I can’t be the only person with a messy collection of USB flash
drives. Today I used my table saw to "3d-print" a way to make mine a
bit neater.
This particular implementation uses
cellular
PVC trim which is a plastic lumber substitute that does not need to
be painted (white anyway) and will never rot. I find it to be
dimensionally stable and perfectly formed. Anyway, good to have
familiarity with it for when all the trees are gone. Another miracle
construction substance that I swear by is
contact
cement which can hold the pieces together.
Here are the important dimensions for making a USB holder — the 4.5mm
is the critical one.
I have always enjoyed making things. I asked for a
router for my 17th birthday. Not a networking one like your ISP gives
you — there were no such things outside of universities and large
companies back then. I wanted a
woodworking power
tool kind of router. I got one and played with it a lot — fortunately
without cutting off my fingers. I built a router table for it to mount
to. I then built another router table using the first one. I built
fancy jigs for it. I believe my dad still has a set of round stacking
coasters I cut with it.
When I started college I soon found
myself in the world of machine
tools. That was quite inspiring and made woodworking seem kind of
rough. I had the idea that I could use my machinist skills and access
to a fine machine shop to make a CNC positioning system for a wood
router. This would be a serious project today, but back then it was
extremely serious. I ultimately was stopped by the expense of motor
controls at the time.
Of course today, it’s relatively easy. Last year I even wrote my own
PID motor controller in microcontroller C. But that’s not even
necessary. It is quite plausible today to order the entire concept I
had envisioned complete and ready to go.
Here’s
an example that I would have been delighted to buy that was not
terribly far from the specs of what I was going for.
With my recent construction project
I was again
using
my router and also doing
some pretty
involved computer modeling. I was reminded of my ancient project and
decided that my wood router would make a good practice project for
improving my hard surface technical modeling skills in Blender.
I have plans to build a high quality router table and, who knows,
maybe one day I’ll tackle the positioning system. But both of those
benefit from having a very accurate model of the router itself.
Hopefully that provides some background about my inordinate interest
in wood routers.
As I was working on this model in Blender, I had ancient memories of
deja vu where I’d already modeled this router before. I knew it wasn’t
fancy, but I had modeled it enough to work on the positioning system’s
design. I thought I would have a look through my ancient CAD files and
see if I could find any actual remnants of that project. And I did!
First up is a 2d drawing I did showing how the router head (the same
router I’m using today) would be held by clamps in the positioning
system.
The concept detail for the clamp itself looks like this.
I even found a surprisingly well preserved shop print for this part.
Sorry for the terrible image quality but I’m looking at these in
Blender after a rather gruesome conversion process and I still don’t
know how to clean these 2d line drawings up properly.
This was the one part of the system I actually machined and here’s
what those clamps look like today.
Then I found some files containing 3d models of my positioning system
concepts. The conversion software made a pretty horrendous mess of it
but here you can see the first router model I created.
This one was for my original router, the one I got for my birthday. I
still own that one and I think it still works, but it is plastic and
not an especially accurate or durable tool. It was while planning my
positioning system that I bought the Porter Cable 1001 shown in the
photograph, and I switched to working on designs based around that.
Here’s a very rough look at that design showing the model of the
Porter Cable router in a 5 axis system.
It seems that the conversion software that rescues things from the
AutoDesk proprietary dungeon doesn’t do as well with 3d models. But
you can get the idea.
All that must seem pretty unremarkable these days. What’s interesting
about it is that these ancient computer models are truly ancient. They
come from a time before normal engineers regularly made 3d computer
models and many were still using pencils and paper. Keeping timestamps
accurate over decades is a tricky problem but I found one of my TOPS
(tool positioning system) files with a full engineering title block
with a legitimate accurate date: 1993-09-22.
So what is the state of the art of Chris' router modeling abilities
28 years later? Here’s what it looks like as I work on it in Blender.
And here it is textured, lit, rendered, and animated.
The difference is obviously pretty huge. I’m quite happy with the
model itself. The geometry is generally accurate to well within 1/64" — it will be far more than sufficient for any subsequent design
purposes. I’m also delighted with the rendering appearance so far, but
amazingly I’ve only scratched the surface of the cosmetic details.
That is what Blender really excels at — making things look
fantastic. The fact that I’ve been able to model this technical piece
with such a high accuracy is my own obsession with getting Blender to
not just make things look right, but to be right. It is possible!
If you go back and look carefully at the
table of my skiing
activity you will see an "A" on February 17 and 21 — that means I
was "Alpine" skiing. A few years ago if someone asked me to make a
list of things I’d rather be doing in preferential order, Alpine
skiing would be at the top of that list. Today it is not even on the
list. While no less fun than it ever was, for me Alpine skiing has
been completely replaced by Nordic skiing.
