Let The Prognosticating Begin!

August 25, 2013
I'm scanning the Sunday Chronicle online, and on the Entertainment Tab (Think Pink Section), I found a story about the '2014 Farmer's Almanac' which publishes Monday August 26th, 2013.

Last week I blogged about the Fire Weather. KirkVallus quizzed me: "no snow news? but you cover all the rest that I need to know, thanks Dave...."

Even my Sainted Mother has been asking about 'the signs'...wooly worms and such, that help make those folksy winter weather predictions...

Truth? I haven't given it any thought lately...oh, the one weathergeek who I respect (for his accurate forecasts going out three weeks) @TahoeWeather tweeted: "Some Winter hints... http://www.opensnow.com/dailysnow/tahoe" on August 13th.

Tahoe-based snow forecaster, Bryan Allegretto was checking in early with some thoughts on our upcoming winter...when KirkVallus quizzed me and I gave the coming winter a bit of thought, I came up with the same data points as @TahoeWeather... ENSO Neutral, PDO Negative. I keep an eye on the Sun's behavior too, and it's still quiet...too quiet.

In his August 13th Blog, @TahoeWeather demurs from offering a forecast this far out.
  
October 15, 2013
I tried to view the Climate Prediction Center's website, to view the September 90 Day climate Outlook Discussion, but the site is unavailable to civilians due the the incremental Government "Shutdown". Shutting down 17% of our $3.8 Trillion+ Government is hardly a shutdown...even the furloughed "Non-Essential" bureaucrats will get paid when all is said and done (think extra paid vacation) 

October 20, 2013
OK, the "Shutdown" is over, and Government websites are open to Citizens again. The CPC's 90 Day Outlook published October 17, 2013, says ENSO Neutral through the 2013-2014 Winter. No El Niño, no La Niña. The PDO is still negative too...in short the "Signs" look about like last year.

The Siskiyou Wing of the family was here at the Ancestral Digs for a long weekend telling tales of near-suicidal squirrels braving traffic to collect as many sugar pine nuts as possible before winter sets in.

Here, hundreds of miles south, Indian Summer holds sway. There's a notable dearth of yellowjackets, and this isn't wooly worm country. There's a slight cooling trend forecast for this week, roughly 1°F cooler each day through the weekend, so we'll still be in the high 70s. There was a 'nip' in the air overnight. The mercury fell to 43°F between 6-7AM this morning.

The Reno NWS Forecast Office put a photo of the famous "Blocking Ridge" up on Facebook.

This was the culprit that kept us dry last winter.

It's eleven days until Halloween. A quick look at Boreal's webcam shows one snowmaking fan sitting forlornly near the bottom of their hill. The forecast says no snowmaking weather up there this week. They're gonna need a modicum of luck to blow enough snow to sell lift tickets for Halloween, in my humble opinion...

OK, so what about my winter forecast? I'm waffling still. In 30+ years on My Mountain, we've never had three below normal winters in a row (read dry winters) so the odds say normal or above precipitation. Why am I not sold on the wet winter forecast? Too many cold signs so far.

By cold I mean the Negative PDO, the sun is still hibernating even though we're at or near the Solar Maximum for Cycle 24, plus another weak Atlantic Hurricane Season. (Last year's Hurricane Sandy, that slammed New York and New Jersey was the second named system that made landfall on the United States during the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season)

Sandy came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane, but did massive damage to the Jersey Shore and coastal areas of New York City as it came ashore at high tide and was 'funneled' into Lower Manhattan by the shoreline topography. Beachfront developements were especially hard hit.

With under two months of the 2013 Atlantic Hurricane Season left, there's been only eleven named systems, of which two have become hurricanes. Hurricane Season ends November 30th. No hurricanes have made landfall on The States yet this year. Pretty quiet overall.

Gotta say...I've got a bad feeling about this...

Stay tuned...

Snow Forecaster Bryan Allegretto

Snow Forecaster Bryan Allegretto

Snow Forecaster Bryan Allegretto

Déjà Vu

I was out the door early today. My plan went this way: COSTCO Gas, COSTCO, Saw Shop, Chick-Fil-A for lunch, Drug Store, Safeway...all so I could get home to the Ancestral Digs and do a little baking before things heated up too much.

Too late... it was hot when I left...but when I returned it was 93°F.

As I was getting ready to leave, I strode down the driveway to get a clear view of the sky and I was struck instantly with a sense of the ol' déjà vu. I could feel the sun's heat on my skin, it's heat reflecting up from the driveway, and I smelled wood smoke...my encoded memories took me south of the border...all the way to Los Cabos, at the southern tip of Baja.

That's how it felt...Tropical, though the relative humidity was only 22%, and not a breath of wind.

That smell of smoke is coming from the newest wildfire to settle into my consciousness, the Morgan Fire, on the southeast flanks of Mount Diablo.

As the crow flies, the Morgan Fire is the same distance east from the Ancestral Digs, as San Francisco is flying west from the Digs. It takes 30 minutes from the Digs to go through the tunnel, across the bridge, and into The City. It's funny, Mt Diablo seems so much closer...I guess it's a human thing...almost everytime I go anywhere out of town, there's Mt Diablo towering over everything. It takes almost an hour, given the tiny neighborhood roads to get to the South Entrance to Mt Diablo State Park from the Ancestral Diggs.

KirkVallus and I made the trek up the Devil Mountain in 2012 to see a stage of the Amgen Tour of California Pro Bicycle Race.

The last time Mt Diablo burned was in 1977. At that time I lived in Walnut Creek with a buddy. We could see the peak from our kitchen window. Back in '77, I was at the kitchen sink when I saw lightning strike Mt Diablo's southwestern flank. It burned for three days.

I did Chick-Fil-A for lunch because their parking lot has a panoramic view of the mountain...there were no spaces that faced Mt Diablo, so I headed south and pulled into one of the many alleyways between small businesses, found a shady east-facing spot, and had lunch.

The mountain looked fully engulfed...at least the backside did from my vantage point. Even the North Peak had a pall of smoke rising up from behind it. As I took in the scene, a commercial-sized aircraft came into view as if it came from the Livermore Airport.

It flew high above the fire, and just past the summit, it turned 180° and dove towards the southern ridgeline. It was a huge jet air tanker, and it laid a line of pink fire retardant just west of the ridgeline. That swath was nearly a half mile long!

I recorded a video of the whole thing...sadly my vantage point was through a bunch of powerlines and the camera's auto focus had trouble coping. However, I found a photo from the backside of the mountain capturing the same drop! Thanks Twitter!

By the time the 5 O'clock news came on, the almost 800 firefighters on the line and the air attack had really tamed things up on the mountain. The near lack of wind helped a bunch too!

Once I got cooled off in the pool, I settled in for some Giants Baseball pre-game radio blather, and I went online...fired up twitter and searched #MorganFire.

Through the magic of twitter, i was treated to an almost continuous stream of tweets loaded with photos, news and views. Much less dramatic that Sunday night, when photos from AT&T Park showed the towering plume of smoke over the East Bay Hills!

I found out the big jet air tanker is called a VLAT DC-10 that is, it's a DC-10 widebody, converted into a Very Large Air Tanker. You gotta love government-speak...

Last I heard it was 'some kid doin' illegal target practice in his yard' that sparked the thing off. At 8PM Monday night, CalFire is reporting the Morgan Fire stands at 3,718 acres and 20% containment.

Reports from Reno/Stead Airport, home of the Reno Air Races say the unlimiteds have arrived, speed trials are underway...and oh yeah, the smoke from the Rim Fire has dissipated!

My next shot at an America's Cup race (and my first trip across the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge is Thursday, so I won't be in the Valley Of Speed until Friday morning.

