Life Changes Update

I know I promised nothing but irregular posts on this reboot, and I have certainly delivered. Many things have changed about my life since my last post in April swooning over Kei trucks.

First and foremost, I left my job at spectrUM at the end of May. I worked there more than full time for almost 12 years, so it was a difficult decision to make. The long and the short of it - DOGE made my entirely grant-funded position miserable, quite frankly. There were many solutions for me to continue employment there, but I got quite tired of the uncertainty and the constant battle to keep my job and those of my employees. I think I was spending more time reacting to executive orders, funding uncertainty and university bureaucracy than doing the things that I signed up to do sharing science and wonder with kids and adults.

I deeply loved my job and all of the amazing things I got to do at spectrUM. My coworkers sent me off in style complete with a "funeral" at which many people said really nice things about me. It was one of the nicest things anyone has done for me, ever.

The summer was good - for the first time in many years, summer was a time to enjoy the nice weather, ride bikes and spend less time working rather than have it be my peak season of employment. Between my bike industry jobs and spectrUM, summer was when you put in the most time and effort and it was really nice to have this past summer be the exact opposite. Caitlin and I took several trips that involved multiple nights of camping, seeing friends, exploring new places, and generally enjoying ourselves. I made it up to the Blue Mountain Observatory a few times to help out with events and trainings - it was really nice to volunteer there again, rather than be the main person responsible for everything!

I've been working part-time at Home Resource taking donations, organizing materials and helping customers find reusable building materials. It's quite enjoyable to do something low-stakes for a bit. In addition, I started my own exhibit building venture - MechaNickal Wonders. I've had a couple of commissioned jobs and pieces, and it's been exciting to do one of my favorite things at spectrUM - designing and building exhibits - for other organizations. I hope to do this full-time at some point, and am working towards that possibility.

I'm now back at spectrUM in a very limited, part-time capacity implementing a project that has been a longtime dream of mine - to get a telescope available for checkout in every single public library across the state of Montana. I submitted a grant to NASA over a year ago that actually was selected for funding, to our great surprise. In addition, I'll be stepping in as the temporary programs director over the winter at Home Resource to oversee some of the educational programs they implement. It will be fun, and a good mix of different tasks to keep me busy! My days are now a mix of building things, working with clients and learning new skills.

Caitlin and I also spent another week in Japan in late September/early October. We loved it so much the first time that we just had to go back because plane tickets dropped in price significantly. We spent several days in Tokyo and Kanazawa walking around gardens, going to museums, and shopping for kitchen knives and Japanese tools and Kei truck accessories. It was a really nice way to close out a summer of relaxation, change and growth.

I don't know what the future holds, really - but who does? It's strange to be back to "gig work" and a handful of part-time jobs after so many years of working a main full-time job with some fun little things on the side, but I've been embracing it. 

Kei is the Way

I love bikes. I really, really do. I'm still a daily commuter to work and back, try to ride for many of my errands that don't involve things like full sheets of plywood, go on mountain bike rides, bomb down forest service roads on my gravel bike, go bike camping and on the occasional road ride. They are my favorite mode of transportation, and probably always will be. But Kei trucks are awesome.

Caitlin and I went to Japan last spring on a trip with our niece, Teagan - it's hard to believe it's been almost a year - and genuinely fell in love with the country and culture. Everything from the food to the landscape to the amazing museums was truly enjoyable. And everywhere we would see these cute little trucks that I'd kinda heard of before, but got to see in action on the streets of Japan.

Called Kei trucks (an abbreviation of the Japanese word "keitora" for the class of vehicle), they are small utility vehicles that are widely used in the agricultural sector of Japan. They're meant to haul vegetables, fish, dirt, etc. around some of the rugged landscapes in the country. Because of the taxation schedule in Japan on vehicles that I won't go into full detail here, they are limited to 660cc for the engine, and have some restrictions on the physical size of the vehicle. Which means they are tiny, tough little trucks (or enclosed vans) that are very inexpensive. The sides of the bed fold down to make it a flatbed, and they are largely all-time 4WD. If you want the full treatment, this short documentary about them is what I often refer people to when they have questions (it's taken from a 30 minute show that appears to be behind a paywall now).

