Category Archives: Restaurants

Japan – Part Four Kanazawa Continued

Kanazawa was probably my favorite place to visit in Japan. Although they list a population of more than 400,000, it’s relatively compact. The cities in Japan are generally densely populated and Kanazawa doesn’t sprawl. The best way for us to get around in Kanazawa was either by bus or walking.

Saturday morning, October 5th, we took a bus to Kanazawa Castle. Google said we could walk there in about 30 minutes, but we knew that once we were there we’d have plenty of walking ahead of us. There are a few different bus lines operating in Kanazawa. The JR (Japan Rail) West line is the only one that accepted our Suica cards. This worked out fine for us as it had a stop near the Hotel Torifito on the busy Kanazawa Ekidori Avenue. This bus made a stop within a few blocks of the entrance to the castle grounds.

The castle dates back to the 16th century although it burned down and had to be rebuilt a few times. Currently there is renovation work in some areas and some paths were closed due to damage from the Noto Peninsula Earthquake earlier this year. Admission to the grounds is free although some buildings have fees to enter.

We found one of the gates to enter from Ohori Dori Avenue and crossed a pedestrian bridge over the outer moat.

The grounds from this entrance resembled a large park – lots of grass with people lounging around.

It was a bit of a hike to reach another moat before following the walkway into the castle courtyards.

We wandered through the grounds, unguided. Once again I was awestruck by the woodwork – the scale and the carpentry skill was unbelievable.

One of many large entrances with huge doors

The woodworkers skill is something to behold – huge armored door behind me

Much of the walkway had bamboo fencing. The bamboo was tied together, no nails or screws!

After a while we found ourselves at an entrance to the Kenroku-en Garden – a garden park first established during the Edo Period (1603-1868). There is a small fee to enter the garden grounds – it’s worth it. Rather than trying to describe it, I’ll post a few photos.

Natural landscape at the garden entrance

View of the city from a high point in the garden

We retraced our steps and skipped the bus. We followed signs directing us toward Omicho Market. This is a large indoor market with stalls selling seafood and fresh produce along with food stands. I found it much more interesting than the Tsukiji market in Tokyo or the malls in Kyoto. I think I like it because we were able to check out each stall without fighting our way through crowds of people.

We also saw the merchants prepping fresh fish brought in the from the port a few miles away. Most of the shoppers appeared to be local Japanese buying fresh food to prepare at home. There were far fewer foreigners than in Kyoto or Tokyo.

Shoppers at a seafood stall in Omicho Market

Fresh fish processed right in the stall for presentation and sale

Styrofoam boxes of fish brought in from the port

We grabbed a quick lunch at a counter – some kind of skewers is all I can remember about it now. We realized weren’t very far away from Hotel Torifito and we walked back to take a mid-day break.

After resting for a bit, I started looking online for a happy hour place and dinner. I was having some trouble, there were izakaya in the area but nothing seemed to appeal to me. I was looking out the window of our fourth floor hotel room when I noticed a couple of people on the rooftop area of a building kitty-corner to our hotel. I asked Donna to take a look and see what she thought. She echoed my thoughts – it looked like a rooftop bar.

We walked over there and found a four story building with a different restaurant on each floor including the one with rooftop seating. We went up there and sat outdoors for a drink. Looking at their menu, we went for an appetizer. This soon turned into a tapas-type dinner for us as we added a few other plates to our order. We had an enjoyable evening – the two businessmen that we had spied on the rooftop left shortly after we arrived and we had the place mostly to ourselves.

One the things I was hoping to find in Japan was old Japanese barber straight razors. I have a modest collection of straight razors and I shave with them. I like the history behind some of the razors which were once found in almost every household. There’s a small cadre of straight razor enthusiasts today and I enjoy the ritual of face lathering with a bowl and brush and shaving the old fashioned way.

Unfortunately, our timing didn’t coincide with the flea markets I’d heard were a good place to look for razors. Sunday morning we took a bus to go shopping at a couple of antique shops that were open. When we walked to the bus stop across Kanazawa Ekidori Avenue, the JR Line bus was just leaving. We missed it. As near as I could decipher from the schedule placard, it looked like it would be 20 minutes until another JR Line bus would arrive. By the time I figured that out, another bus heading in the same direction we wanted to go came.

I told Donna we should get on. Once the bus starting moving, I realized the Suica cards wouldn’t be accepted on this bus line. I had a moment of panic when I remembered reading that you need correct change for city buses. When we got to what I thought was the Hashibacho district I had observed other people paying with paper money and receiving change from the machine when they got off of the bus. Whew! End of panic. I paid after a little confusion when I put in a 10,000 yen bill thinking I had used a 1,000 yen bill. That made for a lot of change coins.

We found a couple of antique shops but I didn’t find any razors. In one shop I tried to convey to the proprietor what I was searching for. I made a scraping motion across my face with my finger and said “Razor?” He just gave me a puzzled look. Then I used the Japanese word kamisori. Uncharacteristically, he laughed and said “Convenience store.” So much for finding an old Japanese razor on this trip.

A funny thing happened after the first few days in Japan. Many Japanese words and phrases were familiar to me. Donna noticed that I understood much of what was spoken and I often used a Japanese phrase to answer someone. I can’t explain it, just hearing many words and phrases I learned from my mom when I was kid came back to me. I used words and phrases I hadn’t spoken out loud in 50 years. Odd. Donna even started to greet people in proper Japanese.

When we gave up on the antique shops, Donna said she saw Geisha at the previous bus stop a few blocks away. We decided to walk in that direction. I wasn’t exactly sure of where we were. I used Google maps on my phone and figured out where we were and it wasn’t that long of a walk to cross the Asano River to the Higashi Chaya district. This area had traditional tea houses where Geisha perform and also has some tourist attractions.

There’s the old Geisha House Shima, a heritage building. This is also the home of gold leaf artisans and there are many museums in the area. While we walking toward Higashi, I saw an interesting sight. We walked past a firehouse and I saw a fireman prepping some gear in front of a fire engine. The interesting part was the size of the firetruck. In Japan many of the streets, especially in residential areas, are very narrow or dwellings are only accessible through narrow alleys. So, the firetruck was sized to drive down these streets.

In Higashi Chaya there are authentic geisha but we also saw many of the fake geisha that I described in my last post. I think some of what we saw may have been maiko, a young geisha in training. I think the local businesses pay these young women to attract customers to the area and specific stores or restaurants.

We had lunch at a small restaurant with a few tables and chairs at the counter. Two geisha’s were at the table next to us. The place was full and by the time we left there were people waiting for a table. We wandered through the area with no real destination.

Typical restaurant/bar entrance in Kanazawa

We found an ice cream parlor that featured ice cream coated with gold leaf sprinkles.

The gold leaf is really gold! Edible gold leaf has a high purity level, it’s almost pure gold. Who knew?

We walked back to the hotel to take a break and rest. It was my birthday – October 6th marked my 68th revolution around the sun. We went for a celebratory dinner at Sushi Tora. This was a small sushi restaurant a short walk from the hotel. This sushi bar has only about eight seats. It’s run by the “oldest sushi chef in Ishikawa Prefecture.” He’s 82 years old – I didn’t get his name – and he’s been in business here all his adult life. He makes the sushi while a woman takes the orders and serves the food. I don’t know if she was his wife or daughter, I’d heard it was a family run business – she didn’t appear to be an octogenarian, but then he didn’t seem that old either.

The woman seemed to enjoy telling Donna about the various cuts of fish in the sushi. She would describe them with the Japanese words, then try to translate to English. I knew many of the names, like toro for the fatty tuna from the belly of the fish, but she also had descriptive words that were new to me.