This Sunday afternoon photo covers all the bases...so to speak...

The whole story: America's Cup recer, new Bay Bridge, Morgan Fire pyre.

More later...

Whew!

That was one fun filled weekend!

The battleship USS Iowa is almost to Los Angeles now...spending the day with her on San Francisco Bay was a peak experience, and a high watermark so far this spring.

The Monaco Grand Prix was in danger of becoming a procession when Mother Nature decided to mix things up with some sprinkles and a threat of genuine rain as the laps wore down. We have a sixth winner in six race weekends, but it's a repeat victory for Red Bull Racing, so there's five teams who've climbed the podium this season. I was rooting for six and six. Team Lotus and Team Sauber could be the 6th and 7th team to win this season...and any of their four drivers could be winners. It's gonna be an amazing Formula One season!

The Indy 500 was OK...to tell the truth, I was kinda out of it after getting up in the middle of the night (4:30AM) to watch Sunday's Formula One race after a long day bouncing around San Francisco Bay. I started paying close attention with 40 laps to go. My fave, Brazilian Tony Kanaan was out front with 16 to go...but yet another yellow flag bunched up the leaders, and Tony got jumped on the restart. Dario Franchitti's third Indy 500 victory suits me fine. Back in the 90s, I played a pay to play IndyCar Fantasy League. CART Rookie, Kanaan was one of my guys, as was Dario. I made $111.00 thanks to Dario one weekend.

In the afternoon I ignored the NASCAR race from Charlotte, NC. I was too busy tending to all the photos and video I shot Saturday

A Canadian, Ryder Hesjidal racing for an American team, Garmin-Barracuda won the Giro d'Italia, while I lead my fantasy bicycle racing league for the first week of the Giro, I finished dead last after all three weeks...as I predicted.

The next Grand Tour is a month away. Le Tour de France rolls out of the gate Saturday June30th.

While downloading, editing my videos and burning DVDs, and managing my photos of the USS Iowa and the AMGEN Tour of California, I was struck by the stark difference in the weather this year versus last year...

This year it's all fun in the sun. While doing all the video, I realized I never downloaded the video I made on top of Mt Hamilton for last year's Stage 4 of the AMGEN ToC. My email entreaty to BajaBabe convinced me that I'd been remiss last year so I ran the gamut and got 'er done. Man it looked miserable up in the fog and clouds last year! A stark contrast to my day on Mt Diablo with KirkVallus that was marked by plenty of sunscreen applications. BajaBabe and I were all bundles up in parkas and ski hats last year.

Mt Diablo was a party in the sun with thousands of fans lining the course, Mt Hamilton was more like serving in a lonely outpost in the Aleutians during WW2.

Ballgame!

Well, my San Francisco Giants didn't disappoint Thursday. KirkVallus and I rode the BART to AT&T Park and became a part of the team's 102nd consecutive sellout crowd.

As forecast, the wind turned into a northwest flow and the deep marine layer evaporated before game time. I do love afternoon baseball games, and at AT&T Park day games are magnificent! The winds reminded us of Candlestick in that they couldn't find a single direction and stick with it. There were even swirling winds for a while, and the northwesterlies gave balls hit into right-center a lift during the 3rd inning rally by the Cardinals when they wrested the lead away from the Giants who took the lead 2-1 in the 2nd.

The wind freshened as the day wore on, and the flags that rim the upper deck were really flapping in the brisk blow, making a loud, very sharp luffing noise. It's easy to get caught up in nautical thoughts at AT&T. The park is right on San Francisco Bay with an expansive view of Yerba Buena Island and the Bay Bridge with the East Bay Hills as a panoramic backdrop.

As the wind ramped up, so did the Giants regaining the lead a second time in the 6th, and adding two "insurance runs" in the 7th. The final score was 7-5 Giants, and the wind really whipped up the whitecaps on the Bay.

From the upper deck, the view is spectacular. San Francisco Bay is a working harbor, and the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge is coming along fine. There's always dredging in Oakland's harbor, and lots of container ships are coming and going into the Port of Oakland.

We walked the mile or so up Third Street back to BART. Let me tell you, that wind was howling through those concrete and glass canyons!

Descending under Market Street to the BART Station, the wind at last became a memory. Our train was there in 12 minutes and we even got seats together during rush hour!

Lots of happy Giants fans on the train were feeling good. So were we.

The Giants play the Oakland A's for three games beginning Friday night. I'll spare you my traditionalist rant on inter-league play.

Next peak event this week would be the annular eclipse on Sunday...and oh yeah...Pole Day at Indianapolis Saturday.

I've got a week to anticipate both the Indy 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix....sweet!

Bicycle Porn

True Dat...I did not post any pictures of the actual competitors in yesterday's blog, in fact I didn't even see race leader Peter Sagan fly by...Well, actually I did see him wizz by, but I couldn't recognize him at speed if my life depended on it.

Slovakian Sagan won the fourth stage of the AMGEN today, making it a sweep of the first four stages. Sagan is on my Team CorduroyPlanet fantasy team, but none of my other guys have scored any points so I'm tied with seven other teams in 15th place.

I'm cheaping out today, so I can hit the rack early...KirkVallus and I are taking in Thursday's San Francisco Giants game vs the St Louis Cardinals, the 2011 World Champions.

Unknown Rabobank rider in the peloton 50 meters from the KOM

Here's an action photo from Mt Diablo and some photos of that lovely woman's TREK bike with the custom paint. She's rightly proud of her ride!

The lady's beautiful TREK in the company of a beautiful steel LeMond

Very nice paint, understated, well realized

Two beautiful rides leaning on the State Park LEO pickup

Good night everybody! Go Giants!

On the Up and Up!

Well things look a lot different this year on the AMGEN Tour of California!

No snow, no ice on Donner Pass Road, no cancelled stages, no low hanging marine layer on the Mt Hamilton summit...Nope, none of it!

Friend of CorduroyPlanet, KirkVallus is in town for the race, and we rolled away from the SturgeUrge Compound a little after 10AM Tuesday morning headed for Mt Diablo. The race was climbing Mt Diablo for the first time, and we wanted to be up on the Devil Mountain at the King of the Mountain summit.

The mountain is in fine springtime shape, most of the grassy hills are still green, washed with colorful rafts of wildflowers looking from a distance like masterpieces from the Impressionist movement...think Claude Monet.

I had plenty of time to admire the beauty, VirkVallus was driving. Mt Diablo is a California State Park, and the roads are narrow (not to mention steep and windey) Oh, there were hundreds of bicyclists climbing the road as well!

A half an hour of climbing the mountain, and we stopped at Rock City, and paid the $10 Day Use Fee. Another 15 minutes and we found our little Valhalla 150 ft from the KOM line.

KirkVallus parked the Suburu wagon so the back would be our own private bleacher seats. We sprayed ourselves with sunscreen and took in the passing scene. We were at Junction City. There's a Ranger Station and a campground, and the road to the summit takes off from the junction with the park's main north/south thoroughfare. There were around 50 fans there when we settled in about two and a half hours before the race would pass over the summit.

Mt Diablo's Junction City KOM Summit

The people watching was World Class. A beautiful day marred only by some haze in the air. There must have been a hundred bicycles climbing the mountain for each car that did.

By the time the race was near, there were thousands of fans lining the road.

It was like a bicycle show. There were millions of dollars worth of bikes up there. Lots of high-dollar racing bikes. Composite bikes were the most common...lots of $4000-$6000 swoopy carbon fiber Time Trial bikes, and flat out racing bikes. I only saw one Lightspeed Titanium frame...these used to be the favored "unobtanium" weapon for poseurs and racers alike.

