Day four of the Moab trip (better posted late than never!). We started out the day with a pow-wow to decide what trails to run and chose Elephant Hill, which is south of Moab, down in Canyonlands National Park. I was a little bit bummed that we were leaving the slickrock playground area that is the off-road Mecca for which Moab is so notable, but excited that we were going to do some more exploration instead of sitting in line on trails full of other vehicles.

Another amazing sunrise, red rocks, Kane Creek wash	more rocks	Not climbing here is a pity, there seem to be fantastic routes all over the place. Next time... next time...	We decided to hit the road and drive back "to California" the long way. Whatever way that turned out, we were just going to head Southwest-ish and see what happened.
Our first stop was Canyonlands, where we decided to tackle "Elephant Hill" Some day it would be fun to plan something out, and get permits to really explore.	hard to look at all this and not think "roadrunner and Wile E Coyote"	Rock Mushrooms	Near Elephant hill. Somehow the terrain looks less rugged when there is an economy car driving behind the Cruiser.
The signs make it clear where the economy car's and Cruiser's paths will diverge. There were only a few tough obstacles on an otherwise easy 4wd trail.	More fabulous blooming desert plants	A view down to the starting point of the trail (with cars parked) gives some scale	Soop is very comfortable offroad. No worries!
Slow and steady....	Seth follows, also no problems	Even a relatively "easy" switchback can be a challenge, especially in larger Landcruisers	Beautiful terrain
A little steep	Very steep. Enough that they've textured it. Another perspective on the steep part. At some point they poured concrete to make it more all-weather, I suppose. Pity.... it is still a challenge but now it is much uglier.	Awesome rocks! These evoke thoughts of monkey heads (for me at least)	No, that's not the trail, but shows how tight the switchbacks are. There is even one switchback where you *can't* turn around, you have to reverse for 50 yards.
Guess what? Cool rock!	Our first glimpse of something like Hoo-doos	This was our view for quite some time, it reminded me of some sort of alien village from Star Trek.	Another reason why bigger isn't always better offroad. One of the most infamous obstacles on the trail, this is a really tight squeeze. Notice where roof racks have left their mark.
Maybe better to fold in that mirror....	Another perspective of the Squeeze	Like something out of a sci-fi movie More Star Trek village	Endless variations on red, yellow, beige, and rocky
You actually do go left here! Thanks, rock.	We did several miles through this valley. Nice, soft floor, beautiful canyon walls	Towards the end of the valley there is some rock art. No walls. No fence. Just a little plaque that says "hey, this is a few thousand years old, please don't break it. So far it seems to have worked.	More of the rock art, and the valley. The overhang is probably what kept the art visible for the last few thousand years.
Lunch break. Nice view seats.	More wildflowers	I'm not very impressed by the Anazasi ruins that were mentioned in our book as a "good place to stop"	But at least there were more flowers
Now this is some quality ruins!	Impressive that without mortar of any sort, these walls have been standing, buffeted by rain and wind and snow, for centuries. Amazing that the wood is still mostly intact.	Great views, too! We wanted to camp here (excellent location) but the incoming weather urged us to keep moving, looking for something less exposed (it was starting to get cold)	Little did we know that all the roads out of there went up. A lot. We left the prarie grass behind and started to see pines.
Then left them behind for Aspens and Birch (and snow)	This was starting to look like worse and worse camping	Darn pretty, but Brrrr! Notice the excellent quality of the fire roads. Great area to just drive around.	Deer. Idyllic sparse forest that is probably superb camping in the summer, but not so great when the ambient temps are dropping like a rock (about 25 F* at this point)
This Alpine lake is listed as a preferred campsite. We can see why. But too cold for us this time around.	Climbing higher still, excellent views of the sun setting into canyons	More canyons to the west. We saw a camp with some turkey hunters along way and they gave us very very vague directions to the main road. Between that and the books we had, we managed to find the highway.	By the time we did find the highway, it was getting dark (and late) Now our problem was: Which way is which? Notice the complete lack of signage on the highway.

We did eventually find a town, which was a relief as we were all pretty tired and the weather had turned really cold- below freezing throughout the area with some areas well below freezing. We settled on a little motel, tried to find some food for dinner, but eventually just cooked in our rooms then headed off to sleep.

