What can I say, I’ve got a ‘stache. So I went hiking today, and I collected some pine sap to make pine-honey mustache wax!
Solid Mustache Wax Recipe
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One of the Most Amazing
Times I’ve ever had sober. I’m going on 4 months now. Dads at six. There’s a certain confidence in being yourself all the time, knowing that there’s only one you and not that other more outgoing intoxicated guy waiting for release. In a 36 hour span I had several defining moments. With family and friends I grilled and watched meteors and rejuvenated in hot springs and danced and sang with Michael Franti and still managed to spend some time by myself and make new friends. The Geminids seemingly coincided with another meteor shower, making for the most spectacular night of meteors that any of us have ever seen. I’m pooped but I wanted to share something very interesting that I learned about meteors: slower meteors burn longer, shallower angle meteor revel further across the sky.
Leonids: 71 kilometers per second
Perseids: 61 kilometers per second
Orionids: 67 kilometers per second
Lyrids: 48 kilometers per second
Geminids: 35 kilometers per second
Fall Taurids: 30 kilometers per second
Delta Leonids: 23 kilometers per second
Draconids: 23 kilometers per second
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Keystone Snowmaking
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Five Meteorological Phenomena in one: a sun dog (bright triangle), a parhelic circle (curved line connecting sun dug and the sun), a 22° halo (circle), an upper tangent arc and a Parry arc (top,) and diamond dust (looks like stars)
I woke up well before sunrise this morning. I slid my hand down my side and found the chord that ran in under the course sheets from my IV pole. I traced the chord to it’s handle and pushed the magic blue button.
The machine at the other end beeped and 0.4 lit up in red. Somewhere inside a pump came to life and began to add hydromorphone HCl to my IV tube from the 6 mg vial locked inside. I can press this button every 15 minutes. Any more and it just beeps at me. Only a nurse with the code can get to the vial or change the dosage.
The aching behind my nose fades away and I push the button again because, well, why not. Being in the hospital is like going to the buffet at Harrahs: I always eat more than one desert. I reached over and in the light from the bathroom found the incline adjustment and raised myself up. On my phone I checked the weather for Dillon. Aspen. Moab. Monticello. Farmington. Overcast in all directions for the upcoming Geminids meteor shower but no snow for the resorts. Dammit Jupiter, you are cruel. Contrary to popular belief though, statewide snowpack is higher than last year, although it is still about 40% below average. Speaking of snowpack. Sometimes when you have sinus surgery they have to pack your sinuses with gauze to stop the bleeding. They didn’t have to do that to me. I started to wonder how much water the resorts are allowed to use. Can Keystone make fake snow all season? I dug into the nitty-gritty blog posts, newspaper articles and forum discussions to sift out a fluffier understanding of my favorite winter playground, Keystone Mountain Resort.
Keystone and Arapahoe Basin both have water rights to the Snake River. This is their primary water source for snowmaking. As far as I can tell there is no seasonal limit on the amount or timing of water use. The only limitation is that the Snake’s flow may not be made to drop below 6 c.f.s. This regulation protects native trout populations that will die if the river’s temperature drops too low as a result of the low water level. With permission from the Forest Service, Keystone can use additional water from the Snake River if skier safety is at risk, so long as flow rates do not drop below 2 c.f.s. However, Keystone has an agreement with the State of Colorado to mitigate fish population declines by stocking catchable-sized rainbow trout to make up for those lost during due to low-flow.
When additional water is needed for snowmaking at Keystone it is diverted from the Roberts Tunnel via the 900-foot-deep Montezuma Shaft. Two pumps at the bottom of the vertical shaft run at 4kV and are permitted to extract as much as 1,500 acre feet of water (presumably on a yearly basis) from Denver’s water supply. Assuming that the snowmaking machines produce snow with a density of 30% this is enough water to cover all of Keystone (trees and sidecountry terrain included) with 18″ of snow. Impurities in the source water help ice crystals to spontaneously form, a process known generally as nucleation. Commercial products such as Drift as will as ina (ice nucleation-active) proteins from the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae are often added to increase nucleation, resulting in more efficient production and fluffier snow. It is not a good idea to ingest any of these and they can cause skin irritation as well.
