Corridor 9

I’m finally starting to shake this cold. I don’t know what had a hold of me, but it was something rather nasty. I felt like I was coughing up a lung today as little gritty pieces of phlegm were discharged…. anyway. I’m sure you’re interested in that.

We’re only a few days away from the Grand Canyon trip, and I’m jittery with anticipation. I finalized the numbers today for the other members, and emailed them individually. Now all we have to do is wait. Dad and I were going to get food in Las Vegas, but after thinking about it, I don’t think this would be a good idea. I’d like to get the packs completely ready to go so we can check weights and redistribute items as necessary. We’ll need food to accomplish this. Maybe we’ll go shopping tomorrow and finish packing on Thursday or Friday.

I’ve been sick as a dog the last day. Unfortunately I didn’t get to complete any of my tasks, and ended up sleeping most of yesterday away trying to get well. I can’t afford to be sick this next week and will do anything to get well. Submit home remedies in the comments section, but please…. nothing with voodoo and chickens!

Only problem is that it’s sitting at a residence somewhere in SPARKS, MD! Hopefully I’ll hear something soon regarding this issue as I really need that camping gear.

UPDATE: Well… they aren’t sure what happened to my package, so they are going to ship out all new items overnight to me. That’s good enough for me, as long as this package arrives on time!

The tester selections came out today for the Black Diamond Enduro Hiking Poles. Unfortunately, my name wasn’t on the list. I would have liked to test these poles on the upcoming trip, but I’m not too upset about them. i have never been a pole man anyway. I’m just glad I ordered the crampons! Let’s hope I see a more positive outcome for the Princeton Tec Apex headlamp.

Another day has come and gone. Things have been hectic around here for most of the past 3 weeks. I’ve been composing emails, trying to get schedules straight, making reservations, and trying to make sure that this trip is a success. I never knew that planning a group trip could be so nerve wracking.

In all, things are going well so far. I’ll bet I’ve dug my gear out of the closet 3 times now trying to make sure I have enough supplies so that if something bad does happen, I’ll be able to handle the situation with the least amount of pain. Knowing that a rescue in the canyon is both expensive, and time consuming, has led me to make sure I’ve got all my bases covered three fold. Lets just hope it doesn’t come to that.

On another note, I’ve yet to hear about the gear I’ve applied for. I’m going to send an email tonight regarding the Black Diamond Enduro poles, since its almost been 2 weeks since the closing date. I’m hoping to hear something soon as I’d really like to take whatever gear I’m approved for on the trip. I’ll keep you posted.

I thought it might be time for an update on the Grand Canyon trip seeing as how it is only a week and a half away.

Weather
It seems as if we may be experiencing rain or snow on the first days of the hike. Good news for me, but not so good news for those who don’t like hiking in rain or snow. I’m hoping there is a bit of snow for the first day or to as it will be a welcome change from the higher temperatures we’re supposed to be getting in the base of the canyon. Let’s just hope that the ice stays away so no one is sliding down the sides of the canyon walls!

Follow the weather from these links:

• Weather.com
• Wunderground Weather
• Intellicast Weather
• Accuweather

Maps
I found another site that has a large selection of maps for the canyon, some of which seem to be a lot more readable than those on the NPS Grand Canyon site.
You can find the new maps at the Harpers Ferry Center: NPS Maps page.

Plans
All flights have been paid for, the hotel hotel room for the first night has been booked, and the campsite has been reserved. I haven’t booked the second night hotel room yet, but may do that this evening.

Time can’t pass quickly enough.

I received an email from the station manager of WayFM yesterday. He was thankful that someone emailed him about the problem and let me know that he would look into it. This morning I received another email from him stating that they were getting a new antenna, and that hopefully this clears up the problem. I’m hoping so, as I miss my music.

Unfortunately, WayFM seems to have been down for a number of days now. I’m not sure if they switched frequencies, or if the transmitter is just broken. If anyone has a clue, please post a comment.

Another year older, another year…. whatever! You fill in the blank.

Sound too good to be true?
It isn’t! Take a look at BackpackGearTest.org and you’ll discover a world of resources and reviews on gear. You’ll be able to test gear as it hits the market, and keep that gear after the test is done.

“There’s gotta be a catch right??” Well sure, there’s always a catch, but this one’s simple. All you have to do is write 3 different reports detailing how you used the gear, how well it stood up, whether you’d buy it later, etc.

Have a look at a recent test session for the Gregory Mountain Products G-Pack.

• Initial Report: Describes the item and testing plan
• Field Report: Describe how the pack worked on your first few hikes
• Long Term Report: Describe how the pack worked over the life of the test. Include positives and negatives you found about the pack.

