Fourth and Final Housesit

We had our fourth and final housesit of the season at the end of August. I mentioned in my last post the construction work on our home, adding a half-bathroom and laundry nook. The work started a bit late on Monday, August 26th. There was some confusion on the expectation and what the construction crew thought they were doing. Donna had met with the contractor and had a fairly long discussion going over what she had in mind and how it should lay out. Ron, the owner of Paragon Home Services, said it looked straightforward and easy.

He sent me the job quote while Donna was away in Vermont. I looked it over, but I wasn’t there when they discussed the project. I wish he would have included a drawing of the layout instead of just a written description which was a little vague in my mind.

We had a meeting with Ron and his foreman, David. Once we were on the same page, they went to work. We thought we would be heading to our housesit in Alpine, California the next morning, but that was also a case of mis-communication. We actually had to arrive on Wednesday, August 28th. This was good as it allowed us to see how the home project was shaping up. Tuesday afternoon, as they were finishing up for the day, I asked David when he thought they would be finished. He said he thought it would take “a few more days” and he would send photos to my phone.

We left Mesa around 9am on Wednesday and made the familiar drive west on I-8. We’ve done this countless times over the years in cars, motorcycles and the motorhome. We made the usual stops – Dateland for a date shake, Yuma for gasoline before we hit California gas prices and El Centro for lunch at Las Palmitas Taco Shop. It’s a pretty authentic Mexican restaurant – my phone even said “Welcome to Mexico!”

We made good time and left I-8 at Japatul Valley Road east of Alpine. It was a little too early to show up at the ranch, so we did a drive-by to find the private road to the ranch, then went into Alpine. Donna bought a new charger for her phone – she forgot her charger at home and wanted a back-up anyway.

It was a 15-20 minute drive back to the ranch from town. After we arrived and had a tour of the house, a custom built ranch home with exquisite woodwork, we went out to the barn to see how things would be done. There were 13 sheep, five Border collies and a cat to take care of. The ranch is on 10 acres of land. The set up was impressive and included an on-demand back-up LP powered generator. If the power went out or dropped below a specified voltage, the generator would automatically start and the electrical power for the entire ranch would continue nearly seamlessly.

The number of animals seemed a bit overwhelming at first, but Donna adapted quickly and the Border collies were so well behaved they took very little care. On the first night, Marcy the home owner, had dinner for us and two other guests – one is a boarder that rents a small studio apartment attached to the barn. The other fellow was a friend from Great Britain, the Isle of Man specifically. It turned out that Sean and Jim were motorcycle enthusiasts and we had a lot of interesting conversations.

I didn’t take many photos – many missed opportunities. Here are a few landscape views of various points from the ranch house.

View south west – terrain is steeper than it looks

I found a suitable spot to set up my telescope and equipment. The preferred portion of the night sky would be in the northeast. This had the fewest obstructions and pointed away from the San Diego light dome, over the sparsely populated Cuyamaca National Forest, Laguna Mountains and desert to the east. We were about 2400 feet above sea level.

The days were warmer than normal with the high temperature exceeding 90 degrees. This was still about 20 degrees cooler than home. The nights were pleasant in the upper 60s.

Friday morning we drove to San Diego, about 40 miles away. I dropped Donna off at her sister, Sheila’s house in Point Loma. I went to Shelter Island to take some photos but made a stop for a quick lunch. Once I was out of the car at Shelter Island, I didn’t find any good photo opportunities for birds and wildlife. I took too long for lunch and was pressed for time. I saw one interesting thing – an amphibious vehicle, a duck tour bus.

We saw similar tour buses in Branson, Missouri but I had never seen one in San Diego before. I saw two of them at the boat ramp on Shelter Island.

Donna helped Sheila plan on the furniture layout for Donna’s mom. She is relocating to San Diego and will live in Sheila’s vacant Point Loma home with some help from a caregiver.

With my astrophotography effort limited to a northeast target, I was at a loss to find an interesting subject given the time of year. I decided on IC 1396, a star forming gas and space dust region in the northeast sky. This is a huge target and if I had known that was going to be the target, I would have brought my William Optics GT71 for its wide field of view. But, without knowing which direction I would be pointing, I brought the AT115EDT as I thought this was my best compromise, since it’s the mid-range of my telescopes. Not ideal.

I had issues the first two nights – it’s been months since I last tried to capture a deep sky object. I figured out the problems – there were a few settings on my laptop software that needed to be corrected. This happens sometimes when the good people at Microsoft automatically apply updates and they choose default settings for me. Grrr.

I ended up shooting two-minute exposures over four nights. I used a new-to-me filter setup. First I used an Askar Colormagic Ha+OIII filter. This brings out the red hydrogen component and bluish oxygen gas. The filters don’t add anything. On the contrary, they block unwanted bands of the light spectrum. This eliminates some effects of light pollution, in essence enhancing the desired color spectrum. Then I used an Askar Colormagic SII+OIII filter, This should allow more of the greenish and bluish light through. I did two nights of imaging with each filter.

IC 1396 is such a dim target that I couldn’t see what I was capturing with a single two-minute exposure, so I was shooting blind. When we came home, I went through the images and stacked 206 of the two-minute exposures for a total integrated time of six hours and 52 minutes. I was a little disappointed in the result, but here it is.

Speaking of coming home, we were in for a surprise. David never sent me photos of the finished construction. We found out why – it wasn’t finished when we came home 10 days later.

To be fair, there was a long weekend over Labor Day included. But here’s the thing. Ron never told us he was retiring on Friday, August 30, four days after the job started. David was taking over the company. David still didn’t have the full picture of job – note the lack of ceiling in the photos above. To compound the issue, when we were back, I noted that different workers showed up to do a part of the job each day and it seemed each worker only knew his or her small part of the job. No one seemed to know what the finished product was supposed to be. This goes back to Ron only doing a written description with no floorplan. He had the whole thing in his head and he was gone.

One of the workers, Brenda, also told me that excessive heat had them knocking off by 2pm on a few days. Well, it was finally finished on Tuesday, September 10th. Everything was straightened out and we were happy with the finished product. These are quick cell phone snap shots.

I also had them install a stainless steel restaurant style sink in the shed where the old washer/dryer was. This will be my knife sharpening and razor honing station. I need to do some finish work and clean out the shed too.

All of the boxes under the sink contain various whetstones for sharpening/ honing. That reminds me of another quick story. Before we left for Alpine, we met up with our friend, Marcia, for happy hour at Fat Willy’s. While we were there, Donna had to excuse herself to take an important phone call. While she was away, Marcia asked me what I was up to lately. She knows I dabble in a number of hobbies. I reluctantly brought up straight razor shaving and razor honing. I say reluctantly because eyes usually glaze over if I start talking about this topic.

Marcia asked me if I used whetstones. This surprised me. I was more surprised when she said she threw one out that very day! What? She said she had an old one in a box, but the box was broken and she didn’t have any use for it. Then she said it was just in her kitchen trash and she could retrieve it if I was interested in it. I told her I would like to look at it. I envisioned a coarse hardware store offering in a plastic box.

The next day she brought me this.

I could see under the gunk what appeared to be a translucent Arkansas stone in a wooden box! The top of the box was broken, but she had all four pieces. I asked her what she wanted for the stone and she said I could have it – she’d thrown it out.

A little Titebond glue and a couple of clamps was all it took to repair the wooden box top. I soaked the stone in Simple Green and gave it a good scrubbing. The stone is a butterscotch translucent Arkansas stone suitable for razor honing. It appears to be at least 70 years old – the stone itself is obviously millions of years old, I ‘m talking about when it was mined, cut and marketed. Without any stamps or labels, it’s impossible to accurately date the manufacturing era of this stone, but the box style and joinery seems to indicate a Pike-Norton from 1930s or 1940s. I’m not clear on whether this stone came from Marcia’s father or her grandfather.