I also used to enjoy riding a 750cc Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle. As with
skiing, there is nothing about the motorcycle experience I can not
achieve with a bicycle. That sounds stupid, so let’s explore that a
bit.
I’ve recently become interested in the branch of philosophy called
phenomenology.
This involves thinking about experiences not as objective data points
but as experiences that are experienced by an individual. For
example, imagine if I tell you about riding my motorcycle at
120mph/200kph and then ask you to tell me about a time when you were
going really fast. Got one in mind? Was it that time you were in
Kansas in the middle of the night asleep in a tailwind that was
pushing the Boeing 737 you were in? No? I wouldn’t have picked that
one either. But if we were talking about "fast" surely something like
that is up there, right? Maybe that’s how things work in the "real"
world, but it’s not how things really work in the real world. That’s
phenomenology.
One day after a superb performance racing to the top of Saddleback
Mountain in Orange County on my bicycle, I did something (else)
memorable. I came down that mountain in the most aggressive descent of
my life. I have never seen a YouTube video of crazy "downhillers"
doing anything crazier than I did that day. I was right on the edge of
what was possible. When I got to the bottom I marveled at the run and
thought to myself, "Wow — that was fucking stupid." Sure, there were
some truly objectively fast speeds involved — a motorcycle would not
have made things faster. But what had really made the experience
intense transcended pure numerical physics. Maybe I got up to
80kph/50mph momentarily. Although that was on unpaved roads, that’s
less than half of what I routinely did on my motorcycle. Yet, that day
I knew I never needed to ride a motorcycle again. The motorcycle, I
realized, was superfluous. I also realized that while it had been fun,
the absurd danger was unsustainable and I probably should get my
thrills other ways.
I still enjoy spontaneous descents but I don’t agressively seek them
out or push my luck. Instead, thanks to phenomenology, the most
intense feeling of speed I get now on the bike is climbing, just
like my memory of the first part of that day on Saddleback Mountain.
And so it is with skiing. While I love skiing in general, I no
longer require the motorized form to feel its excitement and
intensity. In fact, I now feel like I require a more active
participation than simply standing mostly still on two planks and getting
pushed along in the same way a Boeing 737 pushes you. If you think
that Alpine skiing is an active sport — and that’s what you like
about it — I’ve got some good news about what an active sport really
can look like.
If you believe that you like the raw speed and power of Alpine skiing,
why not just ride a snowmobile? Or perhaps just ski off a cliff? (I
know, some crazy people do ski off cliffs.) It turns out if you get
skis that are less effective at dissipating high energy freefalls (no
metal edges, heel not locked) you can still ski at the limit of those
skis. Since you’re probably not skiing out of an airplane door and
saving yourself from death with a parachute, we can conclude that
you’re not after maximum "skiing" speed per se. So why not slightly
reduce the amount of energy you can dissipate by switching to Nordic
skis? (Nordic skis are, in my opinion, faster than Alpine skis — they’re narrow, straight tracking, and aggressively optimized for low
resistance — but the difference is in how easy it is to stop.)
A correctly designed/chosen Nordic course is perfectly exciting and
challenging because it puts you in situations of maximum skiing speed
(i.e. the limit of your abilities to not wipe out) and tries to turn
stopping problems into recycled energy. Still, why not just fall down
the mountain the dumb old Alpine way? The miracle of Nordic skiing is
that you can also go up.
If you’re not athletic and you want the thrill of bicycle riding,
definitely consider getting a motorcycle. If you’re not athletic and
you want the thrill of skiing, sure, Alpine is fine. But if you are
athletic… Do you really need that "help"? Sure it’s not as bad as
riding around in a motorized wheelchair because you’re too lazy to
walk (i.e. driving a car), but for athletic people it should be
considered similar.
I get the feeling that people think that Nordic skiing is boring and
lacks high speed drama. Well, I would like to invite you to this crazy
ass groomed Nordic skiing trail (below #46 on
this map).
I’m not sure you’re even supposed to ski down it (up only) but I did
(both directions). I did not die and I considered that a pretty
impressive accomplishment (both directions).
For comparison, here is a black diamond Alpine descent through steep
moguls that I thought was impressive enough to take a photo of.
When I compare the two experiences (phenomenologically), the Nordic
one was way more intense and memorable. But the sky is the limit. Check out
this video of these crazy
and talented Nordic skiers — it would be hard to argue that they’re
the ones lacking the full skiing experience. Or consider the search
term "nordix" which seems to be some kind of competition that is so
absurd it is quite deliberately hilarious.
If there’s something (good) about the Alpine skiing experience that
these guys are missing, I’m not seeing it. And to belabor the point,
if Alpine skiers competed on this Nordix course, they would be
destroyed, literally stopping in their tracks as the slope turned
upward.
