6. Turning South

We talked about whether to go down to the Olympia, the capital, on the freeway or stay on the smaller highway and go over to the peninsula more quickly. I hadn’t done anything about looking at ferry schedules or reservations. Either way we were going to drive through Tacoma.

John didn’t particularly want to go to Olympia and our hotel was on Highway 99, so we just turned right and kept on going south.

Talked retirement finance – uncertainties of real world.

We talked about retirement savings, the basic idea of making “a fortune” so that you could live on the interest. At six percent interest, that is half a percent a month, you needed two hundred months worth of income invested to have the monthly income you wanted. For us right now this could be two or three million dollars, but we would probably have less saved, have less expenses, and live on less when we did retire.

All of this investment and growth of capital and so forth depended on healthy financial markets. The real world was different. There were peaks and dips, sometimes crashes. None of this was any kind of sure deal.

Tacoma Narrows Bridge, new and newer

Highway 99 closely paralleled I-5 for a while and soon we were in downtown Tacoma looking at the sea on one side and the Tacoma Dome on the other. I missed a turn and we ended up lost up in the Ruston Way part of town. a nice mid to upscale neighborhood. I didn’t mind driving through the neighborhoods, seeing the real people having their real Tuesday lives but it could be slow. At one point a two cars were parked in the street, the drivers talking. As we approached they broke it off and pulled away.

After a while and running into a few dead ends we started looking for specific roads or major streets that might carry us south towards Highway 16. Finally we found one.

This led right onto the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Wasn’t that the one that blew down in a major wind in the fifties due to resonances? Yes! It was! We were driving over the replacement. What’s more, to our left another major suspension bridge was under construction. Traffic was backed up on the other side. I didn’t measure it, but it could have been five, ten, or even fifteen miles before we reached the beginning of the backup.

I gave John the synopsis of the flawed bridge design and its celebrated failure, the old engineering versus the new of its day.

Skipped submarine and museum back there north of Bremerton.

Game Boy Surround Sound

Joining Highway 3, we went through Bremerton and soon passed an exit that claimed to lead to the submarine base and Naval Undersea Museum. The exit also said “Bangor.” I thought it was Bangor, Maine, not Bangor, Washington, but the museum itself was in Virginia, Washington, in the Bremerton area.

John had hooked up his Gameboy to external speakers, “surround sound,” he called it. I second guessed myself for several miles about not going to the submarine museum. We would have liked submarines, but it was early in the drive and I didn’t want to stop yet. I’d take the next similar opportunity. This is a case where a little planning and research might have been nice, or just a willingness to go with the flow, even early in the morning. [ed. I still regret not making that stop today, 2/15/10, cbd.]

Highway 3 went to the top of the Bremerton peninsula then joined 104 that crossed Hood Canal in a long floating bridge. On the other side we were on the Olympic Peninsula.

1240 Highway 101 1751.0

After several more miles we were at Highway 101, the same highway 101 that went nearly all the way home. We would be on or near this road for the rest of the trip. I tried for several opportunities to get a picture of the Highway 101 sign, then woke John up and had him try for a while. Finally we had to pull over at a sign to get a good shot. By then it said “Highway 101 West.”

1319 Safeway Deer Park maybe 5F 1785.0

$12.29 + $2.58 ice

1339

This route followed the northern end of the Olympic Peninsula and after a while we were in the Port Angeles area. We needed ice and minor other supplies.

1349 Port Angeles 76 1786.9 89548 63F

8.781 X $3.189 = $28—

There was a gas station nearby. No telling what the opportunities would be like for the next two or three hundred miles.

1353 1787.9 Visitor Center Picnic table lunch

various 3^rd party Presidential Candidates having the opposite effect they wanted

role of Congress

repack Igloo

got a 5 skip

messed up a good skipper – like all things in life

Right in the middle of downtown, on the beach amongst resorts and stores was the Visitor Center. We cruised the twelve or fourteen space parking lot and got lucky when someone pulled out. This place had picnic tables, what we were looking for. We got the Igloo out and drained four or five gallons of ice water out of it, threw out the leftovers from Thai Palace and some black bananas, made sandwiches for lunch, and repacked the rest.

John mentioned the President (G. W. Bush) and how he had gotten elected. I repeated the wisdom I’d learned from his uncle Doug that a third party candidate always has the opposite effect on the general election that he would have wanted. Recall George Wallace, John Anderson, Ross Perot, and in 2000, Ralph Nader. As had happened with Lincoln before the Civil War, these had all split the support on one side guaranteeing election of the other.

But, citing from my own recent and not so recent study of the Constitution, I also pointed out that the President was not supposed to be such an important figure. He only was due to a certain political laziness among the people. The intent of the authors of the Constitution was that Congress would have most of the real power and that as a citizen I would care most about my representative to Congress rather than the President or other officials.

1456 look around, light rain

We walked along the small, cold, gray beach. Signs said to be careful around the logs, and no swimming. Was this due to cold or pollution or rip tides?

People, somewhat bundled up, were walking on paths and on the sand nearby. John started skipping stones out into the very light surf. I tried a few, exacerbating my “driver’s elbow” pain in my right arm. Finding a good skipper, I threw it wrong and messed it up. On another I got five skips. Such is life.

Ferries to Victoria

Lost down by the docks – Nippon Paper Co.

Back in the van, we drove on, but not on the highway. Not being on the highway, it wasn’t always clear where we were going, but with the ocean right there, it seemed like we couldn’t help but come out to the westbound highway at some point.

The first thing we saw was parking and docks for the ferry to Victoria, British Columbia. A ferry was leaving at 5:30 p.m., a sign said. It looked like a ninety-minute trip or so across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Some RVs were already lined up. We went on down the beach, finally arriving at a dead end into the Nippon Paper Company plant much like the dead end into JPL from Oak Grove in Pasadena.

We did a U-Turn at the unoccupied guard gate and wandered around for a while until we found Highway 101 again.

1514 1807.5 Pi Time 101 W

Olympic National Forest

The one piece of information I’d gotten from Jamie Jenson’s Road Trip USA was to stay on 101 here rather than taking the more coastal looking 112. When we came to the turnoff, in fact, construction crews had traffic stopped and backed up for half a mile. Staying on 101, we drove along the shores of Lake Crescent while John napped. We entered the Olympic National Forest.

1548 1835.7 113 to Cape Flattery

John was still asleep when we reached the turnoff, Highway 113 to Cape Flattery, the most northwestern most point in the lower 48 states. It was late in the day and might well take three or four hours to drive up there. On the other hand, I was a navigator and how often do you have a chance to go to a spot of such geographic, geometric significance? It stayed light late here anyway; I took the right turn.

1656 1880.8 89642 Most NW Pt. Cape Flattery Trail 56F

Road gets worse

Dawson – Mt. Wilson – Tennessee – “open three gates….”

At first the road was fine, a little more winding than 101 but negotiable at 55 mile per hour. After a while it joined the other end of 112 and then proceeded on to the waterfront. At that point it turned left, got noticeably narrower and bumpier and hugged the shoreline for several miles. In addition, we were in light rain and light fog. Occasionally we’d pass a house with smoke coming out of the chimney. Not freezing, but 56 F was chilly for August.

I was watching the mileposts counting down to mile zero, thinking that the cape would be there. Mile zero, however, was only the end of state maintenance and the beginning of the Makah Indian Reservation. The road got noticeably worse again, now just a thin blacktop without markings. We were supposed to pull over and read a billboard’s worth of fine print rules for use of the reservation, but I didn’t want to take twenty minutes to do this, so we kept going.

