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.

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.