I believe that Alpine skiing is — for athletic people at least — an
impoverished form of skiing. But there are many more reasons to
consider Nordic skiing.
Cheap/Free
Here I’m on the Boreas Pass looking back northwest to where the
(Alpine) skiing costs money. SUVs full of it!
I’m delighted with having this gorgeous trail all to myself. Cost? $0.
100% Action, 0% Waiting
The amount of standing and sitting around in the freezing cold doing
absolutely nothing while Alpine skiing is closer to ice fishing than
any other sport I can think of. I’m not really sure of its rules, but
curling seems slightly more active than Alpine skiing. Sorry — do
some Nordic skiing and you’ll see what I mean.
One of the commandments of my religion requires that: if a day
includes the possibility for skiing, then there must be skiing.
I found myself sitting on the chairlift constantly thinking, "What am
I doing here wasting this fine snow? I could be skiing!"
No Lift Lines
The fact that the slopes are crowded enough to need Disneyland style
queue control is a bad sign, but the whole thing is stressful.
Beyond just the painful standing around doing nothing in the freezing
cold in very uncomfortable footwear, there’s a lot of anxiety about
what line lane to get in, is someone standing on your skis, whom will you
share the chair with, etc. And now The Plague. I pretty much
never like hanging out with a bunch of frustrated people all competing
for the same resource I am.
Less Time
Nordic skiing actually takes less time. Let’s say you’re working from
"home" in nice place like Breckenridge (which I can not stress enough
is totally a possible thing if you’re smarter than pre-2020 Silicon
Valley folk). Presumably you need to put in your daily contribution to
the software mines or whatever work you do. I find that Nordic skiing
for hours is a very special situation that will be more than plenty. I
find that even 30 minutes is a great daily workout on cross-country
skis. On the other hand, to properly get any value out of a trip to an
Alpine resort, you pretty much should be waiting in line as the lifts
open and skiing your last run just after they close. Well, that’s how
I do it. Which is both exhausting and very time consuming.
Natural Breaks
"Natural break" is a professional cycling euphemism for "taking a
piss". And the other side of that coin is not being dehydrated (e.g.
drinking coffee). A memorable moment Alpine skiing at Breck this year
involved looking for a bathroom and finding that they were down
several flights of stairs! If you’ve never worn (Alpine) ski boots
before, imagine wearing shoes made of 30lbs/15kg of framing lumber.
Stairs!
Nordic skiing by contrast is a lot easier. Obviously way out in the
wild woods is not a problem. But even when I came into the lodge to
use the BNC bathroom, one of the guys
who worked there explicitly mentioned "other options".
Despite that, when I’m getting dehydrated Nordic skiing, I’m usually
near a handful of clean snow to eat. On Alpine slopes, that fake snow
is often made from (gray?) water from who-knows-where.
"My" (rented) vehicle is within sight. There are fires to sit by to
relax or change shoes (right above my head in this shot). (Yes, that
is a bona fide
igloo!)
In contrast, the parking hassle at every Alpine skiing situation
I’ve ever been to has ranged from a not so great hike in lumber boots
to a substantial ordeal. When I’m at home, the Nordic ski trails I
usually use go right past my backyard — if enough snow falls I can
put my skis on in my garage.
Ecology
Some people don’t eat meat because not killing animals is more fun
for them; but ecologically motivated vegetarianism is valid too.
Skiing is similar. Alpine skiing is fundamentally a motorsport. Like
skydiving from airplanes or waterskiing a rope’s length away from a
motorboat, the sport roughly distances you from that truth while
you’re actively doing the fun part. But make no mistake — it is a
motorsport. What’s worse is because your motor is locked in to a
specific place, you need there to be snow in that specific place; this
means that snow-making equipment must be more heavily used with its
non-negligible footprint. And while Nordic centers with groomed trails
are fun, they are not essential. I think some grooming is necessary
for lift accessible Alpine slopes.
Alpine skiing concentrates throngs of insensitive tourists
into sensitive Alpine biomes. With Nordic skiing, besides being
low-impact in pristine natural environments, you can easily repurpose
other ecological disasters like clear cut farmland, strip mines, and,
worse, golf courses. Nordic skiing improves the value proposition for
converting rail corridors into bike paths, bike paths in general, fire
road and forest trail maintenance, etc.
I will never expect Nordic skiing to become a big part of commuting,
but it is a form of transportation — I used to ski to school in
Alaska.
Avalanche Management
Having large concentrations of people packed into structures at the
base of steep snow-covered slopes is begging for avalanche problems.