This continued several miles to Neah Bay where the highway dead-ended into a house taking a sharp left, then dead-ended into another house taking a sharp right and leaving town on a banking upslope. There were many facilities for the residents and a few for tourists. After a while we passed a building that said it was the tribal headquarters complex.

The road now turned to hard gravel, with braking ridges. I was alternately reminded of driving through Tennessee (for the trees), Mt. Wilson (for the winding mountain road) the back roads in the Dawson – Hubbard – Mt. Calm area (where you’d often come up behind a tractor on his way to a different field), and the story from Leonard Chamber’s honeymoon. Mr. Chambers was the choir director at Tomball High School where Viann had gone and I had been acquainted with and worked with him a few times while we lived there in the early 80s. Driving on his honeymoon, though they had gotten lost they had ultimately gotten to where they were going, but not before “opening three gates.” Gates such as the ones you’d open to go onto private land, for example, but they were coming off private land….

The road got worse with potholes and bumps, we were now down to 30 mile per hour or less. We came up a rise and there was a small, dirt parking area with restrooms and a big sign that indicated the Cape Flattery trail.

A hiking trail! This was the worst road yet!

John wanted to be pictured standing out in the mid 50s rain in his T-shirt. This would have been a nice time to have had a long sleeve shirt other than my heavy coat. My heavy coat was the only raincoat approximation I had, however. John wore his hooded pullover. We started down the trail, trying to keep the camera dry.

There was a sign saying that this was a fee permit area but there was no way to pay a fee. This had probably been covered on the thousand-word billboard back at the entrance to the reservation. I would have been (and still would be) happy to pay a fee and was (and am) prepared to do so, but never discovered the opportunity, and never read the chapters of rules.

People coming back up the trail were dressed more appropriately, in hooded rain slickers. There’s nothing like knowing what you’re doing.

After a while, the trail started to get worse. There were areas of standing water. Some places had stepping stones built-in, others just had slick, exposed roots to slip on. After about half a mile, the trail turned into constructed boardwalk with railings and steps as it approached the cliffs of the actual cape. Despite the rain and grayness, we could see Tatoosh Island and the lighthouse out there. We were a few hundred feet above the water. There were caves and inlets, and places to climb over the railings and get closer to the sheer cliff edge than was reasonable.

It looked like it would be a fun place to kayak down there.

We got pictures and movies and wet and started back up the trail. It was even longer and wetter going back, but trail conditions improved as we approached the parking area.

1803 U.S. Coast Guard Equipment 1881.0 89642 56F

Rain The Top – all is now south

Next to the trailhead sign was a road that looked like you could drive further. I didn’t have any better sense than to try it and soon we were next to a U.S. Coast Guard equipment installation, complete with monitoring cameras. We drove on into the bush, finding many turnouts and forks in the wooded back roads. I went on for several minutes, getting more and more worried. When trees overhanging the narrowing path ahead looked like they would hit the top of the van (and the antennas) I decided I’d had enough and started looking for a way to turn around.

1810 1882.0 Turn around

The turn around was noted because this was considered the furthest reach of this trip. All the rest would be in the direction of home.

1919 Highway 101 61F 1927.7

Passing all the same sites and roads going in reverse, in the improving direction, we were back to the main highway in little over an hour.

2008 Duncan Cedar 1966.4 59F

2027 go on

An hour after that we saw a big sign that pointed up a logging road to the “Duncan Memorial Cedar.” We stopped and looked at each other. We had to go to this.

Well, OK. I turned into the road and it said, “Duncan Cedar 4.1.” We’d already had one nearly-lost-in-the-woods adventure today. It was still light but wouldn’t be for long. I started to back out and just scrub this, then changed my mind again and started down the logging road that quickly turned to gravel.

“This is the kind of road I learned to drive on,” I said, holding it right at 30, about the best you could do on a gravel road like this in a van like this without getting risky.

I knew this from ancient experience.

This logging road took several turns and Y’s. How were we going to find our way back to the highway? I was encouraged by the odometer clicking away the tenths of miles toward the goal. Soon we saw a large stump, a hundred feet high or more, sticking out of the surrounding trees. A sign there explained about Wiley Duncan for whom this tree was the memorial. We took some pictures, the last of the day where we had enough light.

Finding our way back out to the highway wasn’t as difficult as I had expected, though I was developing a respect for the people who had to navigate among all these same-looking trees for their lives or livelihoods, Wiley Duncan among them no doubt.

This part of the road was well inland from the coast, all forests and mountains. After a while we were in Forks, a small but developed area with lodges and hotels. I offered to stop here for the night but John wanted to go on and get out of the rain. We had decided, implicitly, sometime earlier in the day not to camp out tonight, not if it meant camping in the rain or on wet ground from recent rain. It looked like there might never be anything else in this area. (… “rain forest”) It had been clear and bright in Seattle, but here it had been some level of drizzle all day.

Although I was going down the road as fast as I dared, a dual trailer gasoline tanker truck was nearly tailgating me. After half an hour of this, I pulled over to switch places with him, thinking that he knew the road and by following him I would be doing safe speeds. In less than five minutes he had careened out of sight ahead.

We were skipping dinner again.

It looked from the map and from the road signs that the next developed area with hotels would be in the Aberdeen area, more than sixty miles away. John studied the map, “We’re not even even with Seattle yet!” We pressed on as fast as I dared.

Every fifteen or twenty minutes we’d pass through a “congested” area with a road intersection or campground. It looked like a few people lived in these areas. It was darker with each one we passed. There were few cars on the road going either way but there was at least one family trip like ours in the hopscotch driving pattern.

Signs every few miles said it was illegal to delay more than five other cars. We were required to use turnouts.

What is a Jehovah’s Witness?

Various millinealists [sic]. Post-, pre-, a-

Translation – perfection

Things given to

PCC

Holloway

Hoiland

Wallace

Tim Clark

CHET

KICY

Redeemer

Elizabeth House

It was getting too dark to see, John was getting bored and sleepy. To make conversation, I answered John’s question about Jehovah’s Witnesses and expanded that into everything else I could think about. We discussed the various forms of millennialist (of which the Jehovah’s Witnesses represented one) and general interest in the end times. I mentioned the advice I’d gotten from Rev. Paul Morrell as a young man. He figured that he would die “normally” and be buried out of the church before the Lord returned. And, in fact, he had. I was thinking I’d probably do the same. Pat Robertson was a lot older than me and he was still thinking that he was here to usher in the Second Coming, but I had my own doubts. Indeed, given that the disciples who witnessed the resurrection and ascension thought that they would experience the second coming, and yet we were still here 2000 years later, disciples having thought that they would experience the second coming the entire time, Morrell’s bet didn’t seem all that outlandish.

Jehovah’s Witnesses had gotten famous predicting something big would happen in 1914. You could get famous making such a prediction nearly any time, I pointed out. They believed that once saved a person was perfect and didn’t sin anymore. I didn’t believe that myself. They had their own translation of the Bible in which passages were rendered with subtle differences that better supported their teaching. For instance, they rendered Jesus’ words to the thief on the cross as “I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise,” rather than the more standard “I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” By moving the comma, it makes Jesus sound like he is just saying, “I’m telling you this today,” rather than, “Today we will be in paradise together.” (I had checked this with my Greek proficient religion professor at Baylor, Bob Patterson. On looking it up in the Greek while I waited, he said, “nope, the comma belongs before ‘today’.”)

