Box Canyon

I spent a lot of time over the holidays digging through the archives. I have a solid 10 years of photographic records now.

Fall, October 2 2004 5:47 PM MST.

The olds was still navy blue and primer at this point. Packrat still had his bronco. Both are in the photo are there, so, I know this is a caving club trip. Also because the cliff face I took this from is an extremely hard climb, so much so that I don't remember many people doing it and the route names completely escape me. Not that it matters, the names have probably already changed (again). But, an overhanging cliff is a great place to practice free rappels. It's nice to take first timers someplace where there is lots of light and they can walk to the start and walk off the finish. We started at dusk and fooled around until everyone was comfortable and bored. That weekend, we went to a real cave.

A lot of the bouldering stuff is at the left. Battle arms, Waterfall, and a chossy route called Pumpkin Spider come to mind. I had to stare at it for a good long time to remember all that. I never saw water flowing in the canyon, not even after the Great Hailstorm of 2004.

I have surprisingly few pictures of Box Canyon. At least, there are only a few that are recognizably box canyon. In retrospect, one needs to be pretty high up, and not be busy with ropes or anchors, and have a camera handy, in order to actually get a photo, much less a good one.

Of course, I spent so much time in box that you'd think I'd statistically get something worth looking at. Then again, it would be years before I owned a memory card that would hold more than about 30 photos. I used to have to pick and choose. So your guess is as good as any.

Life in NH, and then here in DC is so wildly different that some of the things I used to do seem almost fairytail in nature. To share a canyon with a few people, alone, for hours is unheard of. The cars are all new. There are lines and paperwork everywhere. People don't know anywhere else and aren't keen to leave. They like it this way.

I like things that way.

In a way.

Poof.

It has been three years since NMT decided to a) eliminate alumni TCC accounts b) go back on the agreements with those who had prepaid for long periods or purchased lifetime accounts, and c) alienate me as an alumni and insure I would never donate money to the school.

In the interceding time, my original site soldiered on in zombie form. I was unable to login, but the page was still there, and worked as recently as a few weeks ago. However, it now appears that www.nmt.edu/~holstien/ is now truly expunged from the TCC servers. For several weeks, that URL has returned a 404.

You can, of course, still see it on the Wayback Machine. I don't have vital statistics, but those of you still interested in Power Macintosh G4 fan noise might still find that information useful.

I intend to continue to maintain a presence here for the immediate future. While I had originally planned on a quick move to a different host I directly control, Blogger works well enough and the amount of space available for storing photos is increasing faster than I care to create and post new entries. At some point, it is likely that google will neuter blogger and ultimately attempt to merge it with google+ into a single product no one thinks is cool or useful. Then I will once again consider the options for my broadcasts into the nothing.

I may resort to writing letters and mailing them.

Until then, keep drinking the formaldehyde.

Exhaust Redux: Cutlass Ciera Central Exhaust Pipe Replacement

I follow my blog readership statistics fairly carefully, so I know quite a bit about you. One would think that readers would be into photography, and maybe other dorky science stuff, but no, people come here looking for information about how to fix their old cars. Readers really like big color pictures. You want to know what he classic picture is on this blog? Nothing Roller Derby related! Instead, it's the picture that shows the exact location of the flame trap on a b230f engine.

I wouldn't call myself the living total codex of car repair, but I do have some stories to tell.

Here's another:

A few week ago, I was riding in the ChevOldsmoBuiac with the girl, and noted that I couldn't hear Wait Wait Don't Tell Me for the deafening roar the car was emitting. Upon our next stop, and poked around and discovered a lovely large hole in the central exhaust pipe that runs from the catalytic convert.

This discovery was a source of massive dismay. Like the muffler I replaced last fall, the pipe pretty new, circa 2007 vintage. I just replaced it! It's not rusty to speak of! Except, of course, where the holes rusted through. I am beginning to think the Cutlass Ciera is central a giant exhaust system conspiracy. I'm pretty sure I have had some exhaust problem every year for the past 4 years.

Exasperation and an order to Rockauto.

Whilst waiting for the delivery, I employed a random piece of flashing I found blowing in the yard and some pipe clamps to muffle the rumble. With few exceptions, any piece of sheet metal (pop can, soup can, house parts), tin snips, and a few clamps can solve quite a few exhaust problems, at least until safety and emissions inspection time rolls around.

When the time for replacement came, i decided to try a new approach to exhaust repair, and used the sawzall to cut the old pipe into small pieces instead of trying to snake it out in a single, pokey, rusty piece. I didn't have the sawzall before, so this was a new experience, and it saved me a lot of grief.

I also discovered more holes by the hanger

And further more at another elbow...

...along with the original holes I found. Really, it was becoming more of an exhaust channel than a pipe.

When I cut the pipe from the car, I found that most of it's metal was still there. It was only rusting in certain spots, near welds and bends, and near the seam. The zinc coating must have been applied to the sheet metal before it was formed.

