At Least DC'S Got Key

Of all the schools-both public and private in the entire U.S. of A. chosen to receive Blue Ribbon status this year only one was chosen within the confines of the District of Columbia-Francis Scott Key Elementary. It's both an honor and a disgrace that one public school here in the district has achieved so much in a city wide system that has achieved so little. On one hand, we have a great little school like Key where over half of the students are advanced in math- according to test scores. In fact, when the Obamas were school shopping, Michelle Rhee told us that her office crunched the numbers, and Key came up on top.  On the other hand, our system still supports social promotion and retention, meaning, for example, you might be held back a year or two, but eventually- you will still be moved up to high school-reading or not.
I am really proud of Key school's award. It was well earned by teachers, students, parents and staff alike- all working together, but during the furor of the Obama's school search, I heard more than one voice question why the Obama family should "sacrifice" their children to the cause of DC public schools. The Blue Ribbon award program is part of the No Child Left Behind act, and I can't help but roll my eyes at the irony. Maybe one day-though maybe not in my lifetime- DC will be the Blue Ribbon town it could and should be.

Fossil week

Updated: see below.

While posting recently about the rocks here, I mentioned that the red ones often contained plant fossils. By request, here they are.







I'll post more fossil pics later this week and try to come up with some IDs.

These are possibly leaves of Lycopods - Lepidophylloides maybe. Like this and this. The ancient lycopod tree had different types of leaves, and the grass-like ones were called Lepidophyllum. I believe that would put them in the Pennsylvanian period, about 300 million years ago.

But I'm not sure about that. I've never found any more entire leaf impressions than these. So if you know differently please tell me.

They could possibly be from the other clubmoss tree, the Sigillaria, or the horsetail tree, the Calamites. (They are all from roughly the same time period.)

Updated: I found this at the Virtual Paleontology Lab, which explains why the leaves can have a different scientific name than the rest of the plant:

Because we don't always know which leaves belong to which seeds when they are first discovered, we use the convention of form taxa. When organs are found isolated (not in organic connection), each type of leaf and seed is given its own binomial name (genus and species name according to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature), without making any assumption about what belongs to what. To use the example discussed by Oliver and Scott (1904), leaves were described as Lyginopteris (genus only for brevity), seeds as Lagenostoma, and stems as Lyginodendron. The similarity of the first syllable gives a hint that the describing paleobotanists (others besides Oliver and Scott) suspected some relationship, but were unable to make a strong inference link. The last syllable of each name gives a hint to the organ type: "dendron" = stem, "pteris" is often used for frond-like foliage, "stoma" = seed. However, after Oliver and Scott's recognition of the unique glands on Lagenostoma lomaxi and species in the other organ form genera, they were able to make the whole-plant link with greater confidence. The whole plant then takes the name of the organ first described, in this case Lyginopteris. When you are writing, take care to make clear whether you are talking about form taxa (organs) or whole-plants.

Also, this is what the globe looked like 300 million years ago. Plate tectonics! Continental drift! Gotta love it.

If I'm right about what these are, the fossils pre-date dinosaurs. Pretty cool.

Here's what it's thought to have looked like around here at that time, more or less. There are modern relatives of some of these ancient plants, such as the plant-rescue ground cedar I tried (unsuccessfully, as it turns out) to transplant here last year.

Sue the T-rex? Sniff. Ho hum. My fossils are older than that. Almost five times older! Now if I could only find somebody to pay me $8 million for them...

-----

P.S. I have learned so much since I started writing this blog - looking all this stuff up so I can pretend like I know what I'm talking about.

The Feel of the Road

I never gave much thought to the feel of pavement until I started cycling in Ireland last spring. Then I noticed the difference straight away: The tarmac, as they call it in the British Isles, felt distinctly softer than the asphalt in my part of the US. Having lived for years in the UK before I was a cyclist, I'd somehow never noticed this. But on a bike it was difficult not to. I could feel a give in the road's surface under my tires. It was also more porous, gravely in texture. Feeling more resistance than I'd come to expect from pavement, I kept wondering whether my tires had gone flat, or whether something was mechanically amiss with the folding bike I was riding.Later I learned that the roads in Ireland are a kind of chipseal. The differences I sensed were real.




Being back this summer, and with a skinny-tire roadbike this time, the characteristics of the Irish roads feel even more pronounced. The softness and the rough texture make me exert more effort to achieve the same speed as in the US. I would place the experience as somewhere between riding on pavement and riding on tightly packed gravel.




When the tarmac is freshly laid or repaired, the top layer can be quite loose. It also loosens easily after stretches of bad weather.Cornering on such sections without realising what you're dealing with can be dangerous.