Of course, the non-Jehovah’s Witness Protestants think of this sort of thing as heresy.

John had read the Left Behind series and knew all about this anyway.

Things given to

PCC

Holloway

Hoiland

Wallace

Tim Clark

CHET

KICY

Redeemer

Elizabeth House

I outlined where all our tithes went. Half went to our church and the other half to eight other places:

Holloway – missionaries to Muslims in Muslim countries. They had been in the Maldives for a while but now were in charge of some of the work at a higher level and were based in London.

Hoiland – Wycliffe translators who had worked in a small mountain village of Sicapaca in Guatemala translating parts of the Bible into Sicipacanese so that the natives could read it in their own language rather than in official and formal Spanish. Now they lived in Pennsylvania, near Viannah, where Paul assisted other translators and Sue assisted their families in transition.

Randy Wallace – had gone to the poorest or second poorest county in the United States to help the people there. One of his ministries was to fix up houses so people could survive better. They were also a positive influence in their area in many other ways and the ministry had expanded greatly.

Tim Clark – had been called to Japan from his youth and was sent out from our church. He had been there a while and learned much of the language. He had been instrumental in getting the Alpha Course translated into Japanese and worked with churches there in a largely unchurched environment.

CHET – The Covenant seminary for Spanish speaking pastors. Most Hispanics are culturally Catholic but like many people with nominal faiths, think little of it. Those who realize they need real faith are turning evangelical in the modern era and CHET is one way the Covenant denomination is addressing and supporting this.

KICY is the Covenant radio station in Nome, Alaska. Staff from KICY – Arctic Broadcasting had come to visit our church in Houston in 1986 and at a later time at the church in Pasadena. At that first visit I had talked somewhat seriously about joining the work there but, having just bought a house and having a little baby, had gone a different direction. Quoting the Bible, “I can’t come, I just bought a yoke of oxen and have to try them out….”

Redeemer – the church plant in Los Angeles that our church supports. John had worked there as a volunteer. Our church was just now renewing our commitment.

Elizabeth House – a house up the street from the church that the church used to own and in which we had started a residential home for unwed mothers. Recently they had bought this property from us.

“Why does the road curve this way.”

“Because that’s the way they made it.”

(no curiosity?)

We went on in silence for a while. It wasn’t totally dark yet, but everything was dark gray. Then, the road turned and started to wind around again. As I slowed on the semi-wet road I asked the question about why the road was this way, expecting to start a discussion of civil engineering and its various constraints. John, tired and annoyed, answered, “Because that’s the way they made it.”

True enough. It was quiet again until we needed to talk about arrival logistics and pick a hotel.

Drove until dark and after

This violated our sight-seeing rule.

2156 Hoaquin Westwood Inn 2054.7 60F

2202 2054.8 Room 229

360 532 8161

612 9714

Entering the Hoaquin – Aberdeen area, the first reasonable looking hotel was the Westwood Inn. We were given a room big enough for two king beds but with only one (and consequently, a lot of empty space), as far from the stairs as it could possibly be. I got the dial-up number, went online, dumped the pictures and sent out an e-mail titled “Turning South Today.” Something about dialup data rates busted this so I ended up sending it entirely again. It helped for me to just get away from the computer while it was working, to take a shower for instance.

I went out to the car to get something. Police were detaining a car full of people parked right next to us. I overheard someone in a third car saying, “No that’s not them.” All were gone soon. Someone was doing their laundry in the guest laundry at eleven at night too. We were near the water somewhere, one middle aged couple was just leaving to go on a walk, possibly to the beach.

We watched parts of three high-tension cop shows and then turned off the noise and went to sleep.

2006 August 9

1530Z = 0830 W7PUA and net on 3818 59F -- copy poor on all despite driving around the block.

W7SE, W7SLB, W7LHL

As had become routine, I woke up around 8:00 and dressed while John was still sleeping. Today we would drive down about as close to the Corvallis, Or area as we were going to get so I wanted to see if the invitation for lunch with the DSP-10 crowd was still open. A week ago I had projected that we might be there earlier this week, now it was going to be tomorrow, Thursday.

Being in town, noise levels on 75 meters were not low as they had been in campgrounds. Noise was up around S-9, the typical signal level of the net participants themselves. I turned on the engine and drove to another parking place about a block away, no change.

0901 checked in –

yes, do come tomorrow

147.53 Johann, Jimmy, Bob

Back in the hotel parking lot, and at an appropriate point in the net, I checked in and was recognized. It was still OK to visit tomorrow, two or three of the guys would be available. A talk-in frequency was re-iterated.

0910 to KD7TS Mike, No copy at all either way, secured.

had rained on us all day yesterday

The round table then went to Mike who I couldn’t hear at all and, it was reported, couldn’t hear me at all. Needing to get going and with just noise coming out the speaker for several minutes, I switched off without the usual formal “last remarks and 73s”

Watched three seedy cop shows last night and “Charmed,” that vampire thing this morning. Ugh.

When I came in John was watching TV. I had some more of the Lucky Charms, dry. The one gallon of milk was doing fine in the Igloo with all the ice we were cycling through but I didn’t always want to bring it to the room. Nearly out of cereal too. John didn’t eat much.

There was a cheesy vampire show on. Looked more like a catty beauty pageant to me.

Check out time was 11:00, it turned into a race to get the key turned in by then. John took this deadline very seriously and moved everything out of the room onto the walkway in order to make it on time. I picked up one of the panorama postcards of the WestWood Inn showing the hotel, the location of our room (the right corner) as far as possible from any stairs, and the water about three blocks behind.

[editing note: Mention of this postcard caused me to get up and go look for it. Sure enough, in the pictures cabinet there was a grocery sack full of stuff from the trip, including those pictures from Appendix C. outings that I couldn’t find. 2/15/10 cbd.]

1108 2055.2 = 89816 59F

1113 Shell 2056.1 89817 60F -- No receipt $44.85 = 3.159 X 14.199

We stopped at a gas station in Aberdeen. Other customers were complaining about the Korean ownership. They moved along before any problems occurred.

We drove on through town looking for a post office or at least a mailbox. Finally found one. Some places still have mailboxes on the street. This search caused me to miss a turn in the 101. We drove a few miles east of town on Highway 6 before realizing that we were not driving along the coast as we were supposed to be.

After correcting this error we drove down a couple more maps in DeLorme’s Washington Atlas & Gazetteer, staying on 101 but not venturing out onto the truly coastal access roads such as 109 and 115. These were for people with a destination, or doing the next more detailed level of survey.

Bike ride to Alaska, don’t know why

Taylor to Hubbard

We talked about miscellaneous parts of my history, nearly in free association style.

There was the bike ride to Alaska that had been in plan now for 28 years. All trips like this could be interpreted as versions of that one-time dream. Shortly after getting married in response to the new domestic situation and other primal urges like remoteness and adventure, I had come up with the grandest of possible bicycling adventures, to ride from wherever we were then up to the Alaska Highway and thence to Fairbanks. This would take months. It might be a struggle to fit it all into bearable weather. Once in Fairbanks we’d do things like drive snow plows (a vocation for which I had no concept) or work in broadcasting or something while planning the “next adventure.”

