Odds & Ends: Eclipses, Spring, Printer Cartridges, Private Concerts

 I was in sunny Anchorage yesterday, not in the path of the eclipse.  But in 2019 my daughter invited us to meet her and her family to see an eclipse in San Juan, Argentina.   It was a memorable experience out in the desert.  But at the time I was a bit disappointed that it didn't get really dark, just dusk-like.  My image of an eclipse was that day turned to night for a minute or so.  

My daughter went to Texas to see yesterday's eclipse.  It was cloudy, but the sun poked out through the clouds so they could see the moon covering over the sun, part of the time.  But because it was cloudy, it also got much darker than it was in Argentina.  

So, two things about eclipses: 

1.  Watching the sun covered by the moon.  You can only do that if you have special glasses or other way to darken the image.  Otherwise the brightness of the sun makes it impossible to see the eclipsing moon.  

2.  Experience the change from full daylight to night.  As you can see in the picture (sort of, since the camera's auto lighting affects things a bit) it got twilight in Argentina but not so dark you needed lights if you were driving - as my daughter reported happened yesterday.  So clouds don't completely ruin an eclipse.  You experience more darkness than without clouds.  

SPRING

Anchorage had near record snow for the year - about three inches less than the snowiest winter - so there's still a lot of snow.  But we're seeing larger areas of snowless ground - under the bigger trees in the back yard and along the edges of the snow piles.  Here's Campbell Creek on March 28

And here it is on April 7, ten days later.  Somewhat disappointing that there is now a large piece of trash in the creek.  The trails along the main streets are clear of snow, but the trails along the creeks through the woods still covered.  

The two days of sunshine reminded me that April has often been a wonderful month, but today we have a heavy cloud cover again.  [I just looked up.  It's snowing out.  I really don't need enough snow to set the record.]

PRINTER CARTRIDGES

Lots of people have complained about the printer cartridge scam.  You buy an inexpensive printer, only to be stuck for buying ink cartridges for outrageous prices.  

At Office Depot, to get all four colors for my printer costs $166!!!  

To buy a whole new printer costs $4 more - $170.  They're considerably cheaper online. And then there are kits to refill the old cartridges yourself.  But HP and the others know consumers are too lazy to fill their own cartridges or in too much of a rush to shop around.  Presumably, the market would work if people balked at these prices and didn't buy the new cartridges.  Or is this just a ploy to get people to buy a new printer.  Either way this contributes to waste for the earth and profit for HP.  

What is the cost of a whole printer and packaging compared to four cartridges?  

From Stock Analysis:

"Financial Performance

In 2023, HP Inc.'s revenue was $53.72 billion, a decrease of -14.61% compared to the previous year's $62.91 billion. Earnings were $3.26 billion, an increase of 4.18%."

So they took in almost 15% less total revenue in 2023 than 2022, but increased their profit by 4%.  How much of that profit was from printer cartridges?  

PRIVATE CONCERTS

Before the pandemic, someone invited us to a home nearby to hear a concert.  Since then we've been to four or five such concerts.  Usually it's a $20 donation plus a dish for the buffet to attend.  Sunday we went to a jazz performance there - the first one for us that wasn't classical. 

Here's John Damberg on the vibes and Mark Manners on the guitar.  Bob Andrews hand can be seen on the bass, and drummer Eiden Pospisil is hidden in the background.  The second half connected much better for me - I'm not a big vibes fan and Damberg spent more time on the piano and the guitar had a bigger role.  

But it was a wonderful evening with lots of very friendly people - maybe about 40 or so.  [While I called it a 'private' concert, it was noted in the Anchorage Daily News, so anyone could have come, though there obviously has to be a limit on how many could attend.]

AirDrop Is Back - Demolished Housing, New Trail. Abandoned Kayak, Skateboard Park [UPDATED]

 Some time back, not too long ago, my Air Drop stopped working between my phone and my MacBook.  I checked online but couldn't make it work.  I'd get the Blu Tooth connected both ways, but the airdrop wouldn't happen.