Labels: 4wd, 4x4, expedition, landcruiser, moab, photo, travel, utah, vacation

I've been looking for 12v LED "christmas" lights for years- mostly to use for ambient lighting around my cruiser while camping or otherwise being outdoors. I don't know the voltage at which these operate, probably 4.5v, but the fact that they run on solar power makes them even better than what I wanted. Can't wait to try them out while camping or even just around the barbecue at home.

Labels: camping, landcruiser

We attended a lovely wedding this weekend, in Georgia about an hour east of Atlanta on Lake Oconee. The weather simply could not have been better- right down to the high cloud that moved in to block just enough sun so that we weren't roasting during the ceremony (but that moved back out for us to enjoy the evening sunlight on the water).

Congratulations Brad and Katie Thomas! Thanks for inviting us!

Labels: atlanta, travel, wedding

Really, it is how any 4-cycle internal combustion engine works, mostly. The big difference being that a diesel doesn't rely on spark and has higher compression.

I got the .gif (right) at www.rudolfdiesel.info, that site is in German.

Of course, Wikipedia also has information on how internal combustion engines run. This illustration shows a gas-powered motor. If you watch each, you'll notice that in the diesel, fuel is injected directly into the cylinder (which means it is a direct-injection or DI motor) but that there is no spark. In the gasoline motor, the fuel enters with the air and the spark plug ignites the mixture.

In brief: it goes like this: 1) The piston goes downward, filling the cylinder with fresh air (or air/fuel), 2) the piston goes up, compressing the air (or air/fuel), 3) the compressed mixture explodes, pushing the piston down, 4) the piston rises, pushing the exhasted gasses out of the cylinder.

Then it all starts over again. The only power produced is during the 3rd cycle. The rest all takes power away from the motor. In a 1-cylinder motor, this results in surges of power. This is part of why more cylinders can make for a smoother, more responsive motor-- as the power robbing stages take place, there are more cylinders that are making power.

Labels: landcruiser

Always nice to have a relaxing Sunday, but I decided to spend some time fighting with some minor fixes on the cruiser. Since we got it, it has had some nasty water spotting on the outside of all the windows, and the tint on the pass-side window is a little bit fogged as well. The lack of visibility finally drove me nuts enough to try to tackle it. At first I thought the spots were just hard water, so I tried vinegar. Nope. No effect. I moved up to muriatic acid, but that didn't help either so I figured that the "spots" were really etched into the glass, not on top of it.

Fortunately, I found some pumice-based windshield cleaner at the hardware store and figured it was worth $4 to give it a whirl. Well, whirl is the word of the day. It took a lot of scrubbing, but in the end the stuff seems to have worked nicely. I may go back and do a second treatment, eventually, but at least now I can see out of all the windows, even at night, which is a big step in the right direction. Here is a pic of one of the rear windows, on the left it is just-polished, on the right, original state of disrepair. I went back and cleaned up the right edge of the left window when I saw this picture, but in reality you don't see much of the spots at all anymore.

What I did was: rinse window. Apply compound with wet rag, covering window well. Used polishing pad attached to power drill for first pass, then did a second pass by hand using more pressure, rewetting the compound or adding more as necessary. It seems important to keep the pumice in a slurry as if it dries you get little scratches in the window (bummer). Did a final pass with the drill to buff, then rinsed and ragged it off. After a final rinse, I cleaned the windows with some ammonia-based cleaner, inside and out.

I also pulled the tint off of the front pass window. I like the look better with all the windows tinted, but I prefer to be able to see out. Eventually I'll replace the tint on the two front windows, but only if I can find nearly-clear tint here. The dark stuff just doesn't work for me.

I also took some time to put some roofing leak-repair tape on the underside of the hood. The repair tape is asphalt based with an aluminium liner and in theory it should add some mass to the hood which will help reduce the amount of noise transmitted into the cab. We'll see. The tape is an awful lot cheaper than the stuff that you buy at specialty auto-sound stores, and I don't really have access to the fancy matting anyway. Also, it is too darn heavy to bring down, a big roll of dyna-mat or fatmat or similar weighs over 50lb. I'm not about to devote an entire checked luggage bag to just sound-deadening unless I'm convinced that the $15 I spent on this tape stuff won't do the trick. { edit: the tape helps, a lot. When I close the hood now it is much more a "thud" than a "clank". } I didn't cover the entire hood area as I've read that covering 50-75% of the area is about 90% as effective as covering the whole area. Diminishing returns and all that.