Initially the plan was to leave that next year, spring of 1979, and we started doing some bicycle touring in preparation. Most notable was a Sunday to Monday bike ride from our apartment near Love Field (Dallas) to Tyler Street Methodist church, and then on out to Midlothian and finally Venus where we had camped off the road among piles of construction materials. The next morning we got up and rode home in time to go to evening shifts at our jobs.

Soon it was obvious that we were nowhere near capable or disposed to leave in 1979 so the plan slipped to spring of 1980. I’d pour over maps and work on the bikes and go out and look at the road in front of the house. “This is the road to Alaska,” I’d say, noting that nearly all roads are interconnected so you could go nearly anywhere from nearly anywhere else. Well, except for Nome or Barrow or a number of other places in Alaska, but discovering about things like that would be part of the adventure too.

Friends advised that it didn’t look like it was really happening, and 1980 did indeed turn out much differently than anyone could have expected, as would be detailed later.

At one point in planning of the present trip, it had been considered to drive the Alaska Highway. In fact, since the van was nearing the end of my ownership of it (that is, approaching the end of the 100,000-mile extended warranty) it was thought we might drive it there, donate it to something like Arctic Broadcasting (KICY), and fly home.

There were lots of problems with doing any of this, but the main one was that it would just take too long. I asked John about it. “If this were a trip to Alaska, we’d be on the road for four or five weeks. We would just now be getting into the Canadian part of it. How do you think that would have been.”

“OK I guess, I don’t know.”

John kind of takes every day as it comes.

Whatever.

Sometimes the trip took on truly fantastic, mythical proportions. I’d be reading National Geographic on a Sunday afternoon, for example, about some beautiful region in Argentina and would decide that I didn’t want to ride a bike from Dallas or Pasadena to Alaska, but that I wanted to hike to Alaska from the Straights of Magellan, the backbone of the Americas. Something like that could take years. Sometimes the dream was hiking just from here to Alaska. One time it had been a “vision quest” where I’d go a few hundred miles of the Angeles Crest Trail solo in order to get in touch with … something. I always enjoyed looking at the maps but when it came down to actually doing something, actually packing or setting a date, or realistically looking at anything that would take more than one Saturday, or more than one hour, little would happen.

I remembered the let down after returning from the Grand Canyon with Viannah. For several months I didn’t want to hike anyplace, ride my bike anyplace, not even to work and back. Gradually, the old self had returned, in the usual cycles.

Even this trip had been different. This was no physical conquest as it might have been. We might have set out to hike some famous (or not so famous) fifty or hundred and fifty mile trail, or bike through some region, maybe this one, maybe something closer to “home,” maybe something in a different part of the country. Many things had been considered but in the end I didn’t really want to do a great athletic quest. There would be other coaches, other goals. The aim here had been for me to learn to “hang,” to just go with whatever happened today, to attenuate the drive and goal and push down to just what was needed to roughly follow the route and get home sometime during next week.

John would be fine with those coaches and those quests too, but that wasn’t me. That wasn’t us. That didn’t seem like it would really facilitate us getting acquainted.

There had been a couple of major bike rides in my college years that were supposedly prototypes of the Alaska dream. In 1975 there was the Taylor – Hubbard ride. Dad had taken me and my new Schwinn Varsity to Rob’s house in Taylor on a Friday late in June. It was a hundred miles to Hubbard. The basic plan was to spend two days and one night getting there. We couldn’t even leave until Rob got off work at the public library around two that Saturday afternoon.

We had started out going north on the back roads looking for, I thought, Davilla. As I remembered it had gotten to be about five and we hadn’t seen anything but trees. Were we lost or were we just not there yet? Rob was about to start arguing for finding our way back to Taylor before dark and bagging the whole trip. I argued for trying for another 45 minutes before doing that. Somewhere in the last fifteen minutes of that grace period, we had arrived in Davilla. After that the maps were clearer. We had continued north until dark and stayed on a pile of gravel intended for road construction, on the side away from the road so we wouldn’t be spotted, at least casually.

Sleeping on a pile of gravel intended for road construction isn’t really possible. Based on the motions of the stars, I think I might have dozed off between three and four. Around five dawn broke. We got up, ate something, and continued north. We had estimated probably another 70 miles to go and that should have been possible, starting out before 6 a.m. on a Sunday morning, but mid-day we missed a turn and had gone five extra miles before realizing it. It was decided that we should back-track to the original route, so the second day would be 80 miles at least.

About four in the afternoon we had gotten to Mt. Calm and gone to the church and used up all the water and ice in their refrigerator, carefully refilling the trays, of course. After an hour we had continued on to Hubbard on the main highway, too tired and saddle sore for gravel back roads. Dad had gone to evening service in Mt. Calm on the back road thinking to meet us there by chance, and so we missed each other.

We got to Hubbard sometime between six and seven and lounged the rest of the evening at the house, skipping evening service there. Next day we had gotten in the truck and taken Rob and his bicycle home.

Rob was riding his brother Michael’s Gitane on this trip. It had a leather seat, presumably broken in by Michael. Rob never had saddle soreness.

And then there was the story of Ted and the Raleigh. Ted was the oldest son and his father had decided what he needed to learn to get along in life was a four year tour in the U.S. Navy. This had actually worked. While he was gone, he had left directions about his things, that is, who in the family could use them for what and so forth. Most every direction had begun and ended with, “No, Rob, you can’t ride the Raleigh.” The Raleigh was a $500 bike, a major investment at the time, and was carefully put away, stored in the dark in Ted’s bedroom closet.

At one point this trip had been prototyped as a rendezvous, me leaving from Hubbard, Rob leaving from Taylor, somewhere in the middle, facilitated by amateur radio. This had seemed like a good idea but it was just out of reach. Rob’s two meter radio was a hand held that his Elmer Mr. Peter’s had built at home, but mine was something much larger, barely suitable for bicycling, counting the batteries and all. I dreamed of one day owning a handheld.

The next year there had been the famous ride from Taylor to Enchanted Rock. Leaving from Taylor on a Saturday (again, why is it always leaving from Taylor on a Saturday?) most of the riding had been the first day, about fifty miles to Burnet where we slept in a city park. The next day we had ridden on via Inks Lake up to the north end of Buchanan Dam. The water was high and, in our shorts, we had waded in about knee deep with soap for a “field bath.”

Monday we had gone on to Llano where there was some sort of state park where we could camp and Tuesday we had gone on to Enchanted Rock via Oxford, a ghost town on the road. This was back when Enchanted Rock was privately owned. You could visit for the day for $.50 or camp overnight, anywhere you wished, for $.90. The cost to us was, therefore, $1.80. There were also screened-in buildings used for camping for two or three dollars, but this was out of the question financially and out of the spirit of the adventure anyway.

After exploring the Rock for the rest of that day and Wednesday morning, we loaded up for the final ride into Fredericksburg where dad’s truck was parked. From there we drove back to Taylor, after waiting out a thunderstorm in a gas station.

This was the trip in which we both had about fifty dollars cash on us and split expenses. The plan was that we’d just each pay for things in turn, I would keep detailed records (is that a surprise?) and at the end would tally it all up to figure out who owed whom how much. As I finished up the figuring, Rob said, “Don’t tell me who owes, just tell me how much and I’ll tell you who owes who.” I said, “twenty-five cents.” He said, “Oh good, that means you owe me,” (which was correct), “if it had been two or three dollars it would have been me owing you.”

I ponied up one of my last three quarters and the trip was officially over.