I went for his signature ten course sushi platter while Donna opted for an eight piece plate. I was a little put off by the uni nigiri – sea urchin sushi. I’d only had uni once before in Seattle. It tasted like I was drinking from a tide pool. But I braved it and what a difference! I don’t know if it was the freshness of the urchin or the preparation but it was very tasty. I wonder if I can get uni this good anywhere in the states.

Ten course sushi platter – uni nigiri wrapped with nori in the second row, second piece from the right

The meal was outstanding served with a bottle of Kirin beer.

After dinner we walked back to the rooftop bar for a nightcap. We were welcomed back by the staff – we were the only customers there. There was the same male bartender from our previous visit and he appeared to be in charge of two young women servers. The women seemed to be shy at first but they wanted to work on their English language skills and we were soon engaged in conversation.

They asked us where we were from. Then they showed us a world map on the wall with pins in it depicting the many places visitors had come from. They placed a pin in the Phoenix area for us.

I asked for one of my favorite Japanese whiskys – Hakushu – and they gave me a full adult dose. Most Japanese bars are somewhat stingy in their pours. Not this one. Two drinks and I was at my limit. We had a fun time talking with them but after a while we realized they were only staying open because we were there. It was Sunday night after all and no one else came in. So we said good bye and they insisted on a selfie before we left.

Pie faced with the staff at the rooftop bar

Thus ended my birthday evening out.

It seems like I’m missing a day with this narrative, but after more than a month, much of the time is a blur and I didn’t take any notes. This is just my recollection of how the trip went.

I had booked seats for us to take the Shinkansen back to Tokyo. At one point on Sunday, we walked over to the Kanazawa Station – again booking seats alone didn’t get you to the platform. You must have a paper ticket to feed into the machine to access the boarding area. We went to the station to get our paper tickets in advance to avoid any possible delays when we departed.

It turned out to be a good idea. The JR West ticket counter was crowded. You had to take a number and wait. I was number 136 and I think they were on 103 or something. One person waiting told us they waited for nearly an hour! I noticed a small line outside of the office with people getting ticktes from a machine. I got in line and observed what was going on. I had an open machine in front of me in no time. I was a little puzzled by the instructions for using the machine, but a JR security woman came over and walked me through the process. Voila! We had our tickets. Donna gave our number 136 to someone else with higher number in line.

We were heading back to Tokyo on Monday. While we were at the station, I reloaded our Suica cards anticipating the charge we would incur taking the train to Narita Airport when we left Tokyo in a few days. Then we bought Bento box lunches for the train ride. It’s about a two and a half hour train ride over the mountains near Nagano back to Tokyo.

Donna’s Bento box lunch with chopsticks under a bow

I’ll close the loop with our final days in Tokyo in my next post.

Japan Part Two – Kyoto

I closed my last post with a short mention of the train to Kyoto. I should elaborate on that. From the Hotel Wing International, we made the short walk to the Asakusa Station entrance 2 elevator, which we had discovered after we checked in at the hotel. This was a great find as we avoided having to navigate a lot of staircases with luggage.

We found the Ginza line and an Express train bound for Tokyo Station. I should mention something we learned about Japanese culture and public transportation – actually it pertains to public spaces in general. The Japanese people are very respectful of shared spaces. This is most obvious on trains and buses. No one talks loudly as that would be disrespectful to others – they may be reading or napping. No one talks on their cell phones on trains or buses although 90% of the people are staring into their phones as they read or text or maybe play a silent video game. This stems from the principle of “not causing inconvenience to others” (迷惑をかけない), an important value in Japanese society.

The Ginza Line took us to a section of Tokyo Station – I think it was the west side. Tokyo Station is a huge transit center, the largest and busiest in Japan. More than 4,000 trains arrive and depart daily and more than 500,000 people on average pass through every day.

With all of the train activity, it’s amazing how well it all functions. Trains generally arrive and depart on time. I saw sign boards in the various stations with a message “Arriving late'” when a train was a minute behind schedule! When we got off the train, we followed the flow of people until we entered a concourse area. As I said, the station is huge and daunting. The underground station is covered by a couple of districts overhead. The connecting tunnels include entrances to shopping malls and hotels as well as other train facilities.

We went up to the street level so I could get oriented with the GPS in my phone. We had to go to the Shinkansen station for the train to Kyoto, which was on the east side, about a half-mile from where we were. We stayed above ground and walked through the Ginza business district and followed sparse signage to the Shinkansen station.

Shinkansen translates as “Bullet train.” The Japan Rail website stated the Shinkansen would reach speeds of 177 mph. Sounds pretty impressive. The Green car was very comfortable, surprisingly quiet and smooth. Through the city, the speed was subdued. Once we left the city, the acceleration was barely perceptible. As we sped through the countryside, the speed was deceptive. Looking out of the window, most objects were far enough away to diminish the sensation of speed.

When we went through tunnels, the speed became obvious. The tunnels had lights at a certain interval. I can’t say how far apart they were because they became a blur making it look like a continuous beam of light, like a long flourescent tube. Occasionally we would pass an oncoming Shinkansen and the closing speed of well over 300 mph made the train go by in a flash and it was one of the few times we sensed speed and also exterior noise.

The train took us through Hamamatsu and Nagoya along with a number of smaller towns. The nearly 300-mile distance took a little over two hours.

Kyoto Station is another huge transit center. The underground passageways include numerous restaurants, a shopping mall and department store and a movie theater. Above it is a 15-story building with more shopping and government offices. We had to figure out where we were in relation to our destination hotel – the Irori Kyoto Station Higashi-Honganji.

We walked and looked for signs. I found signs directing us to a bus station – I figured that would be above ground and I could use my phone again to see where we were. Once I did that, I found we were on the south side of the station and we wanted to exit the north side. We went back through the station and discovered more stores and restaurants before we finally found the north exit. This is the Porta underground mall at Kyoto Station.

From there we walked to the hotel – about half a mile away. This took us through an area of Kyoto with high-end hotels, shopping and restaurants. We found the Irori and checked in. It was mostly an automated process – they had e-mailed me entry codes for the lobby and a key code for our room. This room was a little larger than the Wing International room in Tokyo. In fact, it had a kitchenette, small table and chairs and even a washing machine.

Once again, we were tired from travel but didn’t rest much. We cleaned up and headed out. We went back to the Porta area on foot again.

We went on to find dinner. We found a nice looking restaurant, I wish I could remember the name of it. It was sort of a teppenyaki type place. We were led to a private box-like room with tatami seating with a foot well under the table. The table had a hot plate built into the center. By the way, we had to remove our shoes and leave them in a locker at the entry area. We were seated and given menus, then the door was slid shut and we were alone in paper-walled private box.

The menu seemed a little confusing to me. We ordered a la carte. The food was delivered through a small window-like section that slid open and the server handed our plates through it.

A built-in hot plate for sharing and keeping meals warm

The menu started to make more sense to us as we figured out that we were to share food as we wished and the food would stay hot. I had a Highball with the meal – Highballs are standard fare in Japanese restaurants and izakaya. An izakaya is a bar/restaurant – the Japanese kanji for the name literally means stay-drink-place.

I thought this meal would be on the expensive side, but I was surprised to find it was under 6,000 yen – under $40 total. As we walked around the Porta, Donna found a something she had heard we might find – a beer vending machine.

Back at the hotel I thumbed through a sightseeing magazine. I saw an entry for the Toji Temple Flea Market on Tuesday. The Toji Temple Flea Market was something I wanted to do. I immediately looked up how to get there and found a bus route that would get us close.