Now I have two translucent Arkansas stones and both are old stones that were gifted to me. Makes me a happy guy.

A week from Thursday, we’ll board Hawaiian airlines for our trip to Japan. We’re excited about it and I have no idea what to expect. It’s been nearly 60 years since I’ve set foot there – I was just a little kid. Donna has a few ideas, but we mainly want to see the countryside and visit some smaller towns and villages to get a glimpse of the culture and lifestyle of the average person. We’ll see some of the tourist spots, but for me that’s not the main attraction.

We’ll be mostly offline for our two weeks in Japan, so I’ll try to catch up on our adventure after we return.

Summer Sits

The summer is getting away from me. I haven’t been up to posting lately. No motivation. We had three housesits so far, I don’t think I mentioned the last two. One was in Prescott, only about five minutes from downtown. It was a large house in a gated community situated on a steep, rocky hillside with pine trees, overlooking a driving range near the golf course clubhouse.

I brought my AT115EDT telescope and Losmandy mount along with all of the associated equipment, only to find the terrain was too steep and sightlines were blocked by trees and the house anyway. So, that was out.

The house had two levels – the main floor and a finished walk-out basement floor. On the main floor the master bedroom and bath were on one end and a guest room and bath on the opposite end. What I found to be a little unusual was the basement floor – it was an exact replica of the guest wing – same layout and same bed and furniture, just one level below.

The owners had two dogs and one cat. It was an easy housesit. We watched Wimbledon on the tennis channel every day. And our visit coincided with the Prescott Frontier Days – an annual rodeo that’s been taking place since 1888, making it the oldest annual rodeo in the world. It was hot – the temperature was in the 90s, but we enjoyed the final day of the event.

It was a fairly uneventful housesit. I brought my terrestial camera equipment with the hopes of capturing some wildlife images, but that was a failure too. The birds seemed to stay away from the back deck – most were in trees too far away to photograph. One day a coyote trotted along the woodline on the far side of the driving range – again too far away. I managed to get a couple of shots of a hummingbird that came to the deck.

The hummingbird flew into a bush. I approached slowly and could see it well hidden inside the bush. I focused on the bird, shooting between branches. It resulted in a natural vignette, with the branches in the foreground well out of focus.

With no wildlife to point my camera toward, I focused on a flower instead. Look closely and you’ll see an ant inside the flower.

Our next housesit was a four-day sit about 10 days later. We came back to the house near Prescott Valley in an area called Williamson. We had a housesit on this rural property around the same time last year. Again, it was a large, beautiful home on acreage. Last year, I captured images of the Dumbbell Nebula and the Fireworks Galaxy from this property.

This year I was out of luck again. The weather pattern had thunderstorms forming every afternoon with gusty wind and passing showers. The skies were cloudy by late afternoon and into the night every day.

I had better luck finding things to photograph in the mornings here – namely birds and lizards.

One afternoon we took a drive over to Chino Valley, about 15 miles away. We were looking for a Thai restaurant for lunch, but when we found it, it was closed for a few weeks. There was a Mexican Restaurant nearby, but when we entered to check it out, it was more of a fast food type outfit and Donna didn’t like the vibe there.

She found another Mexican restaurant that was off the beaten path. We followed the directions from her smart phone and I was getting a little pessimistic about finding anything good as we were on the outskirts of the small town, well away from highway 89. We eventually found El Charro Norte and had a wonderful lunch there. Great food, good service. We would go back next time we’re in the area.

The weather has been hot – what else would you expect in central Arizona in the summer? We’ve been getting out of bed early to play tennis three days per week. We play from 6:30am to 8am. We usually have a group ranging from four to eight players and we enjoy it. After nine years of pickleball, I felt like my playing had reached a plateau and no longer improved. With tennis, I have a potential upside and I’m enjoying the challenge of learning the finer points of the game.

Earlier this month, Donna made a scheduled visit with her parents in Vermont. Her father was in the Vermont Veterans Home – a skilled nursing facility in Bennington. Her mom is currently in Brookdale Assisted Living, also in Bennington. Her father’s health took a turn for the worse – he was in the end stages of Parkinson’s disease and kidney failure. Unfortunately, her father, Duke Connor passed in the early morning hours of Monday, August 19th – just two days after Donna returned from Vermont. Rest in peace, Duke.

We have a lot on our plate right now. We’re having a small addition built on our house – it’ll be a laundry room and 1/2 bath. The contractor has the crew scheduled to start on Monday, August 26th. While Ron, the owner of Paragon Home Services, Inc was here to make an estimate, he found we had gray polybutylene pipes in our plumbing. This was bad news. This product has been banned since 1998. It corrodes from the inside out – the outward appearance may look fine while the pipes are about to burst.

We had Paragon immediately replace all of the gray polybutylene water supply lines in our place with Pex lines. Meanwhile I’ve purchased a new LG washer/dryer, sink, bathroom cabinet and toilet for the room addition.

Timing is everything, right? We have a housesit scheduled for the 27th through September 5th. The room addition will take about a week to complete and we’ll only be here for the first day. Donna sees this as a blessing in disguise. We trust Ron and will leave him a house key. We won’t have to be living in the house while the construction crew sets to work and tears out part of the Arizona room wall. Also, Ozark the cat will be staying with our neighbor during this time, so there’s no worry about her getting out while they’re working.

The housesit is near Alpine, California – east of San Diego, on the western side of the Laguna Mountains. It’s a 90-acre ranch with 13 sheep, five border collies and a cat. The border collies are trained to herd the sheep out of their pen and into a pasture for the day. In the evening they will herd the sheep back to the pen. It’ll be something different for us, that’s for sure.

Speaking of something different – here is dinner plate Donna made. Crawfish Scampi with cheesy grits and green beans.

When we return from California, we’ll have three weeks at home before we leave again. We have a two-week vacation in Japan coming up.

With Japan on our minds, Donna made an entree of Japanese chicken curry.

Triple digits are forcasted for the remainder of the month – nothing unusual about that. What has been unusual is this year’s monsoon season. We usually have several thunderstorms and downpours of rain at this time of year. Thunderstorms and damaging wind have occurred in the area, just not here in Mesa so much. We can see thunderheads and rainfall around us in the Superstition Mountains to the east, up near Fountain Hills to the north and the San Tan valley to the south, but we’ve only had passing showers. Alpine, California should have daily highs of 80-90 degrees and nighttime temps in the 60s. We can live with that.

Graduate

It’s summertime here – just like it is in the rest of the northern hemisphere. But, here being central Arizona, summertime has extra significance. It can get hot, very hot! We’re playing tennis three days a week from 7am to 8:30 am. Starting tomorrow we’ll move the start time a half hour earlier.

We escaped the heat for a few days when we flew up to western Washington on June 12th for our granddaughter’s high school graduation. Donna had us booked through Trusted Housesitters to housesit in Arlington only a few miles away from Kevin and Alana’s place. My other daughters, Jamie and Shauna, showed up with some of their family members as well. It was nice to have everyone together all at once.

Alana is my oldest daughter and she has two daughters, Lainey and Gabriella (Gabi). Gabi is the younger of the two and she was graduating from Arlington High School. The graduation ceremony was held in a hockey arena in Everett. It was a nice venue and Kevin and Alana secured box seats for family and friends. This was a deluxe accommodation with a private room, snacks and beverages – including adult beverages. I found it a little funny to have drinks served at a high school graduation – they were available to private box suite attendees only. I can’t even get a beer at a college football game!