I became obsessed with them when we returned from Japan, and started reading up on how I might be able to procure one and watching all the YouTube channels that share about how fun they are. And then the local Nissan dealership that is a couple blocks from my house imported a 1996 Honda Acty and plopped it right where I could pass by it whenever I was driving somewhere for work. I finally told Caitlin that we should just go test drive it - after all, maybe they suck to drive, right? Ha. I can't say I've ever really enjoyed driving a vehicle until I got in that thing. We toodled around our neighborhood, snapped some photos in front of the house for posterity, and it was then that I knew I was doomed.

The literal moment I knew I was doomed.

That one was a bit overpriced for its condition and mileage and had dealer fees, so I started trolling Facebook Marketplace/craigslist to keep an eye out for something in our price range. We'd recently inherited some money from my late grandfather's estate that I was able to put towards this (thanks, Grandpa Jerry!). I finally found one last October that met my criteria for low enough miles and price, but it happened to be in Preston, Idaho. That is a serious haul from Missoula - about 6.5 hours drive via the interstate - and I wasn't really willing to make a trip that far just for this; however, I had a work trip planned to Provo, Utah for a maker conference, and we were going to drive to bring exhibits and activities to present. Preston is basically on that route.

So, my boss agreed to drop me off on the way back to pick up this fine 1997 Honda Acty from a very confused and very nice mormon guy who bought the truck from someone else that imported it, but had kids and other life obligations and needed to sell it cheap. He was blown away that I was going to drive it back to Missoula - max speed on mine is about 55 or 60 mph, and they are not legal to drive on the interstate. I had a really fun time driving the backroads of Idaho very slowly and made it back in a record 10 hours. It was a great way to see parts of that gorgeous state that I would not have been to otherwise (excuse the crappy phone handling in this video, it is hard to drive and film at the same time in one of these...)

My new whip on the drive back from ID.

Since purchasing it I've of course tinkered with everything I could, from steering bushings to timing/water pump, engine mounts and coolant flush and new wheels. It came with a full box of parts to do most of this maintenance that the previous owner never got around to. It's great to have a vehicle that is extremely straightforward to maintain with a minimum of hand tools. It's almost as easy to work on as my motorcycle. I can throw a full sheet of plywood or large amount of dimensional lumber in the back for projects for home or work. It's a right hand drive, which didn't take as long to get used to as I thought it might (I've driven RHD in Japan and New Zealand both). It's a manual transmission, which I learned to drive a long time ago and really enjoy - I prefer manual to automatic transmission in fact. It can fit anywhere, and there's a lot of times that I can squeeze into a spot that big trucks can't. 

Custom, bruh.

There are very few safety features (no airbags), there isn't air conditioning, it drives extremely slow with very little getup, doesn't have a Hemi, can't tow worth beans and rides like a truck, and I love everything about it. It's practical in all of the ways that I want a vehicle to be, and impractical in all of the ways that I don't care about. If you yourself are looking for a mid-life crisis vehicle, Kei is truly the way!

Freight Elevator April Fools

April Fools' Day can be downright terrible sometimes - can't say I'm a fan of mean pranks that ruin someone's day or make them feel miserable or small. BUT, I appreciate ridiculousness and hilarity as much as the next person - maybe even a bit more.

For the past three years, we have taken an hour out of our April 1st workday at my science museum - which is located within our local library - to inhabit the staff freight elevator and serve treats, dress up in costume, and in general have fun. This is all thanks to a brilliant inspiration from my former coworker Evan, and we've carried on the tradition to make it an annual thing. This elevator is only usable by building staff from a variety of organizations in our complex, though maybe someday we'll be allowed to expand into the public-serving elevators...

In 2023, we had an "Alice in Wonderland" theme, wherein I dressed up as the Mad Hatter, and coworkers also wore appropriate tea-time attire. We served hot tea, English biscuits baked by my wife, and read sections of "Alice in Wonderland" to freight elevator riders. 

