Biking in Vermont

2014-04-04

It turns out that it's hard.

Here's the route I did.

I'm riding a pretty decent, though not amazing, mountain bike I got used for ~$300. It was a good deal, it's got relatively aggressive tires though not sand tires, disk brakes, and a shock fork. I probably need to replace the seat-post and seat because this one doesn't allow me to slide the seat back, but that's pretty minor.

Up until the far (northbound) segment of the loop it was on pavement and everything was fine. In fact it seemed like this bike seemed had WAY too much tire for what I was doing, something I'm okay with but it did seem a little silly. Then I hit the dirt. I've ridden a lot of dirt, often on a cyclocross bike with slicks. What I wasn't ready for was wet sand. It turns out that all the dirt roads here are packed sand. It's currently mud season so this makes everything *wet* sand. My little rid turned way more exciting than I had intended.

It was worth it though. A beautiful ride with amazing views including glimpses of the White Mountains off to the east,

as well as a small protected set of hills off to the west.

My biggest mistake was not bringing food. I bonked bad up on mosquitoville road and by the time I got back I had absolutely no juice left. Between that and the mud I ended up walking a number of segments.

I ran into a guy walking his dog who just said "That must be a LOT of work!" as I rode by... indeed, at the time I was on flat ground and in second gear fighting along though the wet sand.

So, next time food, and I need to get in better shape! If I do this regularly though, I think large sand-tires are in order as well.

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Bear Tracks

2014-04-01

Jess is taking a WFR course over in Conway, both for the course and to get CEs so she can renew EMT.

Over the weekend they had a break and she was the only one in the class that stayed, so I went down. On Saturday we went on a hike, despite my fogetting the snowshoes and the snow being hip-deep. We only broke through that deep occasionally and were able mostly to only posthole about knee-deep which is doable.

Well, while we were hiking Jess spotted these tracks

First let me explain what you are seeing. This bear is direct registering, so the large rear paw landed exactly over the front, the rear being larger though didn't sink in as far leaving the front still clearly visible.

Bear tracks aren't all that unusual. I've seen them a few times certainly. These tracks though are a little unusual. It's actually comparatively rare that bears put down the heals of their feet front or rear but especially rear. Usually it's just the front of the paws both front and back, as if you put the ball if your hand and fingers on the ground, but kept the heal of your hand up. It's exactly like what people usually call "walking on your toes" in humans. This track though shows the full extent of their surprisingly human hind foot, so I thought I'd share.

EDIT

I misintepreted these tracks, sorry about that! Jess caught me. The larger foot is the *front* foot. You can tell by pressure release that the smaller foot landed second. I did notice that but decided I must be mistake on my part. I also misremembered the shape of a bears hind foot (since, as they put their heal down so rarely you don't usually see it!), so I thought the heal mark was from that foot not the other one. The heal mark from the front foot is actually barely visible in real life (not really in the photo) but mostly obliterated. That front heal mark is actually in the middle of the palm of the hind foot. There should be a slight arch in the foot there, but it's missing.

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Crafting: Wool raincoat

2014-03-17

I go through a raincoat every 2-3 years. Each of these costs between $65.0 and $120.0. In addition they are made of plastic, which is filling up landfills. It's expensive and ugly. Lastly it's stupid loud when trying to walk through the woods, and thuse useless for hunting.

During Jess' stoneage project we thought a lot about what would work well as a raincoat. The obvious solution is bark-tanned deerhide, but with rather extensive testing (29 days of rain) on her trip she discovered that felt worked extraordinarily well.

We had planned to felt our own jackets (I even started one, which I botched badly), but then we were in a fabric store and they had some amazing super-dense thin felt. I decided to cheat a bit and picked up $40.0 of felt and a pattern for a jacket. Since we're hanging around my parent's house we finally got a chance to build the jacket, and here's the result.

The buttons are made with a pocket-knife using a stick from the backyard, and some of the waxed linen twine I use for everything.


The felt is backed, to help support the twine, with some buckskin scraps jess had saved.


This was my first time making clothing from a pattern. I've only done a couple of pieces before, and I did those by pulling a pattern off of existing clothing. Jess had to show me some of the tricks. Following a pattern requires a little knowledge, not much... but some.


Jess helped a lot with the whole project, especially the pinning. We used an extra heavy black thread for extra strength. I was concerned about the shoulder seams holding up under a backpack. Since it was available I borrowed my brother's sewing machine to speed things up. I've done most of my projects by handstitching, but damn a machine speeds things up.


The seams after being stitched are folded and top-stitched. I made an attempt to fold them in the most useful direction so the rain would tend to flow off instead of into the seam (This is a photo of the inside).


Here we're trying to get an idea how the pattern will work out.


I wanted the jacket to be long enough to cover my butt, but not much longer. This way hopefully I won't need rain-pants as often as I do with a modern waist-length jacket (which is already rare). It's actually halfway between the two lengths the pattern is made for

We deviated from the pattern in a couple of other places as well. This jacket is normally lined, but I thought that would be a waste of weight and bulk in the coat. We also ignored all the facing pieces as again I didn't want to pay the weight and bulk. I have a mild wool allergy, so we lined the collar with a bit of Marino wool from an old shirt/sweater that I wore out. We used 2 layers for the lower part of the collar for further protection from the normal wool where it presses against my neck. We sewed the collar as suggested with the liner, except that with no lining for the rest of the coat the bottom seam of the collar is hand-stitched to the rest of the coat. When I hemmed the cuff and bottom I left space to add drawstrings later as well.

Overall it's about what I was aiming for. The biggest change I'd make would be to change the sleeve design so it's set to 45 degrees out instead of straight down. This jacket as it is is a little restrictive of arm movement due to being curved through the shoulder like a suit coat. It's not too bad (better than I expected actually), just something I'd do differently.

