Now that's ? ?

Creative, Silly, Hillarious, I'm not certain, but it definitely is something. I'm talking about puddle duck racers, the self described easiest boat to build and race. As you can see the boats are basically little plywood boxes, the sails ordinary plastic tarps shaped with scissors and the mast and boom are electrical conduit and curtain rods. That such contraption can actually float is already surprising. That they can sail and race is absolutely astounding. Although they may actually have some advantages over the sailboats that men used for 1000s of years before they learned to sail upwind.

I learned about these because I've been wanting to buy a sabot to teach the kids to sail, but I don't really want to spend any money. (I found one for $75 which I would have bought but I wasn't fast enough.) So I mused about building one. Plans for actual sabots cost $25, but these are hillarious. I couldn't use it for the sailing class (they require an actual sabot), but Puddle Duck's Philosophy is that the best way to learn to sail is to get out on a small lake in a light breeze and futz around until you figure it out. (They do recommend bringing oars in case you get totally stuck.) So I guess the bay is too big and El Dorado doesn't allow private boats, but there is a nice small lake near work that could do the trick.

I don't actually plan to build one (Staci would kill me if I took up that much space with a piece of junk boat.) But the idea is certainly amusing.

Misleading Statistics, Again

I was looking into new apartments up here around Pierce and I was comparing them to the cost of driving daily. So I looked into AAA's driving cost listing. http://www.aaaexchange.com/Assets/Files/200948913570.DrivingCosts2009.pdf They list the price per mile as about 55 cents per mile if you are a low mileage driver and 35 cents per mile if you are a high mileage driver.

But if you notice the cost per mile trends downward as you get to higher and higher mileage. In fact if you plot the total cost to drive 10,000 miles, 15,000 miles and 20,000 miles, you find that the slope (the actual cost of driving each mile) is nearly linear. They have included the base cost of owning, insuring, and maintaining the car into the cost per mile. In fact the cost per mile is only about 16 cents per mile.

So why does this matter? You do have those ownership costs! Well of course you do, but very few of us are really going to totally get rid of the car. So in figuring the cost of driving verses public transit we want to know how much extra each mile is going to cost us. That's 16 cents for a small car (I'm guessing about 9-11 of those are for gas, the rest for maintenence.)

In my case, driving to work each day (instead of once a week and staying here) would add about 1200 miles per month. At 35.4 cents/mile that is $425, and it would be reasonable to pay up to that much for a place to stay up here, but at 15.8 cents per mile it is only $190. There are of course intangibles both ways. (Sleeping next to my wife, seeing my family, verses the wear and tear on me.), but it is a very different picture.

I just hate when the stats are misleading like that. I'm no fan of long commutes or excess driving, but let's not claim that simply not driving is going to save you $400 when half of that is just in the cost of owning the car.

Sailing Adventure II

Well, this time I took Perry. I was worried that he would be mopey for much of the time, but actually he seemed to really enjoy it. He got his finger caught in the rigging at the beginning of the first day, but seemed to muddle through it well. By the second day he was a regular little monkey jumping around the boat getting things and helping to sail the boat.

The best part was that even though we didn't have a great race on the first day (we took 7th) we smoked the whole field on the second day with a tactical risk that Andy (the skipper) took. We went a different way from everyone else and found a bit of wind that put us about 15 minutes in front of the next contenders in our class. (There are actually 3 classes that are faster, but only one of them finished before us on the second day. We did great.) The total result is that in spite of our poor performance on Saturday we have gone from second overall to first. It was exciting and some great bonding time with Perry too.

Here we have Perry and Andy preparing for a long hard day of sailing.

Perry at the Helm!! His ability to steer came in quite handy on the return trip. There was a time when we needed to Gybe the spinnaker. A challenging task even with many hands so both Andy and I had to be on the sheets and sails. Luckily, Perry was there to be the skipper. (I was actually more terrified in this picture though because Perry is sitting there steering a $100,000 boat in a narrow channel with other boats around.)

It was a gorgeous day to be out sailing. We were never completely out of sight of land or the other sailboats. You can see the Palos Verdes Penninsula fading off into the distance.

The Competition in the distance. (This Picture did not upload like I wanted it to.)

And the island coming up on the horrizon. The really low spot is the isthmus where we spent the night. The race ended about a third of the way from there to the end of the island on the right.

There is a boat that will take you ashore, but it costs $3.50 per person. That's not bad, but it adds up quick so I thought Perry and I could save a bit by going ashore in Andy's little dinghy. It worked well, but unfortunately the blade of one of the paddles came off and sank before Perry could grab it so I had to break down and pay for us to go back to the boat.

I had also brought dinner to cook aboard, but Andy's wife Katie was so sick and desperate to get off the boat that we ate on land instead. Andy treated us all and I gave him the lasagne I had brought in return.

There is more to chronicle but I think maybe I'd better break it up and put it in another post.