This trip, and Enchanted Rock, had figured prominently in Viann’s and my courtship. I had driven from Hubbard, via Baylor where I had some sort of summer school related business, to Taylor on Wednesday. On Thursday we drove the truck to Fredericksburg and parked it at the police station there, something I had arranged for in advance by mail, then ridden the Kerrville Bus Lines bus to Austin where we had been picked up. Friday we had spent in preparation, setting up a “test campsite” in this “very dense forest” (the woodpile in Rob’s yard) and Saturday we set out.

While driving past Penland at Baylor, Viann ran out in the street and stopped me. She had no way to get herself and her stuff home. Well…. I was going to Taylor, I could take her to Austin where her brother lived and she could get home from there somehow….

So, usually more inflexible, I had agreed to load her stuff in the back of dad’s truck on top of my stuff and I drove to Taylor via Whitehall Coop in Austin. At one point her green sitting pillow had flown out the back. People were already stopping to pick up this treasure when we got back to it and recovered it. Although it is worn out and not really useable anymore, we still have that pillow today.

I got Viann’s home address, and on the trip itself, had sent her a postcard from the store at the south end of Buchanan Dam. Irritated by ever increasing postage, I had put nine one-cent stamps on it, leaving room for few words, but the words ended with “love, Courtney,” which gave her a start. When she received this, she asked her mother what it could mean. “Could he really mean it?”

That fall, in November, Viann and I went on a day trip to Enchanted Rock. I paid the $1.00 and we climbed to the top and went through the cave and hiked around the various other places. We got back to Baylor a little after midnight and were parked in the gravel parking lot (which isn’t there anymore) by Martin and Brooks Halls. I had been intending to propose all day but didn’t really know what I was doing and always put off such things, because of not knowing what I was doing, but was determined to do something before we parted for the evening. So, we were sitting there and I was talking about our grandchildren that we would have some day, my foot resting on the break pedal. Viann, sensing that I was talking about grandchildren that we might … share, turned to me, excited, and asked if I was talking about what she thought I was talking about that.

At that point, my roommate Tom Johns, returning late from the theater where they had just struck a set that night (remember set strike for West Side Story just this June 4?) came up behind us hollering, “Your lights are on! Your lights are on!”

This had been a joke ever since.

I rolled down the window and we talked to Tommy for a minute then he went on in and we continued our … discussion … of grandchildren and the means to that end.

Our first protestations of love had been similar. Dad was having wedding for one of his Civil Air Patrol buddies in the parsonage in Hubbard earlier that September. He had invited me over to witness. I had invited Viann to come with me. We were friendly by now, but not dating. This was not a date. As we drove from Waco to Hubbard, she admired the plowed fields. She liked the open country like that; this was something we had in common.

I was wanting to tell her I loved her formally but had no idea how to do it, so I had written a letter, and had it with me. That night when I dropped her off at her dormitory, I gave it to her and then went back to my own room to get ready for bed.

On reading the letter, she was not going to write back, she came and got me. Someone had to come get me out of the shower. I put clothes back on and went down to the lobby where she was waiting. We had gone out, sat on a bench, fended off the Noze Brothers, talked of our love for each other (and that she did return this love but didn’t know where it would lead), then went back to her dorm, again, where we had had our first kiss.

So Enchanted Rock, and Rob, and Tommy, and bicycles, and amateur radio, and Baylor, and countless other parts of life, routine, mundane, and profound, were all wrapped up in what would become our family, that we celebrated today with this trip.

[editing note: In the routine web-site backlog, I just rewrote these stories, part at

http://cbduncan.duncanheights.com/Bikes/Bikes.html

and part at

http://cbduncan.duncanheights.com/Family/HowWeMet.html

The ordering and intent are different but the individual details I remember are the same. 2/15/10, cbd]

1316 The beach, Long Beach 2134.7 63F

Up to Pt. Disappointment State Park – no picnic tables

John wanted to test the water before we left Washington State. Approaching Ilwaco, 101 went all the way out to a place called Long Beach. There was a shortcut that did not go to the ocean, but we went the long way, and drove out to the actual beach.

We changed shoes and went down to wade into the surface, taking each other’s pictures standing ankle deep in the ice water.

The town had streets “places” with letter names. The closest one to the beach was “J Place,” or, as the sign had it, “J PL”. This was worth a picture.

It was time to not miss lunch. I started looking for a picnic table. We drove up into Point Disappointment State Park and found hiking trails and nature interpretative signs, but no picnic tables.

1407 2143.2 63F Picnic Tables – Black Lake

Back on the other side of town there were picnic tables at a park by a lake called “Black.” The lake was near covered in birds.

We got out, drained several gallons out of the Igloo, and John made lunch.

“Are there two kinds of birds or same birds in two states?”

“I don’t know.”

Trying to talk science again. John sometimes took this bait, but not often. Not now.

“Didn’t know Robby was”

“Didn’t know the Pope was”

All this talk of Rob and bicycles, the stream of consciousness wandered to other things, like Rob’s wedding of 1992 July 4, that John would have attended as a nearly two-year-old. We had gone back and I had played the organ in St. Mary’s Catholic Church for the ceremony. Rob’s brother Michael had been the best man. He had taken me down to practice (a pianist himself) and had tried to talk me into playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” during the ceremony.

“Why did Robby get married in a Catholic Church?” John asked.

“Because he is Catholic, that’s where he was raised.”

“I didn’t know Robby was a Catholic….”

This reminded me of my dad’s favorite joke on the subject, about the traveling preacher who was an anti-papist. He visited homes to rail and rally against the Pope. One day he had done this in the home of Catholics who, offended, had thrown him out. His partner had said, “Didn’t you realize those people were Catholic?” “Yes,” he replied, “but I didn’t know the Pope was….”

Yes, Robby was and is a Catholic. His wife Charlotte had converted. She had been a Methodist and the Methodists were accepting of ambivalence in faith, so swapping back and forth had worked for a while, but in the end it had really worked best for everyone to be Catholic.

1500 go on – Ilwaco, Wa

Horrendous traffic wrecks in Henrietta

To 75 meters et al

We continued south of Ilwaco and rejoined main 101 on the other side of the little shortcut (you could nearly see the other intersection).

Most of John’s cross-country life had been spent on freeways. There hadn’t really been much in the way of long trips on these two lane highways where an understanding of the art and science of passing was important. I wasn’t doing much passing, typically being the slower driver in the picture, but I did pass some cars and had to be cooperative with the many cars that were passing us.

This reminded me of the horrendous wreck stories from Henrietta. Henrietta was a small town but a county seat. That meant that people on the road who just wanted to get married would stop in there at the courthouse to do it. Sometimes the courthouse would refer couples out to local preachers for the actual ceremonies. I had witnessed a number of such weddings, some in the church chapel, some in the living room of the parsonage, some attended by half a dozen, some by just the couple.

The roads were not good in those days and, like now, everyone was traveling at their own risk. There was a hairpin turn on 287 coming into town from the south to accommodate a railroad bridge. Once the driver of a car with seven people in it had missed that turn and crashed into a truck in the hairpin turn. All had died except the driver himself, who was thrown clear, not wearing a seatbelt. John had already heard this story, and finished the “seatbelt” sentence for me.

