Eight days into winter

It was a very strange Christmas at our house this year. The electricity blinked off at 7 or 8 pm on the 23rd. We were having an ice event. Over the next 24 hours more than a half an inch of ice built up on everything outside...encasing everything in ice. I used a rubber sledge hammer to break it off the Audi the next morning. This afternoon, three days later, we saw electrical repair trucks on the West Rd. and the crew said we would have power restored in an hour.

Fortunately, our house has some built in advantages to surviving without electricity in winter. I charged up the heated slab with extra heat prior to the storm and this heat stayed with us for quite awhile. We have a Finnish fireplace that can crank out a lot of heat if stoked for two or three days. Plus we had a lot of solar gain as the two days following the storm were bright and sunny. The fireplace has an oven and Gina cooked potatoes and squash in it for Christmas dinner. I grilled t-bone and porterhouse steaks (Don's grass fed beef) in the weber grill on the porch...the morning of the 24th it was 4 degrees F when we got up and temperatures during the 3 day outage ranged from 4 to 21 degrees...all in all a memorable year.

We are close to having another resource during outages....the Volt can be used as an emergency generator to power 120 volt loads like our oil-fired heating system, lights and chargers for electronic equipment, freezers ( we have a quarter of a steer in ours plus fruits, veggies, etc.),  I was thinking about buying the inverter kit prior to the storm...I guess I'll get it now. The only problem remaining would be water supply...our well pump is 240 volts and won't run off the Volt. Next outage we'll have electricity and heat and fill the bathtub with water to flush the toilets.

The Volt will be so much quieter than the generators we listened to through the woods. Our house is the last one on the circuit so our neighbors Kathie & Kim and Cal and Glen are on a different circuit and had electricity the whole time!! But down in the hollow and beyond the generators ran around the clock for three days!

It's the morning of the 29th now and the forecast calls for 5 to 9 inches of wet snow tonight!! The trees and everything else are still encased with ice and weighted down by snow we got two days ago. We are dumping extra heat into the slab just in case....

Good results

I got the results of Wednesday's bone marrow biopsy on Friday and it confirmed I'm still in remission. That makes it a year that I'm in remission. I'm happy!! Where are those emoticons when you need 'em. 

I feel good today. It's good to know that the fatigue that makes it impossible to pass up a nap on many days is due to the drug (Dasatinib). It lowers the number of red blood cells. At the end of July I had to stop taking it due to very low platelet levels. In some ways I was lucky. I was off the pills for 10 weeks, including most the time we were on our road trip. I felt normal! 

By mid October, my platelets recovered to a level where my doctor re-started the Dasatinib. My hemoglobin has slid from 15.5 to 11.7 since re-starting 10 weeks ago. Normal is 14-18. So I'm anemic and my body has not adjusted to it. I get winded easily. I'm supposed to take Dasatinib until June and some days I don't know how I'll make it. The situation is complicated by the fact that there is no evidence yet that taking Dasatinib at this point is helpful. That is one of the goals of the clinical trial, to begin to test that hypothesis. I agreed to participate so I'm reluctant to drop out but I've decided I won't start in on blood transfusions just to stay on the drug. I had too many transfusions already and the level of iron in my blood is sky high. I may have to take additional drugs to lower my iron levels after finishing with the Dasatinib. Unpleasant side effects from iron lowering chelation drugs are common. Yuck! Well, given the alternative, I can't complain too much. Looking at the statistics, my chance of a relapse has gone from 40% at the outset to 10% today. So far, none of the 45 patients in the clinical trial who are less than 60 years old have had a relapse! It appears that Dasatinib has worked well!

We are in the midst of a powerful nor'easter and 10-14 inches of snow are expected. I have new x country boots and I'm itching to try them out. Gina got some nice new skiis and I want to try them out too. We ski up to the top of Buttermilk Hill on an old abandoned road thick with trees. At the top you can see Mt. Washington on a clear winter or spring day. Then we ski back down a broad slope on its north east side then through the woods to some lower fields. From there, we ski past the long abandoned foundations of a house, barn and some outbuildings, all over grown with big trees and loop back up to the West Road through tall pines. I'd like to ski it...hypnotically beautiful after almost 30 years. It's only 2.5 miles, but in deep new snow it's a lot. I'll be pooped, not sure how far I'll make it.

