Is it November Yet?

My friend Daryl and I have begun a yearly motorcycle trip to Pennsacola, FL to see the Blue Angels air show every November. Last year we brought friend Curt, and the previous year, Daryl's friend Jay. This will be my third trip down. It's become an annual Mecca and we plan it all throughout the year. This year we had great hopes to ride down to Cape Canaveral and see the final Space Shuttle launch, but the mileage was just overwhelming and we decided against it. We would have ridden 600 miles a day for 4 days, plus whatever we put on while seeing the sights.

We are now getting into the final 3 months and it's time to start getting the old 1982 Honda Goldwind ready to make the nearly 2000 mile journey. This year I've decided to upgrade my old suspension to new progressive springs in front and rear. Also, I am putting on new rubber and of course giving the old girl a tuneup. I'm quite excited about this year in particular because it will give us a great chance to use some new DSLR cameras with 300mm zoom lenses. Hopefully we can get some postcard worthy shots during the show. I also recently picked up a very nice scanner at a steal for $25. Hopefully I can get it programmed and listen in on the in flight coms during the airshow (I know I'm a geek).

One of the great perks of my job is that I stay in hotels very often and earn lots of reward points that I can use for free stays. What this means for our trip is that we get to stay at the Holiday Inn resort on Pennsacola beach this year for 3 days and it wont cost a penny!! This is good becuase the Irish steakhouse down the road costs a fortune, but it's worth it.

As the days pass by, the anticipation begins to get unbearable and we start taking 100+ mile rides every weekend. Thankfully these things get good fuel mileage. My bike was acting up a little last weekend. I'm hoping the tuneup will cure it's ills. One note: If you ever suffer from small engine trouble, use some Sea Foam. It's the greatest thing since the gasoline engine.

I'm sure I'll have more to say as we get closer to d-day...

Indiana Family Star Party 2008

Image to right - Jupiter with Milky Way. Unfortunate light polution at lower left.

First, for those who don't know, a star party is an organized event for amateur astronomers. It is typically held under a dark sky location with clear views of the horizon. The Indiana star party took place at the Prairie grass observatory from 7/31-8/3. I planned on attending the event for the entire 3 nights, but decided to wait until Friday because the weather forecast was predicting overcast skies. Of course Murphy's law kicked in and all the clouds blew out shortly before sunset. I was told Thursday was the clearest night of the event.
I arrived on Friday morning about 10am and set up camp at NW corner of the observing field. Friday evening a crazy thunderstorm blew through just to the North of us. This gave me reason to play with my new DSLR for the first time. Fortunately no rain fell and the skies cleared quickly.

*One quick note, I used to think I had a large telescope until I saw what these guys haul with them. (See image to lower right)

The event went very well with every night providing at least several hours of beautiful viewing. Dew became a problem in the late hours which prompted me to build a quick heater out of 10watt resistors. The math was striaghtforward using ohms law.
I enjoyed hanging out with my neighbor Fred during the weekend and appreciated him sharing both his experience and equipment with me. His hand built 8" dob proved to be very interesting and has inspired me to do the same at some point in the future.
The star party organizers arranged for several interesting speakers including my favorite Caty Pilachowski, chairman of the astronomy department at IU, who gave an extremely interesting presentation on "The Glorious Summer Sky - Globular Clusters in the Milky Way and Beyond". If you've never seen a Globular Cluster, you can see many at the Hubble Telescope site.

Our best friends Pam and Daryl brought my wife Joy up for the night on Saturday. We had a great time and I was dissapointed when they had to leave so early. Photo at right is Daryl taking a look at Jupiter. Joy stayed the night with me and made a great effort to stay up and enjoy a night of observing with me. She lasted until about midnight and I continued until around 4:30am. As the dew started getting worse than my heater could keep up with, I decided to call it quits and take a stroll around the field to see what others were up to. Everyone at the event was extremely friendly and it felt good to be around others with a common interest. One person in particular really made the day memorable by allowing me to take some time with his 25" dobsonian telescope. The views were astounding and if it weren't for the fact that the scope costs more than $12k and takes a trailer to move, I would have felt compelled to buy one.
The weekend ended calmly with everyone rolling out of bed at 9am or so and packing up their gear.
A few additional notes:
I noticed that I was the only person who brought solar panels to recharge my deep cycle Optima battery. I was really surprised not to see any others considering many had spent thousands of dollars on their equipment setup. The solar solution worked beautifully and I was able to run my laptop, heater, and miscellaneous equipment all weekend without ever having to start my van to recharge the battery.
Apparently it's a good idea to enter the raffle drawings. My neighbor Fred bought 3 tickets and won 2 very nice eyepieces worth well over $100. I'll have to grab some raffle tickets at the next party in September.

Why I've decided to try blogging

I was taking a really memorable motorcycle trip down some quiet country roads a few weeks ago and got to thinking about all the great times I've had in my life. I love taking pictures and documenting events, but I've never made any effort to leave any record of thoughts, inspirations, or even just descriptions of memorable events. This blog will be my attempt. Unfortunately I am a terrible procrastinator and I suspect it will lag well behind real time, but I guess it is better to tried and failed than to never have tried at all.