Last year in April, Dave and I finally got around to driving down for
Trinity Site day.
Trinity Site is where the Manhattan Project scientists detonated
the first prototype for the "Fat Man" plutonium atomic bomb that would
eventually be dropped on Nagasaki.
Trinity Site is technically
part of the
National Park Service, but it's located on White Sands Missile Range
and therefore is closed to the public most of the time. They open it
two days a year, usually the first Saturday in April and the third
Saturday in October —
except that this year's April opening was canceled
for unspecified reasons, and
apparently
they're going to cancel the April opening, leaving only October.
This year it's October 21.
I like to think of myself as an outdoor person. I like hiking,
mountain biking, astronomy, and generally enjoying the beauty of
the world.
Except — let's not kid ourselves here — I'm
really more of a computer geek.
Without some sort of push, I can easily stay planted on my butt
in front of the computer all day — sure, looking out the window
and admiring the view (I do a lot of that since we moved to New Mexico),
but still sitting indoors in the computer chair.
Earlier this year,
the science podcast "Short Wave" played an NPR series called
Body
Electric that had a lot of interviews with scientists who have
studied some aspect of the health benefits of motion versus sitting,
and specifically, the idea of getting up and moving around for five
minutes every half hour. They challenged listeners to try it, and
featured statements from listeners about their improved health and
energy levels.
A recent trip through Alamosa reminded me that I'd never written about
my trip to see the gators. High time!
As you drive up Colorado highway 17 north of Alamosa, you pass a
series of old, faded, hand-painted signs saying things like
"Alligators? In Colorado?" and "COLORADO GATORS Discount Tickets sold HERE!"
I'd seen them for years, and chuckled a little but didn't ever give them much thought.
The desert is full of signs for roadside attractions that were
abandoned fifty years ago.
But five or six years ago, someone told me
that Colorado Gators actually was quite an interesting place, too bad it had
recently closed. Darnit — why couldn't someone have told me that
before it closed? Oh, well.
Then last year, we were heading up 17 on our way to visit the
relatives, and I couldn't help noticing that there were really quite
a lot of signs for an attraction that was supposedly gone.
And some of the signs looked fairly new. We had some time to spare, so we
took the detour and found Colorado Gators still very much open for business.
I was talking to a friend about LANL's proposed new powerline.
A lot of people are opposing it because
the line would run through the Caja del Rio, an open-space
piñon-juniper area adjacent to Santa Fe which is owned by the
US Forest Service.
The proposed powerline would run from the Caja across the Rio Grande to the Lab.
It would carry not just power but also a broadband fiber line, something
Los Alamos town, if not the Lab, needs badly.
On the other hand, those opposed worry about
road-building and habitat destruction in the Caja.
I'm always puzzled reading accounts of the debate. There already is a
powerline running through the Caja and across the Rio via Powerline Point.
The discussions never say (a) whether the proposed
line would take a different route, and if so, (b) Why? why can't they
just tack on some more lines to the towers along the existing route?
For instance, in the slides from one of the public meetings, the
map
on slide 9
not only doesn't show the existing powerline, but also
uses a basemap that has no borders and NO ROADS. Why would you use a
map that doesn't show roads unless you're deliberately trying to
confuse people?
My Miata blew a radiator hose and dumped out all its coolant,
so I needed to do a radiator flush and fill.
Turns out that's kind of a nasty job on an NB (second-gen) Miata.
The radiator drain plug is accessed through a hole in the tray under
the engine. Once you get it loose enough that coolant has started to
drip out, if the screwdriver slips, it's impossible to get it back on
without getting coolant all over the screwdriver, flashlight, your
arm, your face and hair, etc. And once you do manage to loosen it
enough, it pops out,
sending coolant gushing everywhere onto the engine undertray,
from which it comes out the back and sides and it's impossible to
catch it all in a drain pan.
So that left me with quite a mess to clean up afterward. I started by
pouring the used coolant into a container with a secure cap: I've
always heard warnings about how kids and pets will try to drink
the poisonous stuff because it tastes and smells sweet.
We don't have kids or pets, but there are plenty of wild critters
and we want them to stay healthy too.
Can you follow Lower Water Canyon (in the DOE open space lands south of
White Rock, NM) all the way to the Rio Grande?
In the decade we've lived here, we've heard that question and
asked it ourselves, and have heard a few anecdotal reports.
You can follow it down most of the way, but there's a pour-off near
the end that you won't want to do without a rope. Or there was a
pour-off fifteen years ago that wasn't that big a deal, but it's
changed since then and isn't passable now.
Or ... well, anyway, the story kept changing
depending on who we asked, and nobody seemed to have tried it in many years.
Now I've done it. It's a beautiful hike, and right now there's
an abundance of wildflowers in bloom along the canyon.
On a mountain bike ride on the White Rock Canyon Rim trail yesterday,
we stopped at one of the overlooks to admire the view, and turned to
see three bighorn sheep crossing the trail behind us.