As the crowds built, we spied some beautiful old classic bikes. We saw a good half dozen LeMond bikes from the late 80s-early 90s. Beautifully brazed steel frames from America's first Tour de France Champion, Greg LeMond. I saw LeMond ride through downtown Truckee years ago on his training ride. He blew a shift and cussed as he turned right from West River Street onto HWY 267 heading back to Lake Tahoe.

I started snapping pictures of the more interesting bikes. A grizzled old guy on an old classic lugged steel framed Masi asked if he could park his bike next to the car. I said sure and snapped a photo. The frame was gorgeous, but the wheelset was the most modern carbon fiber rims with radial bladed titanium spokes.

Naturally 95% of the rides were road bikes. Mountain Bikes were the other 5%. We only saw two tandems and one recumbent.

Once the crowd filled in, I was struck by all the people on their handheld devices.

A couple of mountain bikers made a Facetime Video Call to their office to brag at a coworker about where they were and what they were doing as they wagged their gelato pops in front of the iPhone.

I didn't notice just how many people were on their devices until I got home and looked at my photos on my laptop. In some photos everyone was using a device!

I started taking pictures of people taking pictures...without much luck. Most of these people were quick draw experts with their digital cameras and iPhones.

Of course there's an app for the Tour. I asked our nearest neighbor if she had the TourTracker App. She didn't know about the app, but said she was getting tweets, and that the peloton had just gone through the sprint in Livermore.

Perfect. I'd printed the Stage Map and Stage Log before we left, and I looked at the log and it said The race would pass our place at 1:45PM...an hour and ten minutes away...

About 3 hours after the first photo...10 minutes before the peloton arrived Use the Stop Sign as a reference point

The crowd kept growing...it was a huge party...without the sloppy drunks...this was a fitness crowd...and as the race neared, the volume of the crowd grew along with the excitement.

The caravan began to stream by. All the Marshalls, Race Directors, Highway Patrol cars and bikes with lights a-blazing, yipping their sirens, then the crowd roared and the four men in the breakaway blew by. Pro cyclists go crazy fast...UPHILL!

The tweets said the break was almost nine minutes. The crowd kept itself on a slow boil. I listened for the helicopters, but never saw or heard them overhead as the main field approached. Truth be told, I'm sure the choppers cam right over us, but we couldn't hear them over the crowd.

It was an awesome spectacle. Team CorduroyPlanet's Peter Sagan won his third stage in a row. Well done...

Gravity

"Full results are up for Stage 6 of the Giro d'Italia. Despite not scoring any points today our leader remains Team Corduroy Planet with 158 points. Closing the gap today in 2nd is BooRiders with 156."

...From Friday's headline at my Fantasy League.

I didn't expect to score any points in Stage 6, but then again I didn't expect two Team CorduroyPlanet riders to abandon the Giro either. Two of my sprinters, Tyler Farrar and Thor Hushovd couldn't go on. Young phenom, Taylor Phinney and sprinter Mark Cavendish both suffered mightily and soldiered home 33:12 behind the winner.

Since winning the Stage 1 Prologue and the maillot rosa, Taylor Phinney has had nothing but bad luck. Caught in a high speed crash 100 meters from the finish in Stage 3, Phinney crossed the finish line in an ambulance and required three stitches to close an ankle wound. I guess it was lucky that the next day was a transfer/rest day.
  
In the TTT Phinney gave his all, and took an off course excursion through the grass as his reward. He had to coast for several meters to dig the turf from his drivetrain...and surrender the pink leader's jersey...

There's three more stages where I'm likely to score points with Mark Cavendish. My days atop the standings surely will end Saturday.

Starting Sunday, the AMGEN Tour of California takes to the road in Santa Rosa. Last years lingering winter scared the race out of the mountains...pity. 
  
I haven't a clue who to run in my fantasy team. Three time winner Levi Leipheimer will race, though it's a given that he can't compete for the win as he rehabs from getting run over by a car in Spain on April Fools' Day...

Friend of CorduroyPlanet, and fellow bike racing aficionado, KirkVallus is coming to town for the race and a Giants game. I'm guessing that we'll need sunscreen more than the extra layers we needed on Mt Hamilton during last year's ToC Stage 4 when the "Marine Layer" (read cold, wet fogbank) settled right on the mountain's summit, foiling the TV helicopters and thus the beautiful video that graces the VersusTV coverage...clowning around with BajaBabe took the sting outta that letdown.

It's a Formula One weekend, and it's starting a great week in the Month of May!

History Again

History is being made as I write!

It turns out that NASA's meteorite hunting blimp isn't a blimp at all, it's a Zeppelin!  Never before in history has a zeppelin been used to hunt meteorites. The Sacramento Bee today published a "treasure map" of what has been found up to and including Tuesday's finds. I hope they'll do likewise once the zeppelin hunt wraps up.

Sacramento Bee Graphic

On Thursday's 6 O'clock News I watched LIVE as they "landed" the zeppelin at McClellan Park. It looked pretty dicey with the winds kicked up by the passing weather system. At the time I didn't think Hindenberg, because I was still thinking blimp.

Airships are having a renaissance in our modern world. When I was a kid, the Goodyear Blimps were the whole airship flotilla here in America. Now there's a bunch of differently branded blimps floating over sporting events from coast to coast. I remember a newspaper story a few years ago about "stealth blimps" being developed for surveillance work. KirkVallus and I had many belly laughs at the thought of giant airships sneaking up on bad guys. This was before 9/11 I'm sure, today the idea would rate a FacePalm...

I've always had a passing interest in airships, but I don't "follow" them the way I do spaceflight. Thursday the SF Giants played an afternoon game, and waddya know, the telecast had a blimp feeding aerial shots. Needless to say, with the clouds and afternoon sun the views of action on the field paled in comparison to the myriad "beauty shots" of AT&T Park on McCovey Cove, the Bay's Bridges, San Francisco's hills and San Francisco Bay itself.

All the pretty blimp shots didn't help the Giants win however...

The NASA zeppelin Eureka, which NASA actually chartered from Airship Ventures who share space with NASA at Moffett Federal Airfield near Sunnyvale, CA. is the only zeppelin flying in the States today.

Though both are airships, blimps and zeppelins are different solutions to the same puzzle. Blimps are pressurized airships with only the envelope giving them their signature shape. Zeppelins are rigid airships with a metal structure giving the airship it's shape. Post-Hindenberg, all airships use helium instead of the highly explosive hydrogen.

I watched another chartered flight this morning on the web, when a United Launch Alliance Atlas V sent an Air Force Advanced AEHF communications satellite. ULA is a joint venture between Lockeed and Boeing. This was the launch delayed from Thursday for a balky purge valve. ULA rolled the Atlas V back to the assembly building and changed the valve in time to launch 24 hours later...even Florida's weather cooperated.

After the launch I caught up with the zeppelin story. Yesterday I likened the hunt to a glass bottom boat trip, it turns out the glass bottom boat has moved into the 21st Century. The zeppelin Eureka carries a gyro-stabilized, high-resolution video camera that can pick out a golf ball in the dirt from 1,500 feet.

I'm keeping an eye peeled to see if the zeppelinauts find anything.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/04/4464952/meteor-here-jkdkjdffdeck-here.html#storylink=cpy

The Sky Is Falling

...Again! Well, not actually the sky per se...it's another dead satellite...another Russian one. This one won't reenter over North America, and it's little compared to Phobos/Grunt, ROSAT and UARS. Molinya 1-89 only weighs 1600KG, about a ton and three quarters.

My Springtime plans are beginning to gel. Friend of CorduroyPlanet, Kirkvallus is coming down to the Inland Valley in May to catch a couple of stages of the AMGEN Tour of California. Stage 3 San Jose to Livermore climbs Mt Diablo, so we'll be up there watching the action. Here's a .pdf of the Stage 3 Map.

