Point Reyes - Day 1

February 11, 2010
Today was a very, very, very long day. I left my hotel room at 7:00am and got back at 9:30pm. We spent the first hour of the day troubleshooting the new truck. Then spent the rest of the day trying to keep the old truck running...we wasted a lot of good daylight fixing issues with that truck and then hit rain around 5:00 which ended our collection. The list of problems are too numerous to list but one major item is the transmission is going out in the older truck. We had it replaced about 2 years ago so I think it is still under warranty. When the RPMs kept going up and up even when the truck was in park I pretty much opened the door and ran away from the thing. I had no idea what was happening and didn't rule out the possibility of seeing a fire or something come out of the engine area. Luckily it wasn't that bad and Eric (who was driving) turned the truck off so we both could take a deep breath and try to process what just happened.

I did take some photos today but don't have the energy to get them off my camera so I'll try to do that tomorrow and post a couple.

Oh, we did see two coyotes today! That was really neat to see but no luck getting a photo. The truck was actually running at that point so pulling over and stopping was not in the cards.

John Muir, Eugene O'Neill, Presidio Parks

February 10, 2010

Yesterday the roads were wet in the morning but the afternoon was productive and a draining day. The older truck was not cooperating the best and I had to restart the systems twice, which is a bit of a process. I took some pretty good photos of the truck while we were waiting for the roads to dry.

We were lucky with no rain today and we collected some smaller parks that most people may not know about. Eugne O'Neill requires a reservation and is located in a gated community. Here is some information from the park service website http://www.nps.gov/euon/index.htm

"America's only Nobel Prize winning playwright, Eugene O'Neill, chose to live in Northern California at the climax of his writing career. Isolated from the world and within the walls of his home, O'Neill wrote his final and most memorable plays; The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten."

You can find information on the John Muir site here http://www.nps.gov/JOMU/index.htm

We've had some long days working out some kinks in the new truck and keeping the old truck running. The scenery is great though and the weather has been nice so I can't complain.

Muir Woods National Monument and San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park

February 8, 2010
Today the sun was out in the morning so we started collecting at the San Francisco Maritime park. It is right by Fisherman's Wharf and full of people. We have four routes to run there, two are "normal" street roads which we ran but the other two are going to be tricky. By the time we got some new software installed on our new truck the area had too many people so we'll have to collect the remaining two routes later. We then went to the Fort Point area that is right under the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge. We saw a few surfers in the water, collected a couple routes and then headed North over the bridge to Muir Woods. We had one short route to run at Muir Woods but those short routes usually take up a lot of time. The route was covered by tree canopy so it was dark...the camera images came out dark and we reran the route 3 times to try to make it look better. We had little luck. While sitting in the parking lot looking at images I met an interesting, nice guy who wanted to know about our truck. He was from Reston, VA which is very, very close to Sterling, VA where our eastern office is located (soon to be my new home). I ended up talking to him about the truck for at least 15 minutes. His daughter attends an all girls school that focuses on engineering. He thought it was neat that I was a female and in the truck and he was going to share the info I told him about our truck with his daughter and one of her teachers. He was a nice guy and broke up the monotony of the day. It started to rain at 4:00pm so we had to call it a day and go back to the hotel and process our data. All in all the day went well.

San Francisco

February 7, 2010
After working 57 hours this week we decided to took the day off. It was a sunny, nice day. In the morning I decided to go to the Cable Car Museum http://www.cablecarmuseum.org/ . It was 1 mile North from my hotel but looking at the distance on a flat map always looks easier than the actual hike there. San Francisco streets are no where near flat so at least half of the walk there was straight up! It was good exercise. For lunch I took a walk down to the wharf and went to In-N-Out Burger, again there was no place to sit. I ended up walking over by the water and found a spot to sit and eat. I saw these two birds close to where I was so I took their photo :). I then took a walk down to the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park where we have a handful of routes to collect...should be interesting. These "roads" are basically walking paths full of people.

Oh, last night I caught the end of an HBO movie "Temple Grandin". Luckily our hotel has HBO as one of their 17 channels...so much for the typical A&E or Travel Channel. Anyway, it is an amazing story about a lady who lives with autism and had become very successful in life. http://www.templegrandin.com/ From the website "Dr. Grandin presently works as a Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. She also speaks around the world on both autism and cattle handling. " I think after people see this HBO film more people will want to take one of her classes at CSU!

Here are a couple You Tube clips I found...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46ycu3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAu6_Llfh2A&feature=PlayList&p=6F7275739B1BB023&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=12

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wt1IY3ffoU

More From San Francisco...

February 6, 2010
Today our task was to make sure our older truck was working. You never know what to expect with that truck and true to form it ended up being a long day. We fixed several little things and one major thing. The major thing was that one of the GPS antenna's on the top of the truck went bad. I'm pretty sure that is the original antenna so I can understand why it finally gave out but honestly we only need to use that truck for one more week! It is going to put up a fight until the very end! Luckily we had a spare antenna. Mounting the spare antenna on the truck proved to take a bit longer than we had hoped. Whoever came up with English and metric sizes for screws and threading of parts didn't realize what a big headache they were creating. Anyway, after getting things working again we did a distance calibration. After we were done with the old truck we went and got the new truck and did a distance calibration on that truck. After turning on all of the systems in the new truck I realized the rear camera was black...we couldn't see the image. I have no idea why it is acting up. I jumped in the back of the truck to look at the camera and noticed water on the top of the computer rack and water drops on the rear camera....uhhh. Apparently there is a problem with the seal around the back doors and water is getting in the truck, right on a brand new camera! I'm speechless...we aren't supposed to have ANY problems with the new truck! The good thing it is all under warranty but with rain in the forecast a water leak is not a good thing. Luckily we have trash bags in the truck and wrapped the camera in a trash bag, although I'm not sure if the camera is broken or not because we never got it to work so we could actually see an image. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

I took a couple of photos while we were in the parking lot working on the older truck. We were down by the water at a place called Crissy Field. It is a really pretty area and there is no better place to work on a truck!