There are other interesting effects. Once I did a long distance ride in a75°F"heatwave." On the return leg around 4pm, I noticed that the road in front of mewas glistening, getting shinier and more liquid-looking by the minute - almost as if it were melting. I thought to myself "Nah, can't be. I must be tired and imagining things." Next things I know, viscous clumps of tar were sticking to my tires and clogging my brakes. I had to pull over and scrape the gooey black chunks off, then use a stick to knock the hardened clumps out of the brake calipers. Then I sat in the shade and waited for an hour, until the road cooled off enough to continue home. To my relief, the following day everyone was talking about the melting tarmac, so at least I did not hallucinate the surreal experience. I guess the tarmac here is not rated to withstand such boiling temperatures!




If you're riding a harsh-feeling bike on Irish roads, you'll know it. The rough texture exaggerates the jarring sensations of road buzz. When I tried a friend's racing bike, my hands were vibrating so much I could not believe it. "Oh it's like riding on razor blades, to be sure," he laughed. I stroked my own bike with renewed appreciation.




Once I do get used to the roads here, the roads in the US feel unnaturally hard and smooth in comparison, and readjusting to them takes some time as well. As for the New England potholes... well, that is a topic that deserves its own post, possibly in poem form.

Up and Away :: Evening Version

Depending upon the weather, mass ascensions of the balloons are held in the morning and in the early evening. About five o'clock I made my way back to Rotary Park. I could see a bunch of balloons already in the sky and it was an impressive sight!





Even more impressive was seeing the balloons floating just a few feet above the surface of Lake Havasu. Wouldn't it have been fun to be a passenger in either one of the boats or one of the balloons?





There were reportedly six unusually shaped balloons at the festival. This cute little fish is the only one that came close enough so that I could get a nice shot.





Looking to the west, more balloons were ascending. I counted about 40 all in the air at the same time, though not close enough together that you could get them all in one picture.





Another pilot showing off!



For a few brief moments, the sun came out from behind the clouds and the southeastern sky lightened up considerably. I made my way south, toward that spit of land jutting into the lake.





Several balloons landed there but many others continued on further, landing on the southeastern shore of Lake Havasu.





Meanwhile, there were still quite a few balloons drifting off into the western sky.



Carnival rides and other festival activities carried on into the evening, but I did not! I stayed around a few minutes longer, watching the “glow” of some of the balloons still moored on the island.





I also spent a few minutes simply enjoying the awesome sunset that Mother Nature provided for the ending of another beautiful day!



A note about the two photos of the balloons with the golden sky: Those two shots were taken with the camera at the maximum 35x zoom setting and about 20-30 minutes prior to the sunset photo. I made no changes or color corrections to those shots (or any others, for that matter though several had adjustments to contrast and lightness).

It is true...I've made fun of YOU!

If you have worn a helmet rock climbing or a visor/face mask on ice I have likely made fun of you, at least silently, in my past.

I know, poor potty training. But it comes from honest hard labor and not getting killed..... yet.
While I almost never (never?) wear a helmet cragging on decent rock I always wear a helmet on ice or in a winter/alpine environment or on the typical limestone choss.

It is not my suggestion that you skip wearing a helmet or use me as a poster child as to when to or not to wear a helmet. Make up your own mind when you think you need a helmet and "live...or not" with that decision.

Helmets have gotten so light...the newest ones from BD and Petzl are down to ounces...literally half of my last helmet's weight.

But this isn't about helmets. The discussion is actually about face shields while climbing ice. I have to admit having more scars on my face than I care to. All of them from ice cuts. One in particular, a 1980 dinner plate on Carlsberg, knocked me out cold and cut my lip through to the gum line. Unpleasant all that to finally make Banff and getting sew up. I am not sure a face shield would have stopped the injury or brain fade but it might have helped. Either way not an experience I want to repeat.

Old habits die hard so no mask or visor for me. Well not until last season anyway. Two years ago I was finishing up the right hand side of Weeping Wall when for the first time ever, I popped a small piece of ice directly into my eye and it REALLY hurt! And I do mean REALLY hurt. I couldn't see and it hurt bad enough I couldn't climb for a few minutes. My eye was pouring tears. And it was later sore for several days. No fun on lead.


My partner that day was wearing a Petzl helmet and shield which I thought rather goofy at the time.....but not so much now. He wasn't goofy mind you, just his choice in gear was goofy from my inexperienced perspective. My first piece of damning evidence is the zebra striped bike tape he used to wrap his Nomics. '70s California hippy obviously. The fact that he has climbed a whole lot more ice that me..over a longer period time..and was still climbing harder...(the bastard!).... kept me from giving him shit about his obvious "goofiness". But I really wanted too. Right up till I poked myself in the eye!