I finished up the hood install with some roofing insulation that is basically 3/16" of plastic foam with a mylar (aluminium) layer. This should help absorb some noise and reflect/insulate the heat from the motor.

Labels: landcruiser

Seriously. These are the good stuff.

This post was prompted by a friend who asked about "something good to read on an upcoming trip". We like to read about travel when we travel. Go figure. Well... if you enjoy travel, and/or are traveling, and want something to read, the following choices won't let you down. I promise.

They aren't quite in order, because I'm too lazy to put them in order (sorry!), but here is a quick thought on each author.

First: Outside Magazine. If you like rugged travel and enjoy hearing about weird things that happen to other people. Bingo! You are set. These are generally shorter stories, easily digestible, great for travel in that you can stop whenever you need to do so. Possibly not so great for sitting on the beach all day if you want continuity.

2nd: Carl Hiassen. Fiction. In my mind, a perfect beach read (not about travel at all). A little angry at the folks who are ravaging Florida's nature, but otherwise fun, funny and quirky. Easy reading, perfect for an umbrella drink by the pool.

3rd: Tony Horwitz. Non-fiction. Makes history read like a novel (or sitcom, really). So light and pleasant that you won't even mind that you are actually learning about stuff.

4th: Tim Cahill. Essays (in the pecked and wolverine books) or longer stories too. Writes for Outside, often. Funny, self-effacing, engaging. Great stuff that makes me laugh out loud. Good for buses, maybe not so good for red-eye planes (seriously, you will laugh out loud.) Mostly non-fiction. Perhaps "embellished" a little.

5th: Bill Bryson. Also non-fiction (with embellishment). Written as sort of a newspaper column might be written if it were several hundred pages long.




If you don't find something you like... we've got more favorites and will be posting them eventually, stay tuned!

Labels: book, travel

For Orchid enthusiasts out there, this may not be impressive. Apparently these are very easy to grow, so I take no particular credit for having gotten them to bloom, but hey are darn pretty and I'm happy to see that they are happy, so I figured I may as well share. Also interesting: there are some ants that have been hanging out on the closed buds for the last few days. At first I worried that they might attack/eat/maim the blossom, but it seems that they aren't doing anything of the sort. They might be stealing nectar, which is fine with me, I suppose. Another theory is that perhaps they are "milking" aphids for a sugary substance that aphids produce. The thing is, I don't see any aphids, and aphids usually don't hang out on flowers, but rather on the sepals or stems of plants. So I'm at a loss. If you know more than I do about ants and orchids, please do enlighten us.

As a side note: if you like gardening, Costa Rica is your kind of place. A little bit of work, a little bit of attention, and POW! stuff grows gangbusters. It is even easier as you work your way up in elevation a little bit as the dry season is less dry, the wet is less wet, and the temperatures are more constantly in the high 70s. IF you are lucky (I consider us lucky) you might even have a little iguana decide to take up residence in your compost pile. I imagine that if (s)he is capable of complex thoughts, (s)he thinks of it more like "If you are lucky, you'll have a human come dump snacks on your sun-mound every day or two". Either way, so far we both seem to be enjoying the relationship.

Of course, there is no surf up in them thar hills, which has been a deal-killer for me, so far.
Speaking of surf, the minimal rain the last two days has allowed the bays to clean out some and I had a great session this morning. Only four of us in the water, nice sets of just slightly overhead.

A little sunshine in the swimming pool makes any day a little bit better.

Labels: garden, photo, surf, weather

If you, like me, tinker with your vehicle, sooner or later you are probably going to install something electrical and you may find that you want to make sure that the wiring work that you do is of high enough quality to not burst into flames.

First: use fuses! And remember, fuses are there to protect wires, not to protect the stuff at the end of the wires. So size the fuse according to the max current of the wire in question. Or rather, use a fuse that is slightly less amperage than the wire can handle.