After breakfast the following morning, we walked to the bus stop a few blocks away from the Irori. Our Suica cards worked for bus fare in Kyoto and we found the right bus stop after about a twenty minute ride. We walked a few blocks and found the entry gate to the Toji Temple.

Inside we found a large courtyard and several buildings. There was a gift shop with people in it, but otherwise the place seemed fairly empty. We went to the gift shop and I found a guy that worked there and asked about the flea market. He shook his head “no,” and showed me a calendar. The flea market was last Tuesday, September 24th. This was October 1st. Bummer.

We walked around and looked at a few of the buildings. There was an entry to a garden and the Toji Temple pagoda. There was an entry fee, but I was so dejected about missing the flea market that I wasn’t interested enough to pay to enter. I regret that.

The pagoda is the tallest in Japan at 187 feet. It’s an Iconic image. We walked through the grounds and found a different exit. It was near lunch time by then, so we walked through the neighborhood and found a small restaurant with about eight tables. I ordered sushi and Donna opted for ramen. The food was delicious and the place was full of local Japanese people by the time we left and people were waiting for a table. We were the only gaijin (foreigners) there.

We rested for a little while back at the Irori then went shopping back at the area we had walked through from the train station. Did I mention how much my feet were hurting? We went into a shopping mall and we found a modern shoe store. My feet were killing me. For an American, finding shoes in Japan can be troublesome. They typically don’t carry sizes larger than about 10. I got lucky and found some Nike shoes in size 12. My feet used to be 10.5, then they became 11-11.5 and now 12! My theory is that as we age, some of us end up with weaker arches and flattened feet that require larger shoes for comfort. These shoes were among the most expensive in the store, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t keep walking in the shoes I brought.

When we returned home, I found a hole in my theory. The tag in the Nike shoes I bought in Japan says “US 12, UK 9.5, Eur 44.5.” The tags in my US sourced Wilson tennis shoes and Babolat tennis shoes, which both fit me comfortably say “US 11, UK 10.5, Eur 45.5.” So, apparently in Japan Nike uses a strange shoe size chart.

We walked back to the hotel – me in my new comfy Nikes. We saw a small brewery near the hotel and went for a cold one. We were a little early, they were set to open about ten minutes after we got there. The young lady inside let us in though and served us beer. Such hospitality! Donna had a porter float and I had a golden ale. The beer was good.

The bus stops we used were outside of a large walled property. This was the Higashi-Hogan-Ji Temple, a large Buddist temple. We went there to have a look around. This is an old site, but the temple had to be rebuilt several times over the centuries after fires destroyed it. The last rebuild started in 1879 and was finished in 1895.

It’s a very large wooden structure built with traditional Japanese carpentry which doesn’t include nails or adhesives. The wood structure is built with tight jointed pieces precisely cut and fitted together. To get a sense of scale, look at the people standing in front of the steps.

Before you can enter the temple, you must remove your shoes. They had plastic bags to carry your shoes if you wanted to take them with you. They also had recycling bins for the bags. We entered and found most of the flooring was traditional tatami matting.

The posts in the picture above are turned from a single log! I wish I had Donna in the picture to give a sense of scale – these posts were about two and half feet in diameter and about 20 feet tall. They are found throughout the building.

The logs were cut from forests in the mountains near Kanazawa – about 130 miles away. To transport the logs, sleds were made to pull the logs over the snowy mountain passes and down to Kyoto. Whole families made this trek, pulling the sleds with ropes. A disaster occurred when an avalanche killed several people including women and children on a mountain pass.

We had the privilege of observing a ceremony in the temple. That’s one of the things that struck about the shrines and temples in Japan – they aren’t just tourist attractions; they are used in the daily lives of Japanese people.

From the temple we walked to the bus stop a few blocks away and caught a bus to Gion – the Kyoto geisha district. Geisha are misunderstood by many tourists. Although geishas are sometimes hired as escorts, they are not in the sex trade. They are generally well-educated and are entertainers. They are mostly hired as hostesses for parties, banquets and corporate events. Some will sing and dance, others play musical instruments and some are escorts that are well-versed in literature or poetry and have conversational skills. To become a geisha takes years of study and training. There’s a sort of apprenticeship where a maiko learns the skills required of a geisha.

We saw geisha and psuedo-geishas in the Gion District. I think some of the businesses in the area pay to have geishas attract people to their stores and restaurants here. You also see people that rent geisha costumes – something that Donna and I found hard to understand. When you see a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl made up as a geisha, you have to wonder who she thinks she is fooling. On the other hand, some people rent geisha costume packages that include a photographer so they can bring home souvenir pictures of themselves in traditional clothing.

Geisha costume rentals usually include hairstyling and all clothing except underwear and cost from $35 to hundreds of dollars depending on what the renter chooses.

We had dinner at a restaurant that featured wagyu beef. The name wagyu is derived from the Japanese word Wa, which means Japanese and gyu, which means cow. This meat comes from pampered cows and has a high intramuscular fat content. It’s considered a delicacy by many. We were seated at a table that had a hot plate on a bowl in the center heated by a flame. I’m not sure of what the source of flame was, I saw the server light something under the iron plate and it heated up quickly.

The meat was cooked rare and sliced into half-inch thick pieces. We seared our meat on the hot plate and dipped it sauces. It was very rich and honestly not really my cup of tea.

The Gion District is over-run with tourists. There were more gaijin than locals. It was like walking in Disneyland. This has created some problems. Local people are tired of rude visitors that don’t respect Japanese customs. Some geishas felt threatened by foreigners stalking them for photos or touching them as they walk from their housing area to work. Parts of the Gion District are now off-limits to foreigners. We saw police at some intersections to narrow streets or alleys leading into neighborhoods. They stopped and questioned people, presumably to determine if they had good reason to enter a neighborhood.

I quickly grew tired of the crowds in Gion and parts of Kyoto in general. We rode a bus back to the area of the Irori Hotel, did some more walking and called it a day. We needed to plan our next stop on this adventure and figure out what we were going to do. That’s fodder for another post as this is too long already.

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.

Not an Amazon Affiliate

I haven’t been motivated to write a post as we haven’t done anything too exciting lately. The biggest highlight of the past week was dinner at Olio in Mancos for Donna’s birthday. Her birthday was actually on Friday, but celebrated a day early because we couldn’t get a table reservation on Friday.

Olio is upscale dining by reservation only. The owner and chef, Jason Blankenship, prepares locally sourced dinners and the menu will vary according to what may be available at the time. The place only seats about two dozen people and the tables are reserved for the night – no rushing through a meal while people wait for your table.

They have an extensive wine list. We started with the house salad – fresh salad greens with sauteed mushrooms, marcona almonds and piave and saba cheese. Their house dressing was fabulous. I ordered a bottle of 2013 Domaine les Bastides – a blend of cabernet sauvignon and grenache from Aix-en-Provence, France. It went well with our dinner entees. Donna went for the Pan Roasted Pheasant Breast on Grilled Corn Maque Choux with Tomato-Marsala Sauce while I had the Grilled, Dry-Aged, Piedmontese New York Strip with Olio Signature Steak Sauce. We split a slice of Chocolate Silk Pie with a 5-Nut Crust  for dessert. What a meal.

Our time has been mostly occupied with activities in the mornings and leisurely afternoons. I play pickleball for about two hours most mornings while Donna alternates between tennis three or four days a week and pickleball. I didn’t play over the weekend as we had high winds with gusts of 40mph. Donna has also been helping our friend, Carolyn, with chores at the Owers farm a couple of days a week.

