Category: General (Page 12 of 29)

Another Sweep of the Big Hand

11/22/2008 / Matt

Once again the big hand sweeps past the top of the age clock. I celebrated by snapping off yet another tooth. I figured with the stock market in the toilet I would try the old tooth fairy strategy. But it didn’t work out cause I swallowed the darn thing. Just kidding…well mostly…my teeth have always been a weak spot for me. They’ve been chomping on stuff for a long time now. Unfortunately, they are not in the best shape and lately they seem to be breaking off. So…another sojourn to the dentist with a big bag of money and I won’t look like a hillbilly anymore.

Over the past year I have kept a closer eye on the space industry since it was always an area of interest to me. It’s good to see more countries getting into the game. The Indians (think turbans not tomahawks) have sent a spacecraft to orbit the moon and so has China and Japan. I’m still intrigued by the Google Lunar X PRIZE which is a $30 million competition for the first privately funded team to send a robot to the moon, travel 500 meters and transmit video, images and data back to the Earth. There are currently 14 teams registered for the competition. I wish I had the smarts and money to join in. That would be an interesting legacy to leave. By the way, if anyone wants to buy me a cool Google T-shirt for my birthday go right ahead 🙂 (size Large please).

I had thought earlier this year that I might get more involved in some of my old space-related interests but that never panned out. Instead I’ve been getting a local chapter of Engineers Without Borders up and running. We have identified several rural farm villages in Bolivia to partner with over the next three to five years. They are close together, well…relatively speaking, and both have requested the same help. Initially we will be working on irrigation projects but it’s hard to say where it will end up. Each community is just under a hundred families or so and are located high up in the Andes mountains. We will make the first site assessment visit next summer. Continue reading

Traveling Show

11/13/2008 / Matt

This fall has been filled with an awful lot of travel. I just got back from my second trip to Atlanta and Rhonda has been to San Antonio, TX and Suffolk, VA. Fortunately, it has been rather uneventful with planes more or less departing and arriving on time. My trips were business related and to the same place. One of our vendors completed two sets of antennas and part of the process is going down to their facility and witnessing some performance tests. This is what we call a Production Acceptance Test.

The only downside to the whole thing is the testing is quite boring. Satellite antennas have to be pretty sensitive since the transmitter is way out in space. The way they test them is by measuring the amount of noise from a dead space (cold sky) and a major source of noise like the sun or the moon. Our vendor prefers the moon. So, they move the antenna back and forth taking measurements for hours on end and after a thorough application of math come up with these performance figure based on a ration of noise to temperature. The sky has to be clear and sometimes you end up working at night.

The good thing is they are a nice bunch of people and take good care of us while we are there. The next bunch won’t be done until sometime in February so I’ll get a bit of a break on the travel for awhile.

Birthday Hike

9/28/2008 / Matt

It’s fall in the Rocky Mountains and that means lots of color. We headed up to Denver to pick up Kristina and go for an autumn hike and celebrate her 23rd birthday. Our destination was Fall River Rd. just west of Idaho Springs. Rhonda and I had been there about 18 months ago for a snowshoeing adventure and we figured it would be beautiful in it’s fall colors. We were correct. The aspens are plentiful and the colors this year are electric.

We drove up the road taking in the beauty and parked near the trail. The trail is actually a road that lead to several private cabins (cabin is a serious understatement for some of these places) and eventually, some 3 or 4 miles further connects with the National Forest and several trails including the Continental Divide Trail. When we snowshoed up the road in the winter it was buried in snow and quite impassable for vehicles so we didn’t realize the road does provide public access to the National Forest and we could have driven up and started hiking further along. Oh well…next time we’ll know better.

We had gotten a pretty late start to the day and the sun had already dropped behind the ridge so most of our hike was bereft of sunshine. It was a good jaunt and by the time we got back to the car we were getting a bit cool and quite hungry. We made our way back to Idaho Springs where we enjoyed a wonderful dinner at a nice Italian Trattoria and celebrated Kristina’s birthday.

Three Men Camping

8/26/2008 / Matt

Three men went camping in the Puma Hills, an area in the Pike National Forest. What made this particular camping trip unique was; they were all Grimes men. Three generations in fact. Now that may not seem like a big deal but surprisingly, this camping trip took a long time to organize. I’ve been camping at various times over the years with both my Dad and with my Son but never at the same time. It seems like a simple thing to organize but with all of us serving in the armed forces at one time or another it just never made it past the good idea stage.

I’m the middle generation now but I remember trying to make the same scenario happen when I was a young man. We lived in Iowa at the time and the goal I had envisioned was making a trip up to the Boundary Waters in Canada. Dad was retiring from the Air Force and moving back to Des Moines but my Grandfathers health began to fail before I could make it a reality.