Last year, my coworker Caitlin and I chose to host a one-off session of our spoof podcast Carrot Chat in the elevator, reading bad AI haiku about carrots and "interviewing" riders on their carrot preferences. We served carrot cake and coffee, and decorated the elevator with our "carrotphernelia". Carrot Chat was a COVID-induced experimental podcast pushing the boundaries of all things carrot-related. More on that in a future post.

This year, we decided to up our game and theme the elevator ride around Roald Dahl's book, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator - the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I dressed as Willy Wonka, and rigged a Raspberry Pi computer to trigger this final scene on an in-elevator projector from the original Gene Wilder Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory film. It was fun to 3D print and recreate the button from the film and learn how to get a Raspberry Pi to play a section of an .mp4 on a button press. We served Wonka candies, and encouraged all elevator riders to "Take a Ride on the Wonkavator". We even had some library staff print out their digital Golden Ticket invitation to our prank!

Willy Wonka and Augustus Gloop

All in all, this has been a worthwhile exercise in hilarity and levity - something we all need in the current world we live in. 

New Beginnings

Sunset at Mt. Takao in Japan, spring 2024

I'm not sure how to start this post, so I'll just jump right into it: I'm sick of social media and short-form content that adds nothing to our understanding. A few years ago, I mostly gave up social media interactions because it was only making me miserable. With the state of the U.S. and how toxic Facebook had become, it just wasn't for me. I still keep my Meta accounts to engage with work, and use Facebook Marketplace because it is marginally better than craigslist, but otherwise don't want to watch AI bots fight with each other or see a bunch of garbage ads rather than the photos and posts of people that I love.

I used to blog pretty regularly when living in France and spending a lot of time writing for Universe Today in the mid aughts. It would have been easy to just restart anew with another blog since the last post here was in 2008. But, I already restarted this blog from a prior iteration. So, in the interest of keeping things all in one place, I just combined the very old one (To the Extent that it's Absurd) into this one, and will reboot things once again. If you want to see how dumb I was in my 20s, simply scroll down and you won't be disappointed! 

Not everyone needs some sort of digital presence to be important or anything, but I have missed sharing about my life and interesting things that I've been up to, and connections to friends and family that are far-flung. Several friends have actually told me that they miss my posts on Facebook or Instagram about my life, so my intent here is to post roughly every week and share projects, ideas, photos, etc. I know that blogs are a bit more "one-way" in terms of interaction and engagement than other forms of social media, but I'm okay with that - I don't need everyone's "take" on every single bit of my life that I choose to share anyways. Who does?

This blog has no other theme or express purpose other than being a place where I can share things I find interesting with people who might also have interest, and a creative outlet for things I get up to during my work and leisure time. As a recovering English major, long-form content is something that I deeply enjoy both creating and consuming. I make no commitment to any sort of "upload schedule" and will take a page out of the Quaker philosophy of sharing when I feel motivated to do so.

I know the feeling...

From xkcd:

Wow

From Cassini. Wow. Just freaking wow.

Go and Ask

Cosmic Variance is currently taking questions about Quantum Theory so as to explain it in a way that is easily understandable. I urge you to go and ask all of your burning questions about said theory. I doubt they'd appreciate stuff like, "What the F*^K does it all mean, anyway?" but maybe more specific things like "Why was Schroedinger all obsessed with killing cats?"

Pictures

I just got all my pictures from my tour developed onto some CDs. I'll post a little journal with them here sometime in the near or not-so-near future, but if you do the stupid Facebook thingy, I have a lot of them over there. Here's one that turned out really well, though, for your viewing pleasure.

UT: Canada to Build Worlds' First Asteroid-Hunting Satellite

Just yesterday (June 30th) was the 100-year anniversary of the Tunguska event, when a small piece of ice or rock created a huge blast crater near the Podkammenaya Tungus river in Siberia, flattening trees and scaring the heck out of people in the surrounding area. Thankfully, the blast didn't happen in a populated area and nobody was killed, but there are many more pieces of debris floating around out there in space. If we want to do something about an asteroid headed our way, or keep astronauts safe from space debris, knowing is half the battle. Thanks to a new microsatellite being built by the Canadian Space Agency, we will soon have a better map of the objects surrounding the Earth's orbit. More...