In contrast, the exhaust hangars I constructed from springs and rubber strap continue to function very well.

The stainless steel bolts I put on the exhaust flange were almost new looking. The entire system really should be made from stainless steel.

Random rubber strap outlasted the pipe. Maybe it will outlive the next one too. I cannot even remember what the hanger it replaced looked like.

To get the stub out of the 10 month old muffler, I had to slot the middle with the sawzall, then hammer a big flatblad screwdriver into the gap to pop out the old pipe.

Not content to stop playing with powertools, I flattened out the crimp in the muffler flange with a c-clamp, and then tried to return the flange to as close to round as possible. Of course, it still, barely, would not couple with the new pipe, so I slotted it with the saw, then hammered a section of old pipe in and wiggled it around to trumpet it.
Here, you can see the expanded slot and the mark where the crimp used to be.

All the sawzall cutting ended up saving a bunch of time... It still took several hours from start to finish, but the project didn't take all day. I'm not sure how long it would have taken to get the pipe out from under the car with the muffler rusted on, or even then, how long it would have taken to separate the stub from the muffler, or open the muffler to accept the new pipe. Previously, I may have thrown in the towel and bought a new muffler or scrolled out the stub with the dremel. Having tools is great.

In that vein, I'm beginning to have fantasies about getting a wire-feed welder. While it might be better to discuss these fantasies with my therapist, the welder would let me patch exhaust pipes with generic parts (less time lost to shipping) and finally get the exhaust hanger situation straight, and fix a few other sheet metal related projects that I've been ignoring or flat out scared to start.

Spring in Dover, NH

The digital equivalent of memories.

Accidental Record Keeping

In piecing through the piles of photos I took but didn't archive while I was writing my dissertation, I've come accross quite a few repeats, leading to accidental and interesting studies in the evolution of things.

Building the new Wiswall Bridge (New Market, NH). December 2009:

Flood at Wiswall Bridge, April 2010:

The Chive: Early January 2010:

The Chive: March 2010:

The Chive: April 2010:

I found the chive growing the bottom of my refrigerator after a two week trip to Colorado and California. Notably, where I would take an amazing backpacking trip with, and fall head over heals for, my future wife.

After several weeks of hiding in the cool darkness of the ice cabnet, I found several chives not rotton, but thriving. I ate two and put the third one in a spare pot, which it quickly outgrew. After 3 years of re-potting, it flowered. After 4, I gave it to my friend Rachel when we were moving, along with our TV and a irstwhile cactus. I am under the impression she ate it.

Fall of 2009: Swirling Still

Hundreds of them.

I waded through a few hundred more today and yet, even on Halloween, there is still color in the slide tray.

Breath taking.

It's like every time I left the house I just mashed the shutter button.

Even until late october.

Even as the north atlantic wench drug grey misery over the place.

Even as winter stood at the doorstep.

It was beautiful.

I could write a book without words and people would get it.

Garage

An old garage downtown

This dog bit my dog

Ghosties in January

I'm going to choke you with this bar of soap

If i had kid with a swearing problem, I would probably just figure that they heard it from my own pirate mouth and resolve to use new and exciting insults and tirades that they would likely recite and then get in deeper trouble for. ("They are not fat bastards! That's inappropriate language! Never say bastard! Never call someone fat! The correct phrase is human gravitational anomolies.")

I should also seek to write posts that have the same gravitas as their titles. It's like I suck you in with great sizzle, and only to discover that I'm frying lard in pure MSG so my thugs can mug you and take 5 minutes off your life.

I have tabled the project to get my own server for a bit. After I let go of my elitism, figured out how to direct link images in Blogger to Picassa Alblums (so you can click on an image and see it full size), I found that *gasp* it's actually very easy to use, and does not get in you way. There is something to be said for being able to focus on writing and not worrying too much about neatly piling the input together for the ever-persnickety html generating perl code I wrote in 2006. Now if I can just get the D*&@%! style sheets fixed so that the blog margins will expand indefinitely.


Of course, I really like how wikis blur the lines between the writers. I should find my password to grue and work on that again. It was fun.


For the uninitiated, unistrut and 80/20 are modular framing and support systems. Think about it at rapid development and prototyping for mechanical and structural engineering. Essentially, they supply machined bar stock with groves and slots at regular intervals, and a set of fittings that matches and some nice load tables so you can match everything together to get the performance characteristics you need. It reduces the amount of cutting and drilling to the minimum. It is a lot faster than having to cut and drill a bunch of raw bar stock on your own. Generally speaking (there is overlap), Unistrut is iron and generally works well with large loads and designs (think large racks, shelving, heaving equipment mounting) while 80/20 is best for small racks and enclosures that. The unistrut line is mostly steel. The 80/20 line is mostly aluminum. Industrial erector set is right!

Lately, I have been finding it is cheaper to get the unistrut straight from the factory. Some resellers have marked up the price a factor of 2 or more per foot. It pays to shop around.