These were just people passing through. The tragedies you felt more intensely were the people you knew, community or even church members. We’d already talked about Virginia Thompson, the 14-year-old who was killed on the way to an out-of-town basketball game due to a left turn error of a youthful driver in front of a truck. There was also the case of Horace Young. Horace was one of the kids who would come over and play Monopoly with the preacher and the youth director on Sunday afternoon. I had been too young to be included, they thought. Mother hated the whole Monopoly thing. It seemed to her like the preacher was teaching the youth chicanery. Horace had graduated and gone off to Texas A&M. One night late, a friend was driving him home for a surprise visit. They were doing about 90 miles an hour, maybe in a driving rain or fog, and had come up too quickly behind a truck. This was a road just like the one we were on here now, except straight and dark. There was nothing to do but to whip out into the left lane and hope that nobody was there. But, a car was there, and in the collision it had been pushed backwards several hundred feet. Everyone in both cars had died.

Dad had gotten the call after midnight, I thought I remebered. This sort of thing was always happening. A baby would be born and not expected to live through the night, so dad would get a call at midnight, get dressed, and go baptize the infant at the hospital. In this incident, Paul Hawkins, the local undertaker, wanted someone to ride down with him to get the body. Or maybe dad had been the one to go notify the family. Or maybe both. I didn’t remember. I knew that sometimes dad did go with the undertaker on these trips. I wasn’t sure.

Then there was Hattie Hays, remember, we had talked about her singing at Virginia’s funeral? She had been widowed about a month when one day, after visiting family about an hour and a half east in Gainesville, while returning home on 82 had been broadsided by a drunk driver who had run a stop sign at 70 miles per hour. People talked about the circumstances of the wreck. Some thought she may have had tears in his eyes and not seen him. Some thought that she didn’t care anymore. Some had thought that she had reasonably expected the other car to stop. The drunk driver, allegedly asleep, had survived. They brought Hattie home “in a basket.”

One thing I learned from this was that, when discussing automobile catastrophes, little eight year old kids… don’t know what they were talking about.

It had been yet another big funeral in the church and, as an eight year old experiencing these things on a routine basis, I had thought that such a life was normal. Maybe it was, but we claim that we don’t put up with such things now. Now there is a bypass around Henrietta that had been the subject of great discussion and controversy during its planning phases while we lived there.

This was the same Henrietta and the same age eight where dad had taken me out south of town in the Jeep and taught me to drive….

The subject then went back to Robby and ham radio. It was difficult to have enough space for a 75-meter antenna, nominally around 120 feet long and at least 20 or 30 feet high. Robby had learned this after the Hubbard (and Burnet) tornado when, on his 60-foot antenna, he had tried to call me. I was the relief operator at Phil Woodard’s station (W5KRZ) for an hour or so that evening. It hadn’t worked. People could nearly hear Rob and so could I but no one could pull out his callsign.

Shortly after the tornado (March 10, 1973) Phil, who had been my ham radio mentor (“Elmer”) had checked himself into the hospital for tests. They ended up doing abdominal surgery only to discover significant intestinal cancer. They closed him up without doing more.

I was appointed to keep the other hams on 3.930 MHz informed on Phil’s status. Every day after school I would call and find out what was happening, then go on the air and report to the rest of the group. It was nice of the family and friends to have involved me in this way, but soon I was to learn an important lesson.

Phil died. That was the message one day. I went to the radio with the only really important piece of information of the entire exercise and, no one was there. They already knew. Many of them had already traveled to Hubbard.

Of course….

So, back to Rob, in closing out the estate, Phil’s 120-foot dipole antenna had become available. I arranged for Rob to get it. On his next visit we strung it up in my front yard and I went in and tested it while he stood guard out front. He then took it home, put it up, and we talked regularly on 75-meters until after we had gone off to college. We stayed in touch a lot in this way during our last year in High School, sometimes several times per evening. One time we tried for a 6-hour contact for an “award” called the “Real Rag Chewers Club.” The band had gone out after three and a half hours, though, and we hadn’t made it. I started thinking about getting on 160 meters, with a 240-foot antenna….

Seeing some cyclists – touring

We were seeing many cyclists along the coast road, touring. “Hey, we could be doing that,” I would quip. John would reply, “I’m good,” a euphemism for, “That’s OK, I don’t need to be doing that.”

“Cyroplastic flows”

“Do we have a Washington in a 3-4 unit Jet Ski Trailer?”

Rat ‘chere

We were developing several quips in our language. This being volcano country, we were always on the lookout for “cyroplastic flows,” a mis-rendering of the term “pyroclastic flows” that we had heard in several of the talks and movies about volcanoes. In fact, we were driving over ancient pyroclastic flows all the time through these parts. Sometimes you could see them.

We were somewhere in the forties on our license plate states collection and it looked like we might actually not get all fifty on this trip. We had some of the hard ones like Alaska (which was “near” here, after all) and Hawaii (first day) but there were a lot of folks from New England who just weren’t touring the west coast this year. So, we had branched into other types of vehicles (but not really). “Do we have Colorado in a Winnebego? Do we have Virginia in a green, 1997 Honda Accord? Do we have Oregon in a three unit off-road-vehicle trailer?”

“No, amazingly we don’t.” We discussed the possibility of making up a huge matrix of types versus states. There was a glimmer of interest.

I was trying to teach him the subtleties of southern speech. I even had colleagues (a woman from Florida) who would use such usage in e-mail.

For instance, when indicating that something is “right there,” say “rat ‘chere,” pronounced “rat chair,” that is, something a rodent might sit on.

John practiced “rat ‘chere” throughout the trip.

2154.8 start bridge

2155.3 1526 Oregon

2158.6 end bridge

2159.1 on ground at light – Astoria

I was talking about the difference in amateur radio between QRP and QRO, that is, the difference between attempting communications with minimum power and using maximum power. In the amateur service, the maximum power allowed by regulation is 1500 watts, and I had a borrowed amplifier capable of doing this, but really preferred activities where only a few watts were needed. This meant lower voltage, current, power, heat dissipation, danger, electric bill, and so forth. I could do high power when I really needed to but didn’t prefer it.

While I was talking we approached the four-mile long bridge over the mouth of the Columbia River into Astoria, Oregon. John made a movie of some of the bridge crossing while I was talking. The highway itself misses most of Astoria, and so did we. We crossed another bay bridge over to the Warrenton area and continued south. Today’s goal was Newport.

The DeLorme Washington Atlas & Gazette was retired for the trip and John dug for the Orgeon Atlas.

This was Wednesday; we had been in Washington something like five days, three and a half hours.

Hearing Illinois, SoCal on 20 – S-3

I turned on the shortwave to 20 meters and heard stations in the Midwest and a station close to home, weak but solid.

1609 2185.2 Big rock view

1618

Soon we were on what was arguably the first major piece of Pacific coast scenery. Stopped for pictures.

1857 2295.2 Best Western Newport, Or

If we were going to go visit people tomorrow, I wanted to stay in a hotel tonight. The Best Western had beautiful views of the beach and looked relatively upscale. I walked in without a reservation and got the last room. It was a “pet room” on the sixth floor but there was nothing about it that suggested pets to me, no odor, stain, or otherwise.

You pulled into the hotel at the second floor level and then drove up a hill to a parking lot that was adjacent to the sixth floor, which was accessed by bridge.

Made a reservation for 2015

After unloading we decided we had to go to the beach, though it was a quarter mile away and it was cold outside and the water was undoubtedly freezing. Not wanting to drive anymore, I thought we’d eat in the hotel restaurant. Noting in the bedside material that reservations were a good idea, I picked up the phone and made a reservation for 8:15 p.m., 45 minutes from now. Would this be enough time to change, run to the beach, run in the water, run back, clean up and change, and get downstairs?

