Rogue River Rafting pt III: Finishing Up

On the last day of the rafting trip, we passed through a canyon about 70 miles east of the Pacific Ocean. An older couple with a cute outdoor adventures guide rowing the raft passed us, and the guide told us that the toughest rapid was only a mile ahead. She recommended we stop by the side of the river, walk up to the rapid, and scout our course ahead of time. If you look closely at the picture below, you can see the two folks at the front of the raft, and the gal rowing.

So, we followed her advice and stopped at the hauntingly beautiful rocks before the rapids. Mark, Emina, and Kelvin are the tiny figures on the right of the picture scouting out the path ahead. I stayed behind by the rafts and took pictures of the local fauna. In Oregon, the orchids grow right out of the ground, which I had never seen before (I had always assumed the parasitic pretty plants grow out of the bark of host trees.)

And here is the beginning of the rapids. It doesn't look too bad right? That's because I put away my camera before it got too hairy.

We went through the Blossom Bar rapids fine, getting sufficiently wet and bounced around to make everyone happy. Sadly, the trip ended soon after that. You can see I am not really that happy to get off the water in this final group shot.

We broke down all our gear, put it all in the trucks, and drove back through the mountain pass to our original campsite. I was rather dirty and unshaven, but I did not want to go back to civilization. I still don't, even as I sit at my computer here in Ann Arbor and slog at my dissertation revisions. But..We all need companionship, it's merely human nature, and that's what I think, more than needing money, brings us all back to our towns and cities and our friends and families.

Allen Ginsberg reading to High School Students

My oldest friend, the first person I sat next to in first period of junior high, had a hippie uncle from upstate New York. This uncle was a high school teacher who managed to invite Allen Ginsberg to read his famous poems to the high school students in the late 80's/learly 90's (exact date uncertain). My friend, Eric, who I am still very close to, had an old tape of the reading, and one lonely Friday night in undergrad (I still remember that boring night distinctly..weird),  I converted the reading to mp3 format.

My buddy Colin, who is an amateur painter, invited me to a gallery showing in Ann Arbor today, and some paintings struck me as reminiscent of "Sunflower Sutra." The oil paintings depicted lone flowers standing  proud among trash heaps and industrial wastelands. The painter must have heard/read this poem, courtesy of a random upstate New York high school. 

Rogue River Rafting, pt II: The First Two Days on the Water

After the rest of the crew came back from driving the cars out to where the end of the river was (and where we would end up in four days), we all got in the rafts and hit the water. On the first day, I took Mark's advice and didn't wear a wetsuit. He said,"Man you don't need one, you'll be warm enough." He was oh so completely wrong. You can see me at the front of the raft in the picture below. Though it's hard to see, I was completely miserable from constantly getting wet and cold. I was near hypothermic.

The rapid below was traversed on the first day. It was a class IV/V and scared the bejesus out of me (remember I was freezing cold and this was my first day ever rafting). Most of my pictures show a relatively calm river, for the simple reason that when traversing the rapids you don't want to destroy your camera with all the water splashing everywhere. However, on some the rapids, like the one below, we had to port the rafts and walk up to the rapids to plan our trajectory though the rough water. 

Since the other raft in our party went down the rapid, of course the raft I was in had to follow. I didn't want to take three days of ribbing because I was scared (pride is a powerful motivator). So we went down the rapid. And it was sweet truth be told. The whole thing only lasts about two seconds, but its a loooonnnnggg two seconds. You hear the sound and power of the rushing water, everyone is screaming, and the raft is bouncing everywhere threatening to tip over.

After that first day I was so exhausted I immediately set up my tent at the campsite, had something quick to eat, and promptly passed out for ten hours. The next day was much better. I put on my wetsuit, and though I was still cold, it was a "comfortable cold," like mid-Fall in Michigan, and I was able enjoy steering the raft trip, navigate the rapids, and try my best to get everyone in the raft wet.

In late afternoon we ported at a beautiful campsite. Even the view from the outhouse was excellent.

The pictures below show where I pitched my tent. The view was stunning. I sat and watched the sunset for an hour and a half. After 7 months of being chained to a computer desk finishing my dissertation, I had found the perfect place and perfect peace, far away from Ann Arbor and completely off the grid, with only a guitar, a journal, and a tent.

The best thing about camping is that the only entertainment is your companions and any musical instruments you manage to bring along. After dinner I would regale my friends with songs by Johnny Cash and Beck. Danny is a professional singer and would accompany me during some of the songs as well.

Below is the groupshot of everyone at the campsite. That's me on the left, then Kelvin, Danny, Chris, Nigel, Joleigh, Emina, and Mark. I could have stayed there for weeks.

The Cingularity Paper Published

At last year's Society for Neuroscience Meeting in San Diego, my colleagues and I presented a satirical work "The Cingular Theory of Unification: The Cingulate Cortex Does Everything" to great success. The neuroscience community is beginning to swing back from the revolution of fMRI imaging and neophrenology, and while brain mapping is certainly a worthwhile effort, I don't believe studies of the sort should continually make it into the prestigious Science and Nature journals. So, through the use of hyperbole, my friends and I poked fun at what you can synthesize with the brain mapping literature.