We were definitely out of the heat in Washington. In fact, Donna and I were downright cold! Our first couple of days were very pleasant with afternoon temperatures in the low 70s. But it was down in the 50s Thursday evening and never got past 60 degrees again for the duration of our stay. It also drizzled rain on and off. Typical for this time of year in western Washington.

The property we were housesitting was on four or five acres and was very nice. I wish I could’ve packed my camera along as one morning about a dozen band-tailed pigeons came into the bird feeder in the back yard. I’ve never seen band-tailed pigeons at low elevation – I’ve only found them above 3,000 feet above sea level and higher. They’re only found in parts of the west coast and some higher elevation areas of the soutwest and Mexico. They are the largest north American pigeons.

We also had deer traipsing through the yard.

Kevin and Alana had a house full of guests most of the time and always had plenty of food and drink on hand. They also set up games in the yard. Our youngest granddaughter, Petra, daughter of my youngest daughter Shauna had fun with all of the attention.

Somewhere along the way, Donna picked up a bug and stayed behind to rest on Sunday. She felt better on Monday and we hung out with the crew then caught a ride to the Paine Field airport in Everett to fly home. We never warmed up until we got back to Phoenix.

Last week the bug caught up with me and I’ve been off of my game for a week. I rarely catch a cold or any other bugs, but it got me.

Tomorrow we’ll be packing up the Jeep for a trip to Prescott early Tuesday morning. We’ll be housesitting there until the following Monday. The high temperatures here will be triple digits – 102 to 108 degrees. Prescott will be 10 to 15 degrees cooler. I plan to pack my AT115 EDT telescope although I haven’t settled on an astrophotography target. I plan to also take my camera bag.

I’ll close with a dinner plate from earlier this month. Donna came up with something new – crawfish scampi. She served it with cheesy grits and green beans.

Travel Plans

I haven’t posted in a while – nothing in May. Unbeknownst to me, the site was in trouble. I couldn’t log in and Donna could only open it as an Administrator. It took Bluehost an entire day to get it up and running again! Luckily, it appears all is well now.

Donna has been hard at work with our travel plans – inbetween running her Viewpoint Good Neighbors program and making a trip to Vermont to assist her mom, who is recovering from a hip replacement.

Our first trip of the summer will begin next week. Our granddaughter, Gabi, is graduating from high school in Arlington, Washington. Gabi is the daughter of my eldest daughter, Alana. Donna secured a house-sitting job within a few miles of Kevin and Alana’s place. We’ll fly up there on June 12th, graduation is June 13th and we’ll stay through the weekend and fly back home on the 17th. The house sit should be easy, we just have to care for a cat.

The house sit was fortunate as the hotel prices seem high to me and Kevin and Alana will have a house full of guests. That’s house sit number one. The next house sit will be over the Fourth of July. We’ll be up in Prescott, Arizona from the 2nd of July through the 8th. It looks like a real nice place and I should be able to set up for astrophotography.

Our third house sit will be at the end of August. We’ll travel to San Diego’s east county outside of Alpine, California from August 27th through September 6th. This house sit will involve dogs and sheep and more astrophotography. Sounds interesting.

The big travel event will occur on September 26th when we board a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Tokyo, Japan. We will spend two weeks exploring Japan. I haven’t been there since I was a kid and I’m really looking forward to spending some time kicking around there. We plan to spend the first two or three nights in Tokyo, then keep things loose and travel without a preset plan until we return to Tokyo for our flight back home.

We’ve been playing tennis three or four times per week. We were starting our 90-minute sessions at 7:30am to beat the heat. This week we moved the start time up to 7am as the days are getting warmer. Eventually we’ll have to start at 6:30am as the morning temperatures quickly climb.

Yesterday the Viewpoint management had the palm trees trimmed. This is a little earlier than the last couple of years. They started using a different tree service two years ago and they prune the trees severely – the result is what they call a Hurricane Trim in places like Florida. I’ve read that it can be stressful on the trees here in the desert, but they have bounced back every time and seem to be thriving.

I think this time they were even more severe than in the past. Also, trimming this early doesn’t do the birds any favor. We had at least two bird nests in each of the palms at the rear of our property. One had a young bird in it that was unable to fly and it perished.

Our palm tree after trim – the tree in the right background is home to Lovebirds

I mentioned the Belgian Coticule whetstone in my last post. Now that I’m sharpening straight razors I needed another finer stone to to finish after the coticule. I ordered a type of slate called Imperia La Roccia (ILR). While I was waiting for this stone, my next door neighbor gifted me with an old translucent Arkansas stone. He didn’t remember how long he’s had it. It had very little use and he thought he inherited it from an uncle.

It has the original box and markings on the stone. I’ve been told by whetstone experts that this stone was on the market between 1955 and 1965. Back then, hardware stores stocked fine whetstones. This stone has the Bear trademark which indicates Behr, a division of the Norton Company and it came from Troy, New York. Coincidentally, Donna’s dad worked there in the early to mid-1950s.

I wouldn’t have ordered the ILR if I knew I would soon have a fine translucent Arkansas stone. But, you can’t have too many whetstones! I wrote above that I’m sharpening straight razors (plural). My first straight razor is a modern razor made in Germany by Ralf Aust in 2023. Since then, I’ve found old straight razors on Ebay.

I bid on a German Puma razor from the 1930s. It wasn’t in very good condition when I received it and the scales (handle) were incorrectly fitted. The blade was chipped and needed work. It was a learning experience. I replaced the scales with buffalo horn and repaired the blade. I also figured out that I paid too much for it.

Puma 88 with new scales and refinished blade – I wish I took a before resto picture

I found another listing for a Puma razor in Japan. This one appeared to be in much better shape. I made a low-ball bid and won the razor! It only needed a little clean-up and honing to become shave ready. This one is a 222 and it’s also from the 1930s. I still need to polish the blade, but I’ve shaved with it.

Then I bid on a Wester Bros. German straight razor and was surprised to win again. This one was shave ready right out of the box and it’s a real fine razor. It dates back to the 1920s – that’s right, I’ve shaved with a razor that’s about 100 years old.

If I would have known these old razors were available at a fraction of the price of a modern one, I would have started with these. On the other hand, these old razors involved a bit of learning along the way. Just learning to shave with a straight razor is challenging enough without having to think about its condition.

Summer temperatures have arrived with highs forecasted to be around 110 degrees over the weekend before it cools down to the low 100s. We don’t mind it much, we start our day early then stick with mostly indoor activities once it heats up.

I have a couple of dinner plates before I wrap – actually one is a good ol’ American breakfast. I don’t know why I took this photo, but here it is.

Donna tried something new – a stuffed flank steak. She rolled and tied the meat around a stuffing of fresh oregano and cheeses. The oregano came from her garden.

And the dinner plate.

Stuffed flank steak with pasta marinara and asparagus

Learning to Shave

My last post covered some natural whetstones I bought. I also mentioned the Japanese sujihiki kitchen knife I sharpened with the natural whetstones. I don’t usually pay much attention to the handles on my kitchen knives – I have both Japanese traditional style (called wa in Japanese) and western style handles (called yo in Japanese).

But the handle on my sujihiki kind of bothered me – it felt coarse in my hand and the transition from the ferrule to the wood handle wasn’t smooth. I never liked the plastic ferrule either. I saw a sale notification from Tokushu Knife for replacement wa handles. Tokushu Knife is located in Tennessee and the handles they had on sale are locally made and looked to nice. I ordered an ebony handle with a padauk ferrule.