There was a lot of turnover here in La Mesa RV Park over the Memorial Day weekend. Weekenders came in while some of the longer term people went away for the weekend, presumably visiting family. Some of the longer term people here are workers staying here while they work in the mountains. I think they’re stringing electrical cable.

We had a young couple with a baby pull in next door on Friday. They were from Kansas and came here to visit with family. They pulled out Sunday morning and had to drive 900 miles back home. Their intention was to do it in two days so he could be back at work on Tuesday. This seemed awful ambitious to me – especially towing a travel trailer in the gusty, windy conditions on Sunday.

We had a few excellent meals in the last week prepared by Donna. We started the week with grilled chicken with the barbecue sauce that Donna whipped up. She served it with crash-hot potatoes (an Australian recipe) and green beans.

Last Tuesday, Donna made lemon butter scallops served with a side of sweet potato-spinach hash. I cut the spinach into thin strips and this worked much better than preparing it with whole spinach leaves.

Wednesday night Donna made something a little different – she made salami pasta alla gricia. I chopped salami into small squares that went in with the pasta and it was topped with chopped parsley and grated parmesan.

Donna bought wild Bristol Bay salmon on Sunday and she grilled it with a dijon-brown sugar glaze. Really tasty and a simple sauce to make. The side dish was gingery bok choy.

Dijon-brown sugar glazed salmon with sauteed bok choy

The weather has been much cooler than it was at this time last year. A week ago Monday, the thermometer only reached 62 degrees. It gradually warmed back up into the 80s by Thursday. I already mentioned the windy weekend conditions. Yesterday we had another cool Monday with a high of 68 degrees. The pattern will continue with low 70s today and tomorrow before we reach the 80s again.

Tomorrow I’ll drive Donna to the Cortez Regional Airport. She’ll take a small commuter flight back to Phoenix, then carry on to San Diego. Her sister, Linda, will arrive at about the same time and they’ll be visiting her other sister, Sheila. Sheila’s son, Connor, is graduating high school and they’ll attend the graduation Friday. Donna will fly back here on Sunday. So I’ll be on my own for four nights.

By the way, Amazon notified me that they were removing my affiliate status. They said I violating their rules by having friends and family make purchases through my website link. Huh? I thought that was how affiliate links worked – I provide the link and people that follow my blog utilize it. Whatever. I removed the Amazon link – it didn’t earn much anyway.

Moving Out

Last weekend, Donna started packing up stuff that we’ll need over the next four months for our summer vacation. We moved our departure date back by one day – we learned last year that it’s too much work to try and pack four months of necessary stuff in one day. Donna obtained a two-night parking pass and I parked the motorhome in front of our park model home.

Our park model is hidden behind the coach

The first thing I did was fill the fresh water tank and dose it with Chlor Brite. Chlor Brite is a product from Leslie Pool that’s basically granulated chlorine. Sodium diclor is the active ingredient – it’s 99% of the product. It’s a concentrated form of chlorine and a little bit goes a long way. When used in swimming pools, as little as three ounces will treat 10,000 gallons of water. Chlorine in drinking water is at a much lower level than swimming pools use.

I mixed a fairly strong solution, filled the fresh water tank and left it in overnight. After sitting in storage for eight months, I wanted to sanitize and remove any contaminants from the water tank. Early Tuesday morning, I dumped the tank and refilled it with filtered fresh water. We use a two-canister filtration system – the first stage is a five-micron sediment filter followed by a one-micron carbon block filter.

This is what 100 gallons of water quickly dumped in the street looks like

The dump valve on our fresh water tank is relatively large and empties the tank quickly. I dumped 100 gallons and it created a small stream in the road. During a storm in last summer’s monsoon season, our neighbors told us the street was completely flooded and ran all the way down through our carport to the shed! I can’t imagine how many gallons of water had to dump from the clouds to cause that.

Most people not from the area don’t realize Arizona has a monsoon season. In central Arizona, that season usually begins around mid-July and runs through August. Flash floods are common as these storms can drop a lot water very quickly.

Our neighbor across the street from us on the 1600 lane just bought the place. Donna told him we planned to place a barrier at the shed end of our carport to prevent flood water from entering our shed. His Arizona room addition is built on a slab at the back of his carport. Last year it flooded and suffered water damage – all the carpeting had to be ripped out. He was leaving the next day to go back north. He asked me if I could put up a water barrier for him – he gave me $100 for materials.

I found a product called Quick Dam Flood Bags. These are cloth tubes filled with a gel product that swells and seals the tubes, creating a useful flood barrier. They are stackable, so I bought enough to stack two high in front of our shed and his Arizona room. When they’re fully activated, they will create a barrier six to seven inches high.

Flood barrier for our neighbor’s Arizona room

I used a garden hose to activate his Quick Dams and make sure they’ll work. Job done!

I put Midget-San up on jack stands for summer storage. Then I removed the wheels – not only will this prevent the tires from flat-spotting, it’s also an anti-theft measure. It’s pretty hard to steal a car without wheels. I fastened the car cover over it for the summer.

Last Thursday was Cinco de Mayo – our anniversary day. We planned to celebrate our 16th anniversary with dinner at Baja Joe’s. Donna wasn’t feeling up to night out after her trip back from Vermont, so I ordered take-out from Baja Joe’s. Donna had her favorite shrimp dish with poblano cream sauce. I had the chef’s special fish filet with a seafood sauce containing pieces of shrimp and octopus. It was excellent – we’ve never had a bad meal at Baja Joe’s.

Saturday evening I manned the grill and cooked a pork tenderloin that Donna marinated in her mojo marinade. She served it with Cuban rice and a steamed vegetable medley. Another nicely balanced and nutritious meal.

Donna had shrimp again on Sunday when she grilled it and served it over cilantro-avocado-lime sauce. Tasty!

Grilled shrimp, Mexican corn and grilled shishito peppers

We had a warm weekend with the thermometer reaching the upper 90s – it was 99 on Saturday! The temps held in the 80s as we packed on Monday and Tuesday. Packing for four months is more like moving from a furnished apartment to another furnished place. It’s not like we’re just heading out for a weekend.

We hit the road around 9:15am. Our route took us over Usery Pass to the Bush Highway past Saguaro Lake and on to the Beeline Highway (AZ87). We climbed to Payson which sits at an elevation of 5,000 feet above sea level. It was much cooler – in the low 70s there – and continued across the Sitgreaves National Forest to Heber on AZ260. This road runs through pine forest all the way to Heber – not what most people picture in Arizona.

At Heber, we turned northeast on AZ277, then AZ377 to Holbrook. The wind really picked up at Holbrook – it’s a steady 30mph wind with higher speed gusts. We’ve stopped for the night near the entrance of the Petrified Forest National Park. We stayed here last year – it’s a dry camping spot. I positoned the coach near the leeward side of a building to shelter us from some of the wind gusts. This is about the halfway point to tomorrow’s destination – Cortez, Colorado. We’ll spend a month there. Tomorrow we will go north through the National Park, then head east a short way on I-40, then north again through the Navajo Nation past Four Corners and on to Cortez – that’s the plan.

Time for Summer Plans

April 1st – I promise, no April Fool’s lines in this post. This is the time of year when many people pack up for the season and leave Viewpoint Golf and RV Resort, especially the Canadian visitors. I’d be willing to bet that we have only 50% occupancy two weeks from now.

