Elfin Park Hike

Today we went hiking in Elfin Forest park. I was with a group of youth and a few adults (parents) like myself. The trail started at the bottom of the mountain, and it went up gradually all the way to the top. It was not easy but not too hard either. It took 35 minutes to climb up to the top where there was a beautiful scene of a lake and surrounding mountains. We could see the city of Escondido from far away. Beautiful scenery. There was a light drizzle as we were hiking, and it did not stop till we were done, but still it was fun and we all enjoyed it quite a lot. The altitude at the bottom is about 530 ft. At the top it is about 1200 ft. So we climbed about 750 ft. in 35 minutes. Not bad. Of course coming down was not that easy either. Actually it is more difficult that climbing up. We could see bikers going up and down with mountain bikes as well. Man, that is painful, especially coming down, hoooo weeee! The address of this place is 8833 Harmony Grove Rd., Escondido, CA. Check out on Google. It is cool.

Hiking in Ponto Park

Ponto park is located in Carlsbad southern beach area. The park itself has camping ground where folks could camp right by the beach there. It has a long trail along the beach where you could hike for miles. At low tide the beach area is easy to walk on where you would see all sorts of shells and other treasures that come from the sea littering the white sands. At high tide the beach area might get impassable and you would be forced to walk on the bluff next to the beach instead. From the north entrance gate you could walk for about 1.7 miles to the lagoon area and then turn back. At the lagoon you could see the waves coming from the deep green sea water around it and splashing several feet high up as they hit the giant rocks. The picture here is about midway between the entrance gate and the lagoon.

Surfing in Labor Day

It is Labor Day long weekend and this is my first surfing experience. The weather was nice and warm. Yesterday we experienced a light earthquake at night around midnight. The bed was shaking a little bit, but nothing serious. I would not have noticed if they did not wake me up to tell me about it. I went back to sleep right after saying: "wow! An earthquake!". In any case, the waves condition today were not that great. It was rather windy and the waves were breaking in often rather than going smoothly for a while before they break, therefore not giving a good chance for the surfers to enjoy a long surf at each wave peak. They forecast the same windy conditions at the coast for the whole weekend so we might not get favorable surf conditions until next weekend. O well, there is nothing we can do about weather. As I said this is a new experience for me and will take a while before I can learn it properly and really enjoy it. I can see the potential fun in it, but it is not easy and needs good practice before one can really get the hang of it. Take it from a beginner.

Hiking in Buena Vista Park

I discovered a nice park on Shadow Ridge Road near where we live. So decided to explore it. It is a nice hike up to the surrounding hills. The scenery is beautiful as can be seen from the picture. As always the way down is more difficult than climbing up because the trails are sandy and smooth, which makes them very slippery. There are flat trails as well for those who don't want to brave the uphill effort, but the scenery from above and the refreshing breeze is certainly worth the effort. Don't forget to bring a water bottle with you as it gets real hot with the effort and the sun.

Biking in Coronado

It was the Memorial Day weekend, and with an extra day to spare I decided to go biking in Coronado, which is an island off of San Diego. It is supposed to be one of the best ten beaches in the US, but it also has a very nice atmosphere and scenery. I carried my bike by car and drove from where we live in Vista to Coronado, about a good 55 minutes drive. I parked right on the beach (Ocean Blvd), and rode the bike to the trail on Silver Strand Blvd. which goes all all the way south to Chula Vista as you can see in the RunKeeper map. The ride was fantastic and the scenery was beautiful. Needless to say the weather was perfect for biking, with beaches on both sides of the road. I envy the owners of those houses along that road, because they have the ocean view on one side and the San Diego Bay on the other, with a span of less than a mile. By the time I reached the Southern-most point of the trail I was less than four miles away from the border of Mexico as you can tell from the map.

I stopped to take some photos along the way, and there was a nice guy taking photos with his family on the same spot who offered to take a picture of me, so I appreciatively let him use my iPhone camera to do that, but unfortunately he let his finger block part of my iPhone's lens as you may notice in the picture. Anyway, you can see the San Diego-Coronado bridge behind me in that picture - never mind that I was giving my back to the camera, because the nice guy inadvertently pressed the camera button before I had time to pose properly for the photo. It was definitely worth the trip and biking there. I would do it again when I get a chance, perhaps in 4th of July or something.

