Google Sketchup

Google has done it again. On March 14, they bought up a small startup software company called @Last Software. This company produced Sketchup, a 3D modelling tool and sold it for $495.00 per copy. On April 26, Google released it to the world...for free. I should say that you can still buy a professional version of Sketchup, but for the average Jill or Joe, the free version should do nicely.

Be careful...it is very addictive. The easiest way to get started after you download your copy (around 20Mb) is to follow the quick video tutorials offered on the Google Sketchup web site.

We're planning an addition to the house to be built sometime this year. Basically, a 1 room extension, dimensions 14' x 20' (or 4.6m x 6.5m). So I got started, drawing this in Sketchup, just to get an idea what it might look like.

So far I'm up to version 13. Whether or not you can do actual final construction drawings using this, I don't know, the jury is still out on that. It might just be too finicky.

The neat thing is that you can drag the cursor all around and rotate your drawing every which way, see things from the top, the bottom, sides, zoom in for very close detail.

After you download and install Sketchup, you can download my drawing as well. Amazingly enough, the whole drawing only takes up something like a 130 k.

Google Planimeter and Rain

Huh?? First of all, what's a planimeter? A planimeter is a device which allows surveyors, cartographers and other people with weird interests to quickly compute the area bounded by a number of points by setting the counter on the device to zero, then dragging one arm of the device along the outline of the area while keeing the other arm stationary. Once you come back to the original point, i.e. you complete the circle or loop, you can read the approximate area off the dial. Now, mind you, it's quick and dirty: I wouldn't use it to calculate the amount of concrete in a complicated structural component, as you're liable to have a whole lotta concrete left over. (Quick, where's the nearest pothole?). While working for MTO in the seventies, we used the planimeter extensively to compute monthly estimates on road contracts.

In doing research for converting Latitude and Longitude to UTM, I came across Jeff Poskanzer's web site (www.acme.com). While perusing his site, I noticed one item that piqued my interest: Google planimeter. It allows you to calculate the area for either large or small areas and anything in between, with a good degree of accuracy! How it's done, I don't know, but it sure is interesting. In short, it shows you a Google Map, you place points on it by clicking your mouse and when you think you've got enough accuracy, you read the total area displayed just below the map. Way cool!

So, there was a massive rainstorm in the US on April 29th and 30th (2006). From Accuweather.com I copied the map showing the average rainfall expected for the area involved. Then, I used the Google Planimeter involved to compute the total area. As you can see, the area measured 1.292e+6 km2, which equals 1.292 million square kilometers (I only measured the 2 inch rainfall area.) 2 inches equals 5 cm. To calculate the total amount of rain:

1,292,000,000,000 x .05 = 64,600,000,000 cubic meters. That's 64 billion 600 million!

From www.intellicast.com, I got the actual situation as of about 7:30 am April 29th.

Can Keith come out and play...?

Sitting down at my computer in the basement, I heard a rustle in the leaves collected in the window well. This drew my curiosity, as it drew his. The stare-off was a draw: he went his way and I went mine, though not until after I had rattled off some shots on the 20D.





Spring has been very mild this year, and everything is way ahead of normal. I already saw some fruit trees in bloom. The birds, well they do what comes naturally this time of year. They're all lovy-dovy. Just check out these mourning doves who where carrying on (and all now) in the crab apple tree up front.





The hours around dawn and dusk are what photographers call the magic hour, since that's when the light plays tricks on our eyes with its softness and long shadows. At that time, I love to take a walk to deep in the back yard, and then just stand there, looking back. Usually this time of year there is little wind then, so everything is so still and quiet, except for the cardinals singing their majestic song. Spine tingling/bone chilling. Here's the shot from way back there. I tried to record the cardinals' song, but I'm going to have to run out to Radio Shack to git me a microphone pre-amp, as it just wasn't loud enough. You really do need to see the larger version of this shot to even remotely get an idea as to what I'm talking about.


Then I took a walk in the forest, and lo and behold, I saw a trillium in bloom! In April! Most of our trilliums are red, white ones are somewhat rare around here for whatever reason.

On the way back out from taking this picture, I almost tripped over a rusted-out-long-ago-abandoned oil filter. Damn!

Now I'm good 'n mad...

... because this freakin' male red bellied woodpecker keeps visiting the bird feeder and I just cannot get a decent shot of him. This is about the best I could do today, but I'll get him, I'll get him in the end, oh yes I will (name that tune?)

Today's White Thursday, but I presume this doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot to too many people out there. To me, it conjures up images of being liberated from school for 2 weeks (Easter vacation), daffodils in bloom, selling cheese to fat Germans driving mid sixties Volkswagen beetles, eating hard boiled eggs (and lots of them).

