with more confidence.

Liberty Bell guards the top of Washington Pass. It’s a quick run downhill from here to Winthrop for lunch. Winthrop was a little overrun with a bumper crop of summer tourists, lots of cars and motorcycles. (Evenly mixed between Harleys and Valkyries) That’s what you get for a weekend in August though.

We noodled around for a while, filling up at Twisp where the Miata was outnumbered 6 to 1 by various motorcycles. A quick run to Chelan later and we’re dealing with the problem of finding a campsite on one of the major tourist weekends in August. We checked three campgrounds before being directed to a small National Forest campground 4 miles off the main road at 25 Mile Creek. I was stunned at the quality of the lawn at the full campsites, perfect golf course quality and neon green. You’d hardly know that there’s a drought on and we’re in the middle of a desert.

The road to the campsite was prefect twisty blacktop for three miles. Sorry, I don’t have pictures. I was Driving.

The people in the campsite next to us were amused when we pulled in, since they have a Harley and a red Miata.

A little zipping in the morning, and we are on a nearly empty road heading down to breakfast near Levenworth and then to go up over Beaver Pass. I’ve raced over this road in a bicycle race a couple of years ago, and I didn’t realize how much fun it could be. Empty, reasonably smooth, and squiggly yellow signs. Most were marked 30mph in a 55 zone. Perfect road to put a little distance on a motorcycle.

Finally, we pick up route 2 to go over Stevens pass, and catch the Old County Road on the way down. This road is a little wider than a bike path, and completely deserted. This is the one place that I have ever felt that my car was wide even when there was no oncoming traffic.

The last three pics were taken on that road.

The motorcycle had some advantages, better power above 4000 feet, more similar vehicles to wave to, and the general coolness factor of a flat 6 1500cc engine.

Cargo space was a wash, as was gas mileage. (Although the motorcycle has half the tank of the car).

The Miata had a cd player and a heater/ac system. They work well even though the top was down the whole time. It was easier to handle on twisty roads. Passing at 4000 feet was kind of dicey with the short passing lanes.

If you’re in Seattle, there are two events you should be thinking about this weekend. (No not seafair.)

Friday evening there’s a webloggers dinner at the Rock Bottom Brewery. I know there’s going to be good beer, as for company…. Well, I’ll be there.

Three nights this weekend, Cirque de Flambé will be performing their “Verities of Fire” show at the Monroe Center, in scenic Ballard. (18th Ave and 65th, probably in the parking lot on the north side of the building.)

Seven cop cars and three helicopters heading towards Broadway.

Probably a bank robbery.

Supposedly it’s the Evergreen Bank. So is why does it feel wierd that this is happening near where I walk every day?

• When downloading 500 megs of stuff from a slowish site, don’t go messing with firewall rules when you’re most of the way done.
• That creaking noise from your seatpost? Don’t ignore it. You may want to check on the bolts. Fatigue failure makes that sort of noise.
• Quit while you’re ahead. You’ve still got to finish the race. That goes for weeding too.

Extend Microsoft Free Fridays to cover Outlook/Outlook Express.

Those of us with mailservers and procmail could use a user agent filter to return the following text on fridays:

Sorry, your message could not be delivered because: 

There is a high probablilty that your email message 
was infected with a virus, since it came from Outlook. 
Please hang up and try your message later with a 
safe email client.

Of course, this could adversly affect productivity in offices where outlook is the default mailer, but no worse than when 100 computers all decide to send each other attachments.