So lots of pics on my phone just stayed there.  I tried other work arounds.  When I plugged my phone into my computer I got a screen that wanted to download everything from my computer to my phone and there was no way I could get rid of it other than just unplugging.  

Frustrated, today I tried again.  But this time instead of searching for Blu Tooth solutions, I looked for AirDrop solutions.  I got this HelpDeskGeek page with a whole table of contents of approaches.  Quickly I found a good prospect - Open Finder on Mac.  Then Set Air Drop To Open To Anyone.  

That was the magic trick.  Somehow it had gotten switched to Open To No One.  I'm back in business and can now post some pictures here.

But there's a large backload of things I passed on - Juneteenth Festival, Gay Pride March and Festival, and a bunch of other things.  

I'm just going to focus mostly on some pics from (mainly) yesterday's bike ride to highlight changes going on.  

This first pic is from June 4th.  A new homeless camp showed up on the 'off-ramp' from the Campbell Creek bike trail to Dowling.  

About a week ago, it had been reduced to this:

    

And yesterday, it looked like this:

Yesterday's turnaround point was the AARP fitness spot just south of Taku Lake.  

There's construction going on down the trail there (toward Dimond).  Someone recently told me they're building a skateboard park.  

Also heading out yesterday, I noticed someone kayaking in the creek, but there were trees around and I didn't see too much, except it was a red kayak.  On my way back, the kayak was blocking the bike trail.  

Didn't look good.  Nobody was around. But I figure if they got the kayak out, the people got out too, but not sure why they left their stuff there.  That's an old restaurant in the background that they've been slowly working on, including adding landscaping.  It says Creekside something on the other side.   Behind me is Peanut Farm and Arctic Roadrunner.  

Meanwhile, just down the block from our house, I discovered at the beginning of the ride that an old house was demolished.  It's been there at least since the 70s.  It was there two days ago, but this is all that was left yesterday:

The tape says something about asbestos.  It was on a double lot.  Presumably Anchorage will get some new housing.  A single family house?  A duplex?  Two houses?  Stand by.  

Other changes.  I noticed a bike headed up the hill near the forestation at Campbell Airstrip Road at Tudor a week ago.  I decided to see what was there.  It's a wide new gravel path that goes up, south of Tudor.  It starts not too far from Tudor but gets further into the woods.  Then there's a long downhill to this long bridge across what I'm guessing is sometimes wetlands.  

[UPDATED July 16, 2023:   It's called the Chugach Foothills Connector.  Steve Johnson left comment with this link to a Muni page describing the project and the ribbon cutting will take place July 23,2023 at the bridge in the picture below:

"The event will take place on July 26th, 2023 from 4pm to 5pm. If you are driving to the event parking is available at the Benny Benson School's Parking Lot. The rib​bon cutting will take place on the boardwalk in the center of the trail.​"

Thanks, Steve] 

Past the bridge, with some bear poop to remind me this wasn't a place a lot of people went before this trail was put in.  

Then it veers back toward Tudor and the power line right way.  It ends where that power line is.  There's a small path that continues.  And the new trail turns left into a housing area just past where Tudor curves into Muldoon.   There's a big sign that says Neeson Construction is doing this project, but all the paper work was about Alaska employee rights, not anything about this trail and whether it will stay gravel or eventually get paved.   I came out onto Muldoon at Regal Mountain Drive.

And yesterday I got my summer (starting April) biking total up to 603 km.  60% of my target of 1000 again this summer.  

[UPDATE July 16, 2023  below is the map of the project:

For sharper version visit the Muni website

Most Moose Calves Die In Their First Year

 "'Caribou calves can outrun bears in 10 days,' he said. 'It takes moose calves about five weeks until they can outrun a bear. They’re vulnerable for a lot longer.'” (from University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute.)

The quote above is originally from 1998, but more current articles confirm the odds for calf moose are not good.  

"Koch says around one in three calves will survive the summer." (Alaska Public Media, March 23, 2023)

 

I got this quick glimpse of a moose and two calves on a trail leading off from the bike trail this morning.  Then I started thinking that this mom has recently given birth to two large babies all alone somewhere in the woods!  With no help from Dad, Mom, Sis, or anyone else.  It's pretty amazing.  