UT: Dark Matter is Denser in the Solar System

Dark matter was theorized to exist relatively recently, and we've come a long way in understanding what makes up a whopping 23% of our Universe. Our own galaxy is surrounded by a halo of dark matter that adds to its mass. A recent paper on the dark matter closer to home – right here in our own Solar System – reveals that it is denser and more massive than in the galactic halo. More...

UT: Homer's 'Odyssey' May Chronicle Ancient Eclipse

I love writing this story, and how much it's stirred stuff up in the comments. Ah, writing about literature and astronomy together. If I could fit bicycles in there somehow, that would cover all three of my major passions...

Homer's 'Odyssey' May Chronicle Ancient Eclipse
It's likely that sometime in your education career, an English teacher had you enjoy (or suffer through, depending on your tastes) at least part of that classic of classics, Homer's Odyssey. It tells the story of Odysseus, a Greek general, who embarks on a 10-year journey back home after battling in the fall of Troy. The tale is filled with imagery that is referenced often in contemporary films and books. As old as it is, one would think that we've learned pretty much all we can from the book, but a new analysis of celestial events referenced in the Odyssey reveals that Homer may have documented a total solar eclipse. More...

UT: Map of Milky Way Redrawn (again)

Just yesterday Fraser wrote about the Milky Way's demotion from a 4-arm spiral galaxy to a 2-arm. This isn't the only change we'll have to accept about our home galaxy: a Milky Way mapping project has discovered stars in the galaxy moving slower and in more elliptical orbits than predicted. This means we might have to redraw the map we have of our own neighborhood yet again. More...

Ames

Despite the flooding that we experienced last week, my first few days in Ames have been pretty uneventful. Working at the bike shop every day is freaking great. I missed the shop and all of the people that worked there very, very much. It's nice to be back.

I'm finally getting caught up on my astronomy reading, though my podcast queue is getting ridiculously long. So much to do, all the time...

Eric and I got our garden in, and it seems to be surviving all of the pounding rain we've been getting. We planted tomatoes, corn, beets, cucumber, peppers, watermelon, pumpkins, and broccoli. I hope we get to eat at least most of it. The fence we constructed seems pretty rabbit-resistant, though if there are deer milling around we just might have to make the fence taller. I guess we'll know soon enough.

Not much else to report, other than that it's weird to be speaking English all of the time, and having everybody else do the same. Can't wait to start up a French club.

Oh, and if you're on the evil, pointless thing called Facebook, I posted some pictures of my bike trip and my trip with my mother over there. Once I get mine developed and scanned in, I might put up a mini-journal here about all of that jazz.

UT: Over 100 Explosions Observed on the Moon

In the past two and a half years, the Moon has taken a real beating. NASA astronomers have observed over a hundred explosions on the Moon during this time, caused by meteoroids both large and small, slamming into the Moon at speeds of up to 160,000 miles per hour (257,495 kilometers per hour).

The Moon gets pelted constantly – over a metric ton of material falls on the Moon every day! Most impacts are too dim to see with the naked eye because they are small micrometeorites. The rate of the flashes from larger impacts increases dramatically – up to an impact every hour – during meteor showers such as the Perseids and Quadrantids. The sporadic impacts account for twice as many observable events as compared to meteor shower impacts. More...

Back

Right, so I made it back to the U.S. safe and sound. It's so weird to be speaking English all the time and drinking coffee out of non-thimble sized cups. I'm currently in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and will be making my way back to Ames this afternoon, where I will stay for quite a while if everything works out like I hope.

The last month or so has been fun. Lots and lots of traveling. I would like to get pictures up here as soon as I can get them all scanned in (no digital camera for this guy). I'll be back at the bike shop in Ames, so if you live there come by and say hello. I will be giving out my new phone number to people once I get around to buying a phone (expect that to take a few weeks). Also, expect a lot more from me on Universe Today. I wish I could have taken my compy with me on tour, but alas, there is no wireless while camping (yet). Until then, I will point you to Ian's brilliant article on why we all won't die in 2012.

