The Kayak Part 1

I pretty much will never get this blog caught up to all the stories I want to share.  I'll just have to tell you all the stories I have when I see you next.

This summer I made the drawings for the kayak.  In Nick Schade's book he gives a table of offsets and from that you can make an x and y scatter plot.  I saved the x and y scatter plot as a script file and then imported it in to AutoCAD. I don't own AutoCAD but I sure got a good use out of the 30-day trial. I had a cool picture of the kayak drawn up in AutoCAD but I think it disappeared when my Windows 30-day trial was up.  Apparently, I didn't save it onto the Macintosh half of my hard-drive.  Well, after spending lots of time trying to perfect the drawings I had them printed off at a local civil engineering firm.  I was so curious as to how close my drawings were to the real thing that I couldn't resist purchasing the real plans to compare. I'm glad I did because there were a number of differences. Mine are on the right and the real ones are on the left.

In September, my western red cedar arrived from Hoonah. The lumber mill that it came from had quite a fire this summer. Fortunately, everyone was okay and their business survived. I was going to build out by my apartment but Karen offered that I could build in her building! She said she didn't want to see me go from the building and that maybe a class from the high school next door might be interested in seeing the kayak's progress.  I thought that sounded like a great idea!

I pasted the drawings onto 1/2" plywood and cut those out with a jig saw.  They looked beautiful.  I didn't want to cut them anymore, but I did. I cut holes in the middle so I could place them on the strongback.

Well, that's all I have so far!  I need to rip down all the cedar planks I have (you might be able to see them in the back of the pictures).  Once I rip those down I'll be running the strips along these forms and that will really flesh out the kayak.

So I like Puffins

I performed at the Monthly Grind again. This was one of the things in September that kept me from any kayak-building progress. I had agreed to perform way back in the summer when writing two new songs* seemed like something that I had all the time in the world to do. September was fast fading, especially with the Klondike run and the church bell-ringing (I'll explain that one later). And I had two people that I had asked to play with me who were wanting to practice with me. It's a little hard to practice songs when they haven't been written. Anyway, where I'm going with this is... as the end of September approached, all my focus was on writing two songs. This one I will share with you is very goofy. Please excuse the few mistakes in the song.

*I certainly didn't have to write two new songs just for this event, but it is my goal to do it that way. I could do covers, but I think they are best left to people that can actually sing really well and are good performers. I could do a song I've already written but I had already played my best ones so something new is what's left.

Mt. Verstovia got some snow

I learned something recently (from my friend Paul) that I appreciate knowing. You will often hear Mt. Verstovia called Arrowhead, because the tip of it resembles an arrowhead.  And if you call it Arrowhead, you will often be corrected and told, "Arrowhead is actually about 2 miles that way," as the person points. So why is there a mountain that is not given much attention the one that actually gets to be named Arrowhead?  Because a cartographer didn't like one mountain having two names: Arrowhead and Verstovia.  So this cartographer moved the name Arrowhead to arbitrary peak, and that has led to much confusion and annoying corrections I'm sure. Now that you know that, I will share some pictures.

Annual precipitation in a few various U.S. cities

Kayaked to work

I'm going to blog backwards. I have so many blogs I want to do that go back to my visit home to Idaho this summer. I have a feeling if I work backwards I'll more likely get them done. So this blog will be the most recent one.

I finally started my kayak. The western red cedar that I ordered from an outfit in Hoonah finally arrived.  It arrived on the day I was leaving on the ferry to run in a race. Well, a couple days before my cedar arrived my friend and neighbor said she was selling her kayak. I thought it would be very nice to have a kayak that I could actually use since I had no idea when I would be able to finish my kayak. So I bought the kayak and she and I kayaked to work Wednesday. (She used her newer one that she had just bought.)

It was such a gorgeous day and it was supposed to be the last gorgeous day that we'll have in a while. We had nearly 2 weeks (I believe) of sunshine. It was quite overwhelming!

When I got to work, I was asked if I wanted to accompany a group from the high school hiking up Mt. Verstovia.  I said of course I did.  So, I have pictures from that, too.

Compare this picture to the bright green picture from a hike up Mt. Verstovia in August.

Pictured below is the path of kayaking to work. Some people asked if I live on an island when I said I kayaked to work. No, just kayaking along the shore; simply an alternative to taking the road.

Klondike Road Relay 2010

I ran in a race on the Klondike Highway.  It is a yearly event that teams run from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, Canada.  I had never been to Canada either, so it was a great introduction to our northern neighbor.

There are ten legs in the race, so ideally, you want a team of ten. I was on a team from Sitka originally, but it ended up not working out for everyone and it sorta fell apart. It seems a large number of teams have trouble keeping all the numbers that signed up in the first place so there are quite a few teams scrambling to find last-minute runners. A few members from the team I was on dispersed and joined other teams. I joined a Juneau team called the UAS Road Scholars at the last minute.

I was worried that I was going to slow down the team since I had not been training as much as I would've liked.  I felt like I was not in as good of shape as I had been when I ran the half-marathon in Boise three years ago. I predicted I would run 11-minute miles.

The race started at 7:30 PM PST on Friday evening. The first four members of our team shared a vehicle and followed the race. Meanwhile, the runners following the first four, myself included, tried to get a little sleep before leaving around midnight to get to checkpoint 5.

I maybe slept an hour and then we were off. We got to checkpoint 5 and I was the next runner so I was pretty nervous. We got there about an hour before when we predicted the switch would be. I couldn't rest in the car though, I was too nervous! So, I got out and just stood by and watched all the runners.

It was about 2:30 in the morning when I started running. It felt so crazy running in the middle of the night. It was dark. Every runner was required to wear reflective gear for the cars that passed on the road. Some runners wore head lamps to see where they were going. I didn't wear a head lamp. It was sort of a thrill to run when it was pitch black and not know for sure where my feet were landing. I ran along Tutshi Lake and I crossed the border from British Columbia to the Yukon Territory. It was about a 14-mile run and I made it to checkpoint 6 at 4:36 AM. I ran 9-minute miles! My team called me a sandbagger. Hahaha.

I should mention that the race started at 7:30 for a few teams.  From then on there were teams that began every half hour until midnight.  The fastest teams started at midnight.

The last picture is Tutshi Lake.

A hike up Mt. Verstovia

I joined some friends on a hike up Mt. Verstovia on a gorgeous day in August. I will share some pictures.  Right before the hike, my good friend and co-worker Eileen and I were at work.  I was going to drive us and someone else out to the trail head.  As Eileen was preparing some snacks to eat on the hike, I was casually throwing my keys into the air and catching them.  They landed in the light fixture up above and I had to stack some tables up to retrieve them! I have a SketchUp drawing of the building I work in that I update from time-to-time. I thought since I was up there that I might as well take some measurements of the light fixture so I could include it in the SketchUp drawing. I just wanted to tell that story and share a picture from that.

SketchUp drawing.

Compare this vibrant green picture to the picture from a hike in September.