That was my last trip for the season up north. I started looking for one of those fancy shields to add to my helmet on the drive home. "How about sliding me a pro deal on one of them fancy helmets with a visor, Jack?" "Nada."

Took me a few months and I still have a helmet without a shield but now one with as well. I pick and choose which helmet I want to use as the shield is fragile and a PIA to stuff along with the attached helmet into a pack. But I almost never go on water ice now without a shield/visor. So much for the old school label. Now I am one of the goofy ones. But I get to laugh at myself......every time all that nasty stuff bounces off my visor with every swing as I smile and "style" my way upward!

But if you show up with a wired frame football mask or looking like Freddy Krugger I'm still gonna laugh at you. Call it poor potty training.

Pre-dawn light on the shores of Superior

This time of year its amazing how early in the morning it starts to get light. These images were made at about 4:00 a.m. today! They were exposures several seconds in length (about 5 to 6 seconds). It certainly was a beautiful morning, and a very calm one on the lake.

Wordless Wednesday :: Schooldaze ~ Fifth Grade

Of all my school pictures, this is my favorite!

Eagle in a tree

I just get home from work
and what do I see...
An Eagle in a tree
and he's lookin' at me!

Ride Fast or Ride Far?

When I first started trying to increase the milage of my rides, I was advised to keep my average speed down on longer distances. "You can ride fast, or you can ride far," I was told. This advice seemed perfectly logical. The faster you ride, the sooner you'll get tired, right?



But my own experience stubbornly contradicted this piece of wisdom. I grew suspicious when, over the past two years, intentionally keeping my speed down only seemed to make me miserableon longer rides. So this summer I experimented. On some long rides I rode at whatever speed felt natural in the moment (whee!). On others I intentionally kept my speed in check. I felt better after the rides where I maintained a higher speed.



At first this discovery confused me. And then all at once, it made sense. The "fast or far" dichotomy fails to account for one crucial factor: time spent on the bike. Let's say you are doing a 100 mile ride. At an average rolling speed of 14mph, you will spend 7.14 hours on the bike. At an average rolling speed of 12mph, you will spend 8.33 hours on the bike. That's more than an hour of extra bike time! An entire extra hour of pedaling, of leaning forward, of gripping the handlebars, of chafing against the saddle. These things can wear you out just as much as the pedaling effort itself.



My point here is not that one should attempt a century ride with the zeal of a racer, but that it helps to look at a situation from multiple angles and to factor in your own strengths and weaknesses. As it turns out, I can ride faster than I've been giving myself credit. And as my body struggles to cope with longer times in the saddle, riding faster is getting me further. YMMV.

Can Stop, Will Stop: Paul Racer Brakes

When I received a Rawland Nordavinden demo bike for review some time ago, it was fitted with Silver Bigmouth sidepull brakes. The Nordavinden model is made without cantilever bosses, intended to be used with either sidepulls or centerpulls. With 650Bx42mm tires that leaves few options for brakes with sufficiently long reach. I have tried the bigmouth sidepulls before on a 650Bx42mm tire bike with upright handlebars and the stopping power was fine. But it proved decidedly less fine on a bike with drop bars and road levers. The braking wasn't terrible, but not as strong as I wanted. So when setting up a Nordavinden with my own components two months later, I decided to go with centerpulls. The choices were: Paul Racer or Dia Compe 750 brakes. The feedback I'd read about the Dia Compes was pretty good, so I bought those, since they are the considerably less expensive option. To my disappointment, the braking power was not much better than it had been with the sidepulls. I rode the Vermont Fall Classic with the Dia Compes, but had to watch my speed on steep descents, particularly once it started to rain. I was now feeling a little dispirited, because there was only one option left. Trying to not get my hopes up, I bit the bullet and bought the Paul Racers several weeks later. To my immense relief, they work. They are expensive. But they are US-made, and, more to the point, they stop my bike.



In fairness, I should note here that I know riders who useSilver Bigmouth sidepulls, Tektro Bigmouth sidepulls, and Dia Compe 750 centerpulls on fat tire roadbikes without issue. However, my grip strength is weak and I have damaged nerves in my hands. Braking power with the combination of road levers and long-reach brakes has been an ongoing problem, including on bikes built for cantis. It is useful to know that Paul brakes are an option that works. The Center Mount version of the Racers does not require special braze-ons and can be used on any bike that accepts sidepull brakes, provided there is enough steerer available for a cable hanger.