Ran out and waded into the surf, calf deep

~45F Feet hurt- ran back over blowing sand. Changed and went to dinner

Had Top Sirloin and Shrimp $37.00, including tip

Talked about SRTM and #4

The exit towards the beach was down on the first floor, and continued down hill from there. Once out on the sand, not only were we cold, but it was windy, we were getting sandblasted by the sand blowing off the dunes.

You can’t run fast in sand and we were not in top athletic condition (I don’t know that I’ve ever been). We did our best.

The surf was roiling. I’d seen surfs like this before, but about forty degrees warmer. Wading in, our feet started hurting immediately. By the time we were waist deep, our calves hurt and our feet were numb. We took a pounding by three or four waves and had had enough. I estimated the water temperature at 45, but it could have been 50. I have no real experience other than Barton Springs in Austin, which is about 68. This was much colder than that, and pounding.

We made it back to dinner in time; continued to talk about stuff.

Watched National Geographic Roller Coasters and Mt. St. Helens.

The National Geographic Channel had a show in which a guy had built his own roller coaster in his own back yard. This beat “Country Fried Home Videos,” even though people could get hurt on this contraption too. Amazing what a middle class guy with a little welding experience might end up doing. Some other guy wanted to make downtown San Francisco into a giant roller coaster. Amazingly, crazy people had been thinking about this for over a century.

This was followed by a documentary on Mt. St. Helens. Although it had a lot of familiar material (pyroclastic flows…) this particular show was not something we had seen in all of last week’s touring of the volcano.

Katy called with “Code Monkeys”

This room had high speed internet but bring your own network cable, which I was now able to do. I was sitting there doing my e-mail and pictures when Katy called. I had to hear this song “Code Monkeys.”

2006 August 10

1557Z = 0857 3818 Net 70F

KD7TS 58, W7PUA 58, -> 59_10

KC7WW, Johann

Lincoln City -> Freeport, most interesting and varied

Bayfront to Toledo.

0905 signed

I was not on time for the beginning of the net the next morning but did make it over the bridge and to the van before it was over. Today’s visit was reconfirmed. More detail was given. Larkin’s antenna for 147.53 was horizontally polarized, but we’d be able to talk after I got over the ridge on the way into town anyway, at least by the time it was important. I was to start towards Corvalis on Highway 20 then call for directions when we got close. On the way out of Newport, we might take the more scenic Bayfront road to Toledo, then get on 20 for the rest of the way.

I told him that we had been seeing signs all day yesterday that Highway 20 had construction and possible delays on it, but we’d get there when we could.

He also thought that we might go back to the coast on the more scenic Highway 34, missing a few miles of the coastal highway that, in his view, it was OK to miss.

I took the big two-meter radio off of APRS and plugged in the microphone, moving it to 147.53 simplex. Got out the electronics supplies box and cobbled up the stuff to use the five-watt handheld for APRS instead. Switched the big antenna over to the big radio and put the big two-meter whip on it. Started up the APRS and went in to start bringing luggage out.

We were set.

1028 check out of hotel 2295.6 = 91056 63F

1034 drive to Corvallis

We were on the way, only half an hour later than I’d wanted.

talked about ham radio “talking in”

this is the last time I’ll probably do this

because this is probably the last trip I’ll take quipped like this

We did find and take Bayfront drive which was much more pleasant than the “fast road”. Once we’d rejoined the main road in Toledo I started talking about the ham radio conventions that we would see demonstrated today.

Thirty or forty years ago, or even longer, the world was a much different place than it was today with respect to communications. Amateurs had two-way radios in their cars and, aside from public service vehicles and a handful of doctors, they were the only ones, certainly the only “ordinary” citizens.

Also, the entrance requirements to amateur radio were seen as somewhat selective. One had to demonstrate proficiency in manual telegraphy and electronic theory, practice, and regulations in front of a Federal Communications Commission officer in order to qualify. This meant that it functioned kind of like a fraternity (with some women, then and now) with everyone on a first-name basis. When you drove into a strange town you instantly had a few friends. You could show up on a VHF repeater and get directions or local advice or sometimes even an invitation to lunch.

Today, essentially everyone has communications wherever they are. They never travel anywhere without being plugged into whatever information or companionship they need at all times, irrespective of the location of themselves or their companions. This apparently universal human need (or at least urge) had gotten some of the people into amateur radio in the old days. There had been other attractors too, but once you were “in” you were part of this local and worldwide community of friends, mostly.

So, today, even ten or fifteen years after amateur radio was no longer special in this mobile communications respect, we were going to demonstrate it again anyway. Bob Larkin had grown up in the middle of the era when wireless had been magic and I had been an enthusiastic teenager at the end.

Thus, Bob would be “talking us in.”

There was indeed construction along the road. It was being widened and straightened in order to hold more traffic on this increasingly popular route to the sea. We had the unusual good fortune to arrive at each construction site just at the end of our group to go through, so there was no waiting, just slow following.

And, sure enough, as we got close to town, I called Bob on the agreed frequency and he “talked us in.” From my scenery descriptions and odometry, he knew where we were and would say to call back in five minutes or when we saw such-and-such. Then when we were in town and on the roads to the house we just stayed in conversation making small talk between directions.

This was being “talked in.” I had done it dozens of times, sometimes just for the fun of it, as in the first time that Rob and I both had portable radios and he “talked me in” to his house in Taylor from the last ten or so miles out as I came down for a visit. Of course, I had been there hundreds of times and needed no directions. When I pulled up out front, he walked out and dumped his radio into my truck through the window.

1208 2358.3 75F Bob and Janet Larkin’s house

boat

And so we pulled up to Bob and Janet Larkin’s house in Corvallis, a large, well-kept house on a large, well tended lot, on a small cul-de-sac (not unlike Rockmere Way). The only signs of hobbies were a tent in front of the garage and a 120-foot dipole hanging over the house. Bob (W7PUA) and Johann (KC7WW) came out and we all shook hands. I (N5BF) introduced John as KG6HCO, something that doesn’t happen much.

We were standing right by the tent that sheltered a boat, a boat that was under construction. Bob’s other hobby was building boats. This boat was a bird watcher, a sailboat that could be rowed, or powered by a maximum two horsepower motor. The designer was a master somewhere in New England, a man probably as much older than Bob as Bob was older than me (fifteen years plus or minus five). So, for this particular boat anyway, Bob was an acolyte to this man in New England, like I was to him on the DSP-10. But, the master boat builder in New England did nothing electronically. Another half generation older, he was very conversant, but only corresponded in writing. Hand writing, I thought Bob said.

We inspected the boat and its construction, materials, tools, and so forth. He also had two other boats, a kayak and a skiff, also hand built, hanging from the ceiling of his garage. I’d like a kayak like that, for my personal “ideal fitness plan.” I bet this particular one was tailor-sized for the pilot and would, therefore, be too small for me. Conversely, however, perhaps one could be built tailor made for me.

When this line of discussion ran out, we went into the house to look around there. Upstairs was a normal, neat, uncluttered, spacious house with just the right balance for decent décor. Downstairs was Bob’s shack, an entire room with doors on two sides and windows on a third. It immediately impressed me as being exactly like my “shack”, which totally consumed a breakfast nook in our family area, but about five times the floor space.