Smokestacks

Buxie's blog is back! Thank you to those readers who said they want more. Yes, there were at least one or two people who told me that....

Warning, you may find the following blog somewhat turgid and technical...and hopefully inspiring.

Gina and I leased a Chevy Volt last Friday, completing the circuit from our photovoltaic array through our house to our car battery. Here is a picture of the dynamic duo...the car and it's array. In reality, we have a grid connected system, so the power produced by the PVs goes onto the grid and the car battery charging takes place in my garage, plugged in to grid power. 

Many people don't think about the smokestacks in their lives but we all have a few of them...the dirty power plants we don't see consuming massive amounts of fossil fuel (the biggest CO2 emitters world-wide), our vehicle tailpipes (add them all up and you'll start to wheeze) and the chimneys sticking through our roofs. Wouldn't it be great to eliminate or at least eviscerate these polluters before it's too late?

Your monthly power bill probably hovers well below your phone/internet/TV bill (unless you are unfortunate and you heat your house with electricity). At our house, our monthly electric bill is less than $50 per month. Electricity is a bargain!

So, you may be thinking, if electricity is such a bargain, why spend the money on a photovoltaic system? Isn't that expensive? The short answer is no. 

The 6.4 kW double axis tracking system we installed cost $24,600 after the 30% federal tax incentive and the $2,000 state rebate. I figure our annual savings on household electricity are a paltry $500. We don't use a lot of electricity here. But our PV system produces more than twice as much electricity as we use in the house. We can drive the Volt 14,000 miles per year on the excess electricity!! Driving around central Maine in an endless loop of work, play, schmoozing, partying, errands and food shopping. Assuming 30 mpg on our old car and $3.50/gallon for gas, the annual gasoline savings will be $1,600. Of course we'll have to drive the Volt at least 38 miles (the Volt battery's range) every day of the year to save that much. Alternatively, with two electric cars, Gina and I can each drive on the solar power. This will require each of us to drive our car at least 3.5 times a week....not unreasonable at all. It will be interesting to see what other plug-in cars become available...I looked into the Tesla but the nearest dealer is in Massachusetts. Prices are coming down.

As you can see, the $1,600 per year gasoline saving is more than 3 times the $500 annual savings on  household electricity. This points out how expensive it is to drive gasoline cars and how efficient it is to drive on solar electricity. Electricity is well suited for driving...so much better than the internal combustion engine. (Important note: charging your car on coal fired electricity is way more polluting than running your car on gasoline!)

The combined gasoline and household electricity savings from our $24,600 system are $2,100 per year. So the payback (that holy grail for people who don't include unquantified externalities as well as misinformed naysayers) is about 12 years on a system expected to last 25 years. That's equivalent to a 7% return on investment at present gas and electricity prices. Not bad at all.

A smaller roof mounted solar system designed to meet household requirements costs about $9,200 as opposed to the $24,600 spent on the larger tracking system we had installed...and the savings would be about $700 per year...

So how does this relate to those lovely smokestacks in your life? Eliminating exhaust from 14,000 miles of driving every year is huge. Plus, you have eliminated power plant emissions by substituting solar for household electricity use. The new, less expensive PV systems combined with the new plug-in electric vehicles are the best energy technology developments of the early 2000's. If someone developed a large solar farm and started leasing solar powered plug-in electric vehicles would you lease one?

We, the public, have paid a massive amount, literally trillions of dollars, for electrical infrastructure...the grid. What we need now is the political will to overcome vested interests and invest a little more to replace the coal fired power plants that hang on the grid producing massive quantities of CO2 and the nuclear plants that resemble radioactive time bombs. A utility grid powered primarily by renewable sources supplemented with natural gas combined cycle plants will be a beautiful thing! 

Home run

Yes, Gina finally roped me in to coming home. Our last day we drove from Scranton, PA to Belgrade.

A summary of our trip, numbers and favorites:

Miles traveled in the car: 11,014

MIles per gallon: 24.0 (the bikes on the roof probably cost us 2 mpg)

Number of states visited: 26 

States where one or both of us rode bikes: 18

Favorite bike rides: Zion National Park and Long Canyon, Escalante Staircase National Monument

Favorite hike: Grinnell Glacier, Glacier National Park 

States where we spent the most time: Utah, Idaho, New Mexico

Favorite places: southern Utah, South Dakota

Favorite hot springs: Payette River, Idaho 

Unexpectedly good: Bicycle ride around Shiloh battlefield

Unexpectedly bad: I-81 through Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania...zillions of aggressive trucks!