“But wait! I don’t know HTML well enough to design a page like that?” No problem, there are a number of us who would take your text report and “beautify it” for you if needed. In addition, many people post just text reports, or reports with a few pictures at the most.

Take a look! You may find you like testing gear more than you thought!

GrandCanyon/GCMap.jpg
I’ve posted another Grand Canyon Map. This one is topographical, and shows a lot more detail. Please bear in mind this is a BIG file, and may take a few seconds to a minute to download. Unfortunately, the USGS Quadrant maps do not show campsites, so I had to guess a bit on this one. Each color represents a different day on the trip. We’re starting off with the Orange trail and progressing to the Dark Blue trail. Pressing F11 will also increase your browser window to its fullscreen mode so you can better see the map.

Specially for you Gwen. Now you can see what a wonderful last day we’re going to have.

GrandCanyon/gcmap.jpg
I’ve created the above map to show the route we’re taking this March for the Grand Canyon trip!

More information to follow!

I saw this Multiple point touch screen video online and just had to share this. Can you imagine if this technology was coupled with the e-paper we’re hearing about!?!?

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Well… so far this is the the most activity we’ve seen this season. Unfortunately, it’s not due to stick around for long. I’m still wishing for that 12-18 inches we had last year, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to get it anytime soon.

I’ve had to undergo some changes in the way I update my linux systems due to the fact that my hard drives are crashing. I’m going to try something called a stage4. This is basically a complete system that I can backup on a dvd. My only problem is going to be the number of CD re-writes that I’m going to need because my server doesn’t have a dvd drive.

I’m hoping that everything goes good, otherwise I’ll loose everything again.

In addition, the server will go down in the next few days for a backup.

I posted my first application to test a product for BackpackGearTest.org today. There was a call to test the brand new Black Diamond Mountain Series Enduro CF Hiking Poles a few days ago. I wasn’t going to apply, but the testing pool looked small and I thought that this may give me a bit of an advantage. I was also going to wait to see what else was coming out in the next month to test since the Outdoor Retailer Show just finished up. However, these poles are not even on the market yet, so I’m sure this will be a treat. I’m hoping they will help a lot during the trip to the Grand Canyon as I will be hiking very steep terrain.

Hey all. For those of you who are following my blog for my camping information, I’ve posted a new review for you. Take a look at the Stratus Latitude review in the sidebar. I wanted to get this posted now because BGT is going to be having 3 Stratus Latitudes for review. The application deadline is closing in fast, but you can still submit if you want.

I’m finally back up and running on my laptop after a little “mishap” caused me to loose my windows partition.

I had tried installing an update to the wireless card inside my computer when all of the sudden things started going haywire. In all I’ve gotten pretty good at reinstalling winblows on my system, and have it down to a 9 hour ordeal. I did lose a bit of financial information, but nothing that can’t be replaced in the next week or so when the statements clear the bank. It was about time anyway… I had reinstalled about a month ago, but had put a bunch of junk on there to test out.

Miscellaneous/grand_canyon.jpg
Plans for the Grand Canyon trip are coming along rather nicely.

For those of you who don’t know, I have planed another trip early this march to the Grand Canyon for a four night hiking and camping expedition. After reading some information on a trip planning site, I decided that it would be nice to be able to hike down inside the canyon with my old man. I know that his knees are bothering him, so I thought now would be as good a time as any to get this accomplished.

We’re due to fly into Las Vegas and meet up with two other people with whom we’ll be sharing a rental vehicle for the drive to the canyon. Logistics have been a bit tricky to work out due to the fact that everyone is flying in from a different place, at different times and such. I think it will work out rather well though as everyone seems to be getting to Vegas within the same 5 hour time frame.

I think I’m going to try going lightweight this trip. I’ve already made plans to trim down the weight on my pack a bit, and with dad going it will be easier to split the load. The main source of weight this trip is going to be water as there are a few places we won’t be able to fill up due to the radioactive levels found within the streams.

I’ll post a trip map within a few days so you can see the route, so stay tuned for more information.

Miscellaneous/udat_13.jpg
I’ve found a design that I’d like for the new server. I’m looking at building something along the lines of the picture above. This is a 5 Hard Drive, Raid - 5 configuration that is extremely reliable. If one drive crashes, the others keep it up and running. The only other way I could make it any more stable would be to configure this as a Raid - 6 device where up to 2 hard drives could crash at the same time without any significant problems.

I haven’t decided if I want to have a 5 drive system or a 3 drive system. I’m thinking that for my needs a 3 drive system would work. This would also save me over $200, and as long as 2 drives didn’t fail at once I wouldn’t have a problem. I’ve priced out a system at around $800 but I’m going to look at other options as well. My biggest concern is building a computer that I won’t have to worry about for at least 8 years.