Into the Grand Canyon

On Jan. 10th, 2011 we arrived at the Grand Canyon at about 8pm Arizona time (7pm BC time). It was after dark and much too late to pick up our back country permits so we were forced to camp on the rim.

I went there with 4 coworkers from my hospital job. We would later attend a conference in Vegas. So anyway, it was Joanne's birthday so we had a chocolate birthday cake for her.

I slept in this 3-person tent between two other guys, which is perhaps how I survived since it was about -19C and the sleeping bag I brought said 4C on it and I had been told it was rated "comfort:11, limit:6, and extreme:-7". There was a heated washroom I could have slept in but that would have been admitting defeat. I wore many layers so just my feet were cold.

The next morning we woke up around dawn and drove and then took a bus to the South Kaibab trailhead. We hiked down the South Kaibab Trail all the way, across the Kaibab suspension bridge and over to the Bright Angel campground. The next day we crossed the other bridge and took the Bright Angel trail back up.

Here is my first view of the canyon that morning. It is hard to capture the hugeness of it in a photo. It is hard to even comprehend the hugeness of it when you're there.

For the first half of the hike there was snow near the trail and sometimes it was icy. A lot of the trail is steps but not very steep steps. Mules have to walk up and down the trails. Sometimes like this we were walking with steep slopes and a good view on both sides. There are no guard rails.

Down there is a cliff where the snow ends.

It was often easy to see very far in front of us to where we would be in 10 minutes or half an hour. The trail ahead wound around the right side of the pillar of rock past the end of the snow.

Here we are going behind that pillar. We were often on the edge of cliffs.

Some mules passed us on the trail.

We ate some lunch here, just before this gap to ascend into the inner rim.

Once through there we could see down to the Colorado river. You can see a trail way down there near the river that we hiked along the next day on our way back up.

There was more red sand at this level. The canyon has many different layers.

Here's a group photo minus Matthias who took it. I borrowed Jon's Olympics toque for the trip because mine somehow got left in my luggage at the hotel in Vegas.

Here's a view of the suspension bridge from above. It has many cables, so it isn't the kind that dips down or swings. They initially brought down all the cables on men's backs...not by mule.

This is looking back across the bridge at the short dark tunnel that got us there.

After setting up camp, we walked over to the nearby Phantom Ranch where hikers can pay to stay in cabins. They had a canteen there which we got some hot chocolate at. We also went back later and had some beers and played trivial pursuit.

There were deer that wandered right through the campsites. Also, late at night we saw a skunk and also a ringtail. There were also a few birds including a woodpecker.

There were many cacti at different levels of the canyon but the most at the bottom near the river.

I have sooo many more photos so I will probably put them up on facebook or flickr. Also, I will make another post about the hike back out.

Christmas 2010

As per usual, I will now blog about events that happened weeks ago.

First, I saw some of the lunar eclipse, which was the first total lunar eclipse in 3 years and the first total lunar eclipse on the day of Winter Solstice since 1638! Unfortunately for most of the time, the moon was hidden behind clouds.

For Christmas, I was on Saltspring Island from Dec. 22nd - 28th. Christmas was much like Thanksgiving, my whole family + one (this time Eric) crammed into my parent's new place and we did a few things outside, but the weather was crappy and my dad managed to re-injure his leg. I think perhaps all of us visiting is bad luck. I think he will be fine, but the injury has meant he won't be skiing again soon.

Farley and I arrived on a ferry Wednesday night.

The house was all decorated with lights, a Christmas tree and this little village of houses.

My little sister played the piano at least once a day while we were there. She is the youngest but probably the most musical of our whole family, since she is also learning the flute.

My brother Ben showed up on Thursday. Ben, my two sisters and I played some games of Robo Rally. I won one of them and my sister won the second after a great come back.

On Friday, it was Christmas eve. Rebecca and Eric showed up and we iced lots of gingerbread cookies.

We had smarties, mints, chocolates and three colours of icing. Farley chipped at the mints with a knife in order to create a powder which he sprinkled on his gingerbread man. My man looked like some kind of bird.

We played a game of Rumikub, like Rummy except with tiles. I did pretty bad on the last round but won the game by a lot of points.

On Christmas morning there was much giving of presents. My little sister made me a board game by drawing a map on a piece of paper and making many cards as well as folding some paper frogs for the game pieces. We played it and I managed to win.

The cat terrorized the window sticker town.

My brother Ben got me the portable edition of Settlers of Catan which we played a few times. I won the first game but lost all the rest. It's very convenient for playing in a car or on the ferry and the only thing I don't like is how the desert always has to be the middle hex.

I also got my sisters Dominion, a card game that is very quick and fun to play. We played it more than anything that week and my sister and I won as a team the first time.

We also had a couple family games nights. For the first one we were in pairs and earned points in completing the lyrics to Christmas songs, talk about it (like taboo), outburst, charades, and probe. On the second night we played the dictionary game (like Balderdash) and minutes to limit a game where you try and come up with words that start with a certain letter and fit a certain category.