There's much less chance of fog ruining the TV view on Mt Diablo than at last year's Stage 4 that climbed Mt Hamilton between Livermore and San Jose. Baja Babe and I spectated from the Mt Hamilton summit, and it was an awesome spectacle.

Sadly, Perennial ToC contender Santa Rosa's Levi Leipheimer won't be contending this year. Levi was hit by a car while training April 1st for the Vuelta al País Vasco in Basque country, and suffered a broken tibia. Levi sounds like he's game for the challenge though...

I grabbed a couple of tix for the SF Giants vs St Louis Cardinals during the week, too. It's a Day Game and should be a blast! Our seats are out in right-center field over the archways, under the Splash Hit water cannons and Fog Horns...note to self, remember to bring ear plugs!

There's Reno Air Race News this week. The NTSB will hold a press conference next Tuesday, to release recommendations to improve safety at air races and give an update on the ongoing investigation into last year’s tragic crash at the Reno National Championship Air Races.

Tickets for September's Reno Air Races went on sale a couple of weeks ago, but there's still uncertainty whether the Races will go on or not. 

Tonight was Opening Day for the Reno Aces Triple-A ball club. They defeated the Colorado Springs Sky Sox 5-2 after a...wait for it...snow delay!

Lookin' Up

Remember our old friend AR1429, the active sunspot region that kicked out a series of M-Class solar flares, or Coronal Mass Ejections in early March?

Well the view from NASA's SDO satellite shows the region is still kicking up it's heels on the farside of the Sun. AR1429 which will come around the Sun's limb after two weeks traversing the farside, has kicked out a couple of C-Class flares showing the region's ongoing activity.

I'm still trying to see the Northern Lights for the first time. Perhaps AR1429 will deliver.

The night skies have been busy over the past couple of weeks, but the show has been obscured by this year's Miracle March cloudy regime. Jupiter, the Moon, and Venus aligned this week above the clouds...

Later this spring there's two big deal astronomical events that truly are events of a lifetime.

On May 20, 2012 there's an Annular Eclipse who's path of totality comes right over Truckee! Then on June 6th, Venus will transit the Sun in a six hour event which can be seen across North America, and won't be seen again until 2117!

Looking ahead only five years to August 21st, 2017, the United States will be blessed with the Real Deal, a genuine Total Solar Eclipse!  This time the path of totality favors friends of CorduroyPlanet, BajaBabe and KirkVallus

Seeing any of these events is like hitting the lottery which reminds me of another factoid from today's background static...

The big Mega-Millions lotto jackpot for Friday night's drawing is over a half a billion dollars...that's $640 Million bucks. This Mega-Millions Game is the redheaded stepchild to PowerBall, the other multi-state game of chance. California threw in with Mega-Millions, while neighboring Nevada doesn't have any lotteries...they have plenty of gambling to tax already.

The lure of millions has caused a traffic "situation" west of Reno, NV on Interstate 80. The Reno paper has the deets. I don't normally play Mega-Millions, but a buck buys a ticket and more than a dollar's worth of fantasy when we're talking real money, so I'll pick up a ticket before Friday's draw...

Tracking Error

God this heat wave is playin' hell with my sleep this week! I was up trying to fall asleep until 2AM last night. Thank God for streaming internet radio! I found a stream of the Dennis Miller Show, and while I was too hot to sleep, I wasn't to hot to laugh out loud!

My alarm aroused me at 0600 and I tuned in the Armstrong and Getty Show...I faded quickly and rejoined the conscious listeners around 0800.With a start,I remembered that the UARS satellite was set to reenter any hour now,so I hit the 'net for the latest intel.

It seems that the satellite is slightly confounding the tracking people. After some high solar activity last week,the Sun has settled down enough to allow the Earth's upper atmosphere to contract enough to allow UARS a few more orbits before the inevitable.

Tracking maps I've seen show some debris tracks over the United States! NASA says the final orbit will now be late Friday or early Saturday EDT. Depending on which orbit is the last one, the debris field could be near New Orleans, across San Diego, with the debris field stretching into  Southern Nevada, and Arizona, or a few hundred miles offshore from Oregon.

I've spent a couple of hours trying to download the latest tracks and images,but all the tracking websites are overloaded now. Still standing is Spaceflight Now's UARS tracking page.

I found a twitter feed from @UARS_Reentry. They say four more orbits with reentry between 7:55PM PDT and 8:20PM PDT which puts it on the United States West Coast. It looks like off the Oregon coast.

KirkVallus, got a hard hat?

3:30PM PDT Update

It looks like splash-down will be off the Washington State coast, still in the 7:55-8:20PM PDT window.

The Devil's Arithmetic Visits The Valley of Speed

 I've been thinking about this all day. News is slowly leaking out from Reno and Stead Field. I'm struck by the misinformation that the field reporters are providing the viewers of the 24/7 CableNews channels. One handsome guy on FoxNews reported that mechanical issues might have caused Friday's crash...then went on to call the offending part an "Elevator Trim Raise"

I'm pretty sure he means "Elevator Trim Tab"...

It turns out there was a similar incident at the 1998 Reno Air Races.

Seven time AMA Motocross Champion, Bob "Hurricane" Hannah piloting another highly modified P51D, lost his left elevator trim tab during the Saturday Gold Heat Race, and "Voodoo" shot straight up pulling 10+Gs of deceleration, causing Hannah to black out. Hannah regained consciousness  at 9000ft, regained control, called a Mayday and landed safely. Voodoo sat out the rest of the weekend.

Voodoo's missing left elevator trim tab

I witnessed this from the fenceline in the Valley of Speed, far from the grandstands and the Home Pylon. Until today I'd never heard the whole story of Hannah and Voodoo's narrow escape.

It's the rare man who can keep it together when confronted with 10Gs. I think it's fair to assume that Jimmy blacked out when the Galloping Ghost shot skyward in front of the Pits Friday afternoon. The plane's lazy tumble from the top of the climb into the fatal dive without any throttle input, would imply an impaired-pilot situation.

That so many eyewitness pilots said the Jimmy did everything he could to keep his craft out of the crowd, indicates to me that Jimmy was probably coming to and instinctively pulling back on the stick in the final second or so of the fatal dive. There's no substitute for experience, and Jimmy Leeward had experience...in spades. The 50ft or so difference between impacting the tarmac and the VIP Boxes versus crashing into the grandstand probably reduced casualties by a factor of five...Godspeed Jimmy, good on ya'.

The Devil's Other Arithmetic

The Metric System...sorry European Readers, not your Metric System...we Americans don't cotton to your metric system (unless we're American Soldiers, who've been conversant in meters and kilometers since the Marshall Plan)

No I'm talking Web Metrics here...that's American Geek Dialect for Web Measuring...click counting at it's most basic and downright intrusive data collection at it's most extreme.

I've been writing my little...what does KirkVallus' sister call it..."his blog about the weather and other stuff?" for a couple of years. Until Google's Blogger Service added their "Stats" feature in the spring of 2009 I had no idea if I even had any readers aside from a couple of characters who are friends and appear in CorduroyPlanet from time to time. Since last spring I've been averaging 30-35 page views a day. CorduroyPlanet is a labor of love, I like it advertizing-free, and outside of posting a link on Facebook or Twitter from time to time, I've done nothing to try and build a commercially viable audience.

So imagine my surprise when I had six comments in need of moderation this morning! After I published them, I clicked on the Stats Tab and my jaw hit the desk! Over 4000 views of Friday night's "Chilled" blog!

I was dumbfounded! I clicked through the Stats Tabs and found that commenters on a couple of Tech Blogs had linked to my blog. Throughout the day, I looked in every hour or so and the hits just kept coming. Page views hit 10K in 22 hours.