The End

It came so quickly, this very last day of riding. I've spent a couple of lovely days in Aachen, Germany with some friends from Iowa. All I have left is a measly 85km day, one of the shortest of the tour. Then I get to chill in Cologne for a few days with some old friends and head back to Paris for a rendezvous with my mother.

During a tour you feel like it will continue forever, and then it is abruptly over. I wish I could just keep riding, but there is the issue of, y'know, eating and paying bills and such. I now have to go eat French Toast (in Germany, of all places, which is kinda funny for some reason) and get ready to ride.

Belgium

I don't have too much time to write (I am starving and need to make dinner...) but I've made it to Belguim! The trip so far has been absolutely phenomenal. Like, one of the best bike tours I've had. Here's some differences I've noticed between Belgium and France:
- there is less dog shit on the ground to step in
- people have a funny accent. Belgium is France's Canada, y'know?
- there are french fry restaurants everywhere, with millions of sauces to choose from. Curry ketchup is the best, though Pickles comes in second.
- the beer is so freaking cheap
- the highways have bike lanes, even though they suck sometimes

That is all. I leave this glorious country of beer and fries for Germany tomorrow. Guten nacht.

2nd Day

The trip so far has been fabulous. I made it to Dinan today, which is a lovely town with an even lovelier hostel. I rode to almost St. Brieuc yesterday, taking my time to get there. Ended up leaving late (noon instead of 8) but still got to a good place to camp around 5. I guess it was only 90km. That's like 50 miles or something.

I set up camp at the top of this valley, which was only a valley because it had a damn at the end of it. It was clear and nice all day, and then it was cloudy and lightly drizzling, then just cloudy. Initially I wanted to camp right by the stream at the bottom, but it was a Saturday night in a remote area and seemed like a good place for drunken high schoolers to come make a bonfire and party. So I hiked my bike and all my crap up the side in two stages. It was like climbing a wall, but I managed it. I couldn't see stars when I went to bed, but when I woke up one of the numerous times in the night, I could. I was too tired to pick out any constellations, though.

I met up with two friends during the ride yesterday. The first, Mustapha, is running to Caen over the vacation. He was supposed to leave Friday, but got off late and so I passed by him on the rode about 45 minutes after starting. We had a coffee and talked about our respective adventures. And cows, and how they moo differently in France.

My other friend, Bernard, is a cyclist and drove to Guingamp, then bactracked my route until we met up. He gave me dried bananas, which if you've never tried you must. No, not banana chips but these whole dried bananas wrapped in tinfoil. We rode and chatted and then had a juice and some cakes before we got to his car. I wish he could have come with me, but I guess not everybody is a jobless slacker like me.

All of my equipment worries have been unfounded as yet. The homemade panniers are doing fine, even if I don't have a lot of clearance for my foot in the pedal stroke (can't really backpedal, which is ok I guess...). I didn't need to use the "tent" I made because it was clear, but probably will sometime. The stove rocks my freaking socks off. I boiled a few cups of tea and water to drink and a cup of coffee this morning all on like 75ml of alcohol!

More the next time I get an internet connection...

Leaving for Germany

I leave tomorrow for Germany (if I get everything frakkin' finished). It should be a good time pending good weather and preferable winds. Wish me luck, and do an anti-rain dance if you have the time/skill.

Miscellany

A few things:
– I went to Paris with a group of students last weekend. It was a blast, and the kids behaved themselves. I went to the Cinematheque and Le Louvre (for the third time...) on Friday, and walked around the city and saw my friend Kasia at her art installation on Saturday. We came back Saturday night. I took lots of photos, which will be posted once I have them developed and can scan them in.

– While walking around Paris, I put the soundtrack to the film Rushmore on repeat on my iPod. This lead me to fall in love with all things Mark Mothersbaugh. Check out his art, and anything that he's created. It is fabulous.

– I leave in like 4 days for Germany, and have yet to finish sewing my panniers. I'm not too worried, but the next few days will be super-busy. I did, however, succeed at fabricating this stove. It is freakin' sweet! I cooked my dinner last night over the wonderfully bright flame.