Sailing Adventure

I first learned to sail at the Sea Scout Base in Long Beach around the time I was 8 or 9, but I left the hobby dormant for the better part of 2 decades.

I did try to earn my small boat sailing merit badge the year our scout troop went to camp Chawanakee, but while Chawanakee was in many ways a much nicer facility than Tahquitz, their classes were not nearly as good. Any class I took at Tahquitz the counselor worked with you bit by bit until you understood and had the necessary skills. At Chawanakee they mostly told you to go read the book and come back when you were ready to pass off. OK, so maybe it was my fault or the merit badges I attempted, but I earned like 5 badges each year year I went to Tahquitz and none at Chawanakee. So needless to say, I didn't get the small boat sailing merit badge. I'm not certain I even made it out on the water in a sail boat.

I finally renewed the hobby with several classes at UCLA's Marine Aquatic Center (MAC). Since then I've enjoyed getting out from time to time. My father in law even gave me his old boat so I have one of my own to get out in from time to time.

However, in all of this, I've always wanted to really get in a sail boat and go somewhere. In my little 14 footer, just getting across the harbor is a labor, but last weekend my friend Andy Horning invited me to crew for him on his Hunter 40 as we raced to Catalina Island.

It was actually part of an 11 race series including 5 races to the island, 5 races back, and one race there, around the island, and back. The short version of the story is that outside of sex, this was probably the most fun I've had in the last 20 years.

The race over started with decent if not terrific wind, but it never filled in acording to its usual pattern. Luckily we ended up all the way on the left side of the course and the strange wind filled in from there first. After a prolonged lull the wind finally filled in coming from the mainland (exactly where it never comes from) that blew us in to the finish line. We actually won that race (at least within our class). It was a blast.

That evening we moored outside Avalon Harbor and went on shore for dinner and a movie. There is only one theater on the island, but lucky for me it was showing the new Star Trek. (Totally awsome, but that is for another post.)

The night was pretty calm, but being outside the harbor the boat still rocked quite a bit. I had hoped to sleep deep and long, but ended up waking up fairly bright and early after having spent the night in more of a dreaming wakefulness than true sleep.

The next morning after a hearty breakfast of oatmeal we headed back to the starting line for the race back. This time the starting wind was almost non-existant. For the first 2 1/2 hours we drifted at speeds never more than 2 knots. Andy is a talented skipper and managed to squeeze every bit out of the boat, but we were still probably less than 5 miles from the island. Then rather suddenly the wind filled in and we were broad reaching at 9-10 knots for the next 2 hours. (Now that is only about 10 mph, but on a boat it is really fast and exciting.) The pole to put up the spinaker (the big parachute like sail) wasn't working right so we were not able to fly it. That may be for the best, with only two of us it would have been hard to deal with, but it might have given us another knot of speed which may have been enought to win. Still I got to stear most of the way in while Andy navigated and kept the sails trimmed.

We ended up taking 3rd in the race back (there were about 13 boats in our class). That puts us in a very competitive 2nd place for the series. I'm hoping he asks me to crew for him again as the series continues. More to come.

Gone Walkabout

Pierce College where I work is unique among the campuses of the Los Angeles Community College District in that it is the agricultural campus. It is by far the larges campus with most of it being undeveloped or fields and grazing land. A few weeks ago I decided to take about an hour to go and enjoy it. So here are some pictures from my trip.

This is the first field closest to campus. The first barns and another part of the field pointing up towards the stadium.

Next I passed some cows luxuriating in the shade.


It's easy to forget how close to the urban environment we are sometimes. But the apartments in the background are a quick reminder.

The pond is a favorite place to go on a small hike or cross country run.

Finally a few pictures from the walk back. The valley is really a beautiful place. Especially when the smog drops down for a bit.

Assymetry

This sign was posted in the bathroom for the physics offices at Los Angeles City College. We didn't make it, but I thought the assymetry in the English and Spanish instructions was interesting.

If you can't tell, both English and Spanish start by saying "Please Keep the Restroom Clean." Both end with "Thank You", but the Spanish adds a the extra line, "Don't throw paper on the floor." And I keep asking myself, is that cultural, racist, or what gives?

The Big Bang Theory, Part II

Some time ago (and probably on a blog that is no longer operating) I did a review of the PBS commedy "The Big Bang Theory." A very funny sitcom about physics Ph.D.s. Like most commedies it makes accurate if exagerated play on various personalities typical of the subject.

Well recently I found out that the science advisor for the show is Dr. David Saltzberg who I TAed for in Winter of 2002. He is a great and funny guy and does an excellent job of keeping the physics on track. Not only that, but the actors came by UCLA to study how physicists act. So if I had stayed just a bit longer, some of their actions could have been based on me.

I wrote Dave about it and he said he'd be glad to get me into a filming some time. Maybe I'll get really lucky and meet one of the actors. More to follow I hope.