National Air & Space Museum

Well, I'm enjoying my time in DC. Although, today's meeting dragged on from 9:00am until 3:30pm. When it ended I dropped my laptop at the hotel and meandered about Capital Hill with my camera. It's fun to be a tourist in our nation's capital. I took a bunch of cliche pictures of the Capital Building, The Mall etc and then made my way over to the National Air & Space Museum. I love this place. I remember being amazed at the site of all those airplanes when I first visited DC back in 1994. To polish that memory I picked up some freeze-dried ice cream at the gift shop. I can remember my father buying some of this "amazing astronaut food" for me way back in the day.

Having been a licensed aircraft mechanic (I still have my Airframe & Powerplant License) I always find myself staring at the engines in this museum. When I think about reciprocating engines and how they were refined, leaned, improved upon and utilized, I am truly impressed. The Bently rotary engine shown above is an example of this. This engine was made out of aluminum in 1918. Aluminum cylinders (all nine of them) made it lighter and therefor made the plane it was mounted in able to accelerate much faster.

I enjoyed seeing my favorite airplane, the P-51 Mustang as well as a Spitfire, Messerschmidt, DC-3 and a couple very early fighter jets. I'll let the pictures do the talking from here.

Union Station

I'm down in Washington DC for the week on business. Should be a good time; I'll keep you posted. Below are a couple snapshots I took after arriving at Union Station around 10:00 tonight.

Gobble gobble

I'm still full. It's 11:20am the day after thanksgiving and I'm not really hungry. Though, I suppose it could be because of the two turkey sandwiches I ate around 11:30 last night.

Yesterday was a lot of fun. We had sixteen people roaming about, stuffing their gullets, joking, laughing, playing games and catching up on life. Doris (our mutt) was in heaven; she got a lot of scraps from all of the weak strangers. We listened to some great jazz from a new album that my wife's cousin, Miro played piano on. He's an amazing pianist. Take a look at his website.

The menu was as follows: Two turkeys, sweet potatoes with lemon, nutmeg & sugar sauce, smashed potatoes, green beans, salad, cranberry sauce, apple sauce, pumpkin pies, apple pies, cheese cake & pretzel salad.

Busy Sunday

Yesterday was a good day. Got a lot done. I'll sum it up like this: Up at 8:00am, worked on the Cannondale 1X9 installing a new chain guide, rode down to Fairway Market (scored a 2lb bag of Scandinavian blend coffee, some cheeses and two loafs of killer bread), took some snapshots in Harlem, met a friend for brunch at the Popover Cafe at 86th & Amsterdam, rode through Central Park and hung out for a while, hit up The Met and saw the current photo exhibits, stopped by Mod Squad Cycles and picked up new head & tail lights by Knog, helped cook one of our two turkeys for thanksgiving, ate two giant ham sandwiches for dinner, watched 3 episodes of Madmen (I'm on Season 3) passed out at 9:30pm.

Homemade woodgas backpacking stove

This afternoon I built my first woodgas backpacking stove. I must say, it works pretty damn well. I gave it a test run in the woods behind The Cloisters here in upper Manhattan. It boiled water in less than 5 minutes and I only used a handful of tinder. The environmental impact from this type of stove is virtually nonexistent and its a great piece of gear for the minimalist backpacker. It's great to be able to carry a small, light stove like this and not have to worry about bringing fuel canisters for it. All you need are dry sticks and you're all set. I made the stove using a small soup can and a piece of scrap stainless steel I pulled from a dumpster at work. I'd like to thank a few bloggers out there for motivating me to make my own woodgas stove: Heber in particular for his detailed construction notes. “Stick” for his videos of his version of the woodgas stove (by the way, check out Stick's Blog, it's an incredible resource for backpacking gear, tips and information) Lastly, I want to thank Ray Garlington who designed the stove. A quick video and pictures of the construction are below. The video is geeky, I know, but it was actually fun to make. The next time you see me using this stove I will be deep in the Catskills.