The odd year White Thursday coincides with my birthday. And so it was in 1959. I remember getting a soccer ball as the main present. Actually, calling it a soccer ball is a bit of an exaggeration, since it was a cheap plastic ball, oblong to boot (pun intended). It also sprung a leak about a week after I got it. Lo and behold, it was replaced with a better version! Woohoo!

Still in all, happy memories. Or should I say bittersweet?

Birthday Girl

For those of you not in the know, Amaryn celebrated her first birthday last week (April 6th to be exact), blissfully unaware of the whole thing, as a 1 year old should be. She did manage to play the part though in the traditional stick-your-hand-in-the-birthday-cake-and-smear-it-all-over-your-face routine that all 1 year-olds have to undergo.

It is only my personal opinion, and therefore easily dismissable, but I do believe she is going to be a genius in languages, as already she is saying 'bye bye', 'thank you' in a quite audible manner. Of course, languages are not necessarily restricted to human communication only... I mean, what would you call Visual FoxPro?

Latitude/Longitude Conversion to UTM in Visual FoxPro

And now, for something completely different:

A friend of mine works for Rogers Communications, a huge cable company in this part of Canada. He's involved in 'plant': that part of the business that deals with physical assets in the field i.e. the location of swith boxes, cables, routers, switches, hubs and the like. He wanted to know if I knew anything about conversion from latitude/longitude to UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) Coordinate System. I said I didn't and we left it at that.

But then for fun I got poking around on the web and found a version in PHP done by Jim Studnicki. He, in turn, had translated this from a  function originally written in C by Jef Poskanzer. I spent some time converting Jim's PHP version to Visual FoxPro and after the usual minor problems I got it to work. I must say this is the first time I used the DTOR() (degrees to radians) function in VFP. (not that function is hard to mimic otherwise: pi/180).

Anyway, here it is. It ain't pretty, but if you need it, you can fix it up yourself. Once you have it up and running in VFP, test the results against any of the UTM conversion calculators on the web to verify your results.

 Hopefully it can help some other VFP developer in the future. This is what is so absolutely fabulous about the web: the free sharing of information. Ten years ago, getting an answer to this would have been a real problem. Now, anybody with half a brain can do this.

*Keith Hekker 2006-04-02
*Translated from a PHP function by Jim Studnicki
=ConvertToUTM(43,-80)

Procedure ConvertToUTM()
PARAMETERS Latitude, Longitude
* convert decimal geographic coordinates to UTM
*
* param latitude as decimal
* param longitude as decimal

cOldDecimals = SET("DECIMALS")
SET DECIMALS TO 6

* square of eccentricity of equatorial cross-section
ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED = 0.00669437999013

* eccentricity prime squared
ECC_PRIME_SQUARED = ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED /;
(1.0 - ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED)

* radius of Earth in meters
EQUATORIAL_RADIUS = 6378137.0

* scale factor
K0 = 0.9996

* make sure longitude is between -180 and 180
IF longitude < -180.0
longitude = longitude + 360.0
ENDIF
IF longitude > 180.0
longitude = longitude + 360.0
ENDIF

* get UTM letter
DO CASE
CASE latitude <= 84.0 and latitude >= 72.0
utmLetter = "X"
CASE latitude < 72.0 and latitude >= 64.0
utmLetter = "W"
CASE latitude < 64.0 and latitude >= 56.0
utmLetter = "V"
CASE latitude < 56.0 and latitude >= 48.0
utmLetter = "U"
CASE latitude < 48.0 and latitude >= 40.0
utmLetter = "T"
CASE latitude < 40.0 and latitude >= 32.0
utmLetter = "S"
CASE latitude < 32.0 and latitude >= 24.0
utmLetter = "R"
CASE latitude < 24.0 and latitude >= 16.0
utmLetter = "Q"
CASE latitude < 16.0 and latitude >= 8.0
utmLetter = "P"
CASE latitude < 8.0 and latitude >= 0.0
utmLetter = "N"
CASE latitude < 0.0 and latitude >= -8.0
utmLetter = "M"
CASE latitude < -8.0 and latitude >= -16.0
utmLetter = "L"
CASE latitude < -16.0 and latitude >= -24.0
utmLetter = "K"
CASE latitude < -24.0 and latitude >= -32.0
utmLetter = "J"
CASE latitude < -32.0 and latitude >= -40.0
utmLetter = "H"
CASE latitude < -40.0 and latitude >= -48.0
utmLetter = "G"
CASE latitude < -48.0 and latitude >= -56.0
utmLetter = "F"
CASE latitude < -56.0 and latitude >= -64.0
utmLetter = "E"
CASE latitude < -64.0 and latitude >= -72.0
utmLetter = "D"
CASE latitude < -72.0 and latitude >= -80.0
utmLetter = "C"
OTHERWISE
* returns "Z" if the latitude is outside the UTM limits of 84N to 80S
utmLetter = "Z" *
ENDCASE