Places we want to go back to: Allegheny bike trail from Pittsburg to the C&O canal trail in Maryland

Taking the waters

Gina and I left Hot Springs, AR two days ago. It's located in a geologic cleft in the Ouachita mountains from which hot water gushes out of 47 springs. It's a town caught in a time warp....prohibition, bootlegging, gambling, gangsters and hot baths.

Economic activity surrounding the baths was robust up until the end of WWII. The US military had a convalescent hospital here and sent men here for decades. Doctors advised patients with arthritis and other ailments to come take the waters. The bath houses were busy along with the casino and, during Prohibition, speakeasies and  booze. Al Capone stayed in our hotel when he was in town. Major league baseball teams had spring training camps there. After the war the military closed the hospital. The baseball teams moved to Florida. The casino was shut down in 1967. The Park Service preserved bath house row and leases space in them. Here's one of the bath houses with the old military hospital in back.

Gina and I stayed in the old Arlington Hotel, a 470 room behemoth with a rooftop hot tub (big enough to fit 25 people!) and two heated swimming pools, one cascading into the other. Wow, a lot of free hot water feeding the pools straight from the forest covered hillside. We were the only ones up there until a couple from Louisiana came. Check out this construction...looks like something in an 1880’s photo. It connects the roof of the hotel to the springs coming out of the hillside.

Those are magnolias in front of the hotel...must be nice in spring.

Bill Clinton's mother moved here with Bill was three. He grew up and graduated from Hot Springs High School. We left Hot Springs yesterday and visited the Clinton presdiential library in Little Rock (a hagiographic look at his political career) on our way to Memphis. 

We pulled in to Memphis for ribs and blues on Beale Street...we weren't disappointed...

We camped at Chickasaw state park and visited the Shiloh battlefield today. Now we are headed north alog the Natchez Trace. More later.

Hanging in New Mexico

We are staying in John and Mary Benziger's apartment in Santa Fe after a scary episode. 

Wednesday morning I got the go ahead to resume taking the chemotherapy drug Dasatinib. I had my blood checked at a clinic in Utah on Monday and even though my platelets are still low (94,000) the doctor in charge of the clinical trial doesn't think it's due to the drug. This makes me uncomfortable, not knowing why my platelets are below normal. Anyway, I took the first dose Wednesday morning as we headed out of Albuquerque to the Jemez mountains. After a soak at a beautiful hot spring near Jemez Springs we found a great campsite at Fenton Lake state park, high up on Jemez mountain. We bought some warm sleeping bags at REI in Albuquerque and we are prepared now for temps down into the twenties. By the time we pulled into the site, about five hours after taking the drug, I wasn't feeling too good. Within a few minutes I was feeling terrible, then the shakes and chills started. Two hours later, after getting sick to my stomach and passing out in bed I crawled out of the van. We decided to head down out of the mountains and back towards Albuquerque just in case I had more trouble. Nothing like a brief, violent chemotherapy episode to remind you what it's like!

Today, two days later, I feel pretty good. I'm supposed to take this drug daily until June so I'm hoping I tolerate it well. I've been taking it on and off for almost a year, but getting back on to it after two months off it was rough for a day. How come the second and third days have been so much easier? I don't know, but I'm happy!

Gina and I are excited to explore Santa Fe. Here is the view from Mary and John's apartment last night...

Yesterday, we had tea with Sandy Colt's sister Carola and her son Jimmy. They live a few blocks from John and Mary's apartment...

We were lucky to arrive in Albuquerque during the annual Balloon Fiesta. What an amazing, beautiful event...more than 500 balloons participate. We got there at dawn and saw a dozen balloons go up on Dawn Patrol, to test the winds. The balloons glowing in the dark....on and off like fireflies. At 7 am, the mass ascension began...

Here is a picture of Gina in psychedelic mode...could I get a hot air balloon made with her picture on it?