Two tables and numerous filing cabinets and shelves contained projects in various states of completion, computers, tools, test equipment, books and publications, many by our host, and cabling which appeared to run discretely out the window to disappear into the greenery. I didn’t see any antennas out there. I learned later that they were hidden back in the woods, a hundred-foot coax run away. This made the rest of the property look nice, like the upstairs.

All of my correspondence with Bob, or anyone on the list, had been in e-mail so far. When I first actually talked to him on the net last week, his voice had sounded higher pitched and a little more urgent than I had expected. In person he seemed more relaxed, though mutedly intense and also fit and trim, though a little shorter than the giant of the radio art that I had imagined. This man and his wife were having an enviable retirement.

He had set up one of his DSP-10s and turned it on for me to look at. He had two. One was in a larger box so that it was easier to work on. The one that was running was the same form factor as mine. We were looking at some sort of noise on the screen, maybe from a dummy load. He was running software version 3.80 and was synchronized to GPS both for time and frequency, the new set of features in that version. Although I had downloaded 3.80, this reference capability was still in my future, though a necessity if I was going to work other stations at ultra-low power levels. Subconsciously the need for the GPS external reference ratcheted up a notch in the back of my head.

I asked some questions, we talked a few high level points; then we decided to go off to lunch. On the way out the door we met Janet who was very knowledgeable and understanding of these ham radio visits (but was not introduced with a call sign). She was very pleasant about it all but declined to come along, preferring her word processor here at the house. She did chide Bob a bit about being stuck in a rut in the places where the hams went to congregate.

But of course, we’d never been there, so it was fine with us.

Bob’s van was just like ours, except that it had seats in it. There was an amateur antenna on it but it didn’t look like any radio installed, just a BNC for a handheld. There was something that looked like a mobile phone but I didn’t study it closely and certainly didn’t ask. In fact, I had turned off my own cellphone during the visit. Nothing worse than having a cellphone ring during an amateur radio “Eyeball QSO!”

Bob and Johann sat in front, John and I in the middle. We drove towards downtown, turning, circling. Soon I was totally lost. How big was Corvallis? About 50,000. Hewlett Packard had been here for a while with their printer division, but this business had decreased greatly in recent years. Oregon University was here.

Downtown reminded me of Montrose, but larger. Bob said that, not being on the freeway, Corvallis had managed to preserve some uniqueness in its business district, avoiding many of the “box stores.” (There are lesser places where getting a “box store” is considered a good thing.)

Ernie experiment 1 antenna, 5 watt – 1 hour

Everything in paper

ARRL Committee

DSP + backpacket LCD – Johann, 30 ma

He bought lunch, gave me tons of tourist advice.

We ate at a bakery. John and I had calzones. These were indeed better than the ones at my cafeteria at work. Bob bought, saying, “you drove.”

Bob and Ernie (W7LHL) were involved in trying to demonstrate something that would be of interest to me, the ultra-low power moonbounce guy. They were trying to verify signals off the moon using five watts, one antenna at each end, in only one hour. Ernie, being around eighty, had other constraints that made it difficult to even make the attempts, and when they could, man-made noise would often wipe them out. My own experience indicated that only one hour was ambitious for five watts to single antennas, much the same as my situation in which I’d claimed success after about three hours of integrated signal (that took ten or twenty hours to accumulate).

We talked about everything in the paper I had just written for the AMSAT Symposium, including Venus bounce. I learned some things of the sociology of the astronomical amateurs. The typical guy’s obsession would be to do something really big, like the W5UN “Mighty Big Array” that I referenced in my paper, and for people doing something really big, this low power, “barely works” stuff just didn’t count. Still, I pressed, it was only a matter of correctly motivating people. Ten people would spend half a million dollars to put a “rare prefix” on the air, some far away island rarely visited by radio, and make tens of thousands of contacts to put those rare ones in the logs of the truly patient. This was a lot more expensive than my “dollar per contact” self-justification metric and, anyway, what value was it to prove that the ionosphere worked to yet another place in the world?

It was just hard enough, and the difficulty in easily graded steps, to draw people along. And, for sixty years, the contesting and DXing worlds had managed to fine-tune the motivations to make it into the big deal that it was. For many.

Venus bounce detection was within reach, I claimed, but it was at least an obsession and a half from where I was at the moment.

There were other goals in there, like phase tracking amateur satellite radio signals and doing navigation with them. I briefly outlined the technique, an extension of what I do professionally. Even if the oscillators weren’t that good, they could be modeled or estimated. Signal existence was also information that could be used for navigation. I was interested in trying to demonstrate these sorts of things some year soon.

Bob had served on the American Radio Relay League Software Radio Committee, but didn’t anymore. It wasn’t a “satisfying activity.” I understood that.

Johann was involved in a project to make the DSP-X into a back-packable unit for hiking and such QRP work. The idea was to use sleep states in the computer and come up with an LCD display to give you enough to work with in the field, all for 30 milliamps average, receive current. This would be a challenge.

1515 break it off and continue

John and Johann were polite but getting more and more bored. Bob and I had done most of the damage we could do. We went back to the house via the Oregon University campus and talked about how they lived here in part for access to a university grade library. Of course, in the modern world with Google, this was less important than it used to be. And the library had moved many of their archives to employee access storage to where they could only be accessed on a next-day basis. A move in the wrong direction, it seemed to me.

Bob did talk to John a little. John played drums, rode bikes. Bob had a son that did competitive off road biking but had pretty much given it up due to severe poison oak allergies. It’s not that he got injured in crashes, its’ that he always landed in poison oak. I understood that too.

I told John later about the poison oak plant in the middle of the trail on Santa Rosa Island. Katy and I had been on the volunteer ranger guided hike there on her trip. In keeping with modern park service policy, they were fixated on leaving everything alone and never disturbing it. Meanwhile, I was thinking, “you know, we could just take care of this poison oak in the middle of the trail right now!”

We got back to the house and kept talking our subjects. It was one of those situations where anything anyone said would lead to another half hour of conversation. I was afraid to ask for a tourist picture. Deer frightening sprinklers, falsed by sunlight in the blowing trees, were spouting in random directions in the side yard. A well-kept garden over there, looked like vegetables and flowers.

I said, “We’ve got to get on the road.” The four of us said goodbye and made beelines in three directions, Johann to his car, we to ours, and Bob back into the house. I turned off my two-meter radio for the rest of the day.

1526 2362.1 Safeway gas, 20 lb. ice $2.70

I had seen a shopping area back at the highway; we stopped for ice.

1536 continue

This is all the ham radio I can stand for all day.

I told John that I’d had all the ham radio I could stand for that day. He said this had happened to him about the time we finished eating, about two hours before we all parted company.

1547 2364.9 Shell PhiloMath 90126

$44.13 = 14.814 X $2.979

oil down half

This was another full service situation. A kid came out, I gave him my card, he did everything I would have done except topping to round to some $.05.

There were smoke clouds to our east, gray compared to the broken white fluffy cumulus here and there in the sky, I asked him about them. We had heard, dimly, about fires closing some areas around Crater Lake. He said they were just fields burning.

I checked the oil; it was down half a quart now, looking like it had been a few miles since a change.

Winding tourist road.

We took a left on the smaller, more winding, more scenic Highway 34. John fell asleep.

This ran down to Waldport and looked like the kind of road where we would see more logging trucks (there had been many in Washington) but there were none. There were some private properties, some off-the-trail, backwoods recreation areas, and a few cars. I drove along in silence, watching the sharp turns, thinking about other things, and ham radio.