And nature is pretty stark too.  

It's the last day of May and I've got 224 km ridden.  That's a bit on the low side, but given the long winter, including the April snow, I think I can get on pace for another 1000 km this summer on the Anchorage bike trails.  

Rain Feeds Creeks, Fall Sneaks In

 Anchorage has been getting a lot of rain this summer.  

Biking yesterday, Campbell Creek was definitely higher than about a week ago. I'm not sure it's obvious in these two pictures, 

September 5, 2022

September 13, 2022

There were lots of areas along the trail with standing water - the ground too saturated apparently to absorb more water.

And the leaves are starting to turn.

Meanwhile, whoever mowed the lawn near the Waldron Homestead Park left an awful lot of cut grass on the bike trail.  This is where the bike trail comes into Shelikof Street.  Does the Muni do this or is it contracted out?

That was mostly yesterday. Today, when I tried to take a bike break at the Alaska Botanical Garden, I discovered they have new fall hours.  Saturdays and Sundays, though they're going to also be open Mondays.  Though in the smaller print it says the "Bootanical Garden" will be open Mondays from September 24 through October 24.  

Update On My Summer Bike Ride Across Turkey Using Anchorage Bike Trails, Wanders Off Into Otter Attacks And Feeding Ducks

This summer's goal has been to bike from Istanbul to Cappadocia.  By my initial calculation, that was 750 kilometers (466 miles).  So that was my target until I found a site (Ride with gps) where people track their bike rides.  I found someone who had made my trip. Ending up in Avanos.  But he was taking a longer route - it looks like he tried to avoid the main highways that would have more traffic.  His route was a total of 889 kilometers (552 miles.)

So yesterday I got up to 751.8 kms.  Using the Ride with gps site, you can find exactly where that is. You can toggle between km and miles.  You can see the distance (and other factors) by putting the cursor along the route.  I can see I'm riding along a lake, but on the biking map there wasn't a specific place to look up.  Had to go to Google maps to find Aksaray and some pictures.  This seemed the nicest.  

Photo from Google Maps

Of course, I'm doing this along the bike trails of Anchorage - anywhere from about 6km to 20km on any given day.  To make it to Avanos, I've got about 140 kms left to go.  Cappadacio is a region of Turkey where there are lots of caves.  Here's a link to a site with a short video that gives you a sense of the other-worldly landscape of the area and some of the towns there.  

But I only have pictures of the Anchorage bike trails, but they're pretty amazing too.  So here are some from the last several days of biking mostly along Campbell Creek trails.  

Campbell Creek near Lake Otis.

Going east from here, the creek winds back and forth, leading to a series of bridges along the trail.

Much further up the creek is this bridge near Campbell Airstrip.  There is a mix of hiking, mountain biking, ski trails, and dog sled trails in this area.  

This part of the creek, and the trail, is west of Lake Otis and goes south to Taku Lake and beyond. 

Yesterday there were lots of people fishing at Taku Lake.  I was taking a picture of three people fishing together (looked like a family) when this guy moved from the group.  If you look closely you can see the fish he just pulled out of the lake.  

Below is Goose Lake on another day in very different light.  Yellow leaves are starting to show.  This is a spot where people feed the ducks.  I stopped to take a picture and all this ducks moved in my direction looking for handouts.  Here's a link to a National Geographic website with a long explanation of why feeding bread to ducks is not good for the ducks.  Just one of many points:

“White bread in particular has no real nutritional value, so while birds may find it tasty, the danger is that they will fill up on it instead of other foods that could be more beneficial to them,” says a spokeswoman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

There's a lot more on the subject at the link above.

At University Lake near Alaska Pacific University, which has become a popular dog park, I found a warning for another hazard.  

It's only recently that I've become aware of river otters in Anchorage.  In August 2021 there was a report of river otters attack dogs in Anchorage.  That story made it to The Guardian in UK as well as many other news outlets.  The earliest report of aggressive river otters in Anchorage I found was 2019 which called the river otters "a new menace for Anchorage dogs."   Sea otters, in the ocean, have been here for as long as I've been in Alaska.  