Even in relatively hilly Nordic skiing terrain, this is much less of a
problem. You can (and should!) also leave pretty much all of the trees
intact.
Cheap Equipment
The owner of one of the Nordic centers was showing off the fanciest
skis they sell and I asked how much they were - about 3 days worth of
Alpine lift tickets. (Chances are very good I will be getting some!)
Compared to the heavy price tags on Alpine equipment, I find Nordic
gear, even fancy skis or
carbon
fiber poles, to be a steal. Speaking of stealing, the Alpine skis I
once owned cost $10 at the swap meet. I thought that was a steal but
it later occurred to me that they may have been literally stolen. Like
my dad’s Alpine skis were on this trip.
Light Equipment
Alpine gear doesn’t just come with heavy price tags, it’s physically
heavy too. You don’t notice this until you’ve played around with
Nordic gear and then it becomes painfully obvious. My Nordic skis,
bindings, boots, poles, and all the clothes I typically wear skiing
weigh about as much as an Alpine boot.
Simple Equipment
In some ways dressing for Alpine skiing is simple — it will be very
cold. That is because you’re not really doing anything almost all of
the time. But addressing just how cold you’ll be and what to do about
it is quite a challenge. With Nordic skiing, I could literally ski
naked and not freeze to death. Eventually I wouldn’t even be cold. No
matter what the weather. Instead of the Antarctica gear you’ll need to
be comfortable in a high-altitude white-out on a stopped chair lift, for Nordic
skiing you basically need to be dressed with some clothes.
Summer Fun
I don’t know how you train for Alpine skiing in the summer. Sit still
with your feet weighted and dangling off a high chair? But Nordic
skiing has all kinds of cool things to play with in the summer. It’s
called roller skiing. I’m
totally going to get some!
These exercise machines
are famous, and these
are also high quality. If you live near Austria, there’s even
an indoor training hall
for Nordic skiing. (I know what I’m building if I ever become a
billionaire.)
Never Stuck
With Nordic skiing, there’s never that awkward struggle to traverse a
long horizontal stretch on heavy downhill skis. I actually
enjoyed skating those stretches as much as any other part of the
"downhill" experience, which was a hint to me. When I see sad, sad
snowboarders on such terrain or struggling to hop over to and from the
lift lines I can’t help shaking my head and thinking: these people
paid to do that.
Injury
Just like no one has ever said that it’s somehow healthy or builds
face strength for boxers to get punched in the face incessantly, no
one ever has thought that mogul skiing is good for anyone’s knees.
And hanging heavy weights on your feet and dangling them over the edge
of a very tall chair for hours is one of the most painful parts of
Alpine skiing for me. I was amazed at the people who didn’t want to
use the pull-down foot rests when they were available. Eventually, I
just started deploying it pre-emptively — if the group I filled out
the lift with disagreed, I was prepared to push them all off the
chair.
And that’s just subtle chronic problems. People (now) wear helmets
Alpine skiing and for a good reason!
(More lines!) This trip is the first time I’ve ever skied wearing a
helmet. Might be the last! I actually own that helmet for
winter bike
riding.
When I was Alpine skiing in my 20s, I once launched myself off a jump
I had surveyed previously only to find, mid-air, a gormless noob
standing in the landing zone. I avoided decapitating him with some
very adroit aerial adjustments which caused me to land with one ski
going straight into a hole. If that sounds painful, yes, it was. And
everyone involved got off lucky — I’m thankful my knee wasn’t
permanently damaged. You can ski the same terrain on Nordic skis for
double the stupidity, but you can also comfortably go elsewhere and
avoid almost all of the stupidity. Your choice.
Your Best Friend
Bring your dog! A lot of people have dogs and dogs like going outside
and being active. But Alpine skiing is not fun for dogs. Nordic
skiing, however, is fun for dogs and their people. There is even an
official sub-sport of animal-powered skiing called
skijoring. I saw an
Alaskan Malamute at
the park the other day and I knew from direct and personal experience
with such a dog in Alaska, that he’d much rather be pulling me on skis
than, well, anything else.
This adorable machine converts Nordic skiing into Alpine skiing — why
would you not do it this way?
The Wider Winter World
With Alpine skiing you need snow and just the right elevation change.
With Nordic skiing you need snow. This opens up a lot of
possibilities. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario are very large and are, in their
entirety, great for human-powered skiing.
Adventure
You want a real experience? Go ski touring. These cool people are
showing off some awesome
skiing in some awesome Alaskan settings.
Or try camping somewhere very exotic accessible only by skis. Or stay
in one of the
cool
mountain huts only accessible by very hard core people. Visit the
south pole like
this
awesome girl did!
Cool
If you basically plan your day around avoiding crowds as a top
priority (ahem), well, here’s what I got — yet more damn lines!
