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Day 3 - Lake Tahoe, CA to Wells, NV

Ahh Nevada, a state I can understand. California is all fast and noisy, but Nevada… such vast open spaces, and such amazing scenery.

Lazy start today, packed the SUV and was off on my way. Wonderfully clear and sunny, the internet reckoned it was -8°C outside but the car said 0°C which seemed closer to the truth; regardless it was slightly chilly but hardly unpleasant. Drove over the top and was soon on I80. Approaching the Nevada border I saw flumes alongside the freeway, from what I've found these days from the mining days.

Past Reno I thought I saw a nuclear reactor, but turns out it's a combined cycle plant and a gas power station. I stopped in at Reno to visit Wal-Mart and got thoroughly lost, but eventually emerged with clothes, pyjamas, hundreds & thousands coated chocolate donut holes, contact lens cleaner, and some dried cranberries! Just what a boy needs on the road.

Soon I was out of the...

Day 2 - Donner Pass Railfanning

Had a solid evenings sleep and woke up around 8am as my neighbour had a shower, ahh the wonders of cheap motels and noisy plumbing. Got another hours sleep and then did my morning ritual or email checking, route planning, weather forecasting, and car packing. Headed off for Truckee but first stopped at the lake to get a few photos.

 

Was a nice balmy 3°C down at the lake and it was snowing lightly when I left the motel. I pressed on for Truckee and arrived just in time to see the tail end of a container train scooting through. Never mind, there'll be heaps more, right?

I parked up in Truckee and went for a wander around, admiring such beauties as the Vandura 2500, and the "Jax" Truckee Diner.

 

I also checked out the recently overhauled spreaders that UP use to keep Donner Pass open during the winter. These are pretty serious pieces of kit with numerous adjustable ...

Day 1 - Christchurch to Lake Tahoe

Well I'm back in the USA! My journey started with a couple of days in Auckland under the careful eye of my girlfriend, Rachel, before a big goodbye and a careful squeak through the scales (.1kgs over the limit for both carry on and checked bags). Fairly uneventful flight on a massive 747-400. I had a window seat and a spare seat next to me so could try a few different sleeping positons. 12 or 13 hours later we touched down and I went through customs. The lady I got was very cold and she didn't seem to like my idea of a road trip and referred me to "secondary screening". There a young guy had a chat with me and loved my idea of a road trip, in fact in his previous life he was a biker and he started writing down a bunch of "must visit" places. He wished me luck and that was that. I collected my bag and was on my way to the rental centre.

Rental guy took a liking to me and (for a small extra fee) rustled up a true 4wd Jeep Grand Cherokee, the only one the had left. Michigan pl...

MMP

It is voting season here in New Zealand and I hope you'll excuse me while I talk a little bit about MMP. We have used the MMP system since 1993, however now we are faced with a choice on what voting system we would like to have. I have written a bit about MMP these last couple of days and am sharing my thoughts here.

A common complaint I have heard is "there are too many MPs in parliament, MMP sucks". Unfortunately this logic is a little flawed as every system in the referendum mandates 120 MPs in parliament, the committee in charge of the referendum has stated that this is not something that will change. In all the available voting system there will always be opposition MPs and all the bickering and infighting that brings. What changes is how fairly each voting system represents the desires of New Zealanders in the makeup of their parliament.

Another common suggestion I have heard is "NZ politics sucks, I want change". Firstly, what is it you wan...

High Altitude Balloon Experiments: Part 2

(Continued from part 1 )

My first test was a total success, but I had bigger plans. Happy that I could easily track my balloon from the land, and that the transmitter was powerful enough, I set about designing version 2 of my tracker.

Version 2 had one big improvement: a GPS receiver. Now I'd be able to track it's exact latitude, longitude, and altitude. Other changes included:

An Arduino Pro microcontroller module which is vastly more powerful than the PicAxe I had used previously. It is programmed in C++ and has plenty of storage and processing power. A 10v DC/DC converter that runs the transmitter at a higher voltage, in theory increasing its output power and hence range. A new lightweight PCB, made from flexible kapton material. A buzzer that beeps very loudly once every 15 seconds, so that once it had landed I might hear it even if I couldn't find it. This turned out to be a waste of power and space. Two 1.5v AAA E...