Here's a picture of Taku Lake yesterday.  The 2019 otter attack was here.  I've never seen river otters in Anchorage, but I did see a beaver once at Taku.  

Campbell Creek Yesterday And Last Year - Big Difference

 Weather, from one year to another, in one particular location, doesn't tell us anything about climate change.  For that you need data over many years and many locations.  

But, for whatever reasons - more snow, lower spring temperatures, etc. - Campbell Creek - from the bridge at Lake Otis - was almost completely iced over on April 15, 2021.  

But yesterday (March 30, 2022), I took the bike out for the first time to check out conditions and here's what Campbell Creek looked like.

Whatever the reasons, we are way ahead of last year.  

Cell phones let us quickly retrieve old photos to be able to do a comparative post like this.  

Swans At Taku Lake on Sunny Grey Day

You can listen to this song as you read.  It should make sense by the end.  

The sun kept a steady beam shining through the clouds as I biked over to Taku Lake today.  I reached my 745 km goal (a vicarious bike ride from Chiangmai to Bangkok) on September 13.  There's a tension between the benefits of riding the bike outdoors regularly and how my knees feel.  It's obvious that three or four days without being on a bike makes my knees feel much better.  I can live with a little pain if I know that the damage done is temporary.  (It doesn't hurt while I ride, just later on.)  

But there was still good biking weather and so I made a new goal.  800 kilometers.  I reached that goal October 4.  So what next?  A quick and dirty calculation of .6 * 800km got me to 480 miles, so I needed 20 more miles to get to 500 miles.  That would be about 32 more kilometers.  It's not all that important and I didn't set out to go that far today.  But the weather was good, everything was beautiful and a changing seasons way, and I got to Taku Lake feeling good.  

At the south end of the lake were four swans (and a number of smaller and darker water birds) taking a rest on their way south.  

Then back home with a stop on one of the many bridges that cross over the meandering creek to  get a picture of the sun's reflection (maybe glare is a more apt term) on the creek.  Although the sky was mostly grey, the sun made its presence known most of the way.  

It ended up being 13+ kms.  All but about three kilometers were on dedicated bike trail in the greenbelt that buffers the creek from residential and commercial streets.  There's only one non-residential street that I have to cross.  So I now had 816.5 kms for the summer.  Time to check precisely how much more before I hit 500.  So I googled 500 miles = x kms.  Turns out the simple .6 rounds off more than I thought.  804km = 500 miles. 

 I was already there when I started.  So know I'll just ride until it's icy on the trails.  Winter biking, will be on the bike with studded tires and only for short distances if there's what used to be a normal snow covering - without ice.  

Meanwhile, I'm working on a post on how the different redistricting plans move me from one district to another.  Enjoy your Sunday.  Find something wonderful - whether it's the bark on a tree or an old picture of people you love.  

Falling

Even though winter made a brief visit last week - checking out his winter home I guess - it is still just fall.  And after doing some chores and errands, I got on the bike for a few more kilometers.  For now my goal is 800 for the summer.  And it was sunny and beautiful.  Below is the south fork of Campbell Creek from Campbell Airstrip Road.

A quick view of the mountains as the bike trail comes out of the woods and goes along the road.

Campbell Creek, closer to Lake Otis.

Looking up at the Mt. Ash Tree

That's all.  Just lots of trees.  

 

Made It To Bangkok Today - Sort Of

My summer biking goal was to make it from Chiang Mai to Bangkok - 745 km or 462 miles.  But we haven't been out of Alaska since early March 2020.  So this was a way to set a target distance and imagine now and then, as I biked along Anchorage bike trails, the rice paddies, the temples, the markets, and the smiles of Thailand.  Here's the post from May describing the trip and the background.

I scrounged through some old boxes of slides.  I didn't want to give you something stereotypically Bangkok and my old slides and pictures are well hidden away in the closets.  But here are two pictures that mean something to me.