We'll be in Santa Fe until Monday...it's a great place to hang out, relax and wait out the early winter cold front that dropped snow on the surrounding mountains last night and a cold wind today. Sunday night we've got tickets to see Jake Shimabukuro ( an almost well-known ukelele player that Gina heard about on NPR) at the Kimo Theater in Albuquerque...then it's off to Texas, Oklahoma and points east.

The road past Zion

We are camped at the confluence of the Dirty Devil and the Colorado rivers wondering why we are the only ones in America to have chosen this campground. Tens of thousands of people wandering around after the closure of the national parks yet nobody here. Perhaps its the fact that camping today is dominated by RVs and this campground doesn't have water or electricity or sewage hook-ups...just beautiful cliffs and canyons with the Dirty Devil river flowing around a horseshoe bend far below...

Our journey here was a continuing ramble. We spent two nights in Seattle, touched the Pacific Ocean on Bainbridge Island (the location for the book Snow Falling on Cedars) and decided the cold rainy weather was not us....we are sun seeking hedonists! A major storm was predicted and our plans for camping on the Oregon coast evaporated. 

We drove south towards Portland and then back across Oregon. The cold at night was making camping a little uncomfortable so we hatched a plan to flee to southern Utah, an area we had visited 30 years ago and loved. After camping stops near Pendleton, OR, Twin Falls, ID and Ely, NV we landed in Great Basin national park. We had never heard of this park and decided to go in and hike. Turns out there is a grove of Bristlecone pine trees located at 10,400 feet. I have always been intrigued by these ancient trees. So, we drove to the end of the road at 9,600 feet (what a view!) and hiked in a couple of miles (yes, another cheater hike!) to see them. Some were more than 3,000 years old!!

We drove on to Cedar City, UT and spent the night in a motel there so that we could get to Zion national park early the next morning.  We were lucky to get an excellent site...

Took an amazing bike ride up Zion canyon...no cars are allowed, just shuttle buses. The ride back down was like a dream.  

The next day we wanted to hike the canyon narrows but the rangers told us the park is closing, the trails are closed and we had to leave by 11 am. Of course this was upsetting...we thought about chaining ourselves to the fire grate but instead we packed up and left.

Since then we have been wandering about in the desert, staying on land owned by America's largest landowner, a somewhat suspicious organization known as the Bureau of Land Management. They allow camping on their land as long as you are at least 50 feet off the road and they prefer you camp in places already despoiled by previous campers. So, we headed in on the Skatumpah road late one day and found an area that met their requirements...and ours too.

Here is our site the next night...thats Gina playing her guitar again...this is in the Grand Staircase of the Escalante national monument...

Just a short bike ride away we found a beautiful slot canyon and decided we needed to find more slot canyons in the neighborhood.

Here we are in the slot canyon known as Spooky...

This one got so tight you had to walk sideways for several hundred yards!

A cold snap, with lows around 30 degrees was predicted so we booked into the Boulder Mountain Guest Ranch for two nights. We took an amazing hike down into another set of slot canyons...

 There was no trail...the owner of the lodge told us to go to the road leading to the dump, park and head over the cliff and down into the canyon. Gina and I parked there, looked down into the canyon and I could see doubt creeping in. Fortunately, Sara showed up with her 11 year old daughter Sasha and her friend Olivia. We had met them at the lodge. Turns out Sara is an experienced rock climber and she led us down into the canyon...unforgettable!

Well, that brings us to today, camped all by our lonesome down here...dawn looked like this...

Cousins in Boise and Seattle

We drove down out of the high country to Boise to visit my cousin Joan and her family. Joan and Lee showed us a great time including a meal at the over the top restaurant called Barbacoa where we took advantage of the two for one happy hour and had two martinis and appetizers for dinner. The other two nights we had to suffer through gourmet meals at their house. Sunday morning we took a hike in the hills above their house and I detect a slight bulge in my abdomen here.

Boise is full of young people...probably more young people than in the entire state of Maine. It's the biggest city for miles...600,000 people in the metro area. We went to a Saturday farmers market downtown and had Somali sambusas...then cycled out to a dam and back...more than 25 miles...my longest trip to date.

We left Monday morning after a quick exam and blood test at Lee's office. My platelets were 104,000. The doctor in charge of the clinical trial decided I should wait another week and have it re-checked before starting back on the Dasatinib. 