lat_rad = DTOR(latitude)
long_rad = DTOR(longitude)
zone = INT((longitude + 180) / 6) + 1
IF latitude >= 56.0 and latitude < 64.0;
and longitude >= 3.0 and longitude < 12.0
zone = 32
ENDIF

* Special zones for Svalbard.
IF latitude >= 72.0 and latitude < 84.0
DO CASE
CASE longitude >= 0.0 and longitude < 9.0
zone = 31
CASE longitude >= 9.0 and longitude < 21.0
zone = 33
CASE longitude >= 21.0 and longitude < 33.0
zone = 35
CASE longitude >= 33.0 and longitude < 42.0
zone = 37
ENDCASE
ENDIF

* +3 puts origin in middle of zone
long_origin = (zone - 1) * 6 - 180 + 3
long_origin_rad = DTOR(long_origin)
N = EQUATORIAL_RADIUS / sqrt(1.0 - ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED *;
sin(lat_rad) * sin(lat_rad))
T = tan(lat_rad) * tan(lat_rad)
C = ECC_PRIME_SQUARED * cos(lat_rad) * cos(lat_rad)
A = cos(lat_rad) * (long_rad - long_origin_rad)

M = EQUATORIAL_RADIUS *;
((1.0 - ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED / 4 - 3 * ;
ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED * ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED / 64 - 5 *;
ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED * ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED *;
ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED / 256) * lat_rad - (3 * ;
ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED / 8 + 3 * ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED *;
ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED / 32 + 45 * ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED *;
ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED * ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED / 1024) * ;
sin(2 * lat_rad) + (15 * ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED *;
ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED / 256 + 45 * ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED *;
ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED * ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED / ;
1024) * sin(4 * lat_rad) - (35 * ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED *;
ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED * ECCENTRICITY_SQUARED / 3072) *;
sin(6 * lat_rad))

easting = K0 * N * (A + (1 - T + C) * A * A *;
A / 6 + (5 - 18 * T + T * T + 72 * C - 58 *;
ECC_PRIME_SQUARED) * A * A * A * A * A / 120) + 500000.0


northing = K0 * (M + N * tan(lat_rad) *;
(A * A / 2 + (5 - T + 9 * C;
+ 4 * C * C) * A * A * A * A / 24;
+ (61 - 58 * T + T * T + 600 * C -;
330 * ECC_PRIME_SQUARED) * A * A * A * A * A * A / 720))

IF latitude < 0.0
* 1e7 meter offset for southern hemisphere
northing = northing + 10000000.0
north = .F.
ELSE
north = .T.
ENDIF

? "Easting = " + TRANSFORM(easting)
? "Northing = " + TRANSFORM(northing)
? "North = " + TRANSFORM(north)
? "Zone = " + TRANSFORM(zone)
? "UTM Letter = " + TRANSFORM(utmletter)
SET DECIMALS TO &cOldDecimals
RETURN

Fun With Numbers

The incredible forces of Mother Nature have always intrigued me. Consider this for a minute:

Yesterday, we had a rain storm across Norfolk County. It was the usual scenario, one that has been playing itself out for thousands or years and will continue to do so for at least the foreseeable future, climate change notwithstanding.

It had been a warm day, up to a maximum of 21 C. It rained moderately for a couple of hours just before a cold front swept through, dropping the temperature behind it to 10 C.  According to the Environment Canada website, 12 mm of rain fell at Delhi, just down the road. No big deal, it happens all the time.

Where things get interesting is when you start looking at the numbers. The area of Norfolk County is 1,609.95 square kilometres, about 2.5 times that of the City of Toronto at 661 square kilometres. Assuming that the rain fell evenly across Norfolk County, we do the calculation for the total volume of rain in cubic metres as follows:

1,609.95 x 1,000 x 1,000 x .012 = 19,283,400 cubic freakin' metres!

Yes, that is right, more than 19 million cubic meters. If one were to lay these end-to-end, the wall of water, 1 metre high and 1 metre wide, would reach halfway around the world, before it would run out.