Second: Use wire capable of carrying the current that you need for the gizmo on the other end. Remember that if you are using the car chassis or body for your ground, you've still got to figure the distance from the battery. A good rule of thumb is to measure the distance of your + wire, then double it.

Third: use this chart to help figure the correct wire size.

Mostly I posted this wiring information so that later, when I want to find the wiring chart again, I can search my own site for 12V WIRE CAPACITY and hopefully find this link again. But I hope that it is helpful to someone else as well.

Labels: landcruiser

The rains have finally paused. Not stopped, I'm sure. It rained cats n dogs last night, for example, but most of yesterday was flawlessly beautiful (though a tad warm from the humidity) and today is looking equally lovely so far. With a little luck, things can dry out some- the house and cars and dog are all taking on a musty smell, so some breeze and sunshine are much appreciated.

The rain with occasional little bits of sun seems much appreciated by one of our aloe plants as well, it is blooming with what promises to be a really pretty flower.

Back to cars: I'm excited to report that I've finally fixed one of the things that bugged me the most about my 80 series Landcruiser. The "gas" pedal has always had a very stiff and unresponsive feel to it. You've got to really push it to get any sort of get up and go out of the Cruiser. Well, I've got real doubts about the way that the injection pump is tuned, I suspect that the installers of the diesel did a "good enough" job instead of making sure that all of the cool bells n whistles work correctly. So while looking online for some info on how to adjust a particular feature (the Auto Cold Start Device, ACSD), I noticed that there is a spring attached to my IP that isn't stock. It looks almost stock. So I removed the spring and noticed... "Hey, this armature works much better now." Sure enough- the spring was pulling on the AC idle-up arm and due to leverage and friction, that meant an awful lot of extra work from in the driver's seat. The truck feels like a new animal. I've got to relearn to drive it as now I'm burning rubber every time I accelerate. I love it.

I've still got the 2nd most-annoying feature of the truck to contend with-- the windows have really bad hard-water stains on the outside. I've tried a variety of cleansers, yesterday I even tried a little muriatic acid. No good. Still has water spots. I think that the next step is to soak some paper towel in muriatic acid and let it sit there for a while. All window-cleaning tips are welcome at this point.

Labels: garden, landcruiser, tamarindo, weather

This is good little widget, fun for travel-nuts and armchair travelers alike.
I was actually surprised to see that I had only visited 12% (as of this writing) of the world. I guess it means I need to get hopping!

Labels: travel

I was recently reminded of something that everyone traveling to Costa Rica *shouldn't* do. Don't use traveler's checks here. Local businesses hate them. Banks hate them. If you try to exchange them, you'll probably learn to hate them as well. Typically, in order to convert a traveler's check into cash, you'll sit at the bank for about an hour (sometimes two or three) then you'll speak to a non-english-speaking bank clerk who will slowly and reluctantly take your check and give you colones. Typically, they'll refuse to accept more than $100 or $200 in checks at any given time. And you better bring your passport (not a photocopy) or you'll be out of luck. Woe is you if your signature on the passport deviates in any way from the ones on the check. You'll also be out of luck if you've signed the 2nd line on the traveler's check prior to showing it, unsigned, to the bank teller. It is a slow and trying process that you will prefer to avoid, I promise.

Just about anywhere you find yourself in Costa Rica, you are probably less than 15 minutes from an ATM.

My recommendation is that you carry at least one ATM card (two is better) and a credit card (Mastercard/Visa is more widely accepted than Amex). Pull out around $100-$200 in local currency (colones) when you get here. When you go to use the ATM, even if you are using an ATM card from the States, be sure to hit the Credit Card button on the ATM as that is how it is going to process the transaction. Don't miss your pin, the machine *will* eat your card. It can take 2 or 3 hours to get it back.

Also carry five or ten $20 bills with you as just about everyone takes US dollars as well.

Carry some money loose in your pocket vs. keeping it all in your wallet, that way when you have to pay for something, you aren't pulling out the entire shooting match for everyone to see.

But don't bring traveler's checks.

Labels: Costa Rica, travel

There are good ways and bad ways to start the day.
To be roused from slumber by the aroma of freshly brewed coffee being delivered by your beautiful wife: Good way to start the day.