Donna and I have been discussing plans for our summer season. I think we’ll need to scale back from our original thoughts. With the current price of fuel, we’ll be burning over $5 every eight miles! The current administration wants to blame the high cost of fuel on the Russians, but it doesn’t take much memory to go back two months, well before Russia invaded Ukraine, when fuel prices had already increased by 48% over a year ago.

I don’t see any real relief anytime soon and with it, inflation will continue unabated. I don’t see any cohesive plan from the White House to provide a real solution. So, I’m going to be conservative in my spending for the foreseeable future.

We’ve booked a month in Cortez, Colorado. This has been a favorite area to visit over the last few years. We also have a month booked in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’ve pretty much scrapped our original plan to head back to the Pacific Northwest. We’ll hang in the Northern Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico regions this year when we escape the heat of central Arizona next month.

A couple of days ago, I went into my geek mode and ran some tests of our stereo sound system. I found some surprising results with an oscilloscope on the output of the Elekit integrated stereo amp. First of all, looking at power output, I found that only one watt of power could bring the sound to a reasonable listening level in our Arizona room. The room is approximately 24 feet by 16 feet with a peaked ceiling and is acoustically challenging.

Nevertheless, running the power up to five watts will drive you out of the room as it is loud! My speakers have an efficiency (sensitivity) rating of 93db. The low power requirement really took me by surprise. I wish I still had my decibel meter to make meaurements of sound pressure levels, but it’s long gone.

The other thing I looked at with the oscilloscope was the waveforms creating the sound. It always amazed me how a speaker can reproduce several sounds simultaneously. I can easily separate and hear the difference between drums, bass, other instruments and vocals all at once. How can this be?

Oscilloscope trace of speaker output from stereo amplifier

When you look at the waveform trace in the photo above, you mostly see the composite signal. The scope is set for 5 milliseconds per division, so beginning to end we are looking at 0.6 seconds of material. What’s hard to see without enlarging further is the jagged appearance of the trace. This jagged appearance is due to other frequencies of lower amplitude that are overlaid on the larger amplitude overall signal. In other words, the signal trace we’re seeing is made up of thousands of smaller peaks and troughs that make each individual sound. I don’t think I’m putting this phenomenon into words very well, but it’s a topic that fascinates me.

The past week was a little less busy than the week before. My last pickleball clinic of the season was cancelled on Tuesday when we had high wind and thundershowers. I managed to play on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and hope to get a few games in this afternoon. Donna played tennis and had an epiphany last week. Her friend, Lorraine, lent her a racquet to try. Donna was amazed at how much easier it was to handle and how much her accuracy improved.

The first thing she noticed was the grip diameter. She has been using too large of a grip. She has small hands. Tennis racquets can be had in a variety of grip diameters that go up in 1/8-inch increments. Her racquet was 4 1/2 inches, the one she borrowed was 4-1/8 inches. We searched online and found some grip size recommendations. Using one method of measuring hand size it appeared she should be using a 4 3/8 inch grip.

I didn’t believe this was right – especially since she found the 4 1/8 to be comfortable. I ordered her a new racquet and split the difference and went with a 4 1/4 inch grip. She used it yesterday and liked it. She’s played with it again this morning and felt much more confident with it. So we made the right choice!

As I stated in the beginning of this post, it’s the end of the season for a lot of the park visitors. Our friends, Dick and Roxy, from Spokane, Washington will be leaving soon. We invited them to join us for happy hour and dinner tomorrow. Yesterday Donna stopped at Fry’s grocery and saw some Heritage duroc pork babyback ribs, but she passed on them because they were $8.99/pound.

This morning I went to Fry’s and bought a rack – playing the Fry’s VIP card game I got the ribs for $6.99/lb. I’m surprised to find duroc pork at a grocery chain like Fry’s. I would expect to find them at a specialty meat market. Duroc pigs are what’s called a Heritage breed – this is like heirloom vegetables – it’s an old breed that’s come back into favor. Duroc and Berkshire are the most popular of the Heritage pig breeds and are known for their high-quality meat. Duroc is known for juicy meats due to intramuscular fat and mild flavor. They are the second most popular Heritage breed behind Berkshire – also known for its tender, mild-flavored meat.

I’ll prep the ribs later today and smoke them for tomorrow’s dinner. Speaking of dinner, we went out to eat on Wednesday evening. We thought about Fat Willy’s but they had a 30-minute wait for a table on the patio. We went to an old favorite Thai restaurant instead – 5R Cha. We used to go there years ago when we lived here.

I went for the old standard – chicken pad thai. Donna was more adventuresome and ordered a green curry with fish. When she asked the server what kind of fish they used, she just said it was a white fish. Hmm, sounded a little shaky to me. Donna went for it anyway. She’s sorry she did. She had an upset stomach Thursday morning and it persisted all day. I suspect the “white fish” was probably swai. Swai is a fish that’s farmed in Vietnam and it’s not the healthiest fish option. It’s sold under many different names – it used to be called Asian catfish, but that name is no longer allowed in the US as it’s misleading. Anyway, I’ve heard and read many reports of people having digestive disorders after eating swai. We won’t be going back to 5R Cha.

We haven’t had any complaints about Donna’s cooking. Last Sunday, Donna prepared chile-glazed pork tenderloin with a sweet potato-spinach hash.

Pork tenderloin with sweet potato-spinach hash

Monday I made my almost famous – well it’s famous among immediate family members – Japanese fried rice. Donna grilled shrimp to serve with it. Japanese fried rice is always labor intensive for me. I cut the ingredients carefully, trying to keep things uniform. Donna laughs at me for using four different knives during prep. I use the Japanese method of selecting the proper knife for each task – traditional Japanese kitchen cutlery is very specialized.

Ingredients in the wok before rice is added – and yes, that’s fried spam in the other pan to be added to the fried rice

Monday’s dinner plate – Japanese fried rice and grilled shrimp

As I mentioned earlier, Tuesday was a rainy day. Donna kept it simple and made a beef ragu served over angel hair (capellini) pasta for me and spaghetti squash for her.

Last night, we ended the month of March with blackened tilapia. We are always careful when buying tilapia – some parts of the world are known for shady fish farming practices while others have better regulation and use acceptable modern methods. This tilapia was purchased at Costco and came from Costa Rica.

Blackened tilapia with green rice and baby squash

Last Sunday was warm and the high reached 93 degrees. The stormy Tuesday was only 66 degrees. We reached 81 yesterday and will probably hit 83 degrees today. The forecast looks good for the week ahead – maybe on the warm side by the end of next week. Long range, April looks to be comfortable temperature wise.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!

Michiganders, Music and Snow

In addition to all of her usual activities, Donna had a busy week as we had visitors. On Monday, Martha and John Bergquist came by at noon. I had just returned from a couple of hours of pickleball when they arrived. Donna knew Martha from our time in Michigan and they were visiting Arizona, staying down in Tucson. Their home is in Wisconsin now.

Martha and Donna in front of our orange tree

Martha really wanted to see wild horses, so Donna invited them to come up and hike at Coon Bluff to see if they could locate some horses. They lucked out and found a herd of about 30 horses along the Salt River. I was beat from pickleball and wasn’t up for the hike. They went for a late lunch at Saguaro Lake. It was after 5pm before Donna made it back home.

Yesterday we met up with more friends from Michigan. Gary and Cheryl Bida were out here visiting their son in Scottsdale. It was a rainy day yesterday when we met up with them for lunch at Fat Willy’s. Lunch on the patio was out of the question with the cold, windy and rainy weather, so we dined indoors. We had a good time talking and visiting for a couple of hours. It’s been at least 10 years since we last saw them. I neglected to take any photos.