Now, let's take this one step further. That water just didn't happen to get there on its own. It had to evaporate from the ocean to get here. In yesterday's case, it most likely came from the Gulf of Mexico. OK, it takes 600 calories to evaporate 1 gram of water, so that's 600,000 calories for 1 litre or 600,000,000 (600 million) for 1 cubic metre.

This is where it gets really handy to have the Command Window of Visual FoxPro handy, as the numbers get so large, it's easy to lose track. (Even handier to have the _CLIPTEXT system variable available). To evaporate all that water

19,283,400 x 600,000,000 =  11,570,040,000,000,000 calories are needed

Sorry, but I don't know how to pronounce that number. Nevertheless, we carry on. We convert this number to Joules. By the way, 1 Joule is about the equivalent to the amount of energy you expend when you lift a small apple 1 metre off the ground.

11,570,040,000,000,000 calories = 48,409,047,360,000,010 Joules

Now, although a beautiful unit of the metric system in its own right, the Joule is exceedingly meaningless to most people. So let's try kW (kilowatt-hour)

48,409,047,360,000,010 Joules = 13,447,065,175 kW/hr or roughly 13.5 million Megawatt/hr

To put this into perspective, the Nanticoke Power generation station on Lake Erie generates 4,000 Megawatt/hr. It would have to run 3,361 hours (that's about 20 weeks) at full bore to generate that amount of power.

Yet another way:

48,409,047,360,000,010 Joules = 45,891,776,897,279 BTU/hr

An average house furnace is about 100,000 BTU/hr, so it would take 458,917,768  (that's 458 million) house furnaces burning solid for 1 hour to evaporate the water involved.

And I'm only talking Norfolk County!

Furthermore, I haven't even talked about the energy involved to transport the water vapor 2,000 km from the Gulf of Mexico to Norfolk County.

Some useful formulas:

1 calorie = 4.18400 joules

1 Joule = 2.7778×10⁻⁷ kilowatt-hour (or otherwise 0.00000027778 kilowatt-hour)

1 Joule = 9.48×10⁻⁴ BTU (or otherwise 0.000948 BTU)

It was forty years ago today...

...that the Rolling Stones played a venue known as Brabanthal in Den Bosch, Netherlands. And I was there. This was my first big rock event. The Stones had made a name for themselves over the previous couple of years and their lone previous appearance in the Hague (Scheveningen) had ended in a major riot where the 'audience' destroyed the concert hall. So this sounded like fun. That day (March 26th) was my birthday (still is, as a matter of fact). My brother Gerard had been able to somehow obtain 4 tickets for this concert and was kind enough to invite me along. He had, under false pretenses I might add, also been able to borrow a Volkswagen Beetle off some guy he knew at work. Not that the car was an absolute necessity, but it sure made getting there a lot easier than having to take public transit to Den Bosch as it was about 100 km away. So off we drove, late in the afternoon, the 4 of us squeezed into the bug. The venue was normally used to auction cattle, so since the place was already a pigstye, I guess the organizers figured this was the ideal place for a rock concert. Not that the word concert was actually used for an event like that back in those days: that term was strictly reserved for classical music events. To call a performance by the Stones a concert would have been sheer blasphemy. Total number of spectators was extremely low as well: 9000. The entrance fee was pretty steep though: 10 guilders, which converted to about $3 US back in 1966. The warm up acts were Dutch groups, among them the Outsiders and the Bintangs, both now revered in Dutch pop history. The late Wally Tax was the leader of the Outsiders, and a legend in his own mind even back then. I remember we made our way in through some kind of small side entrance. The hall was already packed and the concert was in progress. There were no seats, everybody just sort of piled up against the stage. Talking about the stage, it wasn't exactly up to today's standards: very few, if any spotlights, no massive amplifier banks and speakers. The only fireworks would have been Keif smoking on stage. Mick was his usual trade mark self. From the setlist I don't remember much: the only thing that comes to mind is '19th Nervous Breakdown', the end riff where Bill Wyman's bass sonically mimics a person slide into a state of mental anguish.

The next time I saw the boys live was at Sarsstock in Toronto in 2003, 37 years later. Number of spectators: 500,000.

Thank you, vandals...

...for if it wasn't for your destructive behaviour I never would have found out about the Waterford Heritage Rail Trail. You see, some time ago there was a report in the local newspaper about some fences being destroyed on this trail. So, with a little bit of sleuthing, we found out where the trail runs. Turns out it is just about under our nose, well, say 6 km directly east of us, just east of Hwy 24 on Townsend Road #12.

Today, we decided to take it for a test spin. And it's certainly worth exploring. It runs through, as the brochure describes it, a 'pastoral' landscape, consisting of about 60% farmer's fields and the rest bush and thickets. As luck would have it, just 20 minutes into our walk, three deer appeared from behind a low hill to our right. We looked at them, they looked at us, then off they ran, white tails being waved like fans on a summer's day.

