Wednesday 7/8/15
These last two days have been spent riding my motorcycle. I realized along the way that the last time I rode more than 100 miles at a stretch was 1975 or 1976, or about 40 years ago. I have ridden just under 600 miles, most of it today, and have another 200 or so to complete tomorrow.
I am riding as I had originally planned, from Bishop, California where I’m based for the summer, and Veneta, a bit west of Eugene, Oregon. I’m arriving tomorrow at the Oregon Country Fair, to serve as one of a small volunteer crew staffing the Home Power magazine booth in the Energy Park at the Fair. Ian Woodenden and Michael Welch are the magazine’s senior editors. I visited each last year on my long bicycle tour – the pond and rope swing are at Ian’s Guemes Island homestead.
Ian sends me reader questions for the Ask the Experts column from time to time, and he invited me to join them this year. I haven’t ever been to it, and I will have a (coveted) camping pass, so I suspect I’ll get to drink deeply of the kool-aid this weekend. The Home Power folks have had their booth at the fair for many years, I understand, so I’m glad to have them as guides to the magic.
To catch up since I arrived in Bishop: Monday morning I reported for work at the White Mountain Research Center main office near Bishop. I filled out the necessary forms and became an official employee of the University of California at Los Angeles. Maybe one day I’ll have to visit there… Then Jeremiah took me up the mountain to see some of the facilities. Bishop is about 4,000 feet elevation, Our first stop was Crooked Creek station, at 10,150. A very nice facility, well suited to grad students, scientists and donors. [Techweenie alert: It’s powered by an AC-coupled SMA system with four SI6048s and maybe 8 kW of PV.]
Then we went to Barcroft Station, at 12,500′. This facility is original from the 1940s, so much funkier, with history dripping from its quonset-hut pores. Although another 15 or so miles farther up the mountain, it held the greatest appeal as a summer base. Jeremiah cautioned me to try it out first, rather than expect to settle in, as the elevation an cause real fatigue to set in after a few days. This facility needs the most work on its PV system, as it’s an older (’07) Outback quad-stack with some seriously funky installation issues. There’s more to this, but that’s enough for now.
We also walked briskly up another half mile or so to a small observatory, which was built in the 1970s by one longtime researcher. Until 2012 it had miles of utiltiy power poles strung up to it, but those died about three years ago, and it’s been out of commission since then. Depending on getting the necessary equipment, this may get a whole new system to run the observatory and the internet radiolink equipment.
There’s one more facility that we didn’t get to, but so far this year neither has anyone else – the Summit Hut, at 14,263′ elevation. It may get a system identical to the observatory, but that depends on variables yet unknown. I hope for a chance to install there; I have never worked or even been at 14,000′ while on Earth. This could turn out to be the highest-elevation PV system in the continental US – that’s certainly worth a story!
The eastern Sierra has been experiencing unusual monsoon rains, like what we get in New Mexico. Tuesday’s paper showed flash flooding in the area. As it was, up where we were we watched storm clouds roll in, then drove down through up to 5″ or so of a hail/snow mixture. It would soon melt – after all, this is July – but it was very unusual.
Tuesday morning I prepped the motorcycle, heading off around noon and soon riding through a strong rain. I headed up through Markleeville, where wildland firefighters had recently fought a pretty big fire outside of town; the signs were everywhere about. I rode about 240 miles, making Carson City for dinner. A friendly local woman at the Japanese restaurant overheard me asking about roads into the nearby hills, and directed me to a beautiful dirt road up a couple thousand feet above the city, where I found a quiet place to set up my tent.
Carson City from my camping spot, just before dusk.
The same scene after nightfall.
Wednesday I returned down to the town for coffee and breakfast, and was directed to Comma Coffee, right across the main drag from the Nevada legislative chambers, and a creative, welcoming gathering place.
The Comma Coffee wall
The Comma Coffee counter
I rode through Reno, Susanville, and Klamath Falls, continuing up into Crater Lake National Park. Campground were full, though, so I left again and came down to a Forest Service campground along the upper Rogue River. I’ll return to the Park tomorrow, to ride around and through it, and then on to the Fair by mid-afternoon.