But that photo prompts another topic. Remember when there was a winter
Olympic sport that was so cool that it made people become sick — or
at least use that word a lot? I remember some days on Mammoth where
riding the lifts provided quite an entertaining spectacle of endless
stunt daredevils rolling down the mountain with snowboards strapped
to their feet. Good that it was entertaining because the lifts stopped
every few minutes to untangle some boarders who could not negotiate
the transition to or from the sedentary lifestyle of the lift. Skiers
weren’t just in the minority, but the narrow minority. But today,
check out the ratio of boarders. There are even kids learning to ski
today. That’s quite an amazing counter-revolution!
What that teaches us is that a lot of people on the slopes are really
after a fashion more than engaged in an activity they’d fight to
pursue even if nobody saw them. Well, potentially. These days, with
the shrinking lack of opportunity thanks to our warming planet and
growing population, the people out on the slopes generally fought to
be there and could have been doing a lot of other fun things. But
that level of not giving a shit what else there is to do that other
people do is exactly what being cool is. And I would argue that at
this point, Nordic skiing is that kind of cool.
Nordic skiing used to be seen as very square, sort of like being
a non-smoker before 1980. However human-powered skiing is not nearly
as uncool as it used to be.
When America’s newest ski resort opened on December 31st, Bluebird
Backcountry was uniquely adapted to social-distancing measures because
it lacked one thing that every other ski resort in America has: lifts.
There were no queues to stand in, worrying about your neighbour
breathing on you. Instead of shuttling ticket-holders up the mountain
by gondola, lifts and other mechanised means, the new resort made
skiers and snowboarders slide up the mountain before gliding down.
…
From 2016 to March 2020, sales of touring gear (such as skis with
bindings that release at the heel for skiing up) more than doubled,
going from $39m to $79m. By the 2017-18 season, 5% of America’s 30m
skiers and snowboarders were venturing out of bounds. Although some
resorts are open to backcountry skiers, most choose wilder environs,
such as national parks, where they find solitude and better powder.
Now covid-19 has supercharged the growth of the sport. In March last
year backcountry-gear sales leapt 34% compared with the year before.
Retailers reported that, a week after resorts were forced to shut
down, much of their stock was sold out. Car parks at popular access
spots were full. This year most resorts are open but the boom
continues. Manufacturers and retailers had increased the supply of
skis, boots and the like. Yet many stores are still running low. Doug
Bittinger, the owner of Mountain Outfitters in Breckenridge, Colorado,
reported that he had sold as much by late December as in the whole
2019-20 season. Now he has very limited stock.
Well, if what I saw out on the trails and at the Nordic centers was a
"boom" then there’s still a lot of room in the sport of Nordic skiing
to welcome cool athletic people who love to ski so much that they’ll
climb mountains to do it.
Yesterday I pulled up my driveway snow poles. I don’t really ever find
them useful but I like looking at them and imagining I’m living
someplace that (still?) gets a lot of snow. My neighbors took theirs
down weeks ago and it’s true we had 68F/20C spring temperatures since.
But two days ago, the ground was again white with snow. I was hoping
that maybe there’d be another day of late season skiing, but no, not
enough. I think that’s it.
But what a great ski season it has been!
To understand how great of a year it was let’s look back at all three
years I’ve been in Buffalo.
This is showing the winter spread out horizontally. The three lines
are the three winter ski seasons 2018-2019, 2019-2020, and this
season, 2020-2021 (I’m using the last digit of the year (9,0,1).
First I must note that I only bought
the skis in late January of 2019. After that I made it a religious
commitment that if there was enough snow to ski, then I would ski. So
while these records are days when I went skiing, they’re really
recording the snow conditions and not my laziness. My laziness was
near zero (except for 2021-02-05 when I was feeling very sick and it
rained — had the snow or my health been better, I’d have given it a
try anyway). While I didn’t keep careful track, it seems like I missed
3 or 4 days of possible skiing in 2018-2019 before I got the skis. Which
seems consistent with the next two years. The following season, there
were 3 freak early days in November.
What amazes me is that there was absolutely no skiing after
2019-02-04. Wow. And also nothing between 2019-11-13 and 2020-01-18.
I had 9 outings the first season. Then 12 the next year. Although this
year was missing nearly 30 days after 2020-12-27,
2021 was much better with 20 days skied in Buffalo.
My dad usually rents a house in Colorado during the ski season (thanks
to the miracle of remote work). This
year I had the time and freedom to go with him. On 2021-02-10, I skied
in Buffalo in the morning and Erie, PA in the evening. The next day, I
skied in Erie in the morning and, thanks to catching an unusual storm,
skied in Cincinnati, OH in the evening. The next day was spent driving
to Colorado.