My third year in Thailand I lived in Thonburi, right across the river from Bangkok and the royal palace.  To get to and from my room, in a school near the river, I had to take the little ferry that crossed the Chao Phaya.  It cost 50 satang - or half a baht.  In those days the baht was 20 to the dollar if I remember right, so it was about 2.5 cents.  It took about ten minutes to get on board, cross, and get off.  It was like changing from one world into another.  A relaxation chamber as we crossed the water.  The picture is of that ferry from Tha Chang (tha means pier, and chang means elephant, so essentially the elephant pier) on the Bangkok side of the river.  These two pictures are from 1969.  

Below is a very typical Thai scene.  A monk, in the morning, going house to house giving everyone a chance to gain merit by scooping some rice into his bowl as well as other dishes to go with rice.  The monks didn't eat after noon.  I'm pretty sure this was when I was staying at Thai colleague's house right on a small canal.  When I stayed with them, bathing was in the canal.  This was before the widespread use of chemical fertilizers and other pollutants.  

And below is what it really looked like on my ride today as fall begins in Anchorage.  This is out near Campbell Airstrip.  The red leaves of low ground cover.   

I still have time before the snow flies to get some more biking in, but it's nice to make my target.  My knees will be happy when I cut back my biking.  But I'll miss it.  

I Made It To Uttaradit Today On Anchorage's Campbell Creek Trail

 I mentioned in an earlier post that last summer I biked from Santiago, Chile to Conception - all while staying comfortably isolated on Anchorage bike trails.  About 700 kilometers.  This year I wanted to go a little further so I'm biking from Chiangmai to Bangkok.  

The first destination point was Lampang (120 km) which I got to a while ago.  Today I hit km 269 which gets me to the next stop, Uttaradit.  As I rode today, I was wondering if I have ever been to Uttaradit.  Probably the train went through it when I first arrived in Thailand in 1967 and the Peace Corps volunteers headed for the North all took the train to Chiangmai.  

But I knew that I must have been at least near Uttaradit in 2009 when I was a volunteer with the Northern Thai Farmers Association in Chiangmai and we went to a meeting in Petchabun for Thai farmers from all over Thailand.  

I found a couple of pictures of the trip on a post from then.  It was January and there were record low temperatures.  It even snowed on Doi Suthep.  

On the road somewhere between Lamphun and Uttaradit.

In Thailand, there are always great places to eat along the way.  

It was putsa season.  And a few days later, on the way back to Chiangmai we stopped at a tamarind farm.  Petchabun is said to have the world's best tamarind and I bought enough fresh tamarind to last our whole trip.  Until you've had fresh tamarind in Thailand, you haven't really tasted tamarind.

So these are the landscapes I've been imagining myself biking through for the last couple of weeks.  But actually, I've been on the beautiful bike trails of Anchorage enjoying the greening of the trees and grasses and shrubs and the various colors and gurglings of Campbell Creek and Taku Lake and Goose Lake.  

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal tweeted an article about making friends with a tree.  That it's good for your health.  I've known that a long time, but hearing the WSJ dip their toe into such touchy/feely water is a surprise.  [Of course, I say touchy/feely ironically.]  My bike rides last summer and this summer have been regular forest bathing experiences.  

And Anchorage temperatures are so much more conducive to biking that it would be now arriving in Uttaradit.  

Taku Lake this morning.  Everything's soooo green right now.

Red necked grebe amongst the water lilies at Goose Lake the other day.

Riding under the Seward Highway bridge today.  This really is better than drugs to energize me.

I've got 90 km to get to Sukhothai - an ancient capital of Thailand and directly north of where I lived in Kamphaengphet for two years in the late 60s.  Back then, there was no direct road and I remember riding on the back of a motorcycle through rice paddies.  

And then from Sukhothai to Kamphaengphet.  The bike tour I found online does this trip in ten days.  There's no way I could do that now.  My knees can't take that much biking in such a short time.  But I can spread the 750 or so kilometers more slowly over the summer in Anchorage. Another several weeks to Sukhothai.  I'll let you know when I get there.