My little sister and I went on a walk at dusk and she showed me around the bushes down the far side of their property. Then we cut down the neighbors drive way (which is partly on their property) and walked to one of the nearby lakes.

At dusk the lake looked very spooky. I also went on a walk with my mom and Ben to another lake during the trip and another walk with Natalie at 10pm where we saw a star made out of lights that appeared to hang in mid air. Walks at night are pitch black because there are no street lights. There is also not much of a shoulder so we took a flashlight to let cars know we were there.

Triscuit like to lie by the fire.

I played disc golf three times on the trip with scores around par 4. At the start of the second game Farley lost his disc way off to the side in the bushes. The wet weather made the ground a swamp and so we were all clambering over logs looking for it when my dad slipped and hurt his leg. He also fell onto the lost disc. Farley also lost his disc on the first throw of the third game but I found it without anyone getting hurt.

On boxing day my grandpa and his wife visited and I learned a little more of my family history. Two of my great grandparents were born in Scottland and that side of the family is from Glasgow. This is where the Dunsmuir name comes from. Farley left us on this day to meet his girlfriend in Surrey.

On Monday, the last full day on the island we went on a tour of the island, visiting some of the beach access.

It is too bad the weather was ugly while I was there. Of course, I didn't expect to be able to go swimming so I hadn't brought my swim trunks. In the summer, it will be awesome to visit their place though, because they are surrounded by 3 lakes, all within walking distance and you can swim in any of them. Christmas was very fun with lots of family time and board games...soo many board games!

Up next...a camping trip in the Grand Canyon followed immediately by a conference in Vegas.

Visiting Seattle

Back on Dec. 18th I spent only 8 hours in Seattle but it was first time seeing Seattle so I tried to soak up as much as I could.

I was dropped off near the Space Needle.

Instead of going up the needle, I decided to check out the science fiction museum and experience music project.

There was one room with many pieces of science fiction props, a timeline of science fiction and many video clips to watch. R2D2 was in the robots section.

An animatronic Donatello was also behind glass.

They had a fan-made borg costume and also this face piece that Patrick Stewart wore when Picard was transformed into a borg in a Star Trek TNG episode.

They also had the model used as the Death Star in Star Wars. It is about a meter wide and the backside of it is not complete. Instead you can see inside it where they put a light bulb to make light shine out of it.

Upstairs they had a Battlestar Galactica exhibit and since I've never seen a full episode this chart was useful.

They had a couple full size ships from the series along with a model of the galactica main ship. They also had some costumes that characters on the show have worn. What was most entertaining to me was an interactive monitor that presented moral choices that occurred in the show. Then I had to pick an action and it told me what percent of people agreed with me and also a clip of what they actually did on the show.

The experience music project was cool too. They had this big sculpture made of nearly 700 instruments stuck together, 40 of which are self-playing instruments. The big exhibit there was for Jimi Hendrix who I'm not really a fan of but it was still interesting. I went into a theater and watched part of a concert of his where he smashed his guitar, poured gasoline on it and then lit it on fire. At the EMP they also had many booths where you could learn to play an instrument and rooms where you could record yourself. I could have spent most of a day in these two places if I had more time.

Back outside I walked around the building to see its crazy architecture. In the area was a closed down carnival with some little rides. There was also a monorail but I wanted to walk across Seattle.

My next stop was the Hurricane Cafe which some friends recommended to me as a place to really fill up - a typical greasy spoon diner. I had a taco salad there that was really good. Then I walked to downtown Seattle and along the waterfront for a while passed many piers until I reached Pike Place market. It's like Granville Island except inside one giant building in many levels going up a hill. Seattle is much steeper than Vancouver.

I went passed the fish market which didn't look too amazing except that everyone was taking photos of it, so I did too.

Then I visited the library which is shaped really weird with an overhang.

The 4th floor is all red.

The escalators are all very green and the stairs are orange.

I sat on the big open 10th floor for a while and read a book.

The walls were sloped inward on two sides.

They were sloped outward on the other two sides. Later I went online with my laptop on the library's free wifi. I talked to Gordon who told me the library was designed to look like a stack of books. Ah, now it makes more sense.

Outside I went back over near Pike Place to visit the original Starbucks because I had a couple more hours until my bus left.

On the way I passed this very odd building that I wouldn't want to work in.

I went south and located the Amtrak station where my bus wasn't going to leave for an hour so I searched for food in the area. There wasn't much around there but I found a place called Samurai Noodles. Upon entering, I was surprised to find all the employees were caucasian. I'm so used to having any asian restaurant in the lower mainland be actually run by asian people. Anyways, the food was still quite good.

My bus trip back was uneventful as I slept almost the whole way but had to wake up to walk through customs at the border. I got home around 1am and collapsed into bed. I had succeeded in visiting all the places my friends suggested. My brother went to Seattle a couple weeks later and saw a lot more of it than I did because he did not restrict himself to just the downtown area. Next time I'm there I definitely want to check out the chocolate factory/shop he went to.

