Another fun weekend (and good week)

Hmm...somehow a whole week slipped by since the last post. Ah well, it was a relatively busy week and weekend. Some highlights:

- My dad will be coming out to work for my company. He's been managing the office for my aunt's trucking company in rural western Wyoming, and would prefer to be back in the Denver area where the rest of our family lives. He's been taking solar design classes (and I've been providing a bit of training) so that he can get a job in the Denver area doing that. But, it would be easier for him to get a job if he's got direct experience. And, Jill and I are going away for three weeks for our honeymoon, so the company desperately needs a designer while I'm away. So, I get to spend a couple of weeks bringing my dad up to speed (and tackling my ever-increasing backlog of projects) and then he'll work with us until he can find a job in Denver. It'll be great to have him out here!!!

- We sold Jill's house (well, duplex). This actually happened the week before, but I never posted it. It was only on the market for three weeks, and she managed to get full price for it. Not sure what our next step is, since we're not planning to start looking for a new house to buy until the beginning of the year. We hope to keep renting out our half of the duplex.

- Going to Corvallis yesterday for the annual da Vinci Days celebration. It was crazy fun, with a pedal-powered Kinetic Sculpture Parade, robots, sustainable technology, art, and all kinds of cool stuff. Descriptions don't do it much justice, so you should check out more of the photos here. One of my favorite things there couldn't be photographed - the room-sized camera obscura. It was a large, black tent with a convex lens and mirror arrangement on top, that projected an image onto a round, stone table. It was essentially like a video projected on the table using just a mirror. I can't really say why I liked it so much, but it was fascinating.

- This morning, we ran into a friend of mine (we'll call him spArk since that's the name he used for a long time, and now I can't remember the Scandinavian name he changed it to last year) who basically works as an urban farmer. He plants gardens on thirteen lawns and a stretch of public land along an unpaved road in the neighborhood. He has a Community Supported Agriculture arrangement with the homeowners, who provide him with money in return for the vegetables and herbs that he grows. It's not much, but he's still able to make a living doing something he loves. It's an extremely interesting arrangement, exactly along the lines of what I wanted to develop in the neighborhood of our new house. I'm glad to see that spArk is pioneering the idea already (and very successfully), and we got to take a tour of one of his plots of land.

- We spent a big chunk of the day working on honeymoon plans. We've got a kickass trip to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden planned, and we mapped out the various places we wanted to go, and looked at some of the travel and lodging options. Lots of time online looking at schedules and maps. I'll post a detailed breakdown of that in the near future. It's going to be awesome.

Okay, I've spent way too long on the computer today, time to sign off...

Fun weekend

This has been a great weekend, lots of good stuff going on. Actually, too much good stuff - we had to skip the first-year anniversary party for our local coffee shop, The Funky Door, because we had a few obligations in North Portland. That was sad, because two of the girls who work at The Funky Door were gracious enough to work as servers at our wedding reception, and they took a bunch of funny photos of a little gnome statue at the wedding (it's an inside joke with their boss, Diana). We got to see the album of gnome photos this morning, and they actually had quite a few quirky ones from our wedding (which made us happy to see that Corinna and Jillian were having fun there as well!)


Anyway, on Friday night Jill and I went to see a couple of local bands play at a nearby theater. We'd never heard either band, but the headliner, Talkdemonic, has gotten consistently great reviews over the years. So, we hadn't been to a show in a long time and decided to check it out. We went out to a nice dinner first, then got to the show earlier that we planned. We went on a walk around the neighborhood to kill time, and came across a sweet view of the river and west side that I'd never seen before. We were right across from the new South Waterfront development and OHSU tram, as the Ross Island Bridge. Unfortunately, we were also right next to McLoughlin Blvd, which an ugly, noisy, busy highway between central Portland and points south. Still, it was nice enough that we stayed to watch the sun set over the West Hills.

The bands were excellent. The opening band was Point Juncture, WA, an exuberant five-piece that included a vibraphone, one of my favorite instruments. Many of them shifted around to play various other instruments throughout their set. It was a bit quirky, a bit poppy, and lots of fun. I don't think they have an album out yet, but we'll keep an eye out for it. We really enjoyed that band. Then Talkdemonic came on, and they were incredible. Well worth all of the hype. They featured a dynamic combination of a woman on violin and a guy on drums, along with various pre-recorded instruments and beats for accompaniement. No vocals, but lots of intense, energetic music. The show convinced us that we should probably go out to see more local bands, there's been a large influx of musical talent to Portland over the past decade or so.