Above: I love/hate how noisy the Henry Hudson Parkway is in this video.

Above: This is the top of the stove. Note the four vents near to top of the stove. These, work in conjunction with the vents at the bottom of the stove to facilitate what is called an "inverted downdraft gasifier". In short, this enables the fire to burn from the top, down to the bottom of the fuel source (tinder).


Above: This is the bottom of the stove. The screen keeps the tinder off the ground and allows air in through the vents which double as a support for the screen.

Above: I used a coffee can to make a wind screen. This prevents the fire from being blown out when it's windy (it was windy today!) and also works as a chamber for preheating the air around the stove, further aiding combustion. The coffee can is an ideal height for use as a pot support as well.

Riding with turkeys

For the last three years, Kawasaki Rail Car has handed out turkeys to its employees. They're big birds; tasty albeit chock full o' steroids and hormones. Seeing as how we'll have close to 15 people in the apartment for thanksgiving, I took an extra turkey that a coworker offered me. Having ridden in to work today, it was all I could do to fit the two 20 lb frozen turkeys in my bag. I was actually worried about my wheelset giving out. I run a pair of Mavic Cosmos on my road bike and was especially watchful for pot holes and other debris. I weigh 200 lbs; 240 lbs when I ride with turkeys. Luckily I was stopping by my father in-laws place to fix a computer problem for him. He took one of the birds off my hands which felt great. On the way home I stopped on the Broadway Bridge and snapped the shot you see here. It's been a hell of a week. I'm ready for the weekend.

Pharcyde commute

When I got home, last night, around 11:30pm I wasn't very tired. I was stoked from having such a great exploratory ride home from midtown. I stayed up playing around in Light Room, processing some images I took during the ride home. Afterward, I roamed the web for a bit and before I knew it, it was 1:00am. Crap! I closed the lap top and hit the sack, doubtful that I'd be able to follow through on my intentions to ride to work in the morning. A nanosecond later, my alarm was blaring and it was 5:30am. I hit the shower, packed my bag and grabbed the bike I had stepped off of only 6 hours ago. When I stepped outside I could tell that it was going to be a great day. I selected a Pharcyde album to listen to and set off through the park, down winding leave covered paths with old hip hop in my ears. The paths dropped me out on Broadway which I took north out of Manhattan, through the Bronx and into Yonkers. I got to work on time and chuckling at the lyrics in Pharcyde's "Ya Mama". My commute to work is a fun 7 mile ride that took me 28 minutes this morning. Click the iPhone screen shot if you want to see the Google Maps route and other info.

Liberato

Last night I spent a few hours over at my buddy Chris' place playing games with him and some of his wife's friends. We played Bohnanza for a quite a while, which is actually a pretty awesome game. It sounds kind of funny but it's a card game about farming. Bean farming in particular. Although the game was a lot of fun, the ride down at 6:15, was even better. It's been several weeks since I've ridden anywhere. Life's just been so chaotic that I haven't been getting up early enough to ride to work. Last night I finally committed myself to pedaling downtown. So I geared up with my winter riding garb and set off for Chris' place down on 89th street. Riding down from 190th street along Broadway is a lot of fun, and I always enjoy it. Broadway takes you through so many little villages and each one is different with abrupt transitions from one to the next. When I got to 125th street a 1 Train emerged from the tunnel parallel to me, and paced me as it headed south on the elevated tracks. I couldn't hear it's loud clacking rumble because I was listening to a Land of Loops album in my headphones. I was experiencing one of those "moments" in my life that I enjoy so much. Here I was, cruising down Broadway at night, under a nearly full moon, in Harlem, perfectly comfortable, flowing with traffic under the L, while I could feel the vibrations from the heavy subway cars above. I was thinking to myself: This is exactly where I want to be right now.