Tokushu shipped promptly, but the USPS fumbled. Tracking showed the handle leaving the USPS facility in Chattanooga with no further information for a week. Then it showed it at the USPS facility in Memphis. What did they do, walk it to Memphis? A week to progress from Chattanooga to Memphis is ridiculous. It finally arrived here after 10 days or so.

Getting the old handle off wasn’t an easy task. I tried several methods and in the end I had to use a chisel to split it. I found hot melt glue holding the blade tang to the chestnut wood handle. I had tried heating the knife by submerging the handle in boiling water, but apparently the wood insulated the glue and it wouldn’t melt. I didn’t want to overheat the metal.

It took about 30 minutes of filing with needle files to get the fitment of the new handle right. Then I shaved a hot melt glue stick and put the shavings inside the handle opening. I heated the tip of the tang with a kitchen torch – the type you would use to glaze sugar on creme brulee. I held the blade by the spine near the heel – the heat never went past the tang. The blade slid into the hot glue and I let it set for a few minutes. It was a great fit. Everything is aligned and the depth into the handle is just right. Altogether it took a little over an hour – I was thinking it would be a 20-minute job.

I have another kitchen knife story. The dollar is very strong against the Japanese yen right now. My most recent purchase was a nakiri from Japanese Chef Knives. It was made by Teruyasu Fujiwara from pre-laminated Yasuki Shirogami #1 steel and is part of his Nashiji line of knives. I love cutting with it. But, I couldn’t help stepping up to the next level – a Teruyasu Fujiwara Maboroshi Nakiri. I had to order one and wait for it to be made. Teruyasu-san has three levels of knives he hand makes. The entry level is the Nashiji line made from pre-laminated steel.

The next step up is the Maboroshi line. These have the same shirogami core steel, but the stainless cladding over the core steel is hand forge welded by Teruyasu. This means it is repeatedly heated and hammered and this changes the molecular structure of the steel for the better. The pre-laminated steels use the same materials to make a three-layer blank, but they are made by running the sheets of steel through a high pressure roller. This works well, but it can’t match the quality of hand forging.

Very few bladesmiths have the ability to forge weld the hard shirogami core steel to a soft stainless cladding. I can only think of a few. Most Japanese bladesmiths laminate soft iron over the hard core steel, which is easier to do but it negates the advantage of using a stainless steel to cover the corrosion prone core steel.

By ordering direct, I was given the choice of a custom kanji on the left side of the blade. The right side has the Teruyasu usual signature. I asked Ayano at the customer service if he could create a kanji for Koop. Apparently this was a hard concept to create phonetically, so he offered a couple of suggestions. This is what he suggested:

【光峰】: “光” means luminosity or brilliance, and “峰” means a high mountain or peak. This kanji symbolizes that the person is a person who brings brilliance to those around him or her and pursues the heights to which he or she should aspire.

It might be a little over-the-top, but I went with it. After about nine weeks, I received an e-mail telling me the knife was ready to ship. They sent me pictures.

The knife arrived two days later and it was worth it.

I’ve been doing dinner prep for Donna. She comes up with a dish to make and then sets out the ingredients to be cut. I cut the ingredients and usually will place them on a quarter-sheet pan and she can use them as she prepares our meal. She calls me her sous-chef, but I hardly qualify for that title. I think I’m more like an amateur prep cook. Last night I was getting ready to cut potatoes for Donna – she was making potato salad to go with the Memphis-style babyback ribs I had in the Traeger smoker-grill. I asked her how she wanted the potatoes cut. She said “Let me show you.” I handed her the Maboroshi nakiri – she never uses my Japanese kitchen knives – she was amazed at how it split the potato with no effort at all.

While I’m on the subject of sharp, shiny objects, I want to talk about something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. I wrote a post a few years ago about the shaving razor business model where some companies will give you the razor handle to get you on the hook to buy disposable plastic razor cartridges from them. This model took hold back in the 1970s and the marketing machine has convinced us that we need two, three, five or more blades in the razor cartridge to get a decent shave.

I remember the razors my dad and grandpa used – they were called double edge safety razors. No plastic. I’ve read that the EPA estimates over a billion plastic razor cartridges end up in landfills every year in the USA. That’s a lot of plastic bits.

I’ve found there’s a cult-like following for shaving the old-fashioned way with a safety razor or a straight razor – it’s called wet shaving. No more plastic disposable junk – with ever escalating replacement costs. With a safety razor or straight razor, you pay up front a one-time cost for the razor. With a straight razor you need to develop sharpening skills (or send it to a sharpener), but there are vintage straight razors on the market that are 100 years old! With a safety razor you still need blades, but they are ten to twenty cents a piece and they are recyclable metal – no plastic. Again, these razors can last for generations.

There are forums such as Badger and Blade where you can learn how to wet shave and what equipment to buy or avoid. There are also countless YouTube videos. I jumped aboard this train. I went head first and bought a straight razor.

I bought a Ralf Aust 5/8 straight razor. Ralf is a craftsman in Germany running a one-man shop assisted by his wife with the bookkeeping and shipping. The photo didn’t pick up the laser engraving on the blade – it says “Solinger Handarbeit.” This translates as “Handcrafted in Solingen.” The scales (handle) on this model are made from redwood.

I have plenty of sharpening stones and some sharpening skills. A straight razor is different from a kitchen or pocket knife though. The techniques are similar, yet different.

For one thing, razors need to be finished to a higher level of refinement than a knife. Most people prefer a certain level of “toothiness” in a kitchen or pocket knife – unless they’re cutting sushi. A truly razor-sharp edge might not “bite” into a tomato or pepper skin. This toothiness would make a shaving razor very uncomfortable.

So, I needed a finishing stone for my razor. I wanted go natural, so I bought a rectangular Belgian coticule finishing stone with a small bout – called a nagura in sharpening circles.

The Belgian coticule is a whole story by itself – it will have to wait for another post.

You also should have a couple of strops on hand for a straight razor. These used to be common items in barber shops. I now have two hanging strops – one made in Germany from linen and one made in Morocco from cow hide.

Hanging strops – leather on top and linen below

Well, shaving with a straight razor is not straight forward. It’s scary! Putting a razor sharp blade against your face is daunting. It takes skill to successfully shave with it. Acquiring that skill can be a painful experience. After a few bloody experiences, I decided I needed to take baby steps. It was suggested on the forum to start by only shaving the easy parts – your cheeks – until you get a better feel for it.

If you know me, you know I also shave my head. This would be impossible for me to do with a straight razor – what was I thinking? I’d probably cut my ears off!

Well, I really wanted to ditch the disposable cartridge razor. So I ordered a safety razor. That’s a whole ‘nother topic with much to learn – but it’s not nearly the learning curve of a straight razor. I call it my training wheels – I can shave my cheeks with the straight razor, then shift to the safety razor to finish my neck and touch up areas. I can also shave my head with it. High quality safety razor blades can be obtained on the internet for about $10 for 100 blades.

Goodfellas’ Smile Bayonetta safety razor

My safety razor is made in Italy by Goodfellas’ Smile. The model is Bayonetta and it is CNC machined from brass. It’s a little aggressive, I have to be careful shaving my head. But I’m enjoying the process and I understand the reason why guys and gals do this. That’s probably enough about sharp, shiny objects for now – I’ll be revisiting this sub-culture topic.

I only have one dinner plate photo for this post. Not that Donna hasn’t made many photo-worthy dinner plates, I’ve just neglected to photograph them. This is one-pan tortellini with sausage and fennel soup.