The trail is around 6.2 km in length, of which we did the top 4 return. In addition to that, we walked into Waterford and had a coffee/tea in "The Cafe".

Then, on a sidestreet in Waterford, I spotted this door. Seems like the contractor miscalculated the depth of the basement.












Even though the temperature was right around zero again, at times, it felt a lot warmer than that when the sun was out. Could it be true? Is spring really on its way? Nah, don't get too excited.

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind

Along the northern shoreline of Lake Erie, east of the sleepy little fishing town of Port Burwell, contractors are currently constructing 66 wind turbines. Each of these turbines is capable of generating 1.5 MW (megawatts), so the total project's potential is 99 MW, enough to power 30,000 homes. As a comparison, Toronto's lone Exhibition Place generator is capable of producing .75 MW, enough for 250 homes.

Since this project is now in its advanced stages, we decided today to take a field trip out to



the site, approximately 50 km to the southwest of where we are. The weather was partly cloudy, with the temperature hovering around zero degrees celsius, a little cool for this time of year, but not too bad.

The turbines aren't hard to find, just drive in the general direction and sooner or later they will pop out above the tree line. Then just home in. If you miss them, you'll find yourself swimming in Lake Erie.

Now I must say, these things are humongous. Not only that, they


are very big. Produced by GE (General Electric), they are of the SLE type. The hub (i.e. the tower) can reach heights of 61m to 85m. The total rotor width is 77 m. There are about 25 in Norfolk County, the rest is in Elgin County.

We were lucky: just as we got there, the giant crane used to assembled the turbines was raising the nacelle for Turbine 52, which, as we all know, is positioned just west of Houghton Centre and south of Lakeshore Road. The nacelle is the giant box that contains the generator and the gearbox to which the rotors are attached. Rasing the nacelle was a fairly quick operation, all in all it took about 20 minutes. Obviously, these people had done this before. No sooner was it positioned in place or we could hear the ratchet air wrenches being used to tighten the bolts fastening the nacelle to the tower. In order to prevent the nacelle from slamming into the tower on the way up, two cables were attached to a dozer winch, which slackened while the nacelle was being hoisted.

We stuck around for a while, hoping to see the rotors going up as well, but no such luck. So we drove around a bit, eating the lunch Anne had lovingly prepared in advance. Most of the turbines are somewhat far from the nearest road, usually 2 to 300 m, but there is one on Concession Road 2 ENR, which is only 50 m max into the field. This road is the first one west of Norfolk County Road 28 and runs parallel to it. We stopped at this particular turbine and with the Sigma 10-20 mm set at about 17 mm, I was able to get the whole turbine in the shot, while virtually positioned directly underneath it. Way cool.

Across the road, I framed a ready-to-go turbine between two weather beaten trees.
The Lakeshore tends to be very run down at this point, hopefully, these turbines will give it a well deserved economic boost.
The turbines aren't in operation yet: electrical lines still have to be run and I'm sure there's lots of testing to be done. Supposedly they'll deliver their first power to the grid sometime in April.

I sure hope it works and that it is a profitable venture. Allow me to be a bit skeptical: where we are, wind seems to be something that only occasionally kicks up a storm (pun intended). Most of the time calm days seem to prevail. But then, I've been wrong before...

Things you can do with a bathroom window

Enjoyed the glorious March sunshine this morning, it was a perfect day, cloudless and windless. I let the sun stream on my face while taking a walk in the forest, among the towering oaks, pines and maples. Buds are starting to develop, though there is still a long way to go... Birds are starting to get excited. Common grackles and robins have returned in the last week and now the mornings are a cacaphony of sound, grackles carrying the main tune.

After the walk I had lunch, and while eating this in the sunlit chair in the living room, a bird of an unusual kind visited the bird feeder in the front yard. I rushed to my camera bag, fired up my trusty Rebel and took about 10 shots with the Tamron 28-300 mm through the bathroom window.

Looking through the 'Birds of Ontario' book helped me make the identification: a red bellied woodpecker, rather rare in Ontario. It's a female. Whether or not the male is close by, I do not know. This species reaches the northern limits of its habitat right around Toronto, but is quite common across large portions of the US. In Ontario, it's only found in areas with large tracts of Carolinian forests. It is supposed to be found year round, but I ain't never seen no such critter before.

Update: the male was at the bird feeder this morning (2006/03/20). However, it got away before I was able to get a shot of it.