Boise is on the Oregon trail. We drove across the Payette River into Oregon and decided to drive state highway 26 west across eastern Oregon. This is the route taken my some settlers who had "short cut fever". Instead of following the trail north to the Columbia river they set out directly west and crossed several high passes. I guess we were anxious to finally get to the Pacific. We drove route 26 all the way to Bend, Oregon. Arrived in the late afternoon after a beautiful drive. We camped along the Deschutes river and made ratatouille with vegetables we bought at the Boise farmers market.

Gina was seriously hungry here and she managed to eat the entire pan of ratatouille....and some nice cheese which she is serious about too.

Later, we visited the Deschutes brewery and walked around town. The next morning was cold and rainy and we decided to sprint up to Seattle to visit Gina's cousin Nancy and her family. These people are clearly not very serious...

Moon cakes on the Payette River, frontal nudity

The shameless title of this post will undoubtedly increase our worldwide readership. But wait, you will be  rewarded.

We left Missoula on an extended drive on state roads from Missoula over the continental divide at Chief Joseph's pass. Despite rain showers we wanted to do a hike in the Bitterroot range. Gina found one on the Googleplex, not too far from our route...1.4 miles each way with moderate elevation gain and views into Blodgett Canyon. This was a cheater hike as the car did most of the climbing. Our legs were still recovering from the severe charlie horse we got from the hike to the glacier. The picture is a lame excuse for the real thing.

I expected Idaho to be like Montana, but it isn't. The drive down from the pass and down the Salmon River canyon is a beautiful windy road in and out of canyons. We stopped at North Fork to look at the main branch of the river and it was flowing the wrong way! It turns out the main branch of the Salmon runs north through central Idaho before veering west to eventually flow into the Columbia River. The branch we had been following down from the pass is known as the North branch and it flows south from the pass until it reaches the main branch and starts flowing north. Must have confused the hell out of Lewis and Clark.

We arrived at Stanley, Idaho after spending the night at a bed and breakfast in Challis. The views of the Sawtooth mountains from here are spectacular. It was 51 degrees so we decided it was warm enough for a spin around Redfish Lake. 

We drove on to find the fabled hot springs along the Payette River. Art and Ben LaBrecque had recommended we check them out and we made it a destination on our route towards Boise. Our first stop was a two hour soak in Kirkham springs. The pools there vary from somewhat hotter than a hot tub with no cold water to pools right on the river edge where cold water runs in creating pools where you can move from hot to cooler temperatures when you feel like it. We jumped right into the freezing cold river at one point to cool off!

Okay, you weren't expecting that bathing suit were you. Well, the second hot springs at Pine Flats has a hot waterfall that spills into a pool. It was 36 degrees when we woke up so we turned the van on, heated it up and had coffee in bed. Then we hiked down to the hot springs and soaked until the sun came up over the mountains.

I know you are thinking what a hunk, and it's true, and that I am an exhibitionist, but really it was Gina that said we have to include this in the blog. 

Yesterday was Mia's birthday so we went back for another soak in Kirkham hot spring in the evening and waited for the full moon to come up. Barb Felitti had given us a box of Chinese mooncakes and we gave some to Mia and Emily before we left with the idea that we would all eat them on Mia's birthday. Gina decided we had to see the full moon from our hot pool before we could eat the cakes...I don't know why we decided that but because we were behind the bank where the hot springs cascade down to the river, I didn't get to eat my mooncake until 10:15, almost three hours after we got into the pools. We were seriously shriveled by then.

This morning was slightly warmer at the campsite. Gina got her hot coffee served in the warm van (I am working off a serious debt in this relationship) and I made huevos rancheros with potatoes from our garden and left over refried beans from the night before.

By the way, we brought a cabbage from our garden as well as garlic and hot peppers. The peppers dried nicely sitting in a small spot near the windshield for two weeks. The one I used in the beans last night was HOT! 

We have made Leah's cabbage salad a few times and still have a hunk of cabbage left. Here's the recipe for a delicious Lebanese cabbage salad:

Slice some cabbage thin like for cole slaw

Dice a moderate or immoderate amount of garlic

Dressing is equal parts good olive oil and lemon juice

Add black pepper once it's made

Delicious!

"Ma" Coppens knitted me a hat in the car just in time for this cold weather. I've been sleeping with it the last two nights. In addition to knitting hats, Ma has learned how to play the guitar on the trip. I'm not really sure what I have accomplished during this time.  

