Semicolin's Blog

The 2009 video and slideshow party was a success! And to boot, the quality of the videos have gotten better each year since I first hosted it in 2004. The invitation list grew from just the climbing club to the NMT mountain bike forum this year. Pretty much if it was outdoors, was fun (or painful or embarassing), & was photographed, it was welcomed to be screened for an audience through a digital projector. Slideshow topics were:

- Mish-mash climbing, biking, and ice climbing pics from in, around, & way beyond Socorro, NM (see "There Was Rock" video below)
- Rob's King Swing and other Socorro climbing pics
- Dianita's rock climbing in Columbia slideshow
- Nick's repeating-loop hiking slideshow to Abba
- Colin & Elisa's Yosemite & California Coast trip (see video below)
- Brock & Sofia's New Zealand bouldering & travels video
- Bob's annual bouldering extravaganza video.

I left two videos out of the slideshow party because (1) I forgot and (2) due to technical difficulties. See my updated blog entry for these videos (Colorado climbing trip & William's Lake Basin backcountry ski day) here).

2009 Slideshow Party Intro (38 sec):


2009 "There Was Rock" video (5min 22sec):


2009 Yosemite Video (2min 48sec):

I haven't posted an update in a while. A little busy lately! So here's a brief one.

Spring Skiing Photos:

Short video (2min 31sec) from a May 9th backcountry tour to Sin Nombre Peak in the Williams Lake Basin (Taos, NM). Actually, just the 12,500' ridge of it. Mark, Elisa, Me, & Buford.


Also:
1. Mount Taylor near Grants, NM.
2. Deception Peak near Santa Fe, NM.

(note: removed broken slideshow link. Youtube video above works.)

Spring Climbing Photos, Including:

1. Chloride Canyon with Elisa, Jessie, & Sandy. We had a slighly serendipitous meet-up with Jessie & Sandy who were biking across the US. After hanging out (or rather, getting stuck) in Silver City during the Tour de Gila (we cheered on Lance Armstrong and hundreds of other bikers), they joined for some climbing in Chloride.

2. Front Range Climbing. Elisa & I headed up to visit her friends Bill & Juanita at the Allenspark Lodge (a great B&B!) for a weekend of climbing & even a brief horseback ride. Also met up with Giovanni to climb the Pear Buttress (II 5.8, Book Formation, Lumpy Ridge) and then at Boulder Canyon the next day. (last few photos taken by Gio. Thanks!)

(removed slideshow link here too.)

Added 9/23/09: Youtube video-

Captain's Log: Stardate 62720.8 (April 3, 2008)

I've been piloting 'Chip' [model French Fried Ford (FFF)-1] for three years now. I have learned much in my time with this Greasy Beast. For one thing, as might be expected, it has an insatiable appetite for grease. Chinese and Mexican restaurant grease seem to be it's favorite- although it'll slurp down any fatty vegetarian extract, as long as it's fairly clean, non-hydrogenated, and free of chunks. I learned that the hard way. At the moment, the 13 gallon per minute grease transfer pump is plugged, substantially slowing down my fueling missions. I was also tricked during hot weather into putting hydrogenated oil into the tank, only to be hampered with multiple, gooey filter changes when it turned cold. The Belching Behemoth doesn't like the cold, and will choke out white smoke in the mornings when below freezing. Using the plug-in block heater helps. A newly added submersible aquarium heater in the WVO tank helps me switch to Enviro-mode earlier, too. Those tricks don't do any good while travelling away from home, though. So, I was rescued once by AAA this past year.

And talk about high maintenance! There's a strange, black film that builds up on the inside of the tank, which then sluffs off and plugs the fuel intake. I cleaned as much of it out by hand twice last year as I could- a very messy endeavor. However, it really softens the hands which is nice. As far as regular old-diesel-vehicle issues- it wasn't as bad as last year. Regular maintenance is twice as high as my old Honda Civic (2 batteries to replace, rather than one, and a 4-gal motor oil capacity). Testing out it's ruggedness during my trip to Mexico in '07 and other rough-road trips cost me nearly $500 in front axle and alignment repairs.

Is it worth it? Let's just say it's not for everybody. For once thing, if I just drove less or carpooled more (there's no public transportation in my town), that would be the most environmentally sound livelihood. But, since I'm a road-trip-aholic, it feels good knowing that 70% of my driving is carbon-neutral. Using ~1,150 gal of waste vegetable oil (WVO) over the 21,239 total miles I drove last year, I calculated that this saved me from using 998 gallons of diesel, which prevented 22,330 pounds of fossil fuel-based CO2 from being emitted and converted to $1,830 in fuel costs savings (only about $900 in savings if you consider the additional costs of filters and the amount of time I put into filtering and gathering waste oil- between 2 to 4 hours per month). For details on my fuel use (lots and lots of them, including carbon emission info for my air travel), see this spreadsheet by clicking here. Or, click here for other blog entries about my fatty wagon. Here's another brief, but good commentary on reducing fuel use by Phil.

I guess you can say it's become a way of life. So, for now:
Onward in the Kung Pow Express!

I recently learned that Superbowl Sunday has an estimated 500-ton carbon footprint. So, I started thinking about what could be done to offset the Super-carbon footprint during that weekend. Two things that seem extremely abundant in the desert surrounding my home town are sunlight and rocks. How could I combine the two to maximize fun and efficiency? I had a new mission for Saturday, Jan 31st.
The Mission: Gather with friends to build solar ovens and take our cooking apparati with us to Box Canyon to Boulder while we Bake.

Methods: I had quite a few responses to the message I sent out, but in the end Bob and Cort were the most inspired (or bored? or curious to watch my follies?). I decided to build a box-style solar oven using cardboard, aluminum foil, and a pane of glass that I found near a dumpster. Most of my design ideas came from the internet (my design followed this website mostly, but with significant variations that I learned from this other website).

Results:
Out at Box Canyon, from right to left: Bob still working on his parabolic roaster, my solar box oven, Cort toasting the occasion, and Cort's trash scraps-to-oven box cooker. Oh yeah, and Cort's white Prius. Since when did computer scientists become hippies? Cort got his oven to 180F in the afternoon light. Enough to get his cinnamon rolls warm and gooey.





Bob attempting to roast a weenie in the last rays of the day. Yes, we ran out of daylight and didn't get to fully test our newly built eco-pliances. And, strangely, solar ovens don't work well at night.


However, there was time for some Box-style cranking where the sun was shining down the canyon.




Trial #2 was much more successful. Back at the house I set the oven up at 8:45AM on Feb 6th. By 10:00 I was over 280F and melted the plastic off my cheap-o instant-read thermometer. After a trip to the store to buy a real oven thermometer, I put my vegetarian "pigs-in-a-blanket" in the oven to bake while I cleaned out the fuel tank of my truck, also vegetarian (there were marble-sized fried kibbles plugging the fuel line intake). The oven got up to 325deg F by 11:30am. Not bad for a winter day with a 39.1 degree sun altitude! The ambient temperature was 64 in the shade.

Here's a picture of the "soy-pigs-in-a-blanket" turning golden brown at 325F in the solar oven.

Conclusion: For most days of the year in New Mexico, this oven will work really well. With it's ability to maintain at least 325F, I can bake chicken and brownies! During the summer, with ambient temperatures reaching >100F, I'm going to try breaking 400F. I can see pizzas, chicken pot pies, fresh baked bread in the future... Mmmmm can't wait to try out more sun-cuisine!