My last post rambled on about my stereo system. I have to say, we’re really enjoying it and have music on for hours every day now. It has rekindled my interest and love of music. I’ve always had an eclectic mix of recordings – everything from Mozart to Miles Davis to Jimi Hendrix. Lately, I’ve been expanding my CD collection with new material that I’ve largely ignored over the years.

I’ve added three discs by Diana Krall. Diana is a Canadian jazz singer and pianist and I love her voice, even when she’s singing some sappy song. Her piano playing is exquisite – she started studying piano at the age of four! He parents were musically inclined too. Her husband is none other than British recording artist Elvis Costello.

I recently “discovered” Tom Waits. I don’t know how he flew under my radar all of these years. Tom is from southern California and was a regular in the San Diego folk music scene in the 1960s. I wasn’t into folk music at all back then, so maybe that’s how I missed him. He moved to Los Angeles in 1972 and was already established as a singer/songwriter by then. I didn’t know it until recently, but he penned the Eagles hit Ol’ 55. You might remember their version of this song:

Well, my time went so quickly
I went lickety-splitly
Out to my ol’ 55
As I pulled away slowly
Feeling so holy
God knows I was feeling alive

Now, the sun’s coming up
I’m riding with Lady Luck
Freeway, cars and trucks
Stars beginning to fade
And I lead the parade
Just a-wishin’ I’d stayed a little longer
Oh Lord, let me tell ya that the feeling getting stronger…

Tom Waits is quite a character. He spent a lot of time in San DIego and LA hanging out in diners and dive bars with his notebook, picking up snippets of conversations around him to inspire his song writing. His early recordings in the late 60s and early 70s reveal a soft voice. By 1980, years of cigarettes and whiskey changed his voice to a gravelly rasp.

I’ve also added a couple of discs recorded by John Mayer. I knew of John, but didn’t have any of his recordings until now. He attended the Berklee College of Music and is probably the most famous student of guitar great Tomo Fujita. I like his songwriting and singing as well as his excellent guitar playing.

I also found a CD called On Every Street. Recorded in 1999, it’s the last album Mark Knopfler recorded as Dire Straits – by then, only he and the bass player remained from the original band. All of his work since then is under his name as a solo artist – he is an absolute guitar god.

I mentioned in my last post that Donna is back to following the Bright Line Eating plan. This doesn’t mean we have to curtail fine dining. She just has to be selective in the mix of protein, carbs and fats she eats and she weighs everything she cooks.

Last week, she made a lentil soup with duck sausage and it was delicious.

Saturday she grilled a wild caught Alaskan salmon and served it with a citrus-chile topping. Another hit.

Grilled salmon with citrus-chile sauce and grilled bok choy

The citrus-chile sauce was so tasty, she used again on Monday over grilled chicken thighs and wings. It works as well on chicken as it does on salmon.

Chicken with citrus-chile sauce served with asparagus and cauliflower rice medley

We’ve had a strange weather pattern over the last couple of weeks. Last week, it was cold and wet on Wednesday but warmed back up to the upper 70s by the weekend. This week, the temperature only reached 66 degrees on Tuesday and Wednesday was rainy and only 52 degrees! Average highs at this time of year are 72 degrees. The overnight low last night was down to 33 degrees and we had overnight showers. This left snow on the Superstition Mountains east of us here at Viewpoint – we can see them out our front window.

We can expect another cold night with the low in the mid-30s, but we should warm up to the 70s for highs this weekend. The forecast calls for highs in the 80s by next Tuesday.

Analog Man

FedEx was on schedule and delivered the Elekit TU-8200R stereo integrated amplifier kit I ordered from Tube Depot. Elekit is a Japanese company that’s been in business for about 40 years. They are well-known in Japan for the science project kits they sell to high schools. High schoolers in Japan build projects like robotics and other electronic devices with the Elekit supplied parts and manuals. They are also well-regarded for their audio gear.

Mr. Yoshitsugu Fujita is the Chief Engineer and designer for Elekit. His audio circuits are brilliant. Unlike most boutique stereo amplifiers, which rely on circuit designs originally developed in the 1950s and 1960s, Fujita-san designs outside of the box everyone else is stuck in. His audio gear is vacuum tube driven, but he has no qualms about using solid state devices in the power supply stage. If a DB107 solid state bridge rectifier creates a cleaner power supply, that’s what he uses. He also incorporates transistors in circuit protection schemes, but the signal path is all analog tube driven.

I got to work right away after the delivery came at 1pm. Everything was well packaged and sorted into plastic bags.

One of the key elements of this kit is the R-core power transformer on the left in the photo above. The two output transformers – also very key components – are in the left center of the photo. Once I inventoried all of the parts to ensure nothing was missing, it was time to populate the main board. Over the next five hours or so, I soldered over 200 points on the main circuit board. There are seven boards total to make up the amplifier. These are high-quality printed circuit boards (PCB) with thick fiberglass plates and copper traces on both sides that are well proportioned and 70um thick. The through holes are copper plated.

Bottom of the main board with components in place

I finished the main board around 7pm and knocked off for the day – I was getting tired and I didn’t want to make an error in the build. Building a stereo amplfier is like building two amps at once. Each channel (left and right) has it’s own, separate signal path. Only the main power supply is shared in this amp.

Main PCB finished – all capacitors and resistors are high-quality parts sourced from Japan

Saturday morning after breakfast and coffee, I got back to work around 9am. Assembling the rest of the boards was straight forward. I had to knock off at 1pm to have lunch before going to Donna’s concert. The Viewpoint Concert Band had their first performance of the season. They have fewer musicians than in years past due to covid and other reasons – they’re down by about 30 performers. They sounded great though and put on a good show.

PCB 2 with volume control, switches and headphone jack

Before I started building this amp, I went Michael’s craft store and bought a pack of craft sticks. These look like a popsicle stick but they’re larger – about 3/4″ wide. I glued two of them stacked together to make it 1/8″ thick, then I cut down the width on one end to make it 3/8″ wide. This was my jig for bending the leads on resistors and setting them precisely 1/8″ clear of the board. I did this because resistors get hot and keeping them up from the board would allow air to circulate around them. I wanted a uniform height for aesthetic reasons. This would be an issue later.

There were a couple of places where PCBs are joined perpendicular to each other and tricky soldering was required. The PCBs had copper pads on each board that aligned with each other but didn’t make contact. I had to solder a triangular fillit that joined the copper pads. This was tricky because both pads needed be simultaneously heated to allow the solder to flow and adhere properly.

Twelve triangular solder fillits joining the copper pads of these PCBs

After the concert, I got started on the hardware mounting and had everything put together a couple of hours later. Total time spent on the project was around 12 hours at this point – eight hours or so with a solder iron in my hand.

I put tubes in the sockets and it was time to fire it up. I plugged in through my my bulb limiter connected to the APC Line R voltage regulator. It was a disaster. I had a loud hum. I switched it off and looked everything over. I tried switching tubes but the loud hum persisted. I tried a few tests and found the noise was unrelated to the volume control – no matter where the volume control was set, the hum level was the same. I also found that touching the volume control or the input jacks changed the hum – it was lower volume when I touched them.

This made me believe the hum was from a ground loop. I put a jumper from one input jack to a ground point on the chassis and it killed the hum. I hooked up the CD player for a test – no sound output. Bummer. Up to this point, I thought this was the easiest amp I’d ever built. The kit was high-quality and everything fit well. The instructions were good. Somewhere along the line, I must have been a little over-confident and made a mistake.