Chopping the fennel was interesting – the recipe used all of the parts. I thinly sliced the stalks and bulb, then minced the fronds. It was an excellent dinner!

My last tennis lesson for the season was a couple of weeks ago. We’ve been playing some informal pick-up games. Summer play will begin tomorrow. I played pickleball for a couple of hours yesterday and I think all of the tennis has actually improved some aspects of my pickleball game – I was on fire despite not playing recently while I concentrate on tennis.

The weather has been great. A little on the warm side, but mostly comfortable. We’ve had highs in the upper 70s to 80s. A 90 degree day here and there and more 90s to come. I’m not complaining.

Stoned

The snowbird season is coming to a close. Many of the winter visitors at Viewpoint have departed for points north. Golf league and tennis league play has ended and I had my last tennis lesson of the season.

Donna and I intend to continue to play tennis through the summer in the mornings with other full-time residents. My goal is to become proficient enough to join a team in league play in the fall. I held my last pickleball class of the season at the end of March.

Donna found information for free admittance at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix on the second Tuesday of the month. So this past Tuesday, I grabbed my camera and few bottles of water and we headed there. We arrived around 9:30am and I was surprised at the full parking lots. We parked in the overflow lot and got our second surprise at the entrance. At the check-in area, we were asked if we had a reservation!

I thought this was really odd – like needing a reservation to visit the zoo or something. We told the guy we didn’t have reservation and it didn’t seem to matter. He just handed us a map and waved us in. We entered and it felt like we were at Disneyland. The walking paths were all crowded and little kids were everywhere. I brought my camera thinking I would be able to photograph birds in the gardens, but with all the people the birds seemed to have fled to the open desert.

We walked around for a bit, but it was like going down a crowded Walmart aisle. Oblivious people would stop in the middle of the path, blocking others from moving through. I shot a few pictures of flowers, but we soon tired of the place and left. I would not have been happy if we had paid for admission.

I wrote about a new natural whetstone I bought in my last post. Like most things I do, I had to take it up a notch. I enjoy sharpening knives – I find it almost meditative and doing so on natural stones adds another element to my enjoyment. The use of stones for sharpening tools by humans predates any historical reference. Homer wrote about Cretan whetstones in The Iliad and Odyssey more than 12 centuries ago.

The truth is, natural whetstones are harder to use than man made synthetic whetstones. The biggest difference is the consistency of the stones. Modern synthetic whetstones have abrasives that are usually some form of aluminum oxide or silicon carbide. These abrasive particles are uniform in size and shape and are held by a binder that wears down and constantly releases fresh abrasive particles. The stones are engineered with different binder compounds that can be relatively soft or hard.

Natural stones on the other hand are cut from various types of rocks. They are quarried or mined from seams of mostly homogenous stone types that are naturally abrasive. The abrasive particles are randomly distributed and are bound together with other natural compounds that have fused together from heat and pressure over millions of years. These stones are found and mined all over the world, but the most desirable stones originate from Japan, Belgium and Arkansas in the USA. There are many other lesser known stones from other countries.

The Japanese and Belgian stones can be very expensive – some are considered collectible. I didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole, so I sought out lesser known stones like the Indonesian stone I wrote about before. I bought two more Indonesians – a medium and a medium/fine to go with the fine stone. These stones are called Red Stone (Batu Beureum in Sundanese – the language of West Java), Black Stone (Batu Hideung) and White Stone (Batu Bodas) respectively.

Red, Black and White Indonesian whetstones

I don’t let my Japanese kitchen knives get very dull, so these three stones are a good progression for sharpening them. If the knives were very dull or chipped, I would start with a soft, coarse synthetic stone. I would do the same if I was sharpening a softer stainless steel knife like a German Henckels or Wusthof.

I took things a step further and added a couple of fine finishing stones. The first one is Japanese – an Ocean Blue Tsushima whetstone. Tsushima stones come from two mines – one on a mountain on Tsushima Island – these are usually brownish – the other mine was under the ocean off of the coast of Tsushima. These are black or dark blue. The mines closed in the 1980s, but there are still plenty of stone blocks available.

The other finishing stone came from a mine on Velky Rozsutec – a mountain in the Mala Fatra range in Slovakia. These stones are favored by farmers in that part of the world for sharpening scythes and for knives. The stones were mined and cut by one man until his passing in 2013. A few years later, his son and daughter took over the business and began cutting and selling whetstones.

Rozsutec stones are unique. They are cut from a very hard strata of sandstone. I usually think of sandstone as a soft, crumbly type of stone. Not these. They are very hard and long wearing stones. The silica grains cut the metal when sharpening. Over time, these grains don’t release, they slowly flatten and the stone get smoother. At some point it needs to be conditioned by flattening the surface with a harder stone or diamond plate to expose fresh grit.

I use the Tsushima and Rozsutec in the final stage of sharpening. These require a very light touch and can provide an extremely keen, razor-sharp edge on hard steel. I used all these natural stones on my Sanjo sujihiki ( a Japanese slicer blade) and got a very fine edge. When I used it to cut a pork tenderloin, it practically fell through the meat. As an experiment, I held the blade between my thumb and first two fingers and slid the 240mm blade across the tenderloin with no pressure other than the weight of the blade. It cut cleanly through!

For the past several weeks I’ve been striking out on astrophotography. The nights have been either cloudy or the targets were too close to nearly full or bright full moons. When I shoot from the east tennis court lot here at Viewpoint, my preference is to locate targets that are in the north or east. This keeps me pointed away from the worst of the light pollution, but it’s still a light polluted sky.

Last week I caught a break. I set up on Tuesday night, March 2nd, but was stymied by technical problems (software). I went back out on Wednesday and was able to begin imaging a little after 8pm. I shot 80 exposures, 90 seconds each and packed up. I knew it wasn’t enough – I was targeting a very distant and dim galaxy – the Needle Galaxy (NGC 4565). This is an edge-on galaxy around 40 million light years away from earth.

A week later I had favorable conditions and went after it again. I repeated my earlier effort and picked up 80 more exposures. I used my Astro-Tech 115EDT telescope with a 0.8X reducer/flattener. This gave me a focal length of 644mm and an F5.6 aperture – you photographers out there will know what I mean. I try to keep exposures under 90 seconds in the heavy light pollution – preferably 75 or 60 seconds. This galaxy was so dim, I knew I needed to push the envelope and F5.6 allowed me gather enough light at 90 seconds.

My APM 140 with a focal length of 980mm would have been a better field of view for this target, but at F7 I think I would need a lot more time on target. It worked out better than I expected with the AT 115EDT.

If you click on the photo above to enlarge, you might be able to find three more galaxies in the image – they are much farther away and small.

As usual, Donna is feeding me well. Here are a couple of typical dinner plates from the past month. I bought a USDA Prime tri-tip at Costco and smoked it on the Traeger smoker/grill. Donna served it with sweet potato and green beans.

Another meal was simple grilled chicken seasoned with salt and pepper served with grilled peppers and onions with feta and grilled bok choy.

The weather for the past month has been a little strange. We’ve had very pleasant stretches with highs in the mid-70s, but also had rain at least one day per week accompanied by a couple of cool days with highs in the low 60s. It seems like that’s all in the past now. Today the forecast calls for low 90s. The next two weeks call for highs ranging from the mid-70s to 80s and sunny skies.

Sticker Shock

I received quite a shock in the mail a couple of weeks ago. It was my insurance renewal notice for our Jeep Compass. The rate for the same coverage on a car that’s a year older and depreciating was more than double – that’s right, my premium was more than double the cost of the previous year.