The project took about 2 partial days once we got started.

The real question of course is... does it work. I'm going to save that for another post. It's mud season in new england so I'm sure I'll get a thurough test sometime soon :).

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Renting in Vermont

2014-03-16

We've found an amazing place to rent in Vermont.

The idea is to rent somewhere, get to know folks, understand the area, and get some pieces of our lives going before we buy. We intend to get started with remote tech work, on getting involved with Search and Rescue locally, and that sort of thing, while we do a more idle hunt for land.

We'll be renting a room on a dairy farm from a couple of fine folks who are starting up a cheesemaking business. They've got beautiful Jersey cows, goats, and some sheep, angora goats, and the largest cutest fluffiest sheepdogs I've ever seen. I believe they are english sheepdogs. Jess and I have been calling them dog-sheep.

Lots of details to work out as to how daily life will flow, but it looks like we'll be able to do our own work, spend a little time helping them on the farm, and spend a little time gardening. Jess is interviewing for fulltime tech positions, so she'll be pretty busy. I'm planning to look for part-time so I can put a bit more of my focus on the other things.

We'll be moving in next weekend, and we're super excited. We'll see what adventures await.

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Research: Snow on a long driveway

2014-03-12

Jess and I found a really cool piece of property in Vermont that's up a road that doesn't get plowed in winter. And I started researching various ways to deal with it. It's amusing enough that I thought I'd share some of my results.

Answer #1: Large truck and plow

Okay, sounds pretty reasonable. There's a ton of forums where folks who do plow professionally chat about how to do it. I dug through these a while, as well as some manufacturer websites. What I came up with was not encouraging.

If you get more than about 3 inches you need to "plow with the storm". If you don't apparently it can be very difficult for your truck to get through it. Sure you can probably get that up to 6 or so inches with a good large truck and a good plow, but what if I'm off visiting my folks for christmas when this happens? With a short driveway you go "well shit" and you shovel it, and it sucks but you can get to your house. With a 1/2 mile of road... not so much.
Apparently if you try and plow deep snow it puts a lot of strain on your truck. You need a true heavy-duty truck with extra modifications, plus a special ram plow, and some folks say to never put chains on as the extra traction is likely to cause you to break an axle... wow, okay.

Answer #2: Snowblower

You're kidding right? 1/2 mile with a stupid little push snowblower?

Answer #3: ATV with snowplow

This seems to work surprisingly well. Because it's so much smaller than a truck it seems ATVs handle the stresses much much better, and surprisingly can actually push *more* snow. Now, after many years of snowplowing with a lawnmower I'm quite familiar with the limitiations of this sort of approach, and it's mostly *weight*. If we used this solution we'd likely end up putting tracks on the ATV for logging and such anyway, so it would could push a lot more than our old lawnmower, but it's still pretty limited.

Answer #4: ATV with a snowblower

This looks pretty viable. Up to say 18" of snow this seems to work very well. An interesting catch is that ATVs don't have a PTO, so the snowblower runs off of it's own engine. This is kindof awkward, and means we have another engine to maintain who's reliability is paramount... ugh. But, with the right width you could do this in one run down the road, turn around and come back up the other side, and it'd be done. Not bad.

Answer #5: Unimog with a snowblower

Okay, this is a little silly, but it'd work. A unimog is a special type of tractor designed to double as a truck. It's got portal axles and is known as one of the best offroad vehicles in the world. It would double as a vehicle for getting to town and towing a large trailer. Being a tractor though it's got a PTO, and there are some sweet snowblowers made for it. Also, if the snowblower fails there's a good chance you could just drive out anyway. Downside is that these things are hard to keep running, and you can only get old ones in the U.S.

Answer #6: Something else with a PTO and a snowblower

Well, that would probably be a tractor. Many don't have PTO's on the front. 1/2 mile is just too damned far to back a tractor. To have it on the front would require another engine, with similar downside as the ATV. Also, even if it has the PTO on the front, a fullsized tractor is pricey if that's all we intend to use it for. But, this is likely a good option if we decide we need a tractor anyway.

Answer #6: Why are we trying to move the snow again?

Get a snowmobile and to hell with it. Find a place to park the car down on a plowed road, and just snow-mobile to it. This is a very attractive option as you just don't have to care about the snow getting deep. Plus I mean... snowmobiling, what's not to like? Obviously cross-country ski's would be the backup option if the snowmobile breaks down. Unlike other options if your mechanical solution fails the car isn't behind 1/2 a mile of snowed in road.


We were toying with getting an ATV anyway, for doing selective logging on our own land. It's best to do it in winter as it causes less damage, so this is another option (though not legal on local snowmobile trails).

Answer #7: If that's a good idea, what about a snowcat?

Lots of reading about cool old snowcats later, they are kindof a pita to maintain. They have almost no advantages for my sort of purpose over a snowmobile, and quite a few disadvantages. But... I learned a lot about snowcats, so that was a lot of fun :).

Conclusion

To be clear, I grew up shoveling snow. My parent's have a snowblower attached to a lawnmower now that works pretty well. I'm not unfamiliar with snow-clearing and problems like super heavy snow, or the snow that already got pushed around by the town plows. What was interesting here was considering the feasibility of different solutions to 1/2 mile or so of snow between your house and a plowed road.

I'm thinking in reality some combination would probably be best, like an ATV with tracks and a little blade, and park one of two cars where it can get out if we can't clear the road. Then just pop the blade off and drive down on the ATV to the other car. Also, having our normal vehicles have 4wd and such we can probably often drive directly over the snow anyway.

Most likely we won't end up getting a place requiring all of this, but the research was both fascinating and hilarious, so I thought I'd share.