Colorado: Snowmaking impacts Snake River flows
Massive Snake River snowmaking diversions means tough times for trout after drought summer
By Bob Berwyn
SUMMIT COUNTY — The most recent snowstorm helped boost the overall Colorado snowpack just a bit, bringing it on par with last year's level at this time, which is still well below average for mid-November. Statewide, the snowpack was at 57 percent of average, as of Nov.
Water rights and minimum stream flows must both be considered by Summit County's resorts' snowmakers. Set also: http://www.gjsentinel.com/special_sections/articles/drought-plagues-snowmaking-at-arapahoe-basin-keyst
NWS: Winter weather outlook for Southern Colorado
From the National Weather Service:
In general terms, there is a greater than 40 percent chance that the average temperature for the winter months of December 2012 through February 2013 will be above the 30 year climatological average, with equal chances of seeing above, below or near normal precipitation...
The data collected from observation sites across south central and southeast Colorado during previous ENSO neutral winters also indicate a wide range of distribution, especially in precipitation.
Yikes, The Farmers' Almanac may be wrong.
Finally: 2012 Hi-Res Satellite Image
Shortly after Burning Man an image was released shot from the Geo-Eye IKONOS satellite. Unfortunately this was not the full resolution image, and there was some talk at the time that the smaller file was all we were going to get.
Thanks to TheJaymo for finding this image - at 42Mb, reduced in resolution from the original 150 Mb file.
It gets better...
Hi Res Satellite Photo
Here's this years hi-res image of Black Rock City , taken from the Geo-Eye satellite.
Burncast has an image taken from Ikonos on August 30
Woot woot! Somewhere out there, outside of L, and just before 8:30, is our Camp Help But Notice human mandala. Motivating 30 drunk burners, especially on Friday is a bit of chore but it is strangely fulfilling. Sally, the resolution is too lee to actually *see or mandala :-(
My Very Earthly Mother Just Served Us Nothing
Meteor Shower Alert
It’s coming! What promises to be the best meteor shower of 2012 will happen on the nights of December 13th and 14th, the result of earth passing through debris left by the asteroid 3200 Phaethon. The Geminids meteor shower will be visible shortly after sunset and will peak around 2 am with up to 100 meteors/hour – that’s a lot of meteors! – so mark you calendar. Then, lay out a blanket, let your eyes adjust, look straight up and relax.
But wait, there’s more! If you’re diligent (and it’s dark enough where you are) you will also be able to see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn throughout the next month or so! Want to know what’s even better? The Leonids meteor shower peaked last night, so if you’re anxious to see some meteors now the next few days should still be good! Alright I’m excited. Enjoy the show!
This Is Water
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By David Foster Wallace
What a great book: the whole, hardcover 130-page read takes about half an hour thanks to its one-sentence-per-page layout, but it might change your life despite its brevity. Or at least save you a lot of time in figuring out what’s important in life. Originally written as a commencement speech for Kenyon College, This Is Water underscores the importance of consciously focusing your thoughts and attention – “learning to think” the late author likes to call it – to find True happiness. You’re not the center of the universe, and everybody worships something, the late author posits. The climax is a series of “default settings” that we as societal beings slip into, settings which destroy our happiness and fuel our consumption that, for me, were eye-opening. These “bromides” are the skeleton of every great parable, so commonplace as to be ignored for their banality, but we really need to consider them. So before I give Hendrick*, the traveling German whose life was changed by Water, his book back, I am going to quote them here in hopes of inspiring you toward a moment of reflection:“If you worship money and things-if they are where you tap real meaning in life-then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough.
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Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.
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Worship power-you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.
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Worship your intellect, being seen as smart-you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.”*Hendrick deserves a little more attention here. He and a friend are wrapping up a trip across the US. After reading This Is Water 3 times as he traveled by car and by bike he has been inspired to leave his job producing TV commercials in search of a more meaningful life, a life in which he is more than a cog in a giant machine. Congratulations, Hendrick, and thank you for your inspiration.