I talked to my insurance agent about this and she had some shocking stories to tell. The insurance market is in turmoil. She’s been in the business for over 30 years and she’s never experienced a market like the current conditions. She says a number of factors are involved – I think many of these factors were avoidable.

She cited California and New York as major influences in the cost of insurance. California has had huge claims from wildfires and they regulate the cost of insurance. Many companies have quit writing new policies or renewals in California and New York due to over-regulation. When the government doesn’t allow a free market, unintended consequences can rule. Companies leaving the huge California and New York markets has a ripple effect on the rest of us.

Companies that continue to operate in California and New York have to underwrite policies for less than their actuaries calculate. They spread that loss to others – in this case, my current insurance through Progressive raises the cost for everyone else to cover their losses in states like California and New York. In essence, I’m subsidizing California policies.

Another factor we face in Arizona is the double-edged sword of under-insured/uninsured policy requirements. Under-insured/uninsured coverage is a state requirement here. Many of the collision claims here involve uninsured motorists. The flood of illegal immigration puts many unlicensed, uninsured motorists on the road. So, the state requires me to have insurance coverage to account for that. Again, I’m forced to subsidize their lack of responsibility. If your policy is due for renewal soon, be prepared for a cost increase. End of rant.

Awhile back, Donna and I decided to buy whole chickens which I then broke down into eight or 10 pieces. We liked the quality of whole chickens better than the pre-packaged breasts we found in stores. I would break down the chicken and Donna would vacuum seal pieces and freeze them for later consumption. Somehow, over the last year or so we got out of that habit. It bit us when Donna made a dish with pre-packaged chicken breasts that turned out to be dry and stringy. It had nothing to do with her recipe or cooking skill – it was not a good quality product.

So I’m back into the chicken butchery business. I break down a chicken into two breasts and tenders, two thighs, two drumsticks and two wings which I sometimes cut into four pieces. We rediscovered why we were doing this in the past.

To break down the chicken, I use a Japanese knife called a honesuki which is designed precisely for this task. A honesuki was one of the first Japanese knives I bought. I’ve never liked the Misono brand Swedish steel honesuki I bought all that much. It was made in the traditional Japanese way with the blade sharpened to an offset bevel – in this case a 70/30 grind. I couldn’t keep a sharp edge on it and struggled to maintain the 70/30 edge.

I found a good deal on a honesuki made in Sanjo, Japan with a western 50/50 bevel grind. I like Sanjo knives in general. Sanjo is a historic blade- and tool-making district. Many of the bladesmiths there are small operators with one man doing the entire knifemaking process. There is a factory there called Tadafusa which employs a number of blacksmiths and sharpeners, but most of the knife makers there are run by only a few employees or a single person. The honesuki I bought is typical san-mai (literally translates as three-layer) construction where the hard shirogami #2 carbon steel core is sandwiched between layers of softer stainless steel. I broke down two chickens with this blade and it glided right through all of the joints to separate the chicken parts. Love it!

Most of the meal prep work I do for Donna involves cutting vegetables. I bought another Japanese knife from Teruyasu Fujiwara called a nakiri. Nakiris are typically made with a rectangular blade and have a slight belly curvature. They are specifically designed for cutting vegetables and the flat edge profile makes it cut cleanly through a vegetable without leaving what’s called an accordion – that’s when the vegetable isn’t fully separated and the bottom layer of the vegetable stays connected together. It’s annoying.

I keep our kitchen knives sharp by free-hand sharpening on Japanese water stones. These are whetstones that either need to be soaked in water before use or in some case can be used with just a splash of water to lubricate and clean the surface. I have a number of synthetic stones in various grits for this task.

Traditional Japanese stones were mined for centuries and are natural stones. This can lead to another rabbit hole where there are enthusiasts looking for stones with seemingly magical properties. This can lead to an expensive journey through stones which can be collectable as many of the old mines have been shut down for years. Enthusiasts sometimes spend hundreds of dollars for a single stone!

Recently I’ve been hearing about natural stones being mined in Indonesia. There are a couple of groups there trying to open up an export market for these sharpening stones. I watch a couple of YouTube videos describing them. I fell for it and bought an Indonesian natural whetstone. It was inexpensive – they haven’t developed much of a following or market yet, so they are dirt cheap. The stone I bought is hard and fairly fine grain. I used it to finish the edge on my honesuki and also on a Sanjo slicer (called a sujihiki). It left a razor-sharp edge.

You can see this thing is a brick – I think it’s a lifetime whetstone.

I put my knives to good use recently and made my famous Japanese fried rice.

Donna grilled shrimp and served it over a cup of fried rice.

Another recent meal was pork tenderloin served with chipotle maple sauce with garlic smashed potato and fresh broccoli from our garden on the side. That’s a winner!

Another fine dinner was a plate of skillet chicken parmesan served with gnocci and steamed spinach and fresh basil from our garden.

Last night, we had our friends, Chuck and Sue Lines and Dick and Roxy Zarowny over for Donna’s annual St. Patrick’s dinner. We had it a few days early as Donna has a Viewpoint Concert Band performance on Sunday evening. She made all the traditional Irish foods – corned beef, cabbage and carrots, champ potatoes and Irish soda bread. Sue brought an appetizer and Roxy supplied Key lime pie for dessert. I neglected to take any photos as we chatted all evening.

There’s a big project underway here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort. A company called Airebeam has been contracted to install fiber-optic cabling and internet service for the park. In a couple of months we should have access to blazing fast (up to 750Mbps) internet and video streaming – it will be great!

Donna competed in a tennis tournament a couple of weeks ago. I attended as an official scorekeeper – I’m a league scorekeeper for the East Valley Senior Tennis League. The league sanctions competition for seniors from various 55+ parks and neighborhoods in our area. Donna and her tennis partner, Linda Rice, won their first match but were eliminated in a close second-round match two days later.

The weather has been very pleasant over the past couple of weeks with daily highs in the mid-to-upper 70s. We had clouds roll in last night and will have some rain today before the sunshine returns again tomorrow. The rest of the month is forecast to have daily highs back in the mid-to-upper 70s.

Hearts and Roses

It’s been more than a minute since I last posted – in fact, it’s been about six weeks! It was easier to find topics of interest when we were on the road full-time. New surroundings, projects galore to keep everything functional on the RV – always something to talk about. Not that life here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort is boring – there’s always something going on. But it gets redundant to post about daily life without fresh topics.

This week we had Valentines Day. I don’t get charged up about Hallmark holidays. Maybe I’m just not a romantic type, but I really don’t get it. When we lived in Michigan they also celebrated something called “Sweetest Day.” I think it’s common in the Midwest. To me, it’s another Hallmark holiday made up to sell cards and candies. Bah humbug!

Last year after I started my deep dive into astrophotography, I imaged the Rosette Nebula. I counted it as one of my more successful attempts. I only had 71 minutes of data and the image was quite noisy. I knew I could improve it, but didn’t have a chance to capture it again until this week. I went out on Tuesday and Wednesday night and set up at the East tennis court parking lot.

Tuesday night things went well – until they didn’t. After about 40 one-minute exposures, I had a data transfer failure from the ZWO ASI533 MC Pro camera to the NINA software on my laptop. After a few frantic moments of troubleshooting, I disconnected the camera and restarted it. I was up and running again. It seems I always have moment of drama when I’m imaging the night sky. Things ran smoothly after that. The quality of the exposures seemed good.