Saturday morning was our usual routine of coffee and pastries at the Funky Door. After that, I had to go help out at my company's booth at the Mississippi Street Fair. That was a huge event, one of the best street fairs in the city! I believe it's the only one where they actually close off the street, for about half a mile or so. It makes a big difference. There were expected to be about 10,000 people there. You can see from the photo that it was big. Fortunately, one of our sales staff, Ed Han, lives right on N. Mississippi and we just finished installing a 2-kilowatt photovoltaic system for him. And, it was right up the street from our booth! That helped us while we were talking with potential customers. I also get to spend a lot of time telling people about solar attic fans and how great they are. I feel like an evangelist for them now, since I think every house should have one to increase comfort and lower energy consumption. We had a lot of people sign up to get bids and more information from us, and raised more awareness for solar. It was a fun, successful event. I also ran into a few friends there, and Jill picked up some new jewelry and a cool new T-shirt.

After the Street Fair, we biked up a couple more miles north to an ice cream social in honor of Bastille Day at a co-housing commnity called Peninsula Park Commons. I know a few people there through Shift, a bike fun group. Actually, they had a Memorial Day party a couple of years ago that was Jill and my second date. It was an okay event, but we both felt less inclined to socialize by the time we got there. There were tons of people there, and lots of them with kids. The kids were having a great time, splashing around and playing with a hose and such. We ran into a few people we knew, including one of my old friends from the Green Party. And, there was an enormous amount of excellent homemade ice cream! Jill had made a triple-layer chocolate cake for the event, but it got jostled around in it's container on the back of her bike. The top layer was salvaged and savored by folks, but the other two layers were basically mush. She was disappointed, but for the most part she really enjoys the process of learning to make the cakes. We grilled some food, hung out with a few people we knew, and then decided we didn't really feel liking hanging out much longer. Unfortunately, my good friend Ken showed up right as we were leaving, we don't hang out anywhere near as much as we used to. But, it was time to go.

We rode back home, a fairly straight, fast route down N. Vancouver Ave. (with a double-wide bike lane, so we could ride side by side and talk!) and onto the Eastbank Esplanade, which took us most of the seven miles home. We had time to drop off a lot of our stuff, and then took off again for the Hollywood Theatre in NE Portland, another four mile ride. One of Jill's friends from high school had appeared in a movie shot in Portland back in 1999 called "The Sum of the Parts," and it was just now being released. This showing was the "world premiere." Jill was hoping to see her friend Melody, but we got there just before the movie started. The movie was, um, interesting. The acting was perhaps more suited to the stage than the big screen and they had a bit of trouble with the pacing. And, it was very low budget. There were a lot of interesting elements to it, and I liked some of the style, but the plot simply tried to cover too much ground, and it all got muddled. Basically, a sci-fi, techno-thriller with a lot of hard-core geek information embedded in it. It was a valiant effort for a first time director (and writer, and lead actor) but I think he would have been better off narrowing his focus and making a better film that way. Afterwards, there was a Q&A session with the director. Jill again hoped to find her friend, but couldn't make her out in the audience, and we were tired enough by that point we didn't want to hang around until it was all over.

We got to sleep in late this morning, and have a relaxed day. More coffee and pastries at the Funky Door, and then we both tried to catch up on some work. Jill had to go into her office for a few hours, and I worked on a few things from home. In the afternoon, we went to see another movie, "Day Watch," that we'd been planning to see for quite a long time at the second-run theaters, but were worried wouldn't be there much longer. It's a sub-titled Russian sci-fi/fantasy movie and the sequel to "Night Watch," and they're both based on a bestselling series of Russian novels by the same names. The two movies have broken all box office records in Russia. The first movie was great, with an interesting story and special effects that reminded me of "The Matrix" even though the budget was only $5 million. They did a helluva lot with that money. I've also been reading the novels as the English translations have been released. [an amusing interjection - my friend Ken just called to say that he was biking past the Laurelhurst Theater, and decided to see "Day Watch" tonight, and invited us to join him. That's such a weird coincidence!] Anyway, the second movie wasn't that great. Jill enjoyed because she went in without expectations, but I was disappointed at how much it differed from the books, and the plot was kinda silly. The novels are much more intricate and well-developed. Ah well, that's movies for you. And, it's nearing the end of our weekend...