I did a quick copy from the camera into Picasa, then minor edits in Photoshop (cropping, sharpness, noise)

(By the way, you guys do know that double clicking on the picture produces a larger version?)

Arizona Trip Wrap Up

Well, actually, we did more than just Arizona. If you care to study the map to the left (which you probably won't), you'll see that we visited, in this order, Nevada, California, Arizona, Mexico, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. The majority of time of course was spent in Arizona.

I did some quick queries in Visual FoxPro and came up with some interesting statistics gathered by the logger:


- total records generated: 232, 570
- total distance travelled: 5,390.03 km
- highest elevation attained: 2,480 m above sea level on SR 152 between Silver City, NM and Truth Or Consequences, NM
- lowest elevation attained: -14.70 m (below sea level), south of Yuma, AZ near the Mexican border)
- average speed: 82. 877 km/h
- top speed: 133.307 km/h (allright I admit it, I was speeding)

About the car: Saturn Ion, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rate it a 6. It being a brand new car, you would not expect any mechanical trouble and we didn't experience any. However, ergonomically it is poorly designed, the usual North American approach to looks over functionality. All those rounded lines really cut back on the amount of interior space available. The car's overall responsiveness to accelerating, steering and braking were not more than average, in fact, getting back into my Toyota Echo was a real joy. I couldn't readily track gasoline consumption, so I'm not sure what it was like, but again, compared to the Echo, it would not be good.

About accommodation: for the price you pay, the hotels and motels are a real bargain. They are also readily available, whether in the north or the south, so booking ahead is not really required unless you intend to visit a really small town, such as Kayenta, near Monument Valley. Accommodations are clean and well kept wherever you go. Most have continental breakfast thrown in. Staff, for the most part, are very friendly, with a few ignoramuses thrown in here and there to keep you on your toes.

Roads: Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada have excellent roads, some of the best in North America. Oddly enough, gasoline in these three states is a lot cheaper than in California ($2.30 US vs. $ 3.10 US), yet the roads in California (at least the ones we drove on) were in a lot poorer shape. I'll leave it to the pundits to analyze why.

Food: we bought a cooler the first day in Vegas and then stocked up on food at Von's, which is associated/owned by Safeway. A friendly cashier inquired whether we had a loyalty card, upon which I answered no. She thought for a sec, and decided to get us one, and it is a good thing she did, because it saved us money 'big time'. It works like a discount card: after the final tally, you swipe the card and like a slot machine, the cash register starts working away, calculating the varying discounts on each item you purchased. This usually adds up to about 33% of the total, causing the customer to leave the store sporting a huge smile, which is exactly what Safeway wants. So everybody's happy, supposedly. Anyway, this allowed us keep the grocery bill down to reasonable levels.

With the cooler topped up, we had excellent lunches and munched on things like carrots and fruits while driving. Not having to search for a place to eat, then ordering and finally eating lunch, saves a huge amount of time. We usually ate dinner at a middle-of-the-road restaurant, which are normally easy to find and priced very reasonably.

Weatherwise we were very lucky in that it was a dry winter: normally Flagstaff and other places north get a fair amount of snow. Except for a dusting in Kayenta, we didn't see any.

Arizona and the surrounding area are certainly very unique in their landscapes and are well worth visiting. The highlight: Monument Valley. We thoroughly enjoyed our trip, from start to finish. I'd love to do Utah next, but for that it would have to be a little warmer overall, e.g. October. Sounds good to me!

Just some observations about Arizona that perplexed me a little:

- recycling seems to be non existent. Whereas in Ontario we fanatically recycle newspapers, plastic, food scraps, cans, etc, none of that appears to be happening in the Great Southwest. The only reference to recycling we found was in the Grand Canyon where the signs announced 'The National Park Service proudly recycles'.

- although Arizona gets something like 300 days of sunshine a year, there was very little done to capture any of this in terms of solar energy devices. A few traffic signs, the odd house, but nothing more. Makes ya wonder...if not here then where? What it definitely establishes is that conventional fossil fuels are too cheap at this point in time.

Lake Havasu City, AZ to Las Vegas, NV via Laughlin, NV

I'm doing this post from the Las Vegas airport. Our flight is delayed by 2 hours, so it won't leave till 1:00 in the morning here. Fortunately, there is a free wireless connection here at the airport so I won't be bored.

To offer evidence for the rant in my previous post, I render this photograph, which I snapped just as we were leaving our motel in Lake Havasu City. This boat was parked at the condo next door over night. The owner or driver had to take a couple of stabs at getting it out the gate and onto the road. And let me tell you it by far is not the biggest one I saw.

