Last day in SLO: bike ride, Amtrak

     We woke up and took the bikes to Los Osos area for a last ride over Spooners Cove. Tim, Scott and I rode 10 miles.  I think we made good time but I was the slow one. My ass still was sore from the last ride so that's my excuse, (strangely, this didn't make it better) haha. Good ride, lots of down hill at the end.  Crashed twice on the way down, but nothing bad though.

Made it!

     After eating our post-ride lunch at a Mexican restaurant, I cleaned up and packed for the bus and train ride to Camarillo. The bus ride was uneventful but the train was fun.  It had been a while since I had rode on a train so it was nice. 

     

     After my cab took me to the wrong Hampton Inn and got to the right one, I still had to wait an hour for Greg and Steve to get there from Fairbanks.  We are all down to do camera payload testing on a UAV with Aerovironment in Simi Valley.

Hearst Castle

Went to Hearst Castle today.  Pretty incredible.  Lots of very old art that was purchased and moved here in the 30s. 

   
Afterwards we went and saw the elephant seals

Dinner that night with Tim, Sue, Scott and Pam at Mo's BBQ in downtown SLO.  It was pretty chilly but we walked around a while and saw the mission that was founded in the 1772.

Cal Poly

     I went with nick today to a UAS design class at Cal Poly. Nick is now teaching the class but they had a guest speaker from Boeing talking about aircraft structure. In brief, aircraft are extremely complex and one system would take hours to talk about; there are many systems...
     After the class, Nick introduced me to the professor that leads the class. He took me to their lab where the students build the planes for the AIAA competition. They have nice digs there, haha. Lots of tools, space, tables and even a dust room. A nice rack with carbon fiber and kevlar sits next to a stack of assorted foam pieces.
Thanks Nick, I got a lot of good info from that visit.

     When I got to Tim's, Tom and Loraine as well as Ruby and Pam were there.  (Nice to see you guys).  Later that night this photo was taken:

Diving in Catalina

      I have been putting off the blog because I haven't finished the rough video edit yet. I will post it soon but just have to do picture for now.

      Tim and I went to the dive shop and I bought a wet suit. Its an AquaLung 8:7, 8mm on the body and 7mm on the legs and arms. We went to Tim's rental and picked up the ladders since we would not be there for a few days. As soon as we got tot the house we started packing our gear and checking regulators, BCDs, lights, tanks, etc... By eight in the evening the car was packed and Tim had all his work done, so we head off to LA.

Gear Check.

All the gear loaded in the car.

     We got to LA pretty late and crashed at Brian's house. We had to drive to long beach at like 4:45 in the morning to catch the boat to the island. After I made a navigational error in the crazy streets we had to rush to get to the boat in time. We made it and loaded all our gear onto hand carts, which we would pull all over for the next two days on the island. The trip across was nice as we left in the dark and got to watch the sun rise. At one point we were on the crest of a wave and could see the sun. And when we dipped into the trough it was gone below the horizon, giving us two sun rises.  

Queen Mary

     After we got our gear off the boat and trucked over to the hotel it was 8 am. We had to wait just a little while to get in our room but we dropped off our non diving gear and headed straight to the ocean. The room was pretty small; two beds a tiny bathroom, and a small kitchen with three chairs at a table. But we were there for the diving and the room was just a place to crash at when we weren't out.

At the Hermosa Hotel. Ready to dive!

Tim and I all geared up

     Since this was my first ocean, salt water, wet suit, clear visibility dive, and first dive with Tim, we did a check out dive before going anywhere. We swam out to a raft tethered to the bottom and descended to a small clear spot and sat on the bottom. Once there for a minute to adjust we flooded, took off, and cleared our masks as well as practiced sharing air. We explored the kelp forests and sea life for a while more.  We surfaced to start our surface interval as we planned to check out a ship wreck.  After an hour on the surface we went back down to look for the wreck.

     We went down to about 85' but only found a mast and lots of chain from the buoys on the surface. There were some other parts around but the hull of the ship wasn't to be found. The wreck is on a step underwater slope so it could have got washed out in a storm.

     After taking a five hour nap we explored the city of Avalon. Avalon's prime mode of transportation is golf cart. The steep hills and crowded buildings reminded me of cities I saw in Argentina. There were stairs and little alley ways and even ladders that connected the streets. After walking around we had pizza and went to bed. We had planned to go on a night dive but the cold temp, wet wet suit and warm pizza persuaded us not to go out at and freeze. 