Thunderstorm!

After a few days of hot weather, we had a surprise thunderstorm pop up last night. That's a rare occurrence here, we get maybe two or three thunderstorms each year, usually in the spring. And, it's fairly unusual to get any rain at all in the month of July. The climate here is incredibly mild, and we rarely get any kind of extreme weather. It stays cool for much of the year, but it never gets cold. We often only get snow a few times each winter (or sometimes none at all), and that usually melts within a few hours. For much of the winter we'll have light, scattered showers to occasional steady rain, and the summer is usually clear blue skies from July through September.

So, the thunderstorm last night was a lot of fun, something that I really miss from back in the Midwest (and fireflies, we don't have those either). The first time I heard thunder last night, I went outside in disbelief, and stayed out for half hour or so until the rain got too heavy. Most of the lightning stayed within the clouds, only a few bolts coming down to the ground. Regardless, it was still a fun spectacle. And, the plants really needed the rain!

Air conditioning blows (and how to get by without it)

Today we're supposed to have record-breaking heat, above 100 degrees. The current record for today is 98 degrees. I checked Accuweather this morning, and clicked on the Weather Advisory issued for Portland. I was ticked off to read that one of their recommendations was "stay in an air conditioned room." That's really lame and unnecessary here.


I've lived without air conditioning for 12 years now, except for six months or so in 1999 in Cincinnati when my girlfriend at the time had a small window unit. Air conditioning is a colossal energy drain (which means we're burning lots and lots of coal to provide it), and for the most part it can be avoided with a good building design and a few cheap space conditioning measures.


[had to take a long break to deal with a lot of work issues]


Now it's nearly the end of the work day, although that's always flexible since I'm working from home these days. Accuweather reports it's 101 degrees outside, officially breaking the record. However, I'm sitting relatively comfortable in the house with the thermostat reporting 83 degrees, only up 7 degrees from this morning's low of 76. That's without an air conditioner or even turning on a fan. I'm feeling a little warm but not uncomfortable. I considered digging a fan out of the basement, but don't want to kick up a bunch of dust if I turned it on (well, maybe we should sweep and mop more often...) We also might sleep in the basement bedroom tonight, because the overnight temp is supposed to stay high until just before dawn.


Here are a few things that I do to beat the heat, while saving lots of money (and the environment):


1.) Live in the right place. Fortunately, the Pacific Northwest has a fairly mild climate , which makes this more feasible. Days over 90 degrees are fairly rare and the relatively low humidity makes for a comfortable "dry heat." For many reasons, you couldn't pay me to live in the sweltering, humid Southeast or furnace-like Desert Southwest. Even the Midwest could get very uncomfortable with 90 degree, 90% humidity days. Still, there are options even there.

2.) Install a solar attic fan. This is one of the most effective ways to cool a house (and here's a photo of our solar attic fan). An installer cuts a circular hole in the roof and mounts the solar attic fan over it. Hot air rises and gets trapped in the attic, becoming even hotter. The solar attic fan draws the hottest air out of the attic and draws in cooler ambient air. It also works only when there's direct sun, which is when it's hottest out (and that means they run off free electricity). A solar attic fan should cool a house by 5 or 10 degrees, which can help quite a bit. In our case, it means we don't need AC at all. In other cases, it could reduce the amount of air conditioning needed. And, they're cheap! I got mine at cost through the last solar company I worked for, but one of my co-workers told me that he saw one at Home Depot last week for $179! People can either install themselves, or get either a solar or roofing contractor to do the work. Should only cost $50 to $100 for the labor, and they should be installed within an hour or two.


3.) Cover windows to minimize solar heat gain. During the summer, I make sure to close all of the blinds to the south and west of the house, which the sun is going to bake throughout the day. Most of our blinds are white, which is highly reflective, and that helps even more. When the ambient air is so much hotter outside than inside, it's good to draw all of the blinds as a form of insulation. However, I can put my hand between the windows and blinds, and feel a big jump in temperature. That's bad news, meaning that the heat is still being trapped inside the house. The best scenario would be exterior roll-up blinds above the south and west windows, to block the solar heat gain from getting into the house at all. Unfortunately, we're trying to sell Jill's house (well, duplex) so I had to let a realtor show it this afternoon. To make it more attractive, I had to open all of the blinds and allow more heat and solar gain in for an hour or so. That probably cost me a couple of degrees.