But enough of that. We were heading for Laughlin (pronounced Lofflin). Since we had come down from Laughlin on Friday, I wanted to take a different road to get back there again, just for the heck of it. This was to take south to Parker, then west over the Colorado River into California to the hamlet of Vidal Junction, then north on 95 till we would turn east on 163 just after we crossed the Nevada state line. 163 then leads straight into Laughlin. Roughly this is a rectangle.

Overall, that was a mistake and a waste of time, let's be fair. The drive to Parker is nice enough, but into California the desert becomes somewhat monotonous and the state of the roads is such that the driver really has no time to sight see. Furthermore, there is an awful lot of traffic on the road.

Anyway, one bright moment did occur when I spotted a desert golf course. Literally no grass, just dirt. Some people were out on the course as you can see. I wonder if they knew the location of the sandtraps. At least they wouldn't have to replace any divits...

The other interesting bit is that once again the approach to Laughlin becomes a long descent down a mountain slope. Though it isn't winding or twisting, nonetheless it is a long slope which finally delivers you to Laughlin. This time we stayed at the River Palms, a slightly older hotel, though still in very good shape.

After we settled in we went for a walk along the river, with the ultimate goal of getting a drink somewhere. We made a little detour and took the free train at the Ramada Express, very cute and authentic, narrow gauge rail. Still not having found a cheap place for a drink, we were getting awfully thirsty. Finally we struck gold back at our own hotel, where Happy Hour had just begun. Since the drinks were so cheap, we had another and well you get the picture. What they didn't tell us is that Happy Hour turns into Sleepy Hour and while you're at it you might as well stay in bed for the night. So that took care of Sunday nite.

Monday morning we were up bright and early and why shouldn't we be after twelve hours of sleep. We had an early cheep, cheep breakfast, it's amazing how far $ 2.22 can take you. Then we hit the tourist info again to get information on more, you guessed it, mountain walks. Having procured the necessary documents we headed for Lake Mead National Recreation Area, which isn't really a lake, but more of a mountain area. We parked the car at the Grapevine Canyon and found ancient Indian petroglyphs next to graffiti proclaiming that Jason loves Amy.

We actually also found a bit of a creek, the odd thing about it was the higher you went, the bigger the creek became. Reason for this was that the creek ran over a gravelly type surface which absorbed the water as it progressed downwards. Very strange.

Not quite ready to call it quits after this walk, we continued on the dirt road that led us to Grapevine Canyon in the first place. Higher and higher we went, all by ourselves. Naturally I was looking out for geological oddities which I spotted with some regularity. The best one was this huge rock in the middle of a fairly level stretch of ground, sitting there all by its lonesome self. Somewhat below the top of the ridge, I turned the car around, as the road was getting very rough and I din't fancy the prospect of the car hung up on an axle, front wheels spinning useless in mid air, with Anne frantically pushing from behind, me encouraging her from behind the wheel to give it all she got.

About half way back down the dirt road I spotted another rock formation and threw the car into park while doing about 30 km an hour. This it didn't like. However, that's not the reason for mentioning this little incident, for as I got out of the car, I spotted what appeared to be a stick right in front of our car, actually about 10 meters or so. Wanting to make sure it was just a stick, I walked over and discovered it was not a stick but a snake, a live one, not an unfortunate victim of a traffic accident. So I shot some photographs of course. I found out I had to employ a trick in other to get it to stick
out its tongue: any movement would do it. Which I used of course. I haven't been able to identify what kind of a snake it is as of this writing, but you're in the desert so rattle snake immediately comes to mind. However, I've got pictures of the tail and no rattles are visible. Anyway, more on the kind of snake once I find out what it is.

Update: It appears to be some kind of non venomous gophersnake. That's my guess anyway.

At still another curious rock formation, undoubtedly solidified lava flow because of the molten look it had, we actually spotted the town of Laughlin deep down below.

Once back in Laughlin we shopped at the pawn shop and the outlet mall, then went for dinner, extremely reasonable prices. This is the granny/grampa gambling capital of the USA no doubt, but you can sure get some good deals.

Next morning we had to pack to get ready for the flight home that night, so I made sure to make myself scarce for that event. Actually, I hauled several loads to the car, which wasn't all that close. Then we headed out, back to Vegas, just as the rain started.

Halfway there, I snapped a few shots just south of the hamlet of Searchlight of a particular long straight stretch of Hwy 95, I estimate it to be about 25 km or so.

The first people to lay eyes on us after we arrived in Vegas were the outlet mall security staff, because that's were we headed first. However, frantic searching for more than a few hours only yielded a pair of sandals for Anne.