The Badlands to our own private Idaho

One night while camping in the Badlands we decided to drive a couple miles outside the park and have a beer at the Wagon Wheel bar in Interior, SD (pop. 67). This town hasn't managed to capitalize on it's proximity to the park...we bought a pint of tequila at the store below because we felt sorry for the people there.

Back in the bar, Gina asked the bar woman if the sign outside town regarding the population was correct. Were there only 67 people in town? She pointed to the Native American guy next to us,"He's leaving so it'll be 66 now". "Yep, one girl gets pregnant and three guys have to leave town" he said.

The next day we started on our journey west. First stop was Rapid City, SD to get my blood checked. My platelets still weren't over 100 so I'm still waiting to resume taking the Dasatinib. The service at the cancer center was, well, fast! So, we had lunch in town and took a picture.

We decided we liked the area so much that we would camp in the Black Hills, not too far away. We got to the campground and, as I was talking to the volunteer camp ranger, a yellow jacket crawled under my toe and stung me (I was wearing sandals, you see). After running around for a minute or two like I had been stung I got in the car and we drove to the campsite. As soon as we got out of the car we both heard the buzzing and realized the campground was swarming with wasps. The ranger said, yes, it was true, the yellow jackets were all over the place. By this time my toe hurt so much I couldn't walk and we decided on the spot to hightail it out of the Black Hills. On the way out of the area we saw a billboard advertising the University of the Black Hills and noticed the yellow jacket is their mascot!

Back in the car we did some calculating and figured if we wanted to make it to Glacier National Park we better put some miles on. We drove until we were tired and stayed in a cheap motel right off the highway in Gilette, WY. The next day we drove into Montana and because it is a really big state we drove all day through beautiful country and we were still in Montana! Outside Glacier park the campground was packed with big-ass RVs but they had an area reserved for tents down by the lake. Our neighbors told us there was a black bear out behind the tent area...that's when Gina reminded me  how lucky we are to sleep in our van. I got up in the middle of the night to pee and something big was chowing down on the chokecherries surrounding the van and our neighbors tents. In the morning I discovered this pile of bear shit chock full of chokecherries less than twenty feet from the van. Note the artsy nature of this pile, mimicking the outline of the mountain in the distance.

That morning we got up early and drove to the Many Glaciers campground in the park and got a nice campsite there.

The first day in the park we hiked from the campground up the Swiftcurrent River Valley. The second day we took the boat from the Many Glaciers Hotel to the end of the lake, hiked to a second lake, took another boat and then climbed up to the Grinnell glacier...a round trip of 7.4 miles and 1600 foot elevation gain. I was completely devastated by the time we got back to our campground. We didn't see a grizzly but heard from another helpful volunteer ranger that a griz had used the trail the day before and many people had to go back down to the lake.

We left Glacier park and drove to Missoula where we saw the true nature of these fearsome bears. This one appears to be eating a building.

We cycled all over town and had some excellent local brew. We felt like hipsters with all these young people around. Are you still with me. Don't worry, this brings me to today.

Chicago to the Badlands of South Dakota

It was a two river day! We left Chicago and drove across the unending corn fields of Illinois. We crossed the Mississippi into Iowa near Rock Island and travelled south a little ways to Lock #14 where we saw a raft of 16 corn barges going thru the locks...it was more than 1,000 feet long!

Late in the day after the endless rolling corn fields of Iowa, we arrived at the Missouri river and camped in Lewis and Clark state park. It was almost 90 degrees and humid when we got there. We tried sleeping in our shelter but after an hour or so the bugs drove us into the van. We have screens for the windows (made  by Gina!) so there were no bugs. A cooling wind picked up and we slept well.

The next morning we took a bike ride and wanted to cross the Missouri into Nebraska but the bridge was iron grate and very long so we turned around.

We drove thru the corn of eastern South Dakota until the grasslands started and then we drove some more. We got to the Badlands National Park around 5 PM. A beautiful place where weird rock formations jut out of the grasslands.

It was time for a little music so Gina got out her travel guitar.

We took a ride along the base of the formations and then climbed up a steep pass. By the time we got to the top we were both felling squashed so we cycled back to the campsite and stayed in the shady shelter for the afternoon, reading