Blogger Stats is "Web Metrics Lite" It tracks a few things, but it isn't intrusive to visitors to my blog, and doesn't give nearly the in depth, detailed info that the industry standard Google Analytics does. I do get a look at Referring urls and Referring Pages...curious, I clicked through and found links on several Techie and Gearhead websites.

Devil's Arithmetic

I got pounded on a British Gearhead Forum for being "The blogger on that link doesn't have a clue what he's talking about" I followed that guy's link to the 1998 Voodoo story and photo.

Here's the links that linked CorduroyPlanet...these were the major drivers of the click storm:

SlashDot linked James Gosling's Blog link, and about half the page views came from these two sites.

I'm grateful to have all these folks read my screed...I just wish it wasn't a Train Wreck Event that caused all the commotion. I'd have preferred the traffic went to the posts I'm most proud of like my Father's Day Blast, or my Proposal for a Lincoln Highway Centennial Bicycle Tour.

I did get a hint last year when I wrote daily from the Valley of Speed about the Reno Air Races and a non-fatal crash on Saturday. I got many visits from European readers for those blogs.

As much as I hate what happened Friday, the Air Racing Community will regroup, emotions will ease, the NTSB will issue their findings, and everyone can relax once again. The Leeward family will go on with their hearts heavy, and we all will pray that the Reno Air Races will return to us next September.

Dinner at the SturgeUrge Compound

My friend KirkVallus is in town for the weekend. His Facebook post alerted me that he was in town, and hangin' at the SturgeUrge Compound. I rang him up and invited myself to dinner. They were in Oakland having a beer and a fried chicken sandwich at Bakesale Betty's.

About 4:30, KirkVallus called back and our plan was hatched. "I'll be over in half an hour, and we'll make a road trip out to the asian grocery and grab some live dungeness crabs and all the fixins."

We hit the grocery store and headed right back to the fish market. The tank was brimming full of live dungees in the 1 1/2-2 pound range. There was a problem however...they were $10.99/lb!

I was in the same spot two weeks ago, admiring the crab when it was $5.99/lb...Plan B was indicated...off to the Mexican Market!

They've been upgrading the Mexican produce/fish market this summer, and in the hustle and flow of the sprucing up, they drained and moved their live crab tank...it was still empty when we walked in. Fortunately the fish market had a beautiful Ahi loin on ice, and on sale for $8.99/lb. The loin looked to be from a 60-80lb fish...I had the fishmonger slice off three 1 1/4" thick steaks. Holy moly, they weighed a pound each! We grabbed some patty pan squash in yellow and green and were off.

SturgeUrge was playing plumber when we returned to the Compound, so we had a beer and tuned in the Giants vs Rockies game.

In no time (if you don't count three trips to as many hardware stores), Urge wrapped up his plumbing project and set about making dinner...his jaw dropped when he saw the ahi steaks!

A quick Pow Wow and the menu was set, and magically as always dinner hit the table in no time. Cajun Seared Ahi served Sashimi Style as the appetizer, followed by Seared Ahi Sashimi Style with grilled patty pan squash on the side. Add a decent California Cabernet and we had dinner and a game!

Both were excellent! The Giants won to pace the Arizona Diamondbacks, and Giants' third baseman Pablo Sandoval hit for the cycle...the tenth Giant to accomplish the feat since 1883.

It was a good night all around.

Beginning a New Week: Vuelta a España Edition

A new week and...count 'em...two new bicycle races began over my weekend. The Vuelta a España, and The US Pro Cycling Challenge up in Colorado. The Vuelta began on Saturday, and runs for three weeks, like the Tour de France and the Giro d' Italia. The US Pro CC kicked off Monday, and lasts a week. Both races have good television coverage in the States as well as World-Wide. The US Pro CC is broadcast to 161 countries, the Vuelta a España is seen in even more.

On Monday, I was reminded of the Favorite Motto (read: Prime Directive) of my old grooming boss from my rookie days. Now my memory fades when it comes to the exact title of the Boss' Rule..."The Rule Of Six" or "The Rule Of Six 'P's" are my best guesses...like I say, it has been 30 years! The Rule:

"Poor Prior Planning makes for Piss-Poor Performance"

I'm calling The Rule on NBC Sports...The 6P Rule for short...well, for succinct...and this reminds me of KirkVallus and his whippet, Rose.

When we were introduced (the dog and yours truly) KV said: "TruckeeDave, this is Rose...or Rosy for short"...I didn't say anything...as my brain was knocked slightly askance until I processed the words for a minute...OK...not shorter...twice the syllables...OK...HiHo... 

But I digress...(I've always wanted to say that...rimshot!...I'm in town all week, folks...rimshot again!) OK, OK! Here's the NBC 6P Rule violation...

NBC Sports is televising the Vuelta a España on their CableSports channel Universal Sports. They join the race LIVE from Spain every morning (North American time) for the last two hours of each stage daily, then replay the show several times throughout the day.

NBC Sports also broadcasts the US Pro Challenge LIVE on their Versus Network every day starting at 1PM PDT...right when I prefer to watch the Vuelta replay! The magic of DVRs is not lost on me, but as I've been saying since I got my first Betamax, "The one thing they don't tell you when they're selling you the machine is: You have to have the time to watch what you record" Those recorded programs pile up quick!

NBC Sports has the two races on at the same time at 1PM and 8PM, and there's a 5PM Vuelta Showing. Further complicating my viewing pleasure planning is the Giants' games...it's stretch-run time in baseball's Big Leagues. There's 34 games left for the Giants to regain the lead in their division. As I write, the first pitch of tonight's game is a half an hour away, with the Giants one game behind the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Amazingly, the Giants looked like their old selves, coming from behind in the 8th to tie it up, only to lose it in the ninth. Two games back now...On the bright side, no new injuries.

On the roads of Colorado, quite the picturesque vistas, I didn't get to see the finish at Crested Butte yet.

Over in Spain, the riders were suffering...and they looked like it. Spain's Mediterranean Coast reminds me of Baja, sans cacti. Temps in the 90s...humidity too. Team CorduroyPlanet's sprinter Manxman Mark Cavendish abandoned today citing heat and fatigue.

Today's finish was at Sierra Nevada, the Vuelta's first mountaintop finish of six. The trees on the way up the mountain looked pretty scrubby compared to my Sierra Nevada's trees...

I'll be seeing and smelling those High Sierra conifers beginning mañana! I'm fleeing the little Heat Wave for a few days...maybe I'll touch a Lincoln Highway concrete milepost along my way home...cool...

Thrill Chill

Imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning at 0445 fully clothed on top of the bedspread. I don't remember falling asleep of course, but it was after the Giants victory, and after the package replay of Le Tour's Stage 9 from the French countryside.

The promised break in the Heat Wave finally arrived Saturday in earnest, and this morning the marine layer is overhead.

I got under the covers and tuned in the Tour while the French Roast brewed, and settled in for a day of total niche sports immersion...and a baseball game. Oh, I've got some chores to take up before the day's over, but mostly I get to be self-indulgent today. I settled in to see if race leader Thor Hushovd could hang onto the maillot jaune.

Today's Stage 9 is an up and down affair with no fewer than seven categorized climbs and an uphill finish. Of the seven climbs, three are Category 2, with three Category 3's and a 4. That's a lot of climbing, but not as severe as when they're in the Alps or Pyrénées, climbing the 1st Category and Hors Catégorie mountain passes! This is perfect terrain for breakaways to escape from the peleton and steal a stage win.

Sprinters like Hushovd as a rule are bigger men with huge legs, who struggle in the mountains when compared with the smaller lighter climbers. Hoshovd, reigning Road Race World Champion has impressed the peloton all week by holding the yellow jersey since the roads began to turn uphill in France's Massif Central.