Absolutely famished, we found a Mexican restaurant, where we ordered a bunch of stuff, don't ask me what, I was to starved to really care what we ate. While eating I spotted an employee of Starbucks make good use of the trash bin, so after lunch that's were I gave our trusty cooler the royal heave-ho.

Having a few hours to kill yet before the plane left, I parked the car on the strip somewhere and we went for a long walk, north on Las Vegas Boulevard ('The Strip'). Exhausted from that, we drank a very expensive tea at Bally's ($5.39! yikes), and rested like two bag people on a bench in the convention hall at Bally's. Like school children, we poked fun at whoever went by, especially the guy with the red shoes and tie, it turned out he was the piano player at the fancy restaurant, it did occur to me he looked at lot like Liberace.

We gassed up the car one more time, drove to the airport, couldn't find Alamo, since their car drop off is the only one of the car rental companies nowhere near the car rental return park. But what else is new on this trip, one of the days I'll start using GPS...

Next post will be a wrapup, with good things, bad things, tips and tricks for others to use.

Laughlin, NV to Lake Havasu City, AZ

Since the weekend was coming up, the cheap hotel rates in Laughlin were no more. They quadruple during that period. So we decided to vacate and look for cheaper lodgings, down south in Lake Havasu City, a town we already visited briefly on our first weekend here. After much searching and grumbling, we finally found a place close to the lake which was reasonably priced.

As always, the first thing we did after getting settled in is going to the tourist info for information on walks and such. They gave us a nice, 4 page leaflet describing walks on all sorts, lake shores walks, mountain walks etc. We chose the lakeshore walk first, because it seemed rather idyllic.

The first 500 metres were. Unfortunately, after that, we ended up on a rocky, slimy shore and the only way around it was through unknown thickets, through which over time a path had been created by living things unknown.

Now, I realize I had never heard of the presence of alligators and crocks in this part of the US, but hey, there's water, sort of swampy in some places, brush, and warmth and I can put 2 and 2 together about as well as anybody. Seems like the right combination to me, so the only gallant thing to do was to let Anne lead, since, if one of those guys were to grab her by the leg, somebody would have to save the damsel in distress by running for help. Anyway, except for a roadrunner and a rabbit, no dangerous wildlife was spotted.

Lake Havasu was formed when Parker Dam, downriver about 30 km was formed I believe in 1938. The city itself got its start in 1962 and has grown to about 55,000 inhabitants according to the 2001 census. However, around 20,000 or so snowbirds move in in the wintertime.

Now, Lake Havasu City is not without problems. One of the main problems is an imbalance. An imbalance between the amount of money people have and the braincells required to do something intelligent with that money. We were appalled by the number of monster speed boats on the lake, and I mean monstrous, 30, 40, 50 feet. These emit a low grumble when idling which is audible all day long when you are anywhere on the lake shore, especially when it is multiplied by a factor of 100.

Of course along with the boat goes a trailer and an equally monstrous pickup truck, some of which seemed to be custom built, as I ain't never seen that kind of truck before. Everything is gleaming to boot. So you're likely looking at a million dollars just to get you're boat in the water. You'd probably need a fuel tanker to follow you around to keep your tank somewhat filled up.

The next morning, Saturday, we decided to get away from the lake and go on a mountain walk, which again we chose from the leaflet given to us by the tourist info. Heading away from the city, we reached the end of a paved road and followed the dirt portion up another 2 km or so till we parked at the spot indicated on the leaflet.

We got out and started to walk towards the mountains following the dirt road, but it really wasn't all that interesting, it looked like a huge gravel pit. And what do yahoos like to do in gravel pits? Right, shoot target practice that is. And so it was here. No sooner had we gone up this little hill to get a better view of the city below or this convoy of jeeps pulls up below us, guys jump out carrying rifle cases, from which they (surprisingly) take their rifles and start to load up.

That was enough for us. We headed straight back out. While making our way back to the car, the gun fire started in earnest and it felt like Iraq (or Detroit) for a while. When we got to our car, some other yahoos were firing upon an abandoned car wreck not too far away with a semi-automatic. While driving out along the dirt road we saw a father training his 8 or so year old son in the use of a gun. I sure was hoping the kid wouldn't swing his gun around in our direction and accidentally fire.

So much for that walk.

We finally found a State Park, that had a decent walk. Half way we stopped for a Corona, had a boat ride, then walked back. That was a lot better.

Dinner was had at a noisy Mexican Restaurant, Casa Serrano, though the food was delicious and the prices were reasonable.

Tomorrow we're off the Laughlin again, where I've been able to snag a hotel room at the River Palms for $ 20. And that's Canadian.