I pulled the boards out and reflowed the component solder points. I couldn’t see anything wrong. I put it back together and had the same result. I was getting frustrated and tired. It was past 7pm by then and Donna had dinner waiting. I decided to give it a break and think about it for a while.

I thought about it while sipping a Scotch on the rocks and finally gave up for the night. I woke up at 4:30am Sunday morning and thought about it some more. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up as quietly as I could and went back to the amp at 5am. I reconfirmed all of the component locations and values. I can’t tell you how many times I took things apart and checked them – I wasn’t getting anywhere.

I had to take a break at 9am to meet Mike Hall at our coach – he was going to look at the damaged body panel that I temporarily repaired while we were traveling through Utah last summer. He came up with a plan for a permanent fix.

Then Donna and I drove to Scottsdale to meet Alana and Kevin at Merci French Cafe and Patisserie for brunch. Kevin and Alana had left the Painted Mountain Golf Resort in Mesa on Saturday and went to Alana’s mother’s place in Wickenburg – over an hour away. They made the trip back to Scottsdale to spend a little more time with us before flying back to Washington on Tuesday. We had an excellent brunch on the patio at Merci – eating out again for the fifth time in eight days. I was a little distracted, thinking about the amp problem.

When we got back home, I finally wised up and quit looking for a visual clue. Instead I measured voltages throughout the circuit. The schematic identifies 29 points to take voltage readings. All looked perfect until got to number 29. The reading was impossible. I should have had around 6 volts for the heater filaments, but I found -30 volts. What? How could I have negative voltage there?

Looking at the schematic led me to the solid state bridge rectifier. It was installed properly, so I scratched my head again. I was using a headset that resembles the one used by dentists to magnify things in front of their eyes. The one I bought had five different lenses with magnifying powers of 1x – for eye protection only, 1.5x, 2x, 2.5x and 3x. I used the 2x lens because it allows greater depth of field than the stronger magnification – above 2x, you have view from a precise distance or things get out of focus. It also has an LED lamp to make me look like a cyclops while lighting up the working area.

With this headset on, I was searching the board around the DB107 rectifier chip when I saw something reflect a tiny bit of light. There was a fine line of solder – no thicker than a strand of spider web – across two terminals of the rectifier chip. Bingo – this was enough to short the rectifier. I used a braided copper solder wick to clean it up the solder joint. That should take care of the lack of sound and the voltage issue, but it didn’t explain the hum or ground issue.

I traced the ground circuits and resoldered the triangular fillits where the grounds went from one PCB to another. Then I put it all togther without the top plate on the chassis. I plugged everything in and it was silent – no hum. I turned the CD player on and I had sound. Hooray, I fixed it. All along, Donna kept reassuring me by saying, “You’ll find the problem, I have no doubt.”

I took the amp back to the bench and put the top and front cover plates on. I plugged everything back in and put on some music. Oh, no! Now I had nothing coming from the left channel. I took it apart again and traced back from the left channel input jack. Fujita-san cleverly marked all of the left channel components with odd numbers and all of the right channel components with even numbers. So I went to the resistor R1 to start checking and I found it bent with the lead touching the lead of R3 mounted perpendicular to it. This shorted the signal path to ground. Remember how I set the resistors all 1/8″ high? When I put the chassis back together after I fixed the original problems I must have accidently pushed R1 over onto R3. Problem solved.

This stereo sounds fantastic. It’s unbelievably good. Donna doesn’t exactly share my passion for chasing tone and good sound. When I say something like, “Listen to that bass and how clear the highs sound,” she usually says she just wants to enjoy the music, not dissect the sound. But when she heard this amp for the first time, right away she said, “That really sounds good!” The amp looks good to me in a simple, somewhat industrial way.

Elekit TU-8200R vacuum tube stereo integrated amplifier

Tube amps do sound good. I know, I’m a retrograde analog man in a digital world. But vacuum tubes naturally create an emphasis of second order harmonics – that is, they accentuate the octave above the fundamental frequency. Acoustic instruments naturally do the same thing. It’s a euphonic response and people find the tone pleasing. Solid state amplification creates higher odd order harmonics – the 3rd, 5th, 7th, etc, of the fundamental which most humans perceive as harsh or even unpleasant. Solid state designs require complex circuitry to try to work around this.

In my last post, I mentioned my concerns about the future availability of CD players. I decided to buy the Cambridge Audio AXC35 player after thinking about it for a day. I went online to Crutchfield and found out they had sold out since I last saw it the day before! Luckily, I found it on Amazon for the same price and placed the order. I went with the Cambridge Audio unit which is made by a company based in London, England because of the Wolfson Digital to Analog Convertor (DAC) in it. The Wolfson DAC is made by a company in Ireland and is a very good DAC. The DAC is a key component of a CD player.

Information stored on a compact disc can’t be amplified directly into music. The information is a series of microscopic pits in the disc separated by lands. These become a series of zeros and ones. The DAC takes this information and converts it to a waveform that represents the frequencies of sound. This waveform can now be amplified and sent to a speaker. Magic!

The Cambridge Audio CD player arrived on Monday. Now my stereo system is complete – new CD player, new amplifier and new speakers. It sounds so good, I can’t put it into words.

Enough stereo talk – let’s get to the food. Thursday night, Donna made garlic butter chicken with riced cauliflower, mushrooms and asparagus. She seared the chicken thighs on the stove top, then baked them in the oven

Donna is back on the Bright Line Eating plan, which means I’m sort of on the plan. But I get to cheat some. Monday she grilled wild caught Alaskan salmon and served it with Brussels sprouts in bacon horseradish sauce.

Last night ,she made lemony shrimp and bean stew – this was a new dish for us and really tasty.

Alana and Kevin picked a great week for their visit. The temperature was around 80 degrees everyday. Early this morning, that changed as rain moved in and we’ll be lucky to see 60 degrees today. The forecast looks good though, as we should be in the 70s by Friday.

Compact Discs, Family and Food

We’re ten days into February already. My perception of time gets more and more skewed as I age. We’ve been set into daily routines for most of the past week with a couple of exceptions. I haven’t been on the pickleball courts as much as I would like for a couple of reasons. First is the club’s scheduling – I can’t make much sense of how they are scheduling the courts for different levels of play. Most of the 3.5 play is 8am to 10am – I don’t play my best first thing in the morning. The other issue is wind – we’ve had a stiff breeze most mornings and I find outdoor pickleball in gusty wind to be an exercise in frustration. It becomes a game of chance, not so much skill.

A few weeks ago, we had visitors for happy hour. I had music in playing on the stereo at low volume for background sound. My friend commented that it sounded so clear and detailed. This was before I started upgrading my system and I wondered what he meant – it seemed pretty average to me. I thought about it later and came to the conclusion – it’s the general dumbing-down of sound quality.

My friend is used to streaming online music sources or MP3 files on an iPhone. These sources are so compressed that the music lacks the original detail and dynamics. He probably hadn’t listened to a compact disc in years. I read recently that last year (2021) was the first year to post a year-over-year gain in CD sales in the last 15 years! In fact, during that period, sales of vinyl records exceeded CD sales. Maybe people started to wake up and forgo the convenience of music files versus high-quality recordings. Nah, I doubt it – in the end, convenience wins.

My new Klipsch Reference R-51M bookshelf speakers arrived last Saturday. After about 12 hours of break-in and careful positioning, they sound great! The bass response is a big improvement over the Celestion DL4 speakers I had. To be fair, the Celestions are about 30 years old and the crossover network could probably benefit from fresh capacitors. But there’s no denying the bass reflex design with a rear firing port on the Klipsch speakers allows a much deeper and more powerful bass response. In fact, my Nobsound vacuum tube stereo amplifier sounds better than I ever expected it would. There’s no turning back now.