Wednesday night was the smoothest session I’ve ever experienced. Everything worked as it should, the mount tracked flawlessly and quality of my captures was better than ever. Altogether over the two sessions I had 221 one-minute exposures. During processing of these sub-exposures, I culled eight substandard captures, leaving 213. That’s a 96% keeper rate. Outstanding! I’ve also improved my image processing. Once I stacked the 213 sub-exposures and made corrections, the final image was very satisfying. The improvement over my early effort 11 months ago is pretty dramatic in my opinion.

The total integration time of three hours and 33 minutes reduced the background noise and also improved the detail and color of the nebula. Here is the latest image.

This is what I came up with 11 months ago.

These images were shot with the same camera, filter and software. The telescope in the old photo was a William Optics Zenithstar 73 – a fine doublet telescope. I replaced the Z73 with a William Optics Gran Turismo 71 and used a 0.8X reducer. The GT71 is a triplet and an upgrade over the Z73, but I think that had little to do with the overall results. I also used the Losmandy GM 811G mount vs the Skywatcher HEQ5 I used to have. The stars are tighter in the latest photo – that may be due to me focusing more carefully than when I first started. The background is much smoother – it doesn’t have the gritty noise of the earlier photo. This is mostly due to the longer integration time – three and half hours vs 71 minutes. The other wildcard is atmospheric conditions – I have no control over that other than to pass on nights when conditions are really poor.

Donna is off to band rehearsal this morning. The Viewpoint Concert Band has a performance scheduled for tomorrow night. This will be the third of four concerts scheduled this season. Donna is the president of the Viewpoint Concert Band board of directors. She’s also the secretary of the Viewpoint Tennis Club and she’s the founder and heads up the Viewpoint Good Neighbors program. In her spare time, she golfs in the ladies golf league and tries to get on the golf course a couple of times per week. To say she’s always on the run is an understatement.

I almost forgot about another nebula image I captured at the end of January. This is the Heart Nebula captured with my GT71 and Player One Poseidon C-Pro camera. This was captured with 104 90-second sub-exposures for a total time of two hours and 34 minutes. The atmosperic conditions were less than favorable with the moon at 84% illumination.

Donna just pointed out that while I am not a fan of Hallmark holidays, I did choose appropriate targets for Valentine’s Day – a rosette and a heart!

After a wet and relatively cold start to February, we have great weather forecast to continue through the end of the month. Today we should hit the mid-70s and the thermometer will top out there daily with mostly sunny skies. Can’t complain about that! Donna will miss some of our good weather to go to equally good weather in Florida. She’s meeting two sisters and a cousin and they’re doing a half marathon in Key West, Florida next weekend.

Edit: If you click on the Rosette Nebula photos, they will open in a new pane. Then click on the photo again and it will expand. This will allow you to easily see the quality differences I mention.

Gucci USB

Happy New Year, first of all. I hope you all had an enjoyable holiday season and a merry Christmas. We certainly enjoyed Thanksgiving and Christmas. Donna’s Good Neighbor group shared holiday meals with many older residents of Viewpoint that were homebound or alone over the holidays.

We’re staying busy as usual and settling into our winter routines. Of course, Donna is involved with many more activities than I am – she’s always on the go. I’m running pickleball coaching sessions once a week and taking tennis lessons two days a week. Something that has become a habit is Friday afternoon/evening visits to RJs cigar lounge with Mike Hall. We catch up on events and solve world issues. Sometimes Mike’s wife, Jodi, and Donna join us. I usually puff a premium cigar with rum on the rocks.

Donna has been after me for a while to do something about hearing impairment. I have hearing loss – it’s no wonder really. A lifetime around shop machinery, playing electric guitars, racing motorcycles and shooting guns takes a toll. For some reason, I’ve resisted checking out hearing aids. Since hearing aids were approved for over-the-counter, prices have dropped dramatically.

I did some online research and found that traditional hearing centers convince patients that their services are required and they offer expert advice at no cost. In reality, they bake the cost of their enterprise – building rent, employment expense, etc. – into the price of the hearing aids. Nowadays, hearing tests can be done online with decent headphones. Test results can be analyzed and hearing aids with custom correction profiles can be ordered and shipped to your home.

I chose a company called Jabra – they’re part of the GN Hearing group. They’re headquartered in Denmark. I took the test on their site and submitted my results. I ordered a pair of their Enhance Select 100 hearing aids for $1699. I also downloaded an app for my Samsung Galaxy that connects via Bluetooth to my hearing aids – I can adjust them for different surroundings and scenarios on the fly with my phone.

I can hear so much more now. I love them and wish I would have done this earlier. If you are interested in their products, I have a link to a discount for referrals. I have an online Zoom appointment with a Jabra specialist on the 11th to go over any questions that may have come to mind after using them for a while. They can also customize the settings if I wish to modify it. The purchase price included three years of warranty and support.

When I go to the Cigar Lounge, I change the hearing aid setting to “Restaurant.” This makes nearby conversation easy to hear while muffling background noise and conversation. On the tennis or pickleball courts I switch it to “Outdoors.” This blocks wind noise and muffles loud sounds. Pretty convenient.

I’ve been putting time into astrophotography – nothing new there. It takes about five hours for a two-and-a-half-hour imaging session when you consider set-up, calibration and tear-down. In October, I imaged M31 – the Andromeda Galaxy. This galaxy has been a nemesis. I’ve had a hard time getting enough usable data to process a good picture. It seems like Murphy’s Law strikes every time I go for this target. One night I had good conditions and set everything up only to have communication failures between my gear and laptop. After two hours, I gave up. I ordered some replacement cables. Then I had to wait for another clear night with good seeing conditions. It finally came about and I captured about two and a half hours of 60-second exposures on December 14th.

A week went by before I had good astrophotography conditions again and I set up at the east tennis court parking lot here at Viewpoint. I captured another three hours. After culling out bad frames, I stacked and integrated 297 frames for four hours and 57 minutes of data. I’m fairly happy with the result and I can give Andromeda a break for a while. Maybe next year I’ll see if I can improve it as my skills increase with more experience.

The Andromeda Galaxy is about 2.5 million light years away from Earth. I used my new William Optics GT71 telescope with a 0.8 reducer/flattener and Player One Poseidon cooled astrophotography camera. I used an Optolong L-Pro filter to fight the light pollution and moonglow.

Next, I wanted to capture something new. After looking at the best possibilities, I settled on NGC 281 – the Pacman Nebula. I chose it because it would be high in the sky from 7pm to 10pm. Telescopes work best on objects that are near the zenith – that is, overhead. That’s because when the objects are nearly straight up, there’s less atmosphere to penetrate. If we shoot at a low angle, we have to deal with much more atmospheric disturbance.

Once again, I set up and ran through calibration only to find communication errors. Data wouldn’t transfer from my camera to my laptop. After much wrangling, I isolated the problem to the USB hub. Most modern laptops only have one or two USB-A type ports. I need a minimum of four, so I use a hub for more ports. I was kicking myself when I realized the hub was the problem. I had all this software and equipment and I link it through a $20 hub from Amazon. Not smart.

The demands of an imaging camera and a guidescope camera along with mount guiding commands and so on put a lot strain on the hub’s ability to quickly distribute and transfer data. I did some research and found that most guys are using independently powered USB hubs – they don’t pull any voltage through the laptop USB port. That way constant voltage is supplied through a separate connection and the laptop port only handles data. I found a number of complaints about cheap hubs not working when it gets colder outside. This makes sense if you consider they are designed to work in your home or office where the temperature is fairly constant and only ranges from maybe 60 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

I decided to bite the bullet and get a good hub. I ordered a Pegasus USB hub that is considered industrial grade. It has a certified working temperature range of -40 to +185 degrees Fahrenheit. It took a bite out of my wallet at $200 versus the Amazon $20 hub, but I’m confident this one will work. Actually, I hedged my bet – I also ordered an Amazon $40 powered USB hub for back-up purposes. There’s no worse feeling than to set all of the gear up for a night of imaging, only to fail to even get started because of equipment failure – especially something as simple as a USB connection.