Carlsbad Bike Ride

It was ten miles from home in Vista to the beach in Carlsbad Village. Going there I took Melrose Rd to Palomar Airport Rd to Carlsbad Blvd. On the way back I took Tamarack to El Camino Real to Faraday Ave to Melrose Rd. Each way took about one hour. The beach was wonderful as seen in the picture. The bike lane is next to the cars lanes so it was a bit scary. The roads are not flat at all. I did not mind going up hill but down hill is more difficult and dangerous. Overall the trip is quite enjoyable and the best reward of course is the beach itself, but along the road there are wonderful scenes as well. No doubt the weather is fantastic, just like the mediterranean climate. It reminds me of Egypt's North Coast.

Cleaned up Frequency Counter

So I decided to actually make a nice version of the frequency counter introduced in the previous posting. First of all I had to design a 2 layer PC board. That was done with the CAD software "Eagle" which generates a set of gerber files that could be used by any PC board manufacturer. I decided to make the boards in China at a fraction of the cost here. The shop I chose was iStore as they had a new year special of $29.99 for 10 boards 10 x 10 cm each. Man that was a good deal, especially that they include solder masks and silk screen and all. I received the boards in about a month, which is a very good turn around time. The assembled board is shown below. Looks real nice. Next I had to make a couple of more PC boards manually to include the seven segment displays and the other accessories. The layout of the boards inside the plastic box is shown below. Once all the wiring was complete (which was a tedious task) I closed the box and as you see it looks like a piece of art. So this is a nice functional frequency counter that works from 1 Hz to 10 MHz.


Of course a much better frequency counter could be made with a micro-controller chip instead of all this complicated jumble of ICs but the fun of building something complicated and actually getting it to work was challenging and I could not resist the temptation of it.

A frequency counter

Here is my breadboard of a cheap frequency counter. It is based on the MC14553 counter. The idea is to make the counter count the number of pulses in exactly one second, and display the number on a seven-segment display. This number would then be the frequency in Hz. The counter counts to 999, so I added another counter, which is fed with the overflow output of the first counter. This arrangement extends the measurement to 999999 which is 1 MHz minus one. Then I decided to extend the range to 10 MHz by including a divide by 10 chip (CD4017), and with that arrangement the range now goes up to 10 MHz minus one. Here is a picture of the breadboard reading accurately the output from a DDS synthesizer. It works great and is small enough to be integrated in a little nice enclosure.

Another chip used in the circuit is a CD4521 (24 stage frequency divider) which is driven by a 4.194304 MHz crystal to generate the 1 second timing signal. Actually it generates a 0.5 Hz signal to obtain a 1 second high level and 1 second low level. The frequency measurement is made during the 1 second high level. The 0.5 Hz signal is obtained by dividing the frequency of the crystal by half 23 times.
Another part of the circuit is the wave shaping circuit which amplifies any incoming signal to be measured , turns it into a nice square wave suitable to trigger the counter IC. The wave shaping circuit is implemented with a 2N2222 transistor single stage amplifier, which drives a CD4093 NAND Schmitt trigger IC, which in turn generates the neat square pulses that are suitable to be counted by the MC14553 counter chip.
Last but not least, the measured count is displayed with two 3-digit seven-segment displays that are driven by two HCF4511 decoder chips, one for each.
You can watch the operation of the counter breadboard on this YouTube video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga8Sk-csiKM

Waterloo Waterloo

I always wanted to bike in the Waterloo trail, and last Saturday this wish came true. We had to go there for a conference, so I carried my bike with me and I set out on the Evansdale trail heading south to LaPoint as I wanted to do. But for some reason I could not easily find the trail heading south, so I headed north instead which took me to downtown Waterloo, where I took this picture you see here. Unfortunately I had a little accident on my way back. Here is how it happened: There was a rope hanging low between two far apart trees. The first time I passed I saw it clearly, so I ducked my head and I went by without any problem. But on my way back I did not see it, and you can guess what happened. Well, since I did not see it, I did not duck this time, and therefore it got caught on my neck, just above my throat. It took me a few seconds before I realized I was being chocked, and soon after I made that realization I held the rope with both hands to ease the pressure on my neck, or my throat rather. Obviously having let go of the bike handle, the bike ran freely from under me, and I found myself hitting the ground with full force on my back, while the back of my head banged the ground and then bounced back up. I am glad I was wearing my helmet because that absorbed most of the impact and saved my head from serious injury. Fortunately the ground was grass and not hard asphalt which also helped saving me. Right after the fall I waited a couple of seconds to see if I was going to faint or if any organ in my body hurt badly, but luckily I felt OK and I was able to get up quickly. I tested my memory and my sense of consciousness and I found myself awake and sound, so I continued biking back to where I left the car and went home.
Other than at little mishap the ride was fun and the scenes were good.
I must be careful when biking in unknown territory again, for I won't always get this lucky.
Man how fragile the human being is.