And that’s where the ski year went from better-than-normal to awesome!
And I have photos! Yay!
Skiing the Boreas Pass trail was amazing. Simply gorgeous. It was
about a light 5% grade going up with usually a slight tailwind on the
way out. And how much did this fine skiing cost? $0. I loved skiing this trail!
Most days on the Boreas Pass I went as far as this water tower that
used to service the trains. That’s why the grade of the trail is so
perfect and mild — it used to be a rail corridor.
I usually would ski this trail to the water tower but the farthest I
got was here which I think is in sight of the pass over on the right;
I think it may also be the continental divide. You can see that in
this exposed terrain, the wind (headwind on the return remember) was
blasting. I was kind of nervous about such a long outing, easily the
energy output of running a marathon. But as I got farther from the
trailhead the snow was less visited and less packed down. I realized I
could hit soft snow and fall through and get kind of stuck. I knew I
didn’t have the stamina to slog back through waist deep snow if that
happened or if I broke a ski or something. Still, an epic day that I
will remember fondly.
I knew they had bike trails in Breckenridge and there was tons of
snow. Sure enough, the Blue River Trail just north of town not only
was skiable, it was groomed. I don’t know who did that or why, but
it was awesome. And $0. The wind generally was cranking in from the
north here. You’ll see in other photos that I often wear a hat with a
bill and/or shades. That’s actually to keep the snow crystals from
abrading my eyeballs. Like they were doing here! Still despite my
uncharacteristic equipment oversight on this outing, I had a great
time skiing that trail many times.
Here I’m at the farthest point (#46) on the trail system of the
Breckenridge Nordic Center. It was quite an epic climb to get up
here. I was feeling pretty awesome having accomplished it.
This was a "warming hut" out on one of the remote trails. It had a
Scandinavian style hot sauna. I didn’t fire it up — I was not one bit
cold after all that climbing!
Here I am skiing on the
Gold
Run Nordic Center. It was fine and it is without a doubt the most
sensible thing to do with a golf course. But it was a golf course — so, you know, the terrain wasn’t really ideal for my style of
athleticism. But there were some fun trails and it would be a good
place for skate skiing.
At Gold Run, it was warm enough to be tee shirt weather.
Oh ya, The Plague is still happening. Fortunately Nordic skiing
doesn’t require a mosh pit at the lift line. I think this was one of
the days I was trying different rental skate skis and I would put the
mask on to go inside. XC skiing itself with a mask is not really a possible
thing, at least for me.
An igloo! I was so delighted to see — and enter! — this little
structure since I’m fascinated by igloos. My dream is to figure out how
I can have one where I live. I fear that will involve moving.
I rented skate skis and was able to try different lengths and models.
I learned — my first time on skate skis on a groomed track — that,
yes, I am a natural at this.
( Not terribly shocking
really. ) I also learned that these 192cm ("192/N251") Fischer CRS
Skate skis were awesome! And I learned that this sport (skate skiing)
really does require a nicely groomed track.
I could see this bridge from the road down there and wanted to ski on
it. And here I am. But wow, there was a hell of a climb (or crazy
descent if you go the other way). I just can’t see this trail getting
tons of use despite having a giant bridge and an amazing view of the
town. I didn’t see anyone else on this section.
The snow in Colorado was immaculate. There were some warm mushy days
but the nights snapped everything back into a good base. And there
were tons of days with tons of live action snow. To illustrate how
great the snow was, this photo shows the one place at BNC (yes, I
covered all the trails) where the snow was not perfect. It’s totally
passable and in Buffalo, I’d call it "just fine". It is a sign though
that the season doesn’t last forever, even here.
Here’s another hut out on the remote trails. This one is more of a
normal cabin. Hell, I could live there!
You may notice that in a lot of photos I’m not wearing gloves. It
really has to be down below 15F before I’ll wear some very light
mechanics' gloves. The secret are these hand covers which I originally
designed for bike handlebars. I made this set as a first attempt and
my more serious subsequent set are on my bike now. But these work
great for skiing! I’m probably going to do a full redesign of this
system to handle the complicated wrist cages and other technical
details. But I love these things. This is also on the Boreas Pass
trail.
Driving back from skiing on the Boreas Pass I realized my face was covered
in blood. I don’t know when that happened but this kind of fun can be
pretty brutal to the respiratory system. But in a somewhat good way
ultimately. I hope. It’s better than smoking. That’s the house we
stayed in. Damn nice, but then again, I particularly like living in a
forest and in a snowy climate.
If you like these photos but wish there were more looking down
at my feet, uh highlighting my skis, then you might like
this video I made to
remind myself of skiing on groomed trails. Hey, it’s not easy doing
this sport and filming oneself doing it; this was my first attempt
and I quickly gave up!