     On day two we packed up and headed back down to the dive park. We geared up and did a long surface swam out to a buoy that was supposed to be above the wreck of the Valiant.  The Valiant was a 147' luxury yacht that sank in 1930 in about 90' of water. We descended and found it pretty quickly.  That was the deepest I have dove yet and I was quite nervous about it.

Despite being stressed from diving the wreck, I did well on air and we had a slow ascent and followed the bottom in to shore, exploring along the way. After a surface interval we did another dive with food for the fish. Also just played around and sat on the bottom for a while watching the bubbles...

   
After our fun dive we showered with our gear to get the salt water off and went back to the express boat terminal. The ride back went quickly and we waited in LA for a few hours to avoid the traffic before driving back to SLO.
Great Trip!

Day Ten: Meeting Sam

     Had breakfast with Tom and Loraine and then took Tom's truck down to the box stores to do some shopping as I did not bring enough clothes. I cleaned up the clearance sales and got a new pull over jacket for $5 and some other good deals.
     My friend Sam Brewer from UAF works down here for Halliburton and we arranged to meet up when he had time off. Sam and I work on the plane for the AIAA competition the first year of Aero Group. I drove up to Paso Robles and got Sam. We talked about school, work, UAVs and oil drilling on the drive back to SLO. When we got back, Loraine said that Tim and Tom had gone on a bike ride and were in the hot tub. After introductions Tim and Sam talked a lot about diving, hiking and sail boats.
     A quick side story: I went with Sam on a spur of the moment hike with last spring in Alaska on a quest for GoPro cameras from "space". The quest turned into a survival situation with no food, freezing temperatures and a lack of fuel to keep our wet wood burning. So I know Sam is probably crazy enough to get involved with our hiking group. He is in the area and has similar interests. I hope to see him on future hikes (I hope to get time off to go on future hikes as well).
     We had a quick snack and headed off to Bishop Peak to go hiking. Sam has been working near here and hasn't been able to get away to do anything so was glad to get out. We made it to the top in good time and headed right over to the rocks to do some bouldering. We tried climbing on some of the bigger rocks at the top but it was raining and things were getting slippery pretty fast.  We climbed (or crawled) out on some ledges to get a good view of the valley below.
     After the hike we drove back and talked with Tom while he BBQed two chickens. Good dinner!  Andrew went back to LA so Sue says its their turn to have me over.  Across the street I go. lol

Day Nine

     Got up and went with Tim to work on his rental again. I figure the sooner we get it done, the sooner we will go diving. Got a lot of the finish paint done and helped cut some new boards to replace the ones that had dry rot. We walked down to the corner market where they have an excellent grill with authentic Mexican food and "the best burritos ever" according to Tim.  Tom and Loraine came by a few hours after lunch and "rescued" me from my voluntary slave labor, haha. After leaving the rental I went back to the corner store with Tom and Loraine and we got food for dinner.
     We drove to the house and put the burritos in the refrigerator and I changed and picked up my camera. Then we headed off to Port San Luis and Avila Beach to walk the piers and see the ocean.

Day Eight: Meeting SLO

     Tom set up a tour for me to see Next Intent with him today. Next Intent is a precision machining company which makes parts for NASA, JPL and similar agencies and companies. They make speciality parts that no one else can build. If they bid a job that one or two other companies in the world can do, its not for them.
     Next Intent made the wheels and suspension for the Mars rovers. Each wheel was machined out of a solid piece of material and then anodized black. Similar to what happened with our prototype Puma bays at PFRR, they have left over Mars rover wheels sitting on desks as expensive pencil holders.
     Another item they work on is the vibration isolation mounts used on NASA rockets to keep sensitive electronics payloads from being damaged. They make a variety of mounts from the very small that you can deflect with your finger, to the large mounts that connect the first and second stage of rockets. They also make vibration mounts that only move in certain directions. The entire floor of their building is covered in millions of dollars worth of CNC machines, lathes, and 3, 4, and 5 axis mills. They machine hard(er) to work with materials like tungsten, and titanium.
     After seeing Next Intent we went to see Tom's friend's company, Architectural Iron. Architectural Iron makes very high end windows for very expensive houses. Their last customer was building a 50 million dollar house, the windows alone were half a million.
     Next we to Tom's work and I got to see a little bit of the projects he works on. It has to do with grinding silicon wafers for use in making chips and processors. I would have to do some research to really understand what they were doing but it high tech stuff.

Day Seven: Rutan Boomerang

     I got up early and went over to Tim's house. He is working on his rental a few miles from SLO and I'm helping out. We got some supplies from around the house and went to home depot for more. When we got to the house we unloaded all of the tools and I started painting the trim on the front of the house and the roof while Tim cut out dry rot and made new pieces to fit. At 4:30 we packed up and headed back to clean up and meet Tom.
     Tom had set up a meeting with Tres Clements to check out the Rutan Boomerang. Burt Rutan designed and built the boomerang in 1996 to be the safest twin engine plane ever. It's asymmetrical design with forward swept wings is truly unique. The cabin is situated to the right of the center of the aircraft. On the other side is nacelle with the second engine.
     The entire aircraft is constructed from carbon fiber. The wings are wet wings with internal spars and ribs. The spar runs through the pressurized cabin, behind the pilots seats. The doors have seals and latches that mechanically make it impossible to open the door in flight due to the pressure differential.
     Tres came by the boomerang while working for Rutan's company, Scaled Composites. Burt was unable to fly the boomerang any longer but didnt want to see it grounded. He gave it to Tres for as long as he would maintain and fly it. Tres has received donated gear and avionics that make the plane easier to fly. He still flies it about once a month but says it is a busy cockpit. Meaning the plane takes lots of management and pilot input to keep it flying right.

Day Five: New Years Mountain Biking

     Got up and got the bikes ready for a trip. Tim borrowed a bike from his friend for me to ride. Turns out it is a Giant, similar to the one I have at home. Got my GoPro stuff and day pack ready, loaded the bikes and we were off in Tom's truck.
     We drove east to the coast to ride on the hills overlooking the ocean.  I was still pretty sore from the seat on the ride up and down Prefumo Canyon two days before but nothing you can do for that. We parked right at the beach and pedaled up the road a ways to the trail head.  Tim put a bell on his bike to alert the horse riders that also use the trail systems there. Tim's biking group maintains the trails, and they are very nice.
     We made it up with only a few stops to look at the view. I started using the GoPro wifi remote and it works really well for getting quick on and off shots. I know that during the editing I will only be using a few seconds of video at a time and I'm not sure what to do with the left over video filling up my hard drive. I'm trying to keep the long shots to a minimum.
     After getting to the highest point on the trail which is 1000 ft elevation gain according to Tom's GPS track, Tim wore my GoPro looking back and I rode behind him. We did quite a decent over rocky terrain. Of course it doesn't look steep in the video but riding down it fast is quite different.
     There was one more up hill section and once we passed that it was all downhill from there.  The last part of the trail was steep and through a narrow cut in the brush. I scraped a tree at one point but didn't fall because its like being in a luge.

Video link:
http://youtu.be/JtZp3TDD3M0

     When we got back to the truck we had gone 9.8 miles with an average grade of 6% and 7% on the first uphill section

     Since it is New Years day Tim and I jumped in the ocean with no wet suit. The waves were up so we had to wait a while for a lull in the set. It was pretty cold at first but once the shock passed it wasn't bad. Also knowing there was a 102 degree hot tub waiting back at the house helped.

Pretty rough here...

   

Day Four: Kayaking

     Kind of a slow day.  Tim and Sue had to get stuff done before the new year. I helped Tom take down Christmas lights and do a little work around the garage.  We snagged a kayak from Tim and loaded it in Tom's truck.  After working on a few little things and playing with Tom's rc car he got for Christmas, I drove down to Laguna Lake. Driving an unfamiliar big truck in a new city, in California was a bit of a task. Missed my turn and had to drive around for a bit to find the lake.
    Unloaded the kayak and got paddling. The lake has reeds on one side and houses on the other so I took to unpopulated part.  Saw some birds but spent most of the time kind of just drifting.  Tim didn't tell me the kayak was supposed to have holes in the bottom that let water in. I got quite cold sitting in the water and came back after about two hours.
     After getting back I showered and went with Tom to his sister's house for dinner.  There was a huge platter of ribs with beans, coleslaw, and buns.  On the way back I talked with Tom about the UAVs and business. There is a lot to absorb.
     Loraine got in soon after we got home. Watched tv for a bit but everyone was tired and went to bed early. I ended up falling asleep watching TV, before midnight haha.

here is a video link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doyg_ovDS9E