Paul Racer brakes can be purchased from the manufacturer directly, or ordered via your local bike shop. The company is based in Chico, California, where they have been making parts since 1989.

Wool/Poly Blends for Cycling?

While merino wool has become a popular fabric choice for bicycle clothing, it seems that many manufacturers choose to use wool/polyester blends instead of pure merino, believing that the right combination can deliver the best results. Rapha and Road Holland use a fabric called SportWool. Shutt Velo Rapide usesMerinoPerform. Swobo refers to their blend as Merino 753. I am sure there are other proprietary names, but judging by the descriptions of these fabrics the idea is essentially the same: The blend is formulated to have wool fibers on the inside and polyester fibers on the outside, which the manufacturers believe delivers ideal performance properties.






Observing the way these blends have been marketed over the past couple of years, I've noticed an interesting dichotomy. The fiber content shows that merino comprises only 20-40% of it, whereas polyester comprises 60-80%. Yet the names of the blends inevitably feature the words "merino" and "wool," with no mention of the dominant synthetic content. To me this suggests that the manufacturers are eager to promote their use of wool given its current popularity, but in fact do not believe it is possible for wool to be a performance fabric - hence the idea that wool needs to be improved upon (by adding polyester) in order to be used in cycling clothing. All of this has made me highly skeptical about the wool/poly blends. But over the past few months I've had the opportunity to wear several garments made of these fabrics, and gave them an open-minded try. What follows are my impressions.






Having joined a local cycling club last December, I receivedtheir club jersey (right), which happens to be made by Rapha out of the aforementioned SportWool. A couple of months later, I received some items for review from Shutt Velo Rapide, including the Women's Training jersey (left), made of MerinoPerform. Both jerseys are 40% wool, 60% polyester. The texture and weight of the fabrics appear to be identical.






On the outside, the wool blend fabric is smooth and has a slight sheen to it.On the inside it is matte, soft and slightly textured. To the touch, neither the outside nor the inside feels like true merino, but the inside comes closer.




I have worn both jerseys over a (thin, 100% wool) base layer as well as directly next to my skin. I am sensitive to polyester was was curious whether this blend would engage that sensitivity.





In cooler weather, over a base layer, both jerseys feel pretty good. In fact, as mid/outer layers, I have to admit they regulate temperature better for me than the pure wool equivalents I own. I do not experience any sensitivity wearing either of these jerseys over a wool base layer.





However, worn directly next to skin I found the jerseys inferior to the pure wool alternatives. In warm weather the wool/poly blends do not breathe as well for me, and I feel clammy wearing them. I also find them less versatile for temperature regulation when worn on their own. On one ride I found myself too hot in the jersey at 85°F and too cold at the end of the ride at 65°F. I know that my long sleeve 100% wool jerseys are more versatile over the same temperature range.





Rapha, Shutt Velo Rapide and Road Holland each offer lighter weight versions of their wool blend jerseys in an airy eyelet fabric. I've tried the one by Shutt Velo Rapide (above) and it did keep me cool in hot weather. The downside was that as soon as the temperature dropped a bit, I felt chilly. In my experience, pure wool is just more versatile in this respect.





As far as polyester sensitivity, I experienced it with the Rapha jersey when worn directly next to skin, but not with the Shutt Velo Rapide jerseys. I think the reason is simply that the former fits me tighter, so it comes into closer contact with my skin. Either way, after wearing the Rapha jersey in 80°F weather without a base layer underneath, I promptly got a rash under my arms. To be safe, I won't be wearing either of the wool blend jerseys without a base layer again.





Finally, some are probably wondering about the BO factor. Wool is well known for its odor-resistant properties, whereas polyester is known for quite the opposite. I found these jerseys to be somewhere in the middle in that respect, but closer to polyester.





In summary, I have learned that for me the wool/polyester blends function extremely well as outer and mid layers in cool to freezing temperatures. However, they do not function well for me when worn directly next to skin in warmer temperatures - both failing to provide the same temperature regulation as pure wool and activating my polyester sensitivity when coming into close contact with my body.




I am curious about others' experiences with wool/polyester blend fabrics from these and any other manufacturers. How do you find them for cycling compared to 100% wool or 100% synthetics?

Arches Revisited

Ten days ago I left Hovenweep National Monument and continued north toward Moab. My intention was to stay a few days and spend some time at Arches National Park. I immensely enjoyed my visit there, about a year ago. However, after a stop at the visitor center, where I learned that most of the campgrounds in the area were already full and booked for the weekend, I resumed driving. There is a State Park at Green River about 45 minutes northwest of Moab and, as luck would have it, they still had quite a few campsites available. It was mid-afternoon when I checked in and before the sun set the campground was full.