Biking to Ely

- She can't sink!
- She's made of iron sir, I assure you she can sink and she will.
"The Titanic."
I remembered this conversation from the movie while I was biking to Ely, which is about 15 miles from where I live. The weather was cool but humid, and sunny. I didn't feel thirsty, and I thought I couldn't get dehydrated in that weather. But I assure you if you don't drink, even if you don't feel thirsty, you will get dehydrated. You don't feel thirsty because of the humidity, but in fact your body loses lot of water and minerals, which must be replenished or else. So, remembering the Titanic, I drank water, and lots of it, and good thing I did because I was really thirsty although I didn't feel it.
Anyway, it was the first time in the season I go out biking, and it was nice. It took about 3 hours both ways, and was worth it. The picture was taken just before I reached Ely, near the Wright Borthers highway which leads to the Eastern Iowa airport.

The A Mountain

Nothing is better than hiking up a mountain trail when the weather is fine. Not only one gets the benefit of exercise but also gets rewarded with a beautiful scenery during the endeavor. Here is the scene from the top of the A-mountain in Tempe Arizona. Seen in the picture high rise buildings from Arizona State University and other sights of Tempe. Isn't it beautiful? To match the occasion I am wearing the Sun Devil cap to go with the atmosphere. No its not mine. I borrowed it from my friend Rafique. You can't see it in the picture but the Sun Devil stadium is on the left side of this panorama. In the neighborhood also, albeit you can't see in this picture, is the Islamic Center of Tempe, a nice mosque that looks like the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.
I have great memories in Tempe, and it will always keep a special place in my heart and mind as long as I live.

Hiking on White Mountain

Phoenix, AZ in March is endowed with beautiful weather. The temperature is perfect and the atmosphere is dry. Hiking through the mountains trails is a great sport there, and that is exactly what we did, hiked through the South Mountain trails, and watched the wonderful scenes from the tops of each pinnacle we reached along the way.
It is a perfect setting for retirement and that explains the large number or older folks living there especially in the winter - they call them winter birds, because they flee their harsh winters where they come from such places as far north as Canada and spend a warm winter in houses they own or rent, and then flee the harsh summer back to where they came from.
Phoenix has a unique life, with its clean streets and nice looking Spanish houses. The desert looks wonderful with its Saguaro and Yucca plants, and many other cactus varieties that adorn the landscape. I just love it. Most people here are in great shape because of the lovely outdoors they enjoy, unlike cold places where people are shut up in their houses throughout the winter suffering from cabin fever. Each place has its unique beauty, and for Phoenix it is the desert landscape that highlights its glory, and for that reason I like it, during the winter or during the summer, and for its abundance of sunshine, 300 days each year.

With the Amish

In Kalona, Iowa there reside the Amish, a community of people who live in Medieval conditions without electricity or cars or phones, or any of the modern aspects of life. They live like that by choice. They still use horse buggies to move around and to carry their heavy loads, and they use Medieval methods in agriculture without any machinery or electrical appliances. Their youth go to school, but it is a different kind of school, not the public type, and by the age of sixteen they are married and have children.
People from the city like to go there and spend a day buying form their organic produce and meats. Everything there is cheaper, but you have to pick the produce yourself and you can if you like slaughter your own cow or chickens or goats or lambs then let them clean and cut it for you. You can also get fresh milk and fruits. Everything from there tastes better because they don't use any pesticides or artificial fertilizers. Now that is real organic.

Stormy Weather

The weather is Cedar Rapids these days is reminiscent of that of summer of 2008 when the city was flooded. It has been storming for several days now and the river level is rising again. Although no flooding occurred yet, but it is quite possible that it can happen. Today for example is hot and humid, and storms occurred last night and are possible again tonight. This makes it hard to do outdoors activities in the summer.
In addition to the lack of outdoors activities there is another problem with stormy weather here, and that is lack of sunshine. For several days the sun did not come through the thick dark clouds and when it came out like today it was so hot and humid that you wish it did not come out.
I should not complain because it could be much worse, but summer this year is surely not as nice as it was last year. So we will have to enjoy what we can and hope for the best.