As you can see, I look pretty delighted in all of these photos. If I
don’t, recalibrate now, because in every one of these photos, I was
pretty delighted. Besides being a great opportunity to do something I
love in a setting I love, another objective I had for this trip was to
see how I felt at high altitude. I had reported that
my Covid symptoms
dragged on into a year where some days — not all — I would feel
like I was at 3000m. Well, now I actually was! And I was ok. And then
XC skiing, especially skate skiing and heavy climbing, is notoriously
high-wattage. I was really pleased with how my body handled it. I was
in pretty great shape when I left and
I came back much better. I’m really starting to feel like I have my
proper energy levels back and I think pushing my cardio-vascular and
respiratory systems to the limit was beneficial. I certainly hope so,
because even if it wasn’t, I’d do it again!
I apologize of for the title pun, but I felt we needed to get that out
of the way as quickly as possible. Take a moment to collect yourself.
Once you’re done snickering at that inevitable and amusing linguistic
coincidence we can flush the figurative and move on to the literal.
A couple of years ago I was outside cutting firewood and a crazy
thought came into my head: this pine log is really a fine piece of
solid wood and I wonder if it could be used as the pedestal for the sink I
need to install in my downstairs bathroom. The log seemed solid and
straight so I set it aside to
season.
Fast forward ~18 months and I finally have some time to work on that
project. The answer turns out to be yes, it can work! And here it is.
If "Chris installed a sink" is all you need to know, stop reading
now. However, many people I know will appreciate nerdy details about
its design and construction. The rest of this post is for them!
This log was cut in 2019 from a tree that grew within sight of my
house. I counted 37 rings which presumably means it was planted in
1982. I think it’s kind of cool to have a piece of the local forest
memorialized in my interior space.
First I had to prepare the log by stripping the bark. I used an
insanely nice
Stubai
drawknife from Austria to do that job. Seriously, this is one fine
cutting tool!
This project was far more complicated than I expected. (Which, by the
way, would make a good title for my biography.) Take the "simple"
matter of crosscutting the log — this turned out to not be simple at
all. How do you line up such a cut? What exactly constitutes the long
axis of this quasi-cylindrical block of wood? If it still seems
obvious to you, consider a log that captures a 30 degree bend — how
exactly would you cut it to length such that its faces were parallel?
Just because the imperfections of the log were closer to a 3 degree
bend didn’t eliminate the quandary when trying to get things perfectly
lined up.
In the end I stood the log up on my glass table and shimmed it until
it looked pretty "vertical" even though it was never within 1/2" of
a carpenter’s framing square anywhere along the circumference. Once I
was satisfied that it was vertical enough, I used a
surface gage to mark a ring
around the top and bottom separated by the correct final height.
Here I’m laying out the second cut after the first cut was made.
Which does invite the question, how does one cut such a thing? Sure
normal people use chainsaws, but normal people aren’t trying to get
the two cuts to be within 1/16" of parallel. I ended up cutting it
about 1/2" oversize with a miter saw; this left alignment inaccuracies and
mismatches where I had to rotate the log because my saw could only
handle half at a time. I then
routed
out the middle leaving only a ring on the outside that would need to
be accurate.
With care, this was possible to cut by hand accurately with a back saw.
It seemed to come out decently enough.
That was just getting datums cut on the log. There was more
complexity. Pedestal sinks are deceptively simple looking but I
found out the last time I installed one that this is far from the real
story. The instructions for that previous sink said something like
this.
1. Position the pedestal.
2. Place sink on pedestal.
3. Attach sink to wall.
Note: If your wall does not include framing for a pedestal sink,
tear down your house and rebuild it so that it does.
Easy! On that project I ended up machining a thick aluminum plate that
mounted to the studs and which the sink could perfectly mate to. I was
going to be smarter about it this time. To start with I was going to
use a proper computer model (for the first time in decades). I can’t
model my ideas as fast as I can describe them in words like I once
could in AutoCAD but I am slowly
regaining that superpower with Blender. Comparing my virtual model
with what I actually created shows that it can provide profound
insight.
I had originally envisioned shelves coming from the wall
to stabilize the log. These shelves would be a small one-sided unit
that would mount to the one framing stud I had to work with (just left
of the electrical outlet). The other ends of the shelves I was going
to sink into the log. I realized that if the drain plumbing leaked,
getting to it would be a nightmare. And since drain plumbing always
seems to leak at first, I needed a new plan.
This is the point I started getting very serious about my computer
model of the project. I realized that instead of having the log
literally do the heavy lifting I could make the log optional. If I
could slide the log out when I needed to service the plumbing, that
would be very helpful. When in place, the log could still stabilize and
support the system. Without playing with all the parts in my computer
model, there’s no way I would have imagined that design.