The story has been extensively documented on my friend Shelley's old blog Retrospectacle.

Earlier this year Greg and I wrote it up in a manuscript form at the request of a German satirical neuroscience book publisher who saw the poster and loved it. We wrote it in English and the work is currently being translated. In addition. we sent the English version to the "Annals of Improbable Research," where we had previously published work two years ago on rat neurons and the stock market.

The image above was made by Greg as an idea for the cover of the magazine. Unfortunately, we didn't get the cover, but the work was just published in the current issue. Read and enjoy! If you were sufficiently affected by this Earth-Shattering Work, let me know if you want a copy signed by the authors!

Rogue River Rafting pt I, getting to Oregon

The next few posts will talk about my trip out to Oregon white-water rafting. 

In Salt Lake City, we rented all our gear (coolers, wetsuits, rafts, etc..) from the University of Utah outdoor adventure club, and the six of us got into two very packed cars (Danny's Suburban and Julie's GMC SUV) to begin the 850 mile haul to southwestern Oregon. Shooting out of Salt Lake City we passed by the great salt lake and the Bonneville salt flats where all the cars go very very fast. Oddly, at night (when we were returning the following week), the moonlight shining off the salt flats makes it look like the ocean.

Danny and I were pulled over by a Utah highway patrolman for tailgating the car in front of us (oddly, our friends in the caravan). He just gave us a warning, but when we told him we were going rafting in Oregon, he then asked "Do y'all have anything illegal in this automobile?" Danny and I looked at each other, looked back at the officer, and we said, "No officer, nothing illegal in this car." The officer then responded, "C'mon you are rafting for four days, and you are telling me you don't have any weed in this car?" He was joking, but I imagine we kinda looked the part.

I love the desert. Something about the wide plains, the mountains, the heat, and the ruggedness of it all clears my mind and calms me. I can't explain it, but it's what I miss the most about not living in West Texas anymore.

Notice the sign: "Watch for Snakes and Scorpions."

While driving with Danny, we had a battery powered boombox with a tape adaptor plugged into an iPod. During most the day we listened to an audiobook recording of "World War Z," an excellent book by Max Brooks about a zombie apocalypse and mankind's attempt to fight the zombies and rebuild civilization. The book takes the form of interviews with people around the world telling stories of their zombie experiences. It sounds silly, but it was awesome. There was a great story about Japanese Samurai culture re-arising, as a sword turns out to be one of the best zombie weapons (reusable, doesn't need ammunition, and deadly in the hands of a skilled fighter).

The Nevada desert was a very fitting vista for listening to the zombie book, as you can see in the video below.

We finally reached the Pacific Northwest in the late afternoon/ evening, as you can see in the haggard Danny below revealing an idiosyncrasy about his car that would doom me to moving the windshield wipers by hand with half my body out of the moving car in the cold rain later that evening.

We reached the campsite in Medford at 10 PM, met up with our two other travel companions from the west coast, stayed the night, and the next morning we began assembling the rafts. It takes awhile to pump these up by hand.

And, since you can't bring bottles on the river, you bring cans, lots and lots of cans of adult beverages. 322 beers to be exact. Me never having white water rafted before, I thought Mark was absolutely crazy thinking we would drink beer while navigating rapids that could kill you. I soon learned the error of my thinking.

More to follow in the next post where we hit the water.

Roads and Cars and Adventures Therein

After returning from Oregon to Salt Lake City, I linked up with my roommate Sean and labmate Eric and began phase 3 of my roadtrip, whereby many miles and many cities commenced. Sean had a late 90's Pontiac Sunfire, I had my 1981 Tercel "Bopper," and the three of us began driving south of Salt Lake City, complete with walkie-talkies to communicate in our two-car caravan. We didn't make it very far- 50 miles to be exact. In Provo, Utah (the site of Brigham Young University), the Sunfire's transmission failed and wouldn't shift past 2nd gear.

We found a transmission shop in Provo, and the mechanics were nice enough to do a free diagnostic on the gear box. Bad news. Needs to be rebuilt. Thousand dollars at the least. Soooo...Sean responds to this in the only way he could: He asked where the nearest junkyard was.

We found one a couple miles away, complete with junkyard dog and all, and Sean sold the car for $225 (He originally paid $600 for it). It was all rather funny. My car is small and was packed with gear to boot, but somehow we found a way to pack three grown men and all our supplies into Bopper. It wasn't pretty, but we made it to beautiful Moab in time for sunset.

On to Denver, Bopper had a very hard time making it up the mountains. With its tiny 1.5 liter engine with 60 horsepower, driving through the Vail Pass at 12,000 feet was very slow going. With the pedal all the way to the floor, and downshifting as much as I could, at some points I was only going 25 mph in a 70 mph zone. SUVs and other modern cars were screaming past us, but I had the hazard lights on.

We then went on to New Mexico. You have to be very careful driving through rural state roads because you might get caught in a speed trap. As we did in Magdalena, on our way to visit the radio telescopes. Yes, I got the $58 dollar ticket for going 20 miles over the speed limit.