Good Growth

Compared to a couple of weeks ago the deck pot vegetables had a great growth as you can see when comparing this picture with the one taken last time. The tomato plant is incredibly growing and is almost a tree now. We are yet to see some tomatoes coming out of it. The peppers are also growing albeit not as incredibly as the tomatoes. Even the ones started from seed are doing great.
As for the beds you can see they have also doing very well. We have already cut parsley and spinach for our salads from them. Both parsley and spinach continue to produce like crazy especially the parsley. As for the radishes the leaves have been growing very well but the roots did not get a chance to develop far enough to produce the actual radishes. This is because the plants are so crowded. But that is fine, because the leaves are as good as the roots if not better. Actually they contain more vitamin C than the roots themselves. Also they taste as good. So we cut many of the leaves and already used them in salads. The remaining ones are less crowded now so they may have a chance to produce some radishes in the roots.
The cabbages are growing well and I expect to have some produce in the next couple of weeks or so. Same thing for the broccoli. After harvesting the remaining radish plants I intend to grow in their place some lettuces to make good green salads.
The tomatoes and the peppers are growing as good as the deck pot plants but not enough to produce any fruits yet.
The onions are not getting enough sun so I am not sure if they will ever develop. They might but it is taking longer than thought initially. That is why the best investment in this kind of garden would be in green vegetables that don't require lot of sun. This is a lesson learned so far.

Biking to Urbana

Taking advantage of the long Memorial Day weekend I biked all the way to Urbana which is about 22 miles away. It is about 7 to eight miles away from Center Point which is the usual destination for me on my biking treks. This picture shows the street that leads to the town. Fortunately the weather was good and except for scorching sun the temperature was mild.
After Urbana there is Brandon which is another twelve or so miles further north.
The only section remaining on this trail that was not trekked by me is the part from Waterloo to Brandon, passing by La Porte. The total distance from home to Waterloo and back on the trail is about 112 miles, a little too much for a one day excursion. However, it might be possible as a one way endeavor, if I can be dropped off at Waterloo and bike back home, or park the car in Waterloo and bike to La Porte and back to Waterloo. Now that is manageable and it would be about the same as biking to Urbana from home, but the difference would be riding on a different section of the trail.

Harvesting Spinach

A couple of days ago we had the first spinach harvest. This picture was taken just before the spinach was harvested. It needed to be washed but it had to be stored dry so that it wouldn't wilt. It was already consumed with green salad. The taste was fresh and fine, and it is enough to know that no pesticides were used in this crop. It is said that commercial spinach contains one of the highest pesticide contamination as it is subjected to many insects that eat the leaves. That might be true but we don't use any pesticides and merely clean the leaves by hand. Some leaves get eaten partially though by the insects, and that is fine, consider it a fee you have to pay to the environment to keep the cycle going and the earth green.

Vegetables in Pots II

As you see the pot vegetables are doing great. The tomato plant that was started from a seed is actually doing better than the transplanted plant in the raised bed. This is due to amply sunshine on the deck as opposed to meager sun in the shady backyard. Notice also that the peppers are growing and there are new plants introduced.
We use organic Miracle Grow liquid to supplement the nutrition introduced to the plants and that also has a great effect on the growth rate taking place.

Vegetables in Pots

Since the deck receives more sunshine than the actual garden, we are trying to grow some vegetables in pots as well. The pictures shows another tomato plant started from seed inside and then transplanted in the big black pot shown. We started also some peppers from seed directly in the pot as well as a transplant bought from the nursery, the latter is the rightmost pot in the picture. The pot to the left of the tomato plant is parsley started from seeds indoors and then transplanted into the pot

Vegetable Garden

Many plants have been transplanted already into the two raised beds as shown in the picture. Some plants were started from seeds, like the radishes. The transplanted vegetables so far are: Tomatoes (various kinds), peppers (various kinds), red and white onions, red and green cabbages, broccoli, spinach, and parsley. Unfortunately there isn't enough sun throughout the day thanks to the many trees around the yard, and because of that not many plants can tolerate these conditions, so I am not sure which plants will thrive and which will not. The total amount of sun needs to be at least 6 hours per day, but due to the shades of the trees we would be lucky to have four hours of total sun during the day. Other seeds did not make it like the beans, cucumber and zucchini, so we disregarded those for now. Maybe it is still too cold for them. Some plants are harder to grow than others, so it was decided to start with whatever is easier for now.