The Hanover Collaboration

Geocaching is the “sport” where you go “online:http:/geocaching.com” and look up some GPS coordinates, and then go to them looking for the hidden treasure. Yeah it’s dorky, but it’s my type of dorky. I’m into it.

I like to explore and people generally hide the stuff in interesting places, many of which I wouldn’t have found on my own. Most are relatively tame, but some are pretty adventurous. I think I might start hiding a few of my own.

But I don’t have a GPS.

This isn’t as much of a problem since I found Mapfinder. Mapfinder will overlay the relevant USGS topo map on top of Google Earth. Since you can also map the geocache on GE, all you’ve got to do is print it. If there are decent terrain cues, with a USGS quad (7.5’) I can orienteer with nearly identical precision to a cheap GPS—better if there is heavy tree cover.

Here are my complaints about Geocaching so far:

1. They use DMS and,
2. They hide stuff too well since…
3. They don’t appreciate the limits on GPS’s precision

Universal Transverse Mercator, is a locally linear coordinate system¹, where you can simply read off the meters to target to the east and north. As in I’m at
0270400E, 4939200N and I want to get to
0270450E, 4929150N, then I should just walk
50m E and 50m S.
On a map, UTM makes a square grid that equally easy to use. The trouble with UTM is that it is local and approximate. Around here (from about Hanover to the tip of Maine and from the coast to past Quebec city), our reference surface is 19T. It is difficult to calculate distances between places with reference surfaces of different longitude (but not the same longitude¹). There is an average length distortion of like .05%, but near the edges it is more like .5%.

¹ The linearization is made by projecting the ground or “datum” (e.g. the WGS84 ellipsoid, the NAD27) to a reference surface. This surface is a segment of a longitudinal “cylinder”, parallel to the ground at the center of the region. It’s radius is chosen to minimize the average longitudinal distortion. Cylinder is in quotes because it’s cross section is the same as the cross section of the datum which is slightly elliptical. This fact means that it is surprisingly complicated to recover latitude from a UTM position.

Degrees, Minutes, Seconds, on the other hand is globaly exact. You have the angles made by you, the center of the earth, the axis of rotation and Greenwich England. You are standing exactly above the datum at point they are telling you. But to figure out how far away anything is, that is going to take trigonometry… Trigonometry and a book about datums… And Matlab would help.

The fact that the geocaching community uses DMS is indicative of that most of them just set a waypoint and follow the arrow. It is more fun if you also have some idea of where you are in addition to the GPS.

People think that because of all those significant figures in their GPS that they can bury a film canister and expect someone else to find it. You’re out in the middle of the woods with a $100 device receiving signals at like -160 to -180dBW! From space! You’re going to have to wait a long, long time before you can have centimeter accuracy.

What they could do is give a reference so that you can make an ad-hoc differential signal correction. For instance if there is something obvious nearby, like a stake, and they gave their measurement of both the stake and the cache, you could measure the stake, compute the difference and then add that to their measurement of the cache to get a much better estimate of where you will find the cache. And if they gave the measurement for the stake and cache in UTM, someone like me could probably just do it with a compass.

I built a zipline the other day. I thought the internet might want to know about it. Other people might want to do something similar.

I went out and bought 125’ of the strongest cable that they had at Home Depot which was 1/4” steel with a plastic coating. The first time I did it, the cable coating melted and plugged up the wood block. This actually was a more gentle stop than it became after I stripped the coating off the stopping region. (NB: Don’t use coated cable!). I would have used 5/16” if they had it but they didn’t, so my “Factor Of Safety” might not be up to aerospace standards. This also meant I couldn’t have as taut a line as I had originally planned¹. As it happens, it turns out that the more slack line is a better ride anyway since it is closer to the ideal brachistochrone.

To attach the cable to the trees I got three u-shaped wire clamps for each end, end loops, a handful of (5/16”) steel quick-links (sometimes called rapides) and 2×6’ of 5/16” chain. I stripped the ends before I put the clamps and loop on.

For stopping, I got 75’ of 3/16” coated cable and 2×75’ of 1/4” and 50’ of 3/8” bungee cord (to be used as 6×25’,2×25’ resp). I put a lot of calculation into getting these lengths right.

1. First of all, you want it so that at maximum elongation, you don’t hit the lower tree.
2. Secondly, you want to keep the stress tolerable in the bungees.
3. Third, you want to make the force on the participant tolerable.
4. Fourth, you want the thing as fun as possible which means stopping as quickly as possible while satisfying one through three.