Bolting up from your pillow to the sound of a loud crash/thud from downstairs: Not so good.
Walking downstairs to see a pile of moldy, sodden drywall at the foot of the stairs, and a gaping hole in the ceiling with water steadily emptying from it: Bad. Trust me on this one.

The only thing that made it not-quite-awful was that it was not-quite-surprising. Last week we noticed a pretty serious drip coming from the ceiling. Since then we've been waiting for a break in the deluge to get outside, on the roof, to figure out from where the darn leak is coming. But the rain has been nothing if not persistent. The odd thing is that the roof that fell in is on the 1st floor. There isn't any roof directly above it at all. Which is somewhat worrisome as it makes us think that the water is getting in on the 2nd floor, then seeping between the concrete wall and the stucco, to arrive at the first floor. Somewhere down the line we can look forward to either more damage or some mold issues. Yippee.

But all this rain seems to have an upside as well! A few months back we saved some plumeria that someone else had thrown away by the side of the road. With all this fresh water, the clippings seem to have rooted very well and one has already blossomed! There is another plant that is trying to bloom as well. I guess that this is part of the the old "silver lining" for which we should be on the lookout.

Labels: garden, tamarindo, weather

You may have noticed that we've added some ads and such to Sandcruiser (so far: Amazon and Google ads). We have mixed feelings about this move as on the one hand we've always tried to keep things ad-free, on the other hand we dispense a lot of information, some of it relevant and/or interesting and wouldn't mind having the site pay for itself.

If the ads bother you, you can eliminate them very easily. There is probably a way to do this in Opera, Safari, IE and whatever other browser you may choose, but I know how to do it in Firefox, so that is the info I'm going to provide. If others care to offer comments on the other browsers, I'll be sure to include them.

In Firefox there is a neat feature called "Add-ons". Essentially, you can add functions to the program by adding in little sub-programs. You do this by going to [Tools] and selecting [Add-ons].

On the resulting menu, click on the little window near the top with the magnifying glass and type "Ad block" then click the magnifying glass. It should find Ad Block Plus. Click that. Follow the directions to install it. You may have to restart Firefox at some point.

Once you've done that, go back to [Tools], [Add-ons], [Extensions] to see that you indeed have adblock installed.

Then direct your browser to Sandcruiser and check it out... it should look exactly the same as it did before :)

Hover over the part of Sandcruiser you don't want to see ever again. Hopefully that is the ads and not the content/photos/real estate info/jewelry info/etc.
Hover over, and RIGHT click on about the center of the advertisement. Then select "Adblock iFrame". It should pop up a window that says "Add new Filter" and there should be a long bit of html in the window. You can click OK and it should block that ad... but you may want to be a little smarter than that and instead edit the content there. On our site, for example, the amazon ad starts out with "http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=stevebroylesc-20" and goes on and on. Well, if you want to stop all the amazon ads on our site, just insert a * after the stuff above. Or cut n paste the following http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=stevebroylesc-20* into your window. Then click ok.

That should effectively block all amazon ads from your browser!!

You can do the same for the google ads on our site and any other site. You may have to tinker a little, but once you get it figured out, you'll be blocking ads on sites all over the place. I block the heck out of them!

On the other hand, if you don't mind the ads, go ahead and take a look at 'em. Click 'em even. Every time you do we run the chance of making a little money with which to keep this site running. Who knows? Maybe some day we'll make enough that we can quit our day jobs and start traveling full time again. But that seems darn unlikely!

Labels: blog

Another crazy couple is traveling. Like us, they are making it up as they go along. Unlike us, they are doing it by catamaran, and aiming for around the world. The site is a good irreverent read, I strongly recommend it.

They are somewhere near Tahiti right now.

Labels: expedition, sailing, travel

As of now, there are 14 major rivers in Guanacaste that have flooded their banks. That's an awful lot of rivers for a province that is only 10,140 km2 (3,915 square miles- about half the size of the San Francisco Bay Area).

Spanish speakers can read more at La Nacion. But the short version is: Gustav soaked us down, Hanna is overwhelming us a little. We should be thankful we aren't suffering the way that they are in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, etc... but we sure are getting a lot of rain!

Labels: news, weather