I'm struck by how vivid the green grasses are in this year's France. It may be the rain that's been omnipresent so far. The riders aren't taking in the awesome scenery, they're too busy trying to keep their wheels under themselves on the rain-slick roads.

The first week of Le Tour has been marked by crashes as usual. Typically it's nervousness in the peloton coupled with narrow roads and brisk crosswinds in northern coastal France that causes all the trouble, but this year the field seems to be extra nervous due in part to crashes to race favorites compounding the fear for the teams of the "Heads Of State" as the contenders are known. Throw in wet roads too, and it's just the Devil's Arithmetic.

It started early today, 84km into the stage, when Defending Champion Alberto Contador tangled with another rider and veered off the road and into a spectator landing in a ditch on his butt before chasing back to the peloton, seeming none the worse for wear.

Early on, a six man breakaway escaped and ran their lead up to about five minutes. Three of the five were my fantasy riders. At 102km there was a horrific crash on a 70kph (43.4mph) descent that broke the peleton apart at the front. Four racers were injured badly enough to abandon including American Dave Zabriske of Team Garmin-Cervélo, who's another Team CorduroyPlanet fantasy racer. My fantasy teams are starting to resemble KirkVallus' fantasy football picks...on Injured Reserve...

The peleton kicked into Chivalry Mode, called a truce, and took it easy while those caught in and behind the mess got themselves sorted out and rejoined the peleton. At the front the break away was adding to their lead, as yet unaware of the carnage behind them.

Team CorduroyPlanet is looking good I thought as the news of the crash victims came trickling in. Normally, I'd be monitoring Twitter and Tumblr for up-to-the-second news from France, but I didn't want to find out the results of the British Grand Prix. The Fox TV Network is broadcasting the F1 race today, delayed for the American market. Normally, I'd be watching the GP LIVE, and avoiding the Tour de France results 'till I could catch the next replay, and I'd be unaware of the drama playing out in central France! There's nothing that takes the fun out of watching an F1 race like knowing the outcome!

The news from the crash scene was not good. Zabriske had a broken wrist. Alexander Vinokurov who challenged for yesterday's stage win, and stood 3rd on the podium in Paris in 2003, was the worst off suffering a broken pelvis (or femur) and a broken elbow.

Team Omega Pharma-Lotto teammates Jurgen Van den Broucke and Frederik Willems suffered a broken shoulder blade and a collarbone respectively. Also on the pavement were Team RadioShack/CorduroyPlanet's Andreas Klöden and Team Garmin-Cervélo/CorduroyPlanet's Christian Vande Velde, fortunately undamaged.

After some time, the shattered peleton reassembled itself and called off the truce and began chasing down the breakaway. Up at the front, another weird crash, this one in full view of the High Definition TV cameras. A French Television car bumped breakaway race leader (and Team CorduroyPlanet's) Juan Antonio Flecha at speed, causing him to hit the pavement and cause Johnny Hoogerland to somersault over a roadside ditch and into a barbed wire fence! Ouch!

Juan Antonio Flecha picks up the pieces

Flecha was back up and on his bike quickly before fading from the breakaway and getting caught by the chasing peleton. Hoogerland took quite a long time to get untangled from the barb wire, get bandaged up and slowly soldier on in disgust. Johnny Hoogerland finished dead last on the day. Either man could have gone on to win the stage if not for the fool holding the wheel in the TV Car.


The video is in Dutch, but you don't need a translator to get the gist of the commentary!

I gotta say all this carnage put quite the damper on my day. Thrills chilled, that's for sure.

Spoiler Alert! Stage 9 Results:
Oh, I almost forgot the bright side...Team Rabobank/CorduroyPlanet's Luis-Leon Sanchez won the stage, and is now in contention for the GC  ahead of Cadel Evans and Team RadioShack/CorduroyPlanet's Klöden. Frenchman Thomas Voeckler takes over the yellow jersey after racing in the breakaway all day. Much to my amazement, Team CorduroyPlanet has five riders in the Overall Top 20!

Fantasy and Reality

Fantasy: Maybe my brain got poached Monday on San Pablo Bay.

Reality: This Heat Wave is so cruel coming as it has after such a prolonged cold wet Spring.

Fantasy: Maybe I'll finish out of the cellar in Tour de France Fantasy Bicycle Racing this July.

Reality: I'm a piker at Fantasy Bicycle Racing. I finished four times at the bottom of my league during the two races I've contested this season...the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Tour de Suisse.

I'm never going to play Fantasy Baseball or Fantasy NFL...too much work. (It could be argued that if I did a little more "work" on my fantasy bicycle teams, I'd get out of the cellar)

Baseball loves computers...Football too. Thanks to the computer revolution, there's even more baseball stats than before computers. (However, baseball and computer databases being what they are, all the new stats can easily be compiled all the way back to the 1860's beginning of professional ball).

I love San Francisco Giants baseball too much to burden myself with a fantasy team.

I'm what you'd call a Baseball Purist. I have a visceral connection to the game's Old-Timey nature, and to the history of Baseball. I think Inter-League Play devalues the World Series.

I don't like the DH either, though I believe it's inevitable that the Designated Hitter Virus will infect the National League. (The MLB Player's Union will never let those lucrative positions for aging stars go away, in fact forcing the DH down the National League's throat is a major goal of the Player's Union) The DH spot is a highly paid position for a one-way player, and those adored aging stars carry a lot of weight with the fans come collective bargaining time.

I believe it's short-sided to trash so much strategy and nuance from the game just to extend the careers of a few over-paid fading stars facing the twilight of their careers...most of whom will never be remembered like the True Greats are.

In the Fall, it's gridiron time. My friend KirkVallus cured me of Fantasy Football. Every NFL Season, KV drafts a team, and from week one they all go down to injury like the parade of victims in a murder mystery...I can't afford to have that on my conscience!

The Tour de France begins Saturday July 2nd. I can put together my teams now, but all the real teams aren't quite set yet. I'll do a little more reading...err, studying of the likely team rosters and the pre-race hype before settling on Team CorduroyPlanet's TdF Squad.

If I treat the Fantasy Racing as lightly as I have these past two seasons, it'll be just a little extra fun during the grand Tour.

I wonder...will there be America's Cup Fantasy Racing?

Soldiering On

The Boys look to be havin' a good time down in Baja Sur. The killer app cum appliance, Facebook has been beaming their fishing photos to us Norteños daily, where the non pescadors among KirkVallus' FB friends comment and the fishermen drool and envy.

A mutual friend asked: "I take it T-Dave you're maybe just a bit jealous you're not there?!"

"Not a bit...I'll get 'em next year...did get my Mom's Taxes done tonight, though! More wahoo, Boys!", I replied...I knew in May that I wouldn't be going South this Fall...I had too many pins in the air this year. I'll do it right in 2011...it'll be epic...think Odysseus.

I'm feeling a "good tired" tonight...Income Taxes are just too much hassle. Can we ditch the Income Tax and the millions of pages of rules and go to a Flat Tax, or better yet, a Consumption Tax please? Wouldn't it be wonderful to liberate all those suffering, button downed accountants? Who knows, one of 'em could turn around and cure cancer or something...

So I'm resting up...feelin' the glow of accomplishment...watching some tube...doing the email...thinking about the next round of baseball playoffs. The American League starts Friday...my Giants go to bat Saturday in Philly...it's more epic on tap.

I read some interesting new info about our Sun...but that's a story for a day not devoted to rest and relaxation...on deck, October's 90 Day Climate Outlook Discussion.

Around The World in 70 Centimeters

I spent a lazy evening after a hard day of fishing on San Francisco Bay. SturgeUrge and I returned to the Richmond Marina where we'd encountered the Finn Gold Club last week. Saturday was our last shot for the season to catch a King Salmon, and the forecast and the tides were in our favor.