I decided that (3) would be satisfied by a peak acceleration of about 3.5G. Our target audience weighs about 140lb with gear, this plus (1), (plus that you would like to go nearly all the way t the lower tree) specifies a length and spring constant for the bungees. Then I dictated a maximum weight of 200lb and checked to make sure that 1 is not violated. This design made the top speed about 30-35mph.

This is made much harder by the fact that it is impossible to find specs on the bungees. What I ended up doing was experimenting for half an hour in REI with a yardstick and a quart of water. Based on reading in the internet, I think 2 is not being violated—I would like to have put a little more area of less bouncy bungee in there, but that’s what they sold.

I got one more 50’ length of bungee so that I could have the rest position of the arrest bungees be out of the way. I’ll make a diagram.

Then I got some scrap 2×4 and notched a groove into each so that I could bolt them together onto the wire. The arrest bungees are attached to this block.

I put the thing together almost completely by myself. I had Courtney belay me for setting up an anchor and threading a pull cord one day and that’s it. After that, I just used ascenders. To get the cable up, I used the trucker’s hitch and an auto come-along. I also had some turnbuckles but I didn’t need them. In fact I tried using one, but broke it. You should read (and believe) the spec on the hardware store turnbuckles: they are weaker then they look.

What else? Let’s see, there’s getting up and getting down. Initially I had planned on climbing a knotted rope (with an ascender for self-belay) but between weakness and the difficulty of finding an outdoor-durable, non-slippery rope material, that got scrapped. Instead we have a rope ascent. This is done with an ascender and grigri. Yes a grigri — it is awesome.

Once you get up there, you put your pulley (trolley actually) on the cable, put a backup beiner on there too and take the ride.

Once you stop, there is a rope and a sling attached to the arrest block. You put the rope through your grigri, stand up on the sling and unweight the pulley. Take it (and the beiner) off the cable and then you can lower yourself.

From beginning to end the whole process is about 4min if you’re comfortable with all the gear. Here’s a video. I set the camera up on a branch so the camera-work is on the minimalist side (do you guys know that I’m a cinematographer now?). The beginning and end are sped up, but the ride itself is at regular speed. I’ll try to get some better video later.

¹ You can take a rope and tie one end to something fixed and the other to something heavy. Then by pushing perpendicularly at the midpoint, you can exert a much large force on the heavy object. Clearly this is a simple machine, but it defies easy catagorization as an inclined plane, pulley or lever. Any thoughts?

This post is dedicated to Jon Shea. May he be allowed to stop pestering me about doing this ride.

The Route of the Hiawatha is a rails-to-trails project in the mountains on the border of Idaho/Montana. It follows a portion of the old Milwaukee Railroad for about 15mi, and is quite a feat of engineering. It passes through 10 tunnels and over 7 trestle bridges in that distance. The trail is a compacted gravel road; cross bikes would be feasible, but mountain bikes are preferred.

I apologize in advance for the somewhat oversized pictures. This was my first attempt at embedding pictures, and I don’t feel like spending any more time making it look pretty.

I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I use my local bike shop for repairs. I realize that in this crowd that is a major faux pas. I can clean and adjust most stuff on my own as part of a regular maintenance routine, but I’ve had three real repairs (i.e. something just plain broke) that I couldn’t do myself.

Dartmouth just won the NCAA skiing championship. Something like 9 All-Americans. The last time Dartmouth won was 1976 and that was a tie. Before that it won in 1958. Surprise of the season, Lindsay Mann won the second run of the slalom and came in 4th.

A rule change this year means that every skiers’ score counts while in the past, you could throw out your worst two results. This meant that a team of 11 wasn’t at as much of a disadvantage. Notably DU had a team of 11 this year (so their score is the same as it would have been under the old rules). Looking to see which scores we would ave thrown out, it is obvious that everybody was totally solid. Our worst results were 17 and 21 pts, 23rd and 19th respectively. Those are good worsts to have. Anyway, without those 38 pts, today would have been a lot more of a nail-biter, but Dartmouth still would have won.

“Its like ra-y-ain on your wedding day”

ECCC Mountain bike rankings came out recently.

Here are the top 10 for DII

1. CMU
2. Saint Michaels
3. Wentworth
4. Williams
5. Tufts
6. Cortland
7. MIT
8. Dartmouth
9. Colby
10. RPI

So, the biggest dorks in the world beat the best outdoorsy school in the world…in MOUNTAIN BIKING.

This is so freaking confusing.

Maybe a team from Dartmouth will win this years MIT puzzle hunt

Essentially, do not include the following activities in the three months prior to the race: two weddings, one of which is yours, both on the other side of the country; buying a house; moving; multiple relative visits ranging from several days to several weeks long.

Check it out on my own blog

There are pictures!