From the moment I conceived of the idea I knew that one of the most
difficult fundamental problems with the concept was that a sink needs
a drain and while logs are sometimes hollow, this one wasn’t. I
started by roughing a channel for the drain using a circular saw and a
brick chisel.
I did a lot of hand chiseling until I got it roughed in. I used my
magnificent Sandvik scraper (not just for hand scraping machine tool
ways!) to smooth out the surfaces.
I have to admit that when I bought
the sink from
The Store sight unseen I didn’t really think about
how such sinks were held in place during earthquakes or toddlers. It
turns out this one had two blind holes that I could use. Only what do
I use for an anchor? I tried all kinds of designs that did not work.
These seemed good but I could not get them open once inside the sink.
Eventually I just went with a bent piece of #10-32 threaded rod with
some heat shrink tubing on the inside end.
Building the shelf cabinet was also an adventure. There are three wooden
dowels in the column and, because I’m a buiscuit joinery enthusiast,
biscuits everywhere it
is possible to put one. Since I’m not wealthy (and wood has doubled in
price it seems in the last couple of years) I used cheap pine boards
made from edge-glued planks. They’re decent enough but there was some
cupping and I’m too lazy and unskilled to attack that with a hand
plane. Given the imperfections of the boards, I feel the cabinet came
out as well as can be expected. Let’s just say it’s much more accurate
(parallel, perpendicular, flat, horizontal, etc) than the wall it’s
mounted to.
I don’t know what posessed me to try to mate the top shelf board to
the contour of the sink, but that’s what I set out to do. There was
some rather heroic layout work involved that I think turned out pretty
well.
But what was really astonishing was pulling off this compound
elliptical cut perfectly in one clean shot.
Hut ab
to my insanely excellent Swiss-made Bosch jigsaw!
And then my least favorite part of the whole deal - painting. I used
boat topside paint which I figured would be sane for a bathroom
feature. I kept thinking that I should
fill the wood like I did on
my guitar but unfortunately I was too lazy to
get the proper wood filler necessary.
The painting still seemed to go ok.
For the last two years I’ve looked at two feet of janky plumbing
coming out of the wall. You see that "workbench" in the pictures of
the work on the log? That horror is what used to be in that bathroom
and it is definitely doing a much better job as a workbench. But they
had the sink shifted over a couple of feet from the supply and drain
with weird cantilevered extension plumbing. So actually step one was
to fix all that. I was pretty happy with how that all looked except
for the ragged hole around the drain fitting.
I am quite proud of the inspriation I had to use a Trader Joe’s
peanutbutter container lid as an escutcheon. And also proud of being
able to cut it to size perfectly.
It looks great! And this is pretty important with a pedestal sink
since the plumbing is all exposed to a certain extent. I’m actually
pretty happy with how that all came out.
How technically tricky was this project? Let’s consider a planning
mistake I did fail to prevent. I had considered counter-boring the
sink’s hold-down studs just to keep them hidden from view, but I was
lazy and since it’s on the underside of the top shelf, I didn’t. I was
however surprised to find during installation that this feature was
not optional; if the sink hold-down nuts were not recessed into the
shelf, the log could not slide under. I had modeled the log’s cross
section as a perfect ellipse and that simplification proved
insufficient. It turns out that one of the hold-downs was exposed
halfway and the other was completely covered by the log’s top.
But things get sillier. For a flavor of how this project went consider
the fix. I experimented with different
Forstner
bits. I discovered that my 3/4" was the right size but when in
testing I found it was not cutting well at all. I then dug out a set
of fine grinding stones and dressed the cutting edge. Not exactly
sharp, but once again plausible for cutting. I then went to cut these
counterbores and realized that my hand drill would not fit between the
shelves. Great. I had to dig out my router again and that worked fine,
but it would have been infinitely easier had I started with that plan
while the shelf was disassembled. This project was a long list of
reminders why careful planning can be more essential than optional.
Here are the counterbores hacked in place in what welders nonchalantly
call the "overhead position".
Here is the installation in progress showing the hold-down fasteners I
fabricated. Here it’s easy to see how the log is designed to slide
away for easy maintenance on the plumbing. You can also see my layout
marks to carve clearance for the drain plumbing’s lockrings.
Finally here is another view of what the finished installation looks like.
And yes,
it
does work!
In the end, I think I was successful with this project. Well, if by
"successful" I mean I can wash my hands in the bathroom without a
puddle on the floor after only a couple weeks of exacting labor. Does
it work aesthetically? Probably not for normal people. I personally
like it — as someone who has also taken "tree hugger" from figurative
to literal.