When I left Chris' place around 10:00 I was exhausted. But as soon as I was geared up, I felt a spark of energy and was looking forward to exploring on my ride home. I pedaled west through Central Park while Sublime played in my headphones. I made my first stop in Harlem under the elevated tracks for the Amtrak Line. There is a beautiful trestle bridge here with large arches and impressive iron work. I climbed the embankment at the south end of the bridge and sat peacefully in the dark watching traffic pass through the intersections below. I was surprised that I did not run into anyone else hanging out under the bridge. I sat there in the dark for about a half an hour thinking about where I was in life and I found myself almost completely at peace; it was another moment in life I wanted to hang on to. When I started to get cold, I zipped up, cinched up, and climbed down and out; returning to the Big Apple's buzz.

Pedaling out of Harlem, along Broadway, I chugged steadily north enjoying the night. At 163rd & Broadway I saw a well lit sign for a place called the Liberato Food Market. A small helicopter perched on the front corner of the market advertised the market's delivery services. The empty sidewalk, locked storefront gates and well lit signage seemed photo worthy to me, so I pulled out the point & shoot to snap a couple of pictures.

My last stop, before continuing home was at 168th & Broadway. I was interested in the red globes on the lamp posts of the subway station entrance. Setting the camera down on the ground, I framed the lamp post against the night sky for a long exposure. I wanted to capture the lamp post suspended in the universe for a interesting, thought provoking image. I only wish there were more stars in the sky.

Woodgas Stove Project

I have a new project for this weekend. I want to make a woodgas backpacking stove. From what I've read, when built well & used correctly, they're an ideal piece of gear for the minimalist backpacker. You probably want to know what a woodgas stove is. Well "woodgas" is the hot gas given off by the burning wood. The stove itself, is a simple cylinder (soup can) in which the fuel (wood) is burned. The stove allows air flow (vents cut in the soup can) to facilitate the combustion. You rest your pot/kettle on top of the stove and voila, you're boiling water. Why the sudden interest in woodgas stoves? My recent call of the wild has me reading through all sorts of backpacking blogs lately (like this one, this one and this one). Another reason, is because it's just a really cool concept.

I should mention that I already have a perfectly operable backpacking stove; the MSR Pocket Rocket. It works great, weighs only 3oz, runs on isopropane fuel canisters and folds up into a nice tiny package. So why make a woodgas stove? The main benefit is the environmental aspect of it. Fuel (twigs/tinder) is free and abundant which means that I won't have to carry any fuel canisters with me. Other than that, I just want to make one because it sounds like a rewarding challenge. It's a cheap, fun project and I'll get to give it a test run in the park next to phattire headquarters this weekend.

On my lunch break today, I walked out on the production floor to find a piece of wire mesh for my stove. I soon found myself in the machine shop, dumpster diving for a scrap piece of heater cover material. We laser-cut 1/4" holes in 1/32" thick stainless steel sheet and brake-form it to create the heater covers installed in the PATH subway cars. The piece I found was rather large. Rather than spend time nibbling at it with a pair of tin-snips, I lopped it down to size with the hydraulic shear (KA-CHUNKA!). The rest of the stove will get built this weekend; I'll be sure to post some pictures.

TJ

I spent yesterday morning photographing a friend & coworker's fifteen year old daughter; TJ. TJ wants to be a model and I'm going to help her create a good portfolio that she can be proud to send to agencies. Her personality and attitude is fantastic; she's really nice (like her mom) and is confident which I have to think is a big plus for a model. In short, it was really easy to work with her. She wasn't shy about speaking up, offering ideas and trying different poses and facial expressions. For her first photo shoot, she seemed pretty relaxed, showing only a bit of nervousness here and there, which helped me to relax as well. Initially, I was worried that I would make her uncomfortable because I don't have a lot of experience taking portraits and directing the model at the same time. I was surprised at how much fun it was and I enjoyed the challenge. My taste for urban decay definitely helped me to find interesting backgrounds that created a neat juxtaposition between rubble and the model. I stuck with my 50mm and 85mm prime lenses for the shoot and I'm really pleased with the results. I'm looking forward to working with TJ again. I think that the images will only get better because we will both be more relaxed and we'll have some areas that we both want to improve.