What a nice day for a race. Early morning in Franconia Notch, the morning fog was condensing into a light drizzle. Hardcore teams got their course descriptions just before 7am. I yelled “GO!” but no one had gotten all their gear together. Over the next half hour, most of the other teams managed their way down to echo lake for the first checkpoint. A little after 7:30, team “Sargent” took the early lead by leaving the parking lot. Over the next 20 min the other teams managed to leave also. Except one.

Yikes. Well, that was certainly an improvement for the US, in terms of the level of play. But before we start getting all misty-eyed about the redemption of US soccer, I have a few things to say:

Many people are going to go apeshit about the reffing in this game. And, to be sure, it was decidedly poor. However, the US did not win this game not because of the refs. They settled for a tie because they are still utterly incapable of attacking and finishing chances in the box. I have yet to watch the US play internationally and really feel like we’re capable of putting the ball in the back of the net with some help.

We’ve gotten much better over the past few years at “creating chances”. And this is a good thing. But until we have players who can finish those chances, we will be doomed to performances like the one we saw today. For a while, it was enough to praise the US team for simply attacking the penalty box and creating scoring opportunities. That’s not good enough anymore.

On a related note, our set plays are still terrible. How many really dangerous free kicks did we take? Did you notice that we still had only three corner kicks? Do you recall them being very dangerous?

Given how well we matched up with Italy today, even when down a man, there is no excuse for not coming away with a win. That we didn’t isn’t a result of being sabotaged by the ref; we failed to win because we (still) lack players who are relentless and dominant finishers.

Keller – 8 Much better game for Keller, including a few late saves that kept us in the game. His distribution was a bit better as well. Again, not really much he could have done about the goal.

Bocanegra – 5 Strong first half, faded a bit in the second. I like going with the defenders who push forward on the attack. Still, his service was less than ideal. But the mentality and work rate was a vast inprovement on Lewis.

Cherundolo – 6 Similar to Boca, though he provided a bit more on offense, I think. At least, his crosses weren’t quite as poor as Boca’s.

Mastroeni – 6 Might have been heading for near total redemption before the (undeserved) red card. He seemed much more at home as a true defensive midfielder today: mercilessly marking men, winning 50/50 balls, just generally being a pest to Italy’s midfield.

Onyewu – 7 Excellent game from the Gooch. Did a fantastic job of playing the Italian forwards hard and physically, without drawing much ire from the ref.

Pope – 3 Ok, so I’m not really a fan of the Pope, and no, it’s not just because I’m not Catholic. Sure he was a stunning example of MLS producing quality international players….8 years ago! He got beat on Italy’s goal, and was a weak spot for much of the game. I’m probably being a bit harsh on him, but I really think there are better options (Berhalter, maybe even Olsen).

Convey – 5 This one’s a toughie. Convey worked his ass off today and fearlessly attacking of the wing all through the first half. Did you notice what happened when he got near the box though? That’s right, nothing. This is what I was talking about above. I loved the effort he put in, but too often the result of one of the chances he created was a poor cross, or careless dribble.

Dempsey – 6 Again, I’m tempted to go higher here. He’s young and hopefully will improve. Might turn into the sort of player I was yearning for in my rant above. Of course, we’ve heard that before, too.

Donovan – 8 It almost pains me to rate him this high. He didn’t show up all that much in the first half. And then suddenly, with all the cards and the field opening up maybe, he came alive, and started actually dribbling at people. For me, he’s still missing that final 10% at the end of his neat slicing runs. Perhaps he’s just been overhpyed, but I’m still disappointed in this guy.

Reyna – 9 Mr. Reliable. This guy does everything. He’s my hero. If I could be a US soccer player, it would be Reyna. TV viewers might not always catch his impact, but he was all over the goddam midfield today. Winning balls, starting the attack, harassing forwards, making the smart foul. He is the pillar of this team; you don’t always notice his contribution, but he is out there, doing everthing.

McBride – 4 ARGH! %$&##%$#*#! Get my drift? Ok, so he wasn’t that bad. And kudos for taking the elbow in the face; the man is certainly tough. But how can we justify having this guy in the game when we are so thoroughly incapable of serving the ball to him? I remember one (ONE!) good cross coming his way. And then later in the second half we start serving the ball to his feet?! Excuse me? I honestly think that if Johnson had been in the whole second half we would have squeeked out a 2-1 win.

Subs
Conrad (51st min) – 5 Solid, but not spectacular. We needed some fresh legs, and Convey had just about run himself into the groud. Certainly sacrificing offense in this sub, but that made sense being down a man.