The next morning (Friday the 13th), I decided to stay at Green River State Park for the weekend. It was a gorgeous day and after doing a few chores in the morning took a drive over to Arches National Park.





One of the numerous formations at Arches. It was late afternoon and nearby formations cast their shadows, slowly creeping ever closer to this formation.





Another formation silhouetted against the skyline.



The snow-capped La Sal mountains rise up in the distance and dominate the horizon



Balancing Rock. From this angle it really does looks like it is doing a balancing act.



But as you walk around it, the angle of view and perspective change; it is securely attached to the base rock. In time, the wind and rain will erode the base further and some day, in the distant future, the balancing rock will be no more.





And, of course, the setting sun marked the end of another beautiful day!

Is this Fair Use?

This morning I received an email from someone who was asking me for more information about a person they had found on my site at Ancestry.com but the first thing that popped into my feeble brain was that I don't have a website on Ancestry and I knew that what they were referring to was not on my freepages at RootsWeb!

So I went to Ancestry and did a search for "Phend" which brought up the following screen and didn't see anything out of the ordinary (click on any of the images to make them easier to read):



So I elected to view all 229 results:



The "Internet Biographical Collection" jumped out at me. Notice the padlock? I clicked on that link, but this is a "for pay" subscription database, and since I wasn't logged in I couldn't see the detail any more than the listing of pages, all of which, except for the last one, are from my website and they are definitely NOT part of Ancestry.com!!!



After logging in and clicking on "View Record" on one of the listings, what you see is shown below. No indication of where this came from, only a small link to "View Cached Web Page", Okay, so it says it is a cached page. . .



Click on "View Cached Web Page" (click on these images to make them bigger) you'll see a small link at the top of the page to "View Live web page" and it will then take you to the page, maybe.



For this particular page the link works because my site is still live. But when I was investigating all this I had gone to some obituary links. The site where the obituary was retrieved from is even more "hidden" for lack of a better word - many newspapers only keep obituaries online for a short time so the page is no longer live. I wonder if Ancestry.com is paying those sites to "store" their obituaries and make them available to Ancestry subscribers?

Is this legal or moral? How is it right for Ancestry.com to take my website pages, which I've made freely available, and CHARGE people to use them? And if they can legally or morally do this, how can they in turn say that it is illegal for their users (me and you) to use their images (census records, draft cards, etc.) on our websites or in our books or other publications?

The more I think about this, the angrier I am getting. At first I thought, okay, they say it is a cached web page, but it's not overly obvious. But they are charging people for access to my stuff!!! I really don't think it would bother me so much if this wasn't hidden behind a padlock. The more people that can find my data and possibly connect to me or someone else, the better - but they shouldn't have to pay to see it! Now, Ancestry is probably going to say they are simply providing a service for all of us poor webmasters and making it so that more people will see our stuff - but does that make it right? They are profiting from my work, and not just my work but the work of anyone with a genealogy related website. Will my blog pages show up next?

This is different than Google or Yahoo or any other search engine storing cached pages or providing links to websites. This is a company using other peoples work for their own gain - Ancestry is charging for these 'searches'. That is just not right, and not just because this is my work showing up - if you have genealogy pages out there anywhere they will probably show up as part of this new Ancestry database.

*** Update 4:00 PM Tuesday ***
I spent a while this morning and afternoon putting this post together, and while I was doing so, it appears that "all hel* was breaking loose" on this issue, see these posts with some very good commentary on the subject:

• Kimberly Powell with Has Ancestry.com Gone to Far?
• Janice Brown with Ancestry.com Hijacks Cow Hampshire
• Randy Seaver with Ancestry.com is Caching some web site data
• Amy Crooks with Ancestry.com Nothing but Theifs

*** Update 4:44 PM Tuesday ***

Ancestry.com has now made the "Internet Biographical Collection" a "free" resource. You have to register to view these free records, which is not the same as signing up for a free trial, but why should you even have to register to view the "Internet Biographical Collection"? Registration is not required to view the Ancestry World Tree entries. To my way of thinking, this step by Ancestry does not entirely resolve the issue.

*** Update 11:30 PM Tuesday ***

Dick Eastman's post yesterday on The Generations Network Receives Patent for Correlating Genealogy Records has a lot of comments dealing with the Internet Biographical Collection, which really had nothing to do with his original topic, so you could say the comments thread got hijacked. As can be expected there is a wide range of opinions on the matter. Some make sense, others don't. Some valid, some not. And Dick is really good at playing the devil's advocate!