I checked the local buoys online at 0700 and the data said Normal...the forecast, Normal. We're all systems GO.

I unpacked my digital camera from my tackle bag and the waterproof Pelican Case so I could capture a picture of the top of the boat ramp follies with a minimum of muss and fuss. Saturday was the final day of racing the Finn Class sailboats. The World Champion would be decided on San Francisco Bay Saturday afternoon.

To my dual delight and disappointment, there was no forest of Finn Dollies cluttering the ramp (and making a great photo op) We launched the boat, deployed the coffee and cheese danish, and motored out onto the Bay.

It was a glorious day on San Francisco Bay even though the Salmon didn't come out to play...or the Halibut. Still the wind was moderate, the tides favorable, and the overcast burned off around noon, revealing a glorious day. We couldn't see the Finns contesting the Gold Cup, but we were treated to a picturesque Club Race featuring forty or more 20-something foot long sloops sailing downwind with their colorful spinnakers full.

When we returned to the Marina, there was little sign of the Finns themselves. The Gold Cup World Champion had been decided about two hours before we returned to the ramp to recover the boat.

There was a new class of clutter jamming up the works now...all the Regatta Support Boats were pulling out of the water after spending the week afloat. Judges' and Referees' Boats, Tenders, all manor of Zodaics, Boston Whalers, RIB Inflatables, Antique Yachts and Yacht Club Flagships were tied up at the ramp's docks, sitting on trailers all over the tiny bit of unused parking at the top of the ramp, getting washed down, power washed, and secured for towing...all by men seemingly oblivious to everyone else around them.

SturgeUrge backed the tow rig down "our lane" of the ramp, and I floated the boat onto the trailer. As we were pulling the boat up the ramp on our way to the Washdown Station, Urge said: "Watch me run over a $1000 Finn Mast"..."Umm, I replied, that's probably a bag with five $1000 masts in it!"

The Mast Bag was laying across the lane between the ramp and the Washdown Station...the "Main Drag"! As we drove by the bag, the fellow washing his boat (not at the Washdown Station) kinda glared at us for driving so close to "his" mast bag...

We made quick work of unloading the boat, washing the rods and reels, the boat and the trailer, as we chatted up the guy doing the same in the other washdown lane. We flushed the outboard while we ran the carburetors out of fuel mix. When we were done, I strode back towards the ramp to change into my shorts in one of the dozen or so PortaPotties set up for the event. That's when I watched GlaringBoatWashing Guy pull away and out of the Marina...the Mast Bag was still laying there, obviously not his! Still begging to be run over...right in the middle of the whole show...

Once we got the boat parked in it's spot at the SturgeUrge Compound, we unloaded the tow rig and KirkVallus sauntered in, back from a reunion get together downtown. We had a Dark&Stormy Cocktail on the deck, and caught up for a half an hour.

Back at the Ancestral Digs, my Sister K was in town and was holding dinner until I arrived. We enjoyed gnocchi and converstion, and we all turned in early.

Sunday morning I woke up and brewed a pot of French Roast, and realized I hadn't blogged for Sunday publication. I looked around the internet for some "Wrap Up The Week" items.

I'd been wondering since I heard a radio news tease about the 7.1 Earthquake in New Zealand...did the quake cause any avalanches on New Zealand's Ski Slopes? New Zeasland Ski Reasorts have been on my radar since their season started this summer and I saw a news story of a lift tower failing under huge deposits of rime ice. I wrote about the event here.

So I looked at PlanetSki online (we PlanetWhatevers stick together) and yes...12 avalanches, no reported damage, and no injuries...the temblor occurred when most Kiwis were still in bed.

While reading the NZ Avalanche story, I saw another story citing  70cm of snowfall in the Alps. My handy online Unit Converter says: 70 centimeter = 27.559055118 inches, so for my American Readers...27 1/2 inches of snow fell in the Alps...more "Early Snow"

I'm seeing lots of "Early Snow" stories this summer...that's right, it's still summertime.

On the Atlantic Hurricane Front, there's a lot of Post-Earl hub-bub over the lack of "performance" by Hurricane Earl. Resort operators across the Eastern Seaboard's Hurricane Earl Watch & Warning Areas are pretty upset with the National Hurricane Center's forecasts, and they're plenty angry with the 24/7 Cable News Channels for hyping the hurricane to the degree that the Holiday Weekend Travel Bonanza was denied the tourism sector who, at worst suffered a few hours of heavy rain while their customers were scared off by the media's over the top hurricane hype.

Ongoing hurricane coverage is the ratings motherlode for the Cable News outfits during the otherwise slow Dog Days...hurricanes mean lot's of viewers checking in over and over again...with the Fifth Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the All-Time Summer CableNews Blockbuster at hand, there were plenty of high hopes for a repeat performance of the off that charts ratings bonanza.

I can feel their pain, High Sierra Ski Resorts often suffer at the hands of overzealous weather and news outlets over-hyping the weekend forecast. At My Mountain we stand to lose a quarter million dollars a day when Holiday Crowds avoid the mountains at the behest of an overheated forecast teased all week long heading into a holiday weekend. When the "difficult mountain travel for the Holiday" doesn't materialize, it costs us...big time. All things being equal, Ski Resorts tally all their profits on Holiday Weekends, and the Christmas Holidays...period, bottom line. To paraphrase the late Senator from Illinois, Everett Dirkson...a quarter million here, a quarter million there...pretty soon you're talking Real Money!

Specious Weather Behind Me

Thankfully, the Weatherman was way off today! I was a little worried when I checked the NWS SFO/Monterey AFD and Marine Forecast. Yesterday's Tomales Bay forecast for WNW winds 10-15mph was upped to this morning's 10-16mph!?

SturgeUrge and I hit the road about 0730...there was some barely-there "drizzle" on the windshield...again, contrary to the latest forecast! We arrived at the Miller Park Boat Ramp at 0930 to view a glassy, flat Tomales Bay under cloudy but dry skies.

I rigged and baited the crab pots while SturgeUrge chatted up the other fishermen getting their rigs ready to launch. Word was, no legal dungeness crabs around, halibut fishing...slow. Some helpful anglers advised us to watch the course they ran from the ramp to the main bay, as the water was pretty thin.

We launched into the mirror-like water, followed the Good Samaritans' course until the depth sounder said five feet, and blasted across the Bay to the West shore to set the pots.

With the crab gear deployed, we started drift fishing for halibut. There was barely any wind at all...at least the flooding tide moved us some. We had some raked baits, but no bites that got our attention. We drifted for an hour and ran back to the crab gear.

After a one hour soak, the first pot had a bunch of Red Crabs and a half a dozen dungees! The reds were huge! Three of the dungees were keepers, too. The other pot was loaded with dungees...maybe 15! Most were just a little short, but a couple more were keepers, and went into the livewell.

The day went like this as the sun came out, and so did a small armada of fishing boats and kayak fishermen. We chatted with a couple of the kayakers...nobody it seems was hooking any halibut. One kayaker, whose "handle" I knew from the NorCalKayakAngler's website, was crabbing too. He had crabs in the boat, but wasn't doing any better than the rest of us when it came to the halibut.

We kept at it, drifting for halibut, and pulling the pots every hour. After the third pull, we moved the pots because of diminishing returns, and because I recognized an undersize dungee we'd pulled three times! Poor little fella had one normal claw and one tiny "baby" claw. The Tomales Bay crab had many barnacles on their shells and claws...many more than we see in the Pacific proper.

The day flew by, we were running on adrenaline and didn't ever get around to making sandwiches. As the crabs kept coming aboard, the livewell filled with nice crustaceans. The baitwell was working like a champ...KirkVallus' electronic wizardry was paying off in spades! Thanks KV!