Once I had the new hub – which my friend Mike Hall calls the “Gucci” hub – I had wait out the weather. I finally had a promising night on December 30th. I set up at the east tennis courts and everything calibrated fine. There was a full moon, but as it was rising in the east, I was shooting almost straight up slightly facing the northwest.

This turned out to be the first time I experienced what appeared to be clear skies, but with so much atmospheric turbulence that I struggled to get usable images. After an hour and half or so, things seems to settle down and the session improved. I knew I didn’t have enough to create a decent final image though.

The next clear night was January 2nd. This turned out to be excellent seeing conditions and I captured more than two and half hours of 75-second exposures. The moon didn’t rise until about 9pm so I had good skies most of the night, light pollution notwithstanding.

I had to throw out about half of my first night’s effort, but kept nearly all of the second night – I think I only culled three or four frames out of 125. I had three hours and 52 minutes total integration time. The Pacman Nebula is in the constellation Cassiopeia, about 9,500 light years away from earth. If you remember the video game Pacman from the early 80s, the nebula resembles the Pacman about to gobble up some stars.

I captured this image with my AT115 EDT telescope and ZWO ASI533MC Pro cooled astrophotography camera. The light pollution and moonglow made it difficult to capture much of the oxygen gases that emit blue light, but I’m happy with the final result.

Donna got an air fryer and has been experimenting with it. It’s a story in itself, how she acquired the air fryer through a generous gift but then traded with a friend for a smaller air fryer. The original air fryer was too large for our small kitchen and storage space. Her friend Deborah had a new smaller one and was interested in a larger one, so they swapped.

One of the meals she made was air-fried tilapia. A simple meal ideal for the fryer.

Best wishes for 2024 – another trip around the sun.

Good Neighbors

I posted less than a month ago, but it feels like a long time ago. I guess that’s because we had an eventful November. Most of it good with a couple of exceptions.

Donna started a group here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort over the summer and things got into full swing in the last month or so. It’s called Viewpoint Good Neighbors. She organized a group of volunteers to help some of the elderly residents of Viewpoint. They can provide companionship, help with household chores and also provide meals for people that are mostly alone and/or homebound. She has over 40 volunteers in the group and she’s kept very busy as residents reach out to her and she finds volunteers to accommodate them.

She also has band practice with the Viewpoint Concert Band and she’s a board member of the band. As they gear up for another season, she’s been busy with meetings and planning. On top of that, she’s on the Viewpoint Tennis Club Executive Committee. Whew!

I’ve been taking tennis lessons twice a week and also getting out to practice a bit – so I’m on the courts three times a week usually. I haven’t had much time for pickleball – the lower courts are still closed for refinishing and the upper courts attract a crowd. I’ll be starting my pickleball coaching sessions soon – I think.

Of course, Thanksgiving was a busy week. Donna had several meal deliveries and various assignments for the Good Neighbors. They provided relief for many of the elderly people with no local family and she can be proud of what they accomplished. We enjoyed the dinner Donna prepared – she bought a brined turkey breast from Winco. It was actually a whole turkey minus the wings and legs – I mean a full bone-in breast and back. She stuffed it and served a traditional style meal with sliced turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy with sides of roasted brussel sprouts and butternut squash. She fixed plates for our neighbors and a 94-year old man that was alone at home.

Last week, I found a whole USDA Prime beef tenderloin – about five pounds of super-tender beef. I trimmed it and cut it into filet mignon steaks. Donna vacuum sealed and froze seven or eight steaks plus some tips from the trimming that she will turn into steak bites – yum. I grilled two filets for dinner last Wednesday and they were outstanding. Donna added sauteed mushrooms and onions along with broccoli and baked potatoes on the side.

Now, for the not-so-good stuff. First, I had some sensitivity in one of my teeth and chewing was sometimes painful. It was a lower molar on my right jaw (tooth number 30). I went to the dentist and he scheduled me for a root canal. Ugh! We got it done along with a new ceramic crown replacing the old gold onlay. But I wasn’t finished with the dentist.

Two nights later, I got up in the night to use the bathroom. I’m usually careful about standing up too quickly after I’ve been down for a while – sometimes my blood pressure drops and I can get dizzy. I had a painful episode of this a while back when we were in Cortez, Colorado. This time I must have stood up straight away and took a few steps into the bathroom. The next thing I knew Donna was helping me up as I spit blood and pieces of my teeth into the bath tub. I had a syncope episode – that is, I briefly fainted and fell into the shower tub unconscious.

I was disoriented and had four front teeth broken, rib pain and a bloody lip. I also hit my forehead and had a concussion. Donna was worried most about that and called 911. I was transported to Banner Baywood Hospital for tests. After four hours or so, they sent me home. They didn’t find any conclusive abnormalities and the dental damage was the worst of it. I went back to the dentist the next day and they had to extract what was left of one tooth and make a temporary bridge and crown. I’ll finish the dental work in February.

Meanwhile, Donna had a veneer come off one of her front teeth. She then had a temporary that kept falling off, but she has the permanent veneer in place now and is good to go. So much for the dental stories.

I finally had a chance to take out my William Optics GT71 telescope last Saturday night. The moon was rising late and the forecast called for clear skies. The “seeing” forecast wasn’t the greatest and some atmospheric disturbance was predicted.

I had a few challenges – astrophotography isn’t easy and I often remind myself of that. Figuring out my issues took some time and I started imaging later than I planned. Then I had some high, thin clouds that ended my session. I made a major blunder – I had my software set up for the Player One astro camera, but I was using my ZWO ASI533MC astro camera. By the time I realized this, it was too late to make any changes. This resulted in a noisier image than what I should have captured, but it’s okay. I need to get out again and add more data to get a really good image anyway.

I shot 130 captures of 60 seconds each. I had to cull some of them for various quality reasons and ended up with 102 minutes of integrated data of the Pleiades star cluster. Pleiades is an interesting target. It’s called various names – Pleiades, Seven Sisters, Subaru. The name Pleiades comes from ancient Greek mythology. The star cluster has nine named stars though – the seven sisters are Sterope, Merope, Electra, Maya, Taygeta, Celeano and Alcyone. The other two stars are named after their mythological parents, Atlas and Pleione.

I’m pretty happy with the color in the image – the William Optics GT71 triplet has great color rendition. The bluish nebulosity seen in the photo are from the stars shining through space dust. Pleiades is the closest star cluster at a distance of about 440 light years from earth. I captured this photo from our light polluted neighborhood in Mesa, Arizona. Pleiades was the first deep-sky object I imaged, although I did that from the darker sky found at Weaver Needle Viewpoint. From there you can easily see Pleiades with the naked eye. In cities, it’s very hard to see. With more time on target, I should capture a larger field of nebulosity.

As usual, I’ll close with a couple of Donn’a dinner plates. First we have grilled salmon and bok choy over vegetable fried rice.

Next up was a real winner – Alaskan pollock gratin with green beans.

We had a little rain Thursday night and Friday morning, but the sun was out by noon. It has been colder than usual with highs around 60 in the last few days, but 80 degree temperature should return by tomorrow.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Fourth and Final Housesit

Summer Sits

Graduate

Travel Plans

Learning to Shave

Stoned

Sticker Shock

Hearts and Roses

Gucci USB

Good Neighbors

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: