Colorado, June 2009. Elevation 12,126 ft. This was a good day.
Cumberland Pass
Colorado, June 2009. Elevation 12,126 ft. This was a good day.
Monthly Archives: February 2011
Illinois River
Every year I throw together a float trip for my HS & college friends. We usually do the Illinois river, nice & easy going slow float. Last year we did class 3 rapids down the Mountain Fork River, twice, that was quite the adventure remind me to tell the story sometime.
This is one of the best pics I have of the float, Click for full size.
Injury Log
I was complaining to Jess at lunch today about how my left shin hurt real bad and I got a good idea for another category; Injuries!
From now on anytime I get a decent injury I’ll post it in a little log. Clicking injury category will show them in order of appearance.
So, latest injury – Tues Jess & I were horsing around on the stairs at work on he way to the car and it ended up with me falling down some stairs again. A couple stumbles & I was quickly heading towards a 10 ft face-plant tumble. Luckily I was able to somehow maintain my footing well enough to attempt a saving move & was able to jump 7 steps down instead of tumble 7 steps down. Thats a bit too many steps even for me & I was carrying my laptop bag. Banged up my heels & bruised both knees. 2nd time I’ve fallen down stairs while holding a laptop in the last month.
Record Freeze
Highs and Lows
Normal High: 52°
Normal Low: 30°
Record High: 79° in 1922
Record Low: 4° in 1899
Today: -5°
The News On 6 WARN Team is reporting clear across the state Thursday morning and temperatures as low as 27 below zero in Bartlesville and 24 below in Ponca City. Stillwater is at 14 below while Enid is at 11 below.
The temperature in Tulsa was 5 below while Lawton reports 1 below and Oklahoma City was at 5 above zero.
Soreness
Been doing a lot of Taekwondo classes in the last few days to make up for the snow days from last week. Constant state of soreness in my legs. While doing Songahm 4 in class last night I heeled myself in the shin so hard I had to sit down for a few minutes. It actually put a dent in my shin that I swear was big enough to eat a bowl of cereal out of. I don’t mind getting hurt during sparing when someone kicks me in the head or what not, but kicking myself.. thats really irritating. And hurts LOTS. Both legs have pretty bad shin splints and aching muscles.
Smithy
So yea, I want to build a little forge & smelter to have at my disposal out of hopefully cheap-to-free, old used scrap bricks & quick-crete.
The basic idea is to build it over a small ash pit & have a fan blowing into the ash pit, up & into the fuel source (charcoal, wood, w/e) for the basic heating of metal stuffs. The smelter (in this revision) is designed for the basic extraction of metals from metal ore, and hopefully be able to add some amount of carbon to iron in the process. It would be nice if it were capable of smelting good enough to make some nice way too high carbon content cast iron, at least I could then have room to work with if I wanted to try to make a batch of 1% carbon steel.
The smelter has a cone drip at the base & a vent blower at the base of the pillar. There is a space for a crucible under it to collect molten metal.
The space directly above the heat forging chamber is just for quick & easy storage of items in & out of the fire so that they are kept safe away from peoples & objects that you don’t necessarily want bursting into quick fiery destruction.
Pretty simple design, don’t want to get too fancy just yet. If I find a good source of high iron content sand I may make a Tatara some day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatara_(furnace)).
Click for full size.
Paintball Cheating
I really hate paintball cheaters. They ruin the game for everybody. When I find one I, and as many people as I can rally to my call, try to hurt them as much as possible. In one case, one of our team photographers snapped this picture of one particular cheater that was using an empty deer corn sack to shield his gun from hits during a point based scenario event, an event we designed & ran. That is a no no. Gun hits count & this guy knew it. Soooo I had a little fun & made a funny picture.
Here ya go.
(Click for full size)
David P. Roberts