4.) Make the best use of cooler ambient air. Once the sun goes down, the air outside will start to cool down. And, any wind will also help circulate the air and cool things down in general. So, when the sun sets, I'll usually open many of our windows and let the house cool down. Usually within an hour or two it's cool enough to sleep comfortably during the summer. Like I wrote, we might just sleep in the basement bedroom tonight. In the morning, I'll leave the windows open to keep the cool, fresh air circulating, until the outside air temperature starts warming up in the late morning. If the air inside the house is cooler than outside, then why keep windows open to let in the hot air?




So, that's basically what I do to keep cool during the summer. It's fairly effective and relatively painless. I had to stop a few more times while writing to deal with various work issues, so it's turned into a rather late work night. It's now a little after 7 pm. Accuweather indicates that it's cooled down a little outside to 97 degrees. The house has absorbed more heat (we've got a lot of western exposure) so the temperature has climbed to 88 degrees. But, I have to admit that I'm still feeling relatively comfortable, probably because it's climbed so gradually throughout the day. I haven't turned on a fan all day, and haven't really felt the need. Yay!


We'll see how things go tomorrow when it might be warmer than usual overnight, and we're expecting our second 100 degree day in a row. Of course, it'll help if I don't have to open the blinds again to show off the house!

Inaugural post!

This is part of new experiment mainly for keeping in better touch with friends and family throughout the country, and letting them know more about what Jill and I are doing. The tools are out there, so it seemed worthwhile to take the time to learn to use them. I also created a Flickr account to post the photos from our various trips. Not sure how frequently this will be updated, but it's worth a shot.

This weekend has been a little too slow and laid back for sharing much, but maybe that's why I feel comfortable creating this new blog. Last weekend, we helped with a bike move on Saturday (that's the accompanying picture) and went on great bike trip out to Multnomah Falls (Jill's longest bike ride ever!) Both were fun and tiring, in a good way.

The main event for this weekend was last night, when we went on The Night Ride, a benefit for the Bicycle Transportation Alliance. Basically, it was a couple thousand people riding around town at night, starting aroudn 9 pm. Everyone received a glow-in-the-dark necklace and Tireflys, and many others had various other lights, in addition to their bike lights. There were a couple of refreshment and entertainment stops throughout the ride, which was about 15 miles or so. It made for quite a spectacle - we had a lot of people coming out of their houses and watching us stream by, and/or cheering us on. Not all of the car drivers were too thrilled, but most of them ranged somewhere between supportive and tolerant.

The highlight for Jill and I was riding along the Columbia Slough Trail. The trail snaked along a raised bank next to the water, without any street lights. It was rather dark, except for a clear, starry sky. Jill and I were at the back of large group, with the next group far behind us, slowed down by the people at the front who were uncertainly negotiating the terrain in the dark. It was great for us to watch the long line of blinky red lights winding along the water ahead of us, as far as we could see. Then, we'd occasionally stop to look behind us, to see a similarly long, winding group of white bike lights and other blinky things stretching back to the horizon, as well as reflecting in the dark water below. It was really beautiful and wish we'd had the camera with us. Our friend Dat was out there with his camera, so maybe I'll re-post any good photos that he took.

Later, on the home stretch on N. Vancouver Avenue, there were a couple of Latino kids (one about 6 years old, the other probably 3) standing on the side of street, asking the bicyclists for their lights (they meant the glow-in-the-dark necklaces). Most bicyclists, including me, were zipping by too quickly to really register what the kid was asking for. However, once it sank in, I realized that I didn't need my glow-in-the-dark necklace any longer and he'd probably appreciate it a lot more. So, I asked Jill to stop by the side of the road for a couple of minutes (which she reluctantly did), while I made a quick U-turn back to the kid. I gave him my necklace (his little brother already had a couple) and also reached in my pannier to give him the Tireflys I'd gotten earlier. The Tireflys only worked for conventional Presta tire valves, but wouldn't fit on the Schrader valves my tires have. I think it made his night. He thanked me, and the last time I saw him he was running into his house waving the pack of Tireflys. Then we rode home. Overall, it was a lot of fun.

Today involved waking up late and getting breakfast at Genie's Cafe. Then I worked on various projects, like finishing up the photo CD packaging from our wedding for family and friends, checking out a location for a potential Pedalpalooza ride I might organize next year, updating our Flickr site, and creating this blog. And, now I'm kinda tired of writing and doing project stuff, so maybe I'll give it a rest.