Klipsch R-51M with Tractix horn tweeter and spun copper woofer

Like the Celestion speaker, the Klipsch R-51M is a two-way design, meaning it has a tweeter for higher frequencies and a woofer for bass and mid-range controlled with a crossover network. Their designs differ though – Klipsch is famous for horn designs and this bookshelf speaker uses a 90-degree tractix horn tweeter and an injection-molded graphite spun copper woofer. I’m really happy I went for them.

Hopefully I’ll receive a package from TubeDepot tomorrow. I’m going to build another amplifier. I ordered the Japanese Elekit TU8200R kit. I think this will become my main stereo and I’ll set up my old speakers and the Nobsound amp in my ham shack.

I’ve read some alarming reports predicting the demise of CD music players. Here’s the situation and possible outcome. First of all, CD sales have been slow although they picked up a little steam last year. Right now, there’s a worldwide shortage of integrated circuit chipsets. This has impacted most consumer goods – everything from cars to cell phones. With CD players now a small player in consumer electronics, manufacturers aren’t prioritizing CD players for their precious chipsets – they have other goods to manufacture that are in higher demand. This in turn means that manufacturers aren’t buying the disc transport mechanisms that load CDs into the player – which means the companies that usually supply these components are moving on to other goods.

I looked at Amazon and Crutchfield and my findings seem to support this theory. Crutchfield lists 12 different CD players in their catalog, but 10 out of 12 are out of stock with no date for resupply. I have a lot of music on CDs and would hate to lose the ability to play them. Our Pioneer CD player is about 30 years old and sometimes can’t decode a disc that has dropouts. I think I’ll buy a new unit and relegate the Pioneer to the ham shack.

Donna’s golf game is improving quickly. Last week, she played her fifth game ever on the nine-hole course here at Viewpoint Golf and RV Park. She hit a bogie on one hole, made par on another and birdied a hole!

Last Sunday, we had a delightful brunch at OHSO Brewery in Gilbert with our friends Sara and Howard Graff. After brunch, we strolled the streets of old downtown Gilbert. It’s a fun place – I can remember when it was a one-horse town that was little more than a water tower and crossroads. I neglected to take photos.

On Tuesday, my daughter, Alana and her husband Kevin (collectively known as Kevlana) flew down from Washington. We had a cold one on our deck along with my middle daughter, Jamie. Then we piled into Jamie’s Passat and went to dinner at Alessia’s, an Italian restaurant a few miles from here.

Poorly focused photo – Alana and Kevin on the left, Donna and Jamie on the right

The food was excellent and we thoroughly enjoyed the time together. Yesterday, Kevin and Alana came over to golf the nine-hole course with Donna. Kevin and Alana are avid golfers and Kevin is quite good at it. Afterwards, we enjoyed lunch at Fat Willy’s, the restaurant here at Viewpoint.

Last night, we went out to eat with Kevin and Alana again at the Zushi Japanese Bistro and had Japanese beer – Kirin for me, Kevin and Alana, Asahi for Donna – and enjoyed miso soup and a platter of sushi.

Speaking of food, Donna came up with a couple of new dishes for us last week. She’s been meaning to try her hand at pizza for a while and finally got to it using the method her parents use as well as one of their old pizza pans that she brought back from her last visit.

The pizza was good, but she thinks she can improve the crust. We both thought she could use a little less sauce, but that’s just our thoughts – there wasn’t anything wrong with it.

She also made a chalupa dish by slowly cooking a boneless pork shoulder with dry pinto beans, green chiles and spices for about five hours on the stove. It was very tasty but made enough food to feed a football team. She served it over corn tortillas fried in olive oil and with a topping of tomato chunks, red onion, cotija cheese, cilantro and lettuce.

We vacuum packed the leftover and put two packages in the freezer – enough for two more dinners and two more lunches – a total of eight more servings.

Kevin and Alana picked the right time for an Arizona visit. It was cold last week by local standards with highs of only around 60 degrees. But that changed by Tuesday when we had upper 70s and hit 81 degrees yesterday – making an enjoyable, sunny morning on the golf course. The forecast calls for daily highs around 80 degrees for next week.

Fire Detour

I’ve always said RVers have to be flexible. We planned to leave here tomorrow and spend one night at the Northern Quest Casino in Airway Heights outside of Spokane. Then we would head west to Twisp for a night on the Methow River before continuing west to Mount Vernon, WA.

We will leave tomorrow and go to Northern Quest Casino so we can join our friends Dick and Roxy Zarowny for dinner. But we won’t be going to Twisp. The North Cascades Highway (SR20) is closed west of Winthrop, WA due to forest fires. There isn’t any way to detour around the closure, so we can’t cross the mountains on the North Cascades Highway. We had reservations at Riverbend RV Park which we cancelled. They don’t usually refund cancellations but under these circumstances they refunded our payment.

We’ll be crossing the Cascade Mountains on US2 over Stevens Pass instead. We’ll spend Sunday night somewhere between Wenatchee and Leavenworth before climbing over the pass.

We played pickleball Monday morning at Memorial Park. Tuesday we played pickleball again and then had rainshowers in the afternoon. Wednesday we drove up to Priest River to join Cindy and Jim Birditt for lunch at Mi Pueblo – a Mexican restaurant in town. We lingered for about an hour and half catching up. Jim was concerned about a 30-acre wild fire burning about three miles north of his place.Thursday we were back at Memorial Park for more pickleball.

Donna had a mysterious problem with the rear tire on her bike. When we arrived here in Coeur d’Alene, her tire had gone flat. Last week we stopped at a bike shop in town but they were out of patch kits. The gal at the shop gave me an old inner tube and said I could cut it to make a patch and use super glue. I found a hole in the Donna’s inner tube – it looked like she must have picked up a goathead sticker.

I roughed up her inner tube and the makeshift patch with sandpaper and fixed the flat tire – or so I thought. The next day her tire was flat again. I pulled the tube, which I had put Slime in – it’s supposed to fill any holes in the tube. I found another hole in the tube with slime oozing out of it about two inches from the original hole. This was puzzling – I had checked the tire carefully the first time looking for anything that could cause a puncture and didn’t find anything. The tire held air fine after I patched it and pumped it up. The bike hadn’t been ridden at all. So, how did it have another puncture?

I made another patch and put it back together. Again it pumped up fine and held pressure. The next day the tire was a little soft – there was a very slow leak. I pumped the tire and Donna went for a ride Sunday morning. A little over half an hour later, Donna phoned me to tell me she her tire had gone flat. I drove down in the truck and picked her up at the Hampton Inn in Coeur d’Alene.

I picked up a new inner tube on Tuesday and this morning I installed it. Again, I looked closely at the tire and didn’t find anything to cause a puncture. Donna rode for over an hour this morning with no issues.

The daily temperatures were warm all week with highs in the low 90s. Today the temperature is expected to reach 100 degrees and the forecast calls for a few degrees hotter tomorrow. Western Washington will be cooler – we can expect the daily high to be around 80 degrees there.

Flying The Koop

…from real estate to wheel estate and back again

Category Archives: Restaurants

Japan – Part Four Kanazawa Continued

Japan Part Two – Kyoto

Fourth and Final Housesit

Not an Amazon Affiliate

Moving Out

Time for Summer Plans

Michiganders, Music and Snow

Analog Man

Compact Discs, Family and Food

Fire Detour

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