Beasely – (62nd min) – NR It’s very tempting to give a rating to Beasely, just because I now hate him so much. He is going to get way too much credit for his goal that got called back (correctly) for an offsides call. You bring a guy like him on late for legs, speed. A fresh set of wheels on offense (Dempsey was just beat as well), who can also defend in midfield. How many slicing runs did he make? One? Maybe two? Most of the time he sort of puttered around midfield, content to just knock the ball around and let other people do the running. That’s bullshit.

So I guess I should say a few words about the ref. Hmmm…let’s see…”disgrace”, “embarrassment” and “piss poor” certainly come to mind. The worst thing you can do as a ref is start giving out yellow’s left and right for stupid, ticky-tack little fouls.

The de Rossi red was spot on. Mastroeni should have been a yellow. Pope’s first yellow was absolutely undeserved; inexcusable. His second yellow probably was justified, but by then the ref had boxed himseld in with all the yellows.

I might add that the Italians showed almost as much skill at drawing questionable fouls as they did at actually playing soccer. Not that I’m complaining (see my rant above), but the dive has been so immaculatelly perfected by Italian soccer players, that the skill involved deserves a little respect. I’d comment on the equally (perhaps more) exciting Czech/Ghana match, but this post has dragged on too long already.

Location: Craigsville Beach, Hyannis, Cape Cod, MA
Event: Hyannis I Sprint Triathlon
Date: June 10, 2006

Its been roughly 3 years since I last competed in a triathlon, and that was somewhat evident in saturday’s race. Still, I had a good time, and the race was certainly a good time. The story begins Friday evening, were I braved the epic Boston-Cape Cod traffic to make it to Hyannis around 7:00. A word of warning: Mountain Dew + Boston Traffic = lots of profanity. After I popped in my Fellowship of the Ring (unabridged) on tape, I calmed down considerably. My parents decided to come up to watch the race, and were generous enough to get me a hotel room. My father spends about half his time now in Marriots on business, so, he has an butt-load of rewards points. Score! I had dinner with them at the harbor, and got to watch some World Cup action on TV.

I woke up at 5:00, suited up, and got in the car. My dad drove us down to the beach and when we got there at 5:40, the primary lot was almost full. I jumped out, checked in, and then hauled all my crap over to the transition area. I should point out, this event was well run especially since there were 850 racers. My transition set up, I jogged a little, and then sprayed cannola oil all over my arms and legs to facilitate the entrance to and removal of my wetsuit. The threating rain had not materialized, but it was cold and windy, so the race director had shortened the swim to 1/8 mile. I thought this was kinda lame, but we shall soon see it was probably a good call.

I managed to get the wetsuit on, and ran down to the water to swim a bit. Damn, was that water cold. I can’t imagine going without a suit. The swells were also pretty big, maybe 2-4 feet. The start was delayed by maybe 10 minutes, so, I swam a bit, and jogged on the beach a bit, and laughed at the poor guys with farmer john wetsuits who were freezing outside the water. Finally the first wave, composed of elite racers, and also people under the age of 24 started. Those of us in the 2nd wave, that is people ages 25-28 got down to the waters edge and waited for the horn. Then we were off!

The first thing I did was pile directly into the dude in front of me, and get tangled up. Swimming was hard through the waves, and we were getting pushed around a lot. The field opened at the first bouy, and I tried, as best I could, to set a good line for the second. I failed miserably, and swam a less than optimal route. Rounding the second buoy, I set a course for the transition area gate, and, again, failed miserably. The current kept pulling me off course. I finally made it to the beach and was supremely disoriented, but I made it to the transition area in more or less one peice.

One apon a time, I could fly through a transition in like 30 seconds. For this race, not so much. I put on socks, because I though it would be cold, and that turned out to be just plain ruinous. In the time it took me to get out of there, I probably could have made a sandwich or something. I finally wheeled my bike out and started pedaling. I wasn’t turning hard gears, but I was making pretty decent speed, and I dualed with some dude on a tricked out Kestrel for most of the race. Course was decent. Rolling, with no real climbing, but interesting with lots of twists and turns. I broke the yellow line rule passing a couple of times before I remembered that that was forbidden. The course was only 10 miles, so the bike was over pretty quick, although, not before I got trapped in a “no passing” zone behind some guy on a mountain bike. I rode back to the transition area and racked my bike, threw on my racing flats and hit the run course. This transition was again slower than it should have been because I didn’t get my feet out of my shoes before the transition area.
The run started out pretty painful, but I think I built to some decent speed by the end. I was passing a lot of people from the wave before me, but only a few in my wave. The run course was pretty good; there was a little bit of climbing, and then downhill to the finish. The actual finish was on sand, which makes sprinting not too fun. I crossed the line in 1:02:53.