Visiting Boeing

Last week I went on a journey south to the Seattle area to take part in a face to face meeting between people from SFU, UBC, Dalhousie and Boeing. The Dalhousie group is joining our Canadian visual analytics efforts and I went to present a demo of our software CZSaw to them and to people at Boeing. I also got to see the big Boeing factory. I didn't take any photos of any part of it though.

My supervisor originally asked me if I was free Mon - Wed to visit Boeing and then later he wanted me to come down Sunday and return Wednesday. I wanted to go to Brad's sushi birthday dinner on Sunday night so I hoped to go down late Sunday. So he said I could rent a car and drive down late Sunday and I would get reimbursed. Unfortunately, I haven't driven a car in a year and a half. Driving an unfamiliar rented car in the dark in the winter across an international border is not my idea of the best way to begin driving again. Luckily some other people were heading down super early Monday morning.

I was picked up around 6:15am in Surrey. Near Seattle we used the HOV lane to skip most of the traffic and get to the Bellevue Boeing site perfectly on time. We were given special passes to get passed the gate which labeled us as international guests who needed to be escorted. The morning talks were by software engineers at Boeing and they were quite interesting. They provided lunch in the same room and then in the afternoon I gave my presentation.

The only thing I screwed up on during the trip was forgetting to bring my HDMI to VGA adapter to be able to plug my mac into the projector. I still don't know where it is. When I got there in the morning I realized that all the Boeing employees had Dell laptops. Also, all the guests with macs had the new mini ports so they had different adapters. So I was forced to do the presentation on my supervisor's laptop. We were prepared for that as a backup though.

The presentation went great. I was demoing the old version 1 of CZSaw, while we have been working on developing version 2. Progress is slow on the new version and it's not ready for a good demo. By now I am very used to demoing CZSaw 1 as I did it many times at VAST. I went through many different features during my 20 minute presentation. There was some good discussion and questions about it.

After my presentation, a Phd student and a professor from SFU Burnaby gave a presentation on some text analytics that could be added to CZSaw. They were the ones that gave me a ride down to Seattle and they proceeded to give a demo using CZSaw with some data they had crafted. It was awesome that they were able to give a demo after just receiving CZSaw a couple weeks before and with no training and on a different operating system (Mac) then my demo. Woot.. Java! Still, it was hard to watch him accomplish things the long way around instead of the quick ways I use. Apparently a few things need to be more intuitive. The extensions they propose to our tool would be great and I look forward to working with them soon.

After all the presentations we had a break before dinner plans, so I checked into my hotel room and went online. I ended up doing some programming on version 2 before heading out to dinner. We had dinner at a fancy seafood restaurant and the food was pretty good. I had grilled swordfish. After dinner I did a lot more coding to get ready for our internal demo of CZSaw version 2 later that week back at SFU.

The next day I had to wake up early (7am) to head north to the Everett Boeing factory. I caught a ride with some professors at 8am after the continental breakfast. We were given a presentation from some ergonomics Boeing people about reducing injuries that mechanics get. Over the last few months, one of our students used Tableau and helped them very quickly analyze some data to determine what tasks were causing the most injuries. Tableau allowed them to shrink a task that would have taken weeks in Excel down to only a matter of hours in Tableau.

After the presentation we caught a little bus across the Boeing campus to the giant airplane factory. The factory holds many planes being built in 4 bays with huge doors that can be opened to tow a plane out. Inside the bays are open with the ceiling about 6 floors up (there are 6 floors of offices between the bays). We had to wear protective glasses and were driven around on 3 little carts through the streets inside the factory.

We got to go inside two 777 planes at different stages of production. We were in the cargo hold of one and in the passenger cabin of the other. It was before any of the inside lining had covered things up and you could see a huge space above the cabin that I didn't know was there. Apparently on long flights, crew can sleep up there. The planes were part of a moving line as they slowly move forward the whole time across the bay floor. They have to be all finished by the time they reach the end of the bay so that they can then be wheeled out the door. So basically, pieces of planes go in one side and finished planes come out the other. The coolest thing about the factory was just how massive the building is and how big the planes are inside it. Normally you don't really get close to a plane outside of it, you just walk down the enclosed ramp. It was cool to walk under the huge tail wing of a 777 and marvel at how it gets off the ground.

After the tour we caught a bus back to the first building and ate lunch in the cafeteria where they had a huge variety of food. Then we drove back to Bellevue. There were some business meetings in the afternoon which I sat in but mostly because I had no where else to go. I did some coding. That night we had dinner together at a delicious Mexican restaurant. That was after my supervisor and all the professors from Vancouver already left. I failed to get the schedule changes that there was nothing really happening on Wednesday, so while they went back I had another night in the hotel.

Luckily I made up for it by getting a meeting scheduled to demo CZSaw one on one to a software engineer / analyst at Boeing. It was another great meetings as he had some good feedback about the tool and how we might improve it. I think we will take trips to Boeing more often now.

After the early morning meeting I met up with another student and a guy from a Vancouver Boeing subsidiary to catch a ride to downtown Seattle. I spent 8 hours in Seattle seeing the sight before heading home. I took a lot of photos for that part of the trip, so I'll put that in the next blog post.