High Altitude Balloon Experiments: Part 1

In between my usual adventures I always have about 10,000 projects on the go. Lately some of these projects have been getting rather "lofty", in a series of high altitude ballooning experiments.

My eventual goal is to attach a camera to a helium filled balloon and take photos of the earth from way up above the clouds. It's been done many times before and there is nothing new about it, but it's still fun to try, and not without many many challenges. It doesn't take an genius to work out how to tie a camera to a balloon and let it go; the challenge is to get the camera back again at the end!

Transmitter Range Testing

So for some time I've been pondering how to do this, and then one day something clicked and I started making it happen. The first thing I decided was that I needed some way of knowing where the balloon was, which meant some kind of transmitter. Without a radio license though I am fairly limited in how much power I can transmit with, and power means range...

Day 15: Tokyo to Christchurch

Woke up to a drenched Tokyo. At first I thought it was just the aircon I could hear, but no, the rain was so heavy I could hear it over the sound of the AC.

I spent some time trying to optimise the packing arrangement, checked out and headed for the train station. First stop, Mr Donut for a nutritious breakfast. Then onto the subway and off to Ueno. At Ueno I wandered around for some time till I found a locker to store the bags in. Liberated I headed for the platforms.

Spent a while taking photos here; with a train every couple of minutes it's not hard!

Notice how clean they are. After a while I hopped on a Yamanote Line train and stood right up the front where I could see the driver. Looked like a fairly advanced set up.

<...

Day 14: Kyoto to Tokyo

(Slightly late…)

After climing Mt Fuji and having only hours sleep over the previous 48 hours, sleep was very welcome, however I was a little surprised when I heard a knock at the door, only to discover that it was almost midday… checkout time was 10am! Felt terrible and a furious scramble ensued to get out ASAP.

Teri and I headed down to the train station and caught a train to Kameoka.

Kyoto is fairly built up, but we soon entered a long tunnel and when we excited we were in the middle of a forest, flying over a river, then plunging into another tunnel, only to emerge over water again. The scenery was very pretty.

We soon arrived at Kameoka and started heading towards the river rafting place that Teri wanted to see.

Kameoka is fairly rural, as you can see from the great rice fields right next to the station.

  ...

Day 13: Mt Fuji to Kyoto

Continuing from yesterday…

About 1am: The girls are both starting to feel a bit dizzy and headachy; another sign of altitude sickness. We stop at the 8th station (I think) and enquire about mountain-side sleeping; 5000 yen! ($NZ75). We find a small space next to the hut and snuggle up together; Teri has a emergency blanket that looks like it would do nothing but actually works really well. I get an hour of half-sleep. When we wake again the girls are feeling better and we press on. I make a joke about turning two girls and an emergency blanket into a "comfortable" bed on the side of Mt Fuji.

Approaching 4am: In theory the distance between each station is getting less, however the guideline times obviously aren't made for us regular humans. Towards the top things start getitng pretty congested and we can see the sky starting to lighten. Around us we can hear people getting impatient but there isn't much that can be done;...

Day 12 - Tokushima to Mt Fuji

At 5;30am we were jogging down the road as an impossibly large and orange sun emerged through the distant fog. We had all had between 30 minutes and a couple of hours of sleep and no we were on our way to climb the tallest mountain in Japan! Were we mad? Yes, most likely. First we had to catch a train and this was about 2km from Anna's apartment, and I am definitely not used to that much exercise, that early in the morning!

We caught our train though, a real bucket of bolts and seemed to take forever to get moving after each stop. At Tokushima we quickly transferred to a rapid express made up of fancy new green "Eco" DMUs. The different was amazing and after each stop we flew up to line speed in no time at all. Sometimes we would pass through a station on a curve and the tilting effect was amazing; it didn't feel like a sharp corner, but you could clearly see the difference in height from one side of the train to the other.

At Takumatsu we transferred again to a "ma...