Overall, I’d say the race was well run, even by Cosmo’s high standards . The shwag they gave out with the number packet was first rate! My level of fitness is ok right now, but my level of speed is crap. I’ve got some work to do, especially on the bike, if I’m going to make any showing at the Boston Tri in September.

Results are posted here.

Pictures to come!

This being the first of three trail races that I plan on doing this summer (hopefully), I thought it might deserve a brief write-up.

The race is 12.5 miles, starting right on campus in Missoula. About 400m east of campus (3200ft) , Mt. Sentinal rises pretty steeply (5158ft), drops down to a small saddle (4800ft) and then rises steeply again to University Peak (~5800ft).

The course starts on campus, climbs quickly about a third of the way up Sentinel and then winds its way around Sentinel on a rolling fire road before climbing up to the saddle from the south. Then the dips: first up University Peak and back down, then up Sentinel and down (both climbs are out and back). Then you descend about 2.4 miles on the north side of the saddle and run the final 1.5 miles of very flat terrain back to campus.

Now, Audrey and I are just back from our wedding tour on the east coast, and I can tell you that not much running was done. And our sights are really set on this race (I also plan on doing this one, but I think Audrey is working that weekend), so the Double Dip was really just supposed to be a training run for us.

The start was pretty slow, but the first bit of climbing up Sentinel, while only about .5mi, is quite steep, even with several switchbacks. I was happy sitting in the middle of the pack and just hill walking; even so I was steadily picking off people who insisted on maintaining a running stride even though they clearly were travelling farther up and down with each stride than forward. I got lots of dirty looks as I walked by.

I felt pretty good by the time we reached the fire road, so I pushed the pace a bit through the rolling terrain and picked off another 6-7 places. By the time we reached the beginning of the long climb up to the saddle and then up University, I figured I was in about 30th.

By this point I’m starting to feel me lack of running, so I ease things was back and hill walk almost the entire way up to the saddle, losing 2-3 places in the process. I, however, knew what was coming. The climb up University is steep. Really steep. For you Dartmouth skiers out there, think of that steepest section on the uphill run test…now make that last about .3 miles! That’s one of the three pitches. Lots of people weren’t just walking up this, they were staggering.

As people paid for their aggressive running on the early part of the climb up to the saddle, I picked up another few spots going up University. After that, you only have the .5mi and less steep climb up sentinel and lots of descending.

Largely thanks to running with Tom for a few years, I seem to be much better at descending than many people. I probably passed 4-5 people just on the final descent. Other people I passed on the final descent: 3 transients, 2 horses and about 5 hikers going up. The only dangerous moment was when I came up behind the horses (one rider and one pack horse) a wee bit too quickly. The pack horse spooked slightly, but was quickly brought under control.

The downhill running tends to lull you into feeling stronger than you really are. So when you’re not really that fit, you’ve been running/hill walking rather hard for about 2hrs and suddenly you have 1.5mi of dead flat running to do, things aren’t looking so good. So, yeah, the last 1.5mi were pretty brutal. I kept running, but I wasn’t very hapy about it.

Anyway, I ended up running it nearly ten minutes slower than I did last year (not surprising) but still came in the same place (21st overall). Go figure.

As I mentioned, I sort of whisked Audrey into the race as well. She needs only two fingers to count the number of running races she’s done since high school (an ill fated xc running team debacle). I sort of casually tossed out that she should just run it and try to finish as close to 3hrs as she could, hoping I wasn’t being too optimistic. So we were both pretty psyched that she rolled in just a few seconds under 3hrs!

All in all a lovely day, capped off with free Baskin Robbins ice cream as the finish. I’m sure the longer and more adventurous races to come will provide some more interesting stories…

Jon and I did a pair of adventure races last summer. We finished one smiling and we finished the other frowning.

So now that I’m in charge of the smiley race, I’m making there be a frowny division so everybody is happy. Conversely, if you call the smiley people wimps, they get frownier. It’s all about balance you see.

Here’s the Active link but they’ll charge you like $6. On the other hand you could just email me. That entry fee is going to cover maps and some refreshment for the finish. If there is anything left over, there’ll be prizes.

No promises yet but I’ll try to get a minibus or two for the start.

Parts 1, 2 and 3

When we left off, we were at Barnard hut with 10mi of “rolling” terrain. We just finished our mandatory 10min break at about 7AM. We’re in 7th with 8 or so min to 6th and 90 seconds to 8th.

I finally get to take the skins off which feels great (except of course on the uphills) since the skis run free and smooth again. The snow is mostly pretty good since a lot of snowmobiles have been through.