Even better, an hour later we ran out of gas in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Bopper's fuel gauge is broken, so we had to simply write down the mileage upon every fill-up and make sure to get gas every 250 miles or so. The farthest I've gone on a single tank of gas is 300 miles. Sean was driving as fast as Bopper could go (84 mph), the wind was very strong, but we were trying to make it to Socorro (290 miles) to save time and make it to the telescopes before sunset.

At 270 miles into it, we lost power and had to pull over to the side of the road. Sean wondered if the car's fuel pump had broken, but I knew we had just run out of gas. We tried to flag some cars down for help, and thankfully it didn't take long before someone pulled over. A nice man in a Toyota FJ drove me into town, we borrowed a gas can, filled it up, and we drove back. The man, Jack Hooper, turned out to be a demolitions engineer in Soccorro, and he even paid for the gas. He was an awesome guy, and we're going to send him a 6-pack of Bell's as a thank you gift.

Bopper did well from there on in, making it to El Paso, Austin, Memphis, and Kentucky. But then something drastic happened. After filling up gas in Columbus, Ohio, we noticed a ratcheting noise eminating from the engine. We pulled over and tried to figure out what it was, but nothing appeared wrong under the hood. Since Columbus was only 120 miles to Cleveland (where I was going for the Neural Interfaces Conference), and Cleveland is then only 150 miles to Ann Arbor, I figured "Ehh...I'll just take a closer look at it when I get into Ann Arbor."

But 50 miles south of Cleveland, Bopper begin to overheat. I pulled over to the side of the road and the radiator was bone-dry. We refilled the radiator with coolant, and then in 10 minutes the engine began overheating again! For the life of me I could not determine where the leak was. At a rest stop I let the car run while I peered under the hood and under the car, but I couldn't not see any leak. Where in the hell was all the coolant going?

So, we had to drive the last 50 miles to Cleveland by stopping every 10 minutes to let the car cool down and refill the radiator. You can see the lovely excitement of such a thing in the two videos below. It took 2.5 hours to travel 50 miles.

Once we arrived in Cleveland, Eric and I parted ways (he took a greyhound back to Ann Arbor), and I was alone again. I took Bopper to the local Toyota dealership to get a diagnostic and possible repair. Mind you, I have not been to a mechanic in five years. Part of my personality that's developed in grad school, among other things, is my transformation into a gearhead. But with a problem I could not figure out, I had reservations about trying to fix the car on the side streets of Cleveland.

Anyway, the mechanics at the dealership had a field day with the car. Surrounded by new Prius, Scion, Camry, Corrola, and Tacoma models, Bopper looked simultaneously completely ridiculous and completely at home. The mechanics would sit in the car, keep looking under the hood, and smile all the time. The car was assigned to the oldest mechanic in the shop, a man in his late 50's named Gil, because he was THE ONLY ONE in the shop who had actually worked on that generation of Tercel. He drove the struggling car into his shop area, got out of the car smiling, saying, "Mannnn....I haven't worked on this car in over 20 years!"

The next day I get a call from the Toyota dealership and my worst fears are realized: blown head gasket. The seal between the engine block and engine head had corroded, and coolant was literally leaking into the engine. Gil told me as soon as he saw wet spark plugs he knew exactly what it was. The head gasket part is only $20, but its a huge labor job, and I was looking at $1500 initial assesment, with the potential for even more cost once he opened the engine up and looked at the state of the valves, cylinders, and piston heads. He said it might be better to replace the whole engine, which he could do for $4000 plus labor.

Gulp. What to do? Should I junk the car and just tell them they can have it? I can't afford the repair, and it's not even worth it anyway. I was only mentally prepared to pay $500 max.

I love this car. I love how old it is, how small it is, and all the history associated with it. I couldn't let it go. If only I could get it back to Ann Arbor, I could try to fix it myself. So, I rented a U-Haul truck with car tow bed in Cleveland, and towed Bopper all the way back to Ann Arbor for the tune of $350. It was a bummer to spend the money, but I was planning to go to New York City anyway after Cleveland, but that final trip was cut short due to Bopper's engine troubles.

And so now, Bopper and I, are back in Ann Arbor after our trek across this beautiful country.

Notice there is absolutely nothing in the storage space of the U-Haul. It was the smallest truck I could rent. All I had was my suitcase, my bookbag, and my guitar, and that all went in the cab!

brief update

I am now in the second phase of the trip where I am either in a car or out and about exploring cities with very little downtime. After coming back from rafting in Oregon, I met up with friends in Salt Lake City, motored to Moab, Utah, lost a car on the way (not Bopper), went to Denver, had a lovely adventure, then ran out of gas in New Mexico, hung out and drank beers with rural New Mexico firefighters, and am now in El Paso, TX to visit my Mom and sister. I spent the last 4 hours in 100 degree heat replacing the radiator in my sister's Pontiac Grandam. We were going to go to Austin tomorrow but we are sweaty, dirty, and tired and will stay in El Paso tomorrow. We'll maybe visit Mexico, but I don't want to go because there are gang/drug cartel wars going on right now.
Many fun adventures and pictures on the way when I get back. Current total: 13 states, 5000 miles.