Time passes swiftly and I began to realize another opportunity might easily slip by so I got a commitment from everyone to make it happen this summer. Dad caught the train to Denver and slipped through the “Gestapo” as he called them [Denver was hosting the Democratic National Convention at the time and the Secret Service were all over the place to include boarding the train in Ft Morgan and checking everyone’s “papers”.] and rode the bus on down to the Springs. Continue reading

Summer Catchup

8/23/2008 / Matt

August is winding down and once again I find myself wondering Where did the summer go? Time just seems to fly by these days. Oh…and there was one other positive thing from the Rio Chama Adventure…I got a really good start on a beard and decided to let it grow. It’s been well over 25 years since I had a fuzzy face. Most everyone seems to like it too. 😉

Kristie and Noelle Swanson came out in early June for a weekend visit. Noelle spent the weekend at an Art Conference/Workshop while we showed Kristie around the local area and went hiking in North Cheyenne Canyon. We also got to see some of Noelle’s work and can confirm that she is one talented young lady.

We’ve only gotten one camping trip in since the big Memorial Day trip. That was back in mid-June. We went over near LaSalle Pass which is located north of Wilkerson Pass. It leads through the Puma Hills immediately north of Badger Mountain. We found a really nice campsite with a view back to the east of Pikes Peak. The weather was a welcome relief from the previous trip. It remained sunny and warm for our entire stay and we had a very relaxing time.

In early July we went to see America in concert. They were playing here in town at the Pikes Peak Center and put on quite a show. It was quite interesting looking around at the crowd and comparing to the “old days”. Needless to say, there was a lot of gray or balding heads in the crowd. Everyone had an awesome time and it was well worth the money spent.

The 4th of July weekend saw us headed to Iowa for the big family reunion. This was probably the last time that the whole crew will get together. I’m not sure how many were there this year but it was good to see everyone and catch up on family news and events. We spent some time with friends and family and got reacquainted with the heat and humidity of an Iowa summer.

July and August have been filled mostly with house projects, fellowship with our church small group, building Rhonda’s business, and helping people move. Kristina is living in Denver now and working for an energy company. Hopefully she will write an article for the website one of these days. A lot of my time has been taken up building a local chapter of Engineers Without Borders – USA which I started this earlier this year. I’ve made luncheon presentations to a number of local engineering societies this summer. It has been fairly slow going but I’ve now recruited enough people to gain official recognition as an established chapter.

EWB-USA is a non-profit humanitarian organization. Our local Professional Chapter will partner with a developing community in order to improve their quality of life. This partnership involves the implementation of sustainable engineering projects, which typically focuses on providing water supply and sanitation systems. Another goal is to involve and training internationally responsible engineers and engineering students. We are planning to work with University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and the Air Force Academy students and faculty to support the student chapters. You can read a little more about it at the website I built at www.ewbcos.org if you’re interested.

The Rio Chama Canyon Adventure – Part Two

8/20/2008 / Matt

The Continental Divide Trail (CDT) has a section that runs through the canyon. We drove back down the river to Skull Bridge and parked. Once you leave the road you are in the Chama River Canyon Wilderness. The trail heads out through the Ojitos Canyon where cattle are being grazed on the grassland. The walls of the Chama Canyons are a striking variety of colors from yellows to maroons marking the distinct sedimentary layers of rock. We hiked several miles across the canyon and then the trail headed up a side canyon and began to gain some elevation. We continued to follow it and it eventually started paralleling a small stream.

The clouds settled back in but they were high and did not seem to be threatening rain so we continued for awhile until we got tired. Didn’t see any wildlife to speak of but the canyon walls were quite interesting throughout the hike. We thought we might get to the point where the canyon narrowed down but decided we had best turn back. The hike back went pretty quickly and by the time we got back to the car we had covered eight miles. We hadn’t planned to go quite so far but it felt good to be out and about and not cooped up by bad weather. Continue reading

The Rio Chama Canyon (Mis)Adventure – Part One

6/2/2008 / Matt

I’d been planning on a camping trip to Utah’s Canyon Country after the wedding in the hopes of getting out into red-rock country. There is something I find fascinating about this beautiful but desolate area and I was looking forward to the warmth, photo opportunities, and no responsibilities. However, in the end we opted out of the long drive and decided to try something a little closer to home. A little research on the Internet turned up a similar area in the Santa Fe National Forest. Located in north central New Mexico, the Rio Chama Canyon became our destination for an extended Memorial Day weekend.

The forecast was a bit dubious but we headed out and worked our way south through high winds and rain arriving at the Coyote Ranger station a few minutes before they closed. We snagged a map of the area and located a nice lookout point on the map at the end of a 4WD forest road that promised extraordinary views of the canyon and river. It took another hour to get there but the view did not disappoint. The only problem was the stinking weather! The winds were still kicking up and it was hinting that it might snow. We decided that setting up camp on the exposed lookout was not the best idea and retreated back into the forest where we pitched the tent among a bunch a small trees.

Misadventure #1: I forgot to pack the sleeping mats. Doh! Rhonda came to the rescue and created a comfortable bed out of the materials we had on hand.

The wind died down and I made a nice campfire but after supper the big old fat snowflakes started coming down. It was pretty but we didn’t linger too long after such a long travel day. We crawled into the tent and quickly realized we should have brought our winter bags. The down blanket and vests we always bring saved the day, er…night, and we managed to stay warm. At least for awhile. I woke up in the middle of the night wondering why the dog was sleeping on my legs. It wasn’t the dog. Continue reading