We weren't catching halibut, but we were caring less and less the more the livewell filled with tasty crabs! Finally, SturgeUrge brought a halibut aboard! It was about 20 1/2 inches...too short!

California Halibut must be 22 inches to retain in California waters...Urge's halibut went about 1 1/2 inches. It was impaled on a hook's point, but it was only a "flesh wound"...nothing important felt the "sting of steel"...in fact, the little flatfish was so small that he was still transparent. It was cool, it had the signature halibut spots, both eyes were on top, and Urge said he could see right through the skin. I snapped a quick photo, and the little guy swam away when SturgeUrge put it back in the Bay. Alas, in the bright sun, I couldn't see the LCD screen, and the camera moved, or the boat moved, and the focus was way off.

As the haul of crab grew, we started thinking we'd better leave earlier than we'd planned, so we called: "One more drift"...we'd recount and remeasure the crab, and hightail it home because there was an hour or two of crab cookin' and cleaning to do...not to mention a fresh dungeness crab dinner to savor!

We went a little further northwest for our last drift, and before long, we drifted out of the wind shadow of Point Reyes and we really started to scoot! Just then, SturgeUrge's rod almost jumps overboard! Urge grabs it, sets the hook, and starts reeling. "Anybody home" I asked. "No, it's got weight, but no head shake"...then Urge says: "Get the net!" There's a big dungee hanging onto my bait!" Then, "I'm not making any headway...start it up and we'll back down on it" That's when Urge realizes he's snagged on a crab pot rope, entangled with a bunch of eel grass, and that big crab hitching a ride. I bumped the outboard into and out of reverse, handed the landing net to SturgeUrge, he expertly caught the crab as it cleared the surface and let go, dropping right into the net.

As this was going on, we realized what we had here...A crab pot that was lost when a boat ran over the pot's line...I grabbed the gaff, and caught the crab line. SturgeUrge picked up the other fishing line that was still out, and I started to pull the derelict pot's line.

There were no line weights on the hardware store black and orange nylon rope. You've got to weight the floating line, or it's bound to find a boat's propeller.

I hoisted the pot over the gunnel, and it was loaded with dungeness crabs, and a lone red crab. We whooped it up, high-fived each other, and generally enjoyed our great fortune. There were another three or four keepers in the lost pot, which was poorly rigged...under-weighted, no line weights, no hanging bait...just a giant bait cage. We guessed it was lost last weekend, because the line didn't have any growth started on it yet...So some poor schlub lost his new crab pot on Father's Day...sorry about that, DaddyO...

So, today turned out to a day for the archives...catching a lost pot with a rod and reel is rare enough...but grabbing that hitchhiker crab, and a potfull of dungeness...well, that was just icing on the cake!

We talked to some other anglers back at the ramp who did catch a 10lb halibut today...they said they've been catching halibut all week...with live jacksmelt for bait. They jigged up the smelt from the edges of the eelgrass patches in the shallows of the Bay. They were one of only two boats we saw using the local live bait today...Noted for next time...jacksmelt were the prey we saw the ospreys winging back to their nests too.

Two hours on the highway later, we were back at the SturgeUrge Compound by 6:30PM. SturgeUrge fired up my cooker and steamed the 20 crabs in two batches, while I flushed the outboard motor, washed the rods and reels, and hauled in all the stuff from the tow rig.

I set the table for the regal spread. Two flavors of crab, french bread, and a quick homemade coleslaw, enjoyed with a great California Sparkling Wine, Domaine Chandon Blac de Noir.

In a word...perfect.

In The Bag

I had a fun and productive weekend here in the Inland Valley. KirkVallus was in town and we spent some time working on SturgeUrge's boat Friday afternoon. Saturday, KV was off to the Big Valley for a Dog Race called "Lure Coursing" where he plays with his whippet Rose...or as KirkVallus told me with a straight face..."Rose, it's short for Rosy"

KirkVallus told me that his sister read my blog from time to time, and said: "I don't get it...he's always writing about the weather" and stuff. I looked at KV and said: "Well, duh..." We went back to riffin' and laughin'...

We always have a lot of laughs when we get together...we've earned the title: "The Kirk and Dave Show" over the years from our closest friends...so it came as no surprise Sunday evening, when we laughed ourselves into tears over at SturgeUrge's house. SturgeUrge is in sales, so he knows a joke or two as well...suffice it to say, hilarity ensued...in spades.

In a little lull in the laugh-track, I queried the boys on the phrase "Baggy Trough" Nothing but crickets...then back to the wholesale hijinx. KirkVallus was anxious to get home to work, so he was going to miss our Monday halibut trip. SturgeUrge and I decided we'd pass on Monday too, and go up to Tomales Bay for crab and halibut hunting on Friday instead.

I've been digging in the garden early...until the heat causes me to retreat. Today I called it a morning in time to catch the weather on the Noon News. While waiting for the weather segment to air, I scanned the 'Net for fishing reports, Marine Weather Forecasts, and I went back to the Reno AFD from last Friday to look again at the "Baggy Trough" reference. Still puzzled, I ran through the AFD Archive to see if I could get a clear idea of just what a baggy trough is. No such luck. I clicked on YellowPages.com and searched National Weather Service near Reno, NV and gave 'em a call.

After a fairly short computer phone triage, I pushed zero and got a human on the line.

I explained that I worked in the Ski Industry, and that I was a regular reader of their Area Forecast Discussion, and I was wondering what a Baggy Ridge was.

The guy on the phone was one of the forecasters, and was just like my Dad (and every engineer I've ever met) all business. He explained haltingly that a baggy trough was an elongated trough that wasn't well organized as opposed to a closed low which is an actual storm system. "Kinda like a Slacker Trough?" I asked...well, he allowed...maybe..."Sloppy?" I asked...yeah, kinda, let's just say it's weak and disorganized. Sounds like Slacker to me, I thought.

Once I recognized that I was "workin' a tough room", I started thanking him for his office's level-headed forecast work, especially in contrast to the Sacramento Office and their Chamber of Commerce style. I told him that I thought of the Reno guys as cowboys...not out to pasture, but realists, conservative with their forecasts, and thanked him for missing the snowfall predictions to the light side. He said: "We try to hit it right on the button"..."I know you do" I replied, and said you guys are conservative, not Pollyanna types. I told him that every time the Sacramento Office forecast the "End of the drought" for the weekend, and it turned out to be nice, it costs us a quarter million bucks. I could hear him smile when he volunteered that Sacramento has a "different threshold for warning criteria"

I reminded him that Sacramento posted a Winter Storm Warning the Friday night of Memorial Weekend, that it did snow, but the mess on the Interstate was due more to unsuspecting revelers caught in winter weather and chain controls for the first time, and not from copious snowfall. I said a Winter Storm Watch was more like it, and he said "We'd call an Advisory"

I smiled hearing the Engineer-Speak, and thanked him again, and asked: "how's the weather in Reno today?" Cheerfully he told me, and said it was the kind of day he'd rather be outside. In passing, I whined about the Spring-long North Wind Regime's effect on my fishing plans, and asked if it would return to normal any time soon. He said the winds should become onshore by this weekend!

We chatted about the Bay Area, the "Natural Air Conditioner" (they must have a chapter on Weather Cliches in meteorology school) and the prevailing coastal winds and their effect on upwelling. I tried to pry some La Niña intel from him, but he didn't have any other than the quick exit of El Niño conditions. I thanked him once more and told him to "keep up the good work" I could hear him smile as I hung up. I smiled too, knowing my opinion of the culture in the NWS Reno Office was spot-on.

I always smile when the World is spinning in greased grooves...