Happy 5th of July!

Well, apparently I missed posting on the 4th but, well, it is such an odd year maybe that just fits in properly.  Happy 244th Birthday USA!  I was reading a couple blogs this a.m. and one that I often enjoy is Sightings Over Sixty and yesterday's post was no exception.  The post, entitled "More Stuff I Don't Understand" was about the strange, strange times we are living through.  It's true:  horribly high unemployment but the stock market is fully recovered from the Covid-19 scare; there are more people with the virus but no one seems to care; the President seems totally unaware of the rest of the world; people still think he is doing a good job.  WTF??? 

Another blogger quoted this line:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  So what the hell happened to that idea?  Equal??  Rights??  Liberty??  Why does it seem that black people not included in that sentence?  They seem much more likely to be arrested than white people.  I was checking out a fact sheet from the NAACP web site.  It has some really amazing statistics!  For example, African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites.  As of 2015 African American and Hispanic people comprise about 32% of the population but comprise 56% of the prison population. 

I don't pretend to know what is going on there; certainly discrimination by the police is part of the problem but I'm sure that poverty is a much larger factor.  26% of African American families live in poverty compared to 11% of white families.  And that isn't counting single parent families where the rate is much higher.  It is a shame that in this wonderful land that such discrimination exists.  Education, or the lack of it, is certainly a critical factor.  The same article suggests that a family headed by a college graduate makes nearly two times as much as a family headed by someone whose education stopped at high school.

I hope I haven't been too dismal here but these days are not 'our finest hour'.  The government isn't totally to blame but there sure are things that could be done differently.  The way everyday people interact is nothing to do with government but it doesn't make me proud.  Here in Nevada we've been ordered to wear masks while in public areas so, of course, we had a demonstration against wearing masks.  A large number of the people demonstrating were wearing firearms because that is legal here.  Inspections suggest that only about half of businesses are complying.  What the heck, the mask may keep you from getting ill but one's right to not wear one is oh so important.  What a place!  Take care & keep washing those hands.

A little trip...

So I really do like being home.  However, my wife and I just got back from another little jaunt so I can't whine about it being dull quite yet.  This time it was 'business'. 

For several years I've been a member of a board that is supposed to tell the Dept. of Energy, Environmental Management people what local people think about the Nevada National Security Site - aka the Test Site.  You may remember it as the site used for testing atomic weapons back in the day.  Well, it's still there and parts are still radioactive and all is off limits except when you are taken on a tour.  It is 31 miles 'as the crow flies' from home so that is the excuse for me being on the board.  Actually, I'm just interested because of it's place in history.  Once a year the group gets a tour to visit things we'll talk about in the coming year and I always invite my wife.  We spend the day wandering around the site (on a bus with guides!) seeing places that are scheduled to be 'cleaned up' in the next year.  Security is pretty tight:  cameras and phones are banned and the guards do carry guns. 

I am not afraid of radioactivity so long as it is far enough away so visiting these places is always interesting.  Some of the pollutants need to be cleaned up; some simply cannot.  One place I remember was a concrete bunker that was polluted with some cleaning agent.  We recommended that it be locked and signposted as 'Do Not Enter'.  Recently the DOE transported hundreds of truck loads of dirt from one place to another because the first area is on an Air Force base and was needed for training.  It seems silly to move dirt but those tests ended in the 1990's and it was still polluted today.  The site has special areas reserved for Low Level Polluted Waste and that's where the dirt ended up. 

ANYWAY, every year there is a meeting of people from our board and other similiar boards from around the country.  This time I got to represent our board and the meeting was in Sun Valley, Idaho.  We've been near Sun Valley but never in the actual town.  It turns out to be a pretty little place and the resort we stayed in was quite nice.  The meeting was a day and a half (and pretty dull) but we also got to tour part of the Idaho National Laboratory.  We got to visit the EBR-1 nuclear reactor built back in 1953 and some other reactors still being used for various tests.  It wasn't as historically dramatic as I find the Test Site but it was very interesting all the same. 

We could have flown but decided to drive just because we haven't seen all that northern Nevada has to offer.  It is a 600 mile (970 km) trip one way but we were in no hurry so we made it two days up and two back down.  We got to visit a few new Nevada towns and see a bunch of pretty scenery.  No photos unfortunately because it was cold and windy.  When we were touring the Lab. areas photos were not allowed anyway; and yes, their guards carry guns as well.

So that's what we do for fun.  Drive, drive and drive some more.  Thanks for stopping by.

Enjoying Spring!

This time of year is often pretty good around here.  It has been windy this year but reasonably warm.  When we haven't been out spraying weeds in our yard we've gotten out and about a bit.

Week before last we visited Death Valley National Park.  The park is absolutely huge and we'd never seen the other side; specifically over by Panamint Springs.  We decided to just drive over and check out the roads.  With the over-62 senior pass it is free to visit so why not?  I was surprised by the number of visitors though I guess I shouldn't have been.  Even in early April the high was going to be 97F (36C) so waiting until later would make it a bit warm.  We ended up taking no photos worth sharing but we did discover that the roads are excellent and wouldn't be a problem at all if we were towing our trailer.  I'm not a huge fan of high and windy roads but this was just fine even if there were places that we were happy they had installed a guard rail.

Then last week we took a bus tour on the Nevada National Security Site.  This is where the majority of our nuclear weapons testing was done back in the day.  Today the site is used for a variety of things where security, space and even nuclear debris is useful.  (They train police and fire fighters on dealing with accidents that include a nuclear component; like the stuff your dentist uses to xray your teeth.)  Public tours are available but they are few and far between, like once a month.  If you are interested in visiting you should sign up around a year in advance!  Really, all remaining tours being offered in 2019 are full.  They are pretty rigorous about security and two of the things you can't bring are cameras and cellphones.  You also need to pass a paperwork security check but after all that you get a 250 mile bus ride.

Anyway, I managed to get onto a board that is supposed to advice the site management on how local people think they are doing.  I've been on the board for several years and we usually get a special tour about once a year.  This year we went to a part of the site I've never visited before where some of the larger underground tests were conducted.  One of the concerns with underground testing is that the ground water can be contaminated with nuclear debris.  The Dept. of Energy has drilled many wells around the test areas to test the ground water.  There are also wells on other federal land outside the site.  Happily the ground water doesn't move a lot out here and testing has shown that the water has traveled off the site but won't reach private lands for several hundred years by which time the radiation danger will be well past.  (The primary traveling nuclide is Trinium which has a half-life of 12+ years; it isn't something that has a half-life of 500 years or anything.)

Finally I drove into Las Vegas the other day to buy a couple things.  On the way there and back I go past Red Rock Canyon which is really quite a beautifully impressive place.  There were zillions of tourists!  There is a sign where people like to stop and take selfies with the sign.  This time a tour bus had stopped there!  Anyway, the rock is really very beautiful and a real attraction for rock climbers.  This photo is from 2010.

On the way home I stopped to get a couple photos of the cactus.  They are having their moment and have lovely blooms.

So we haven't been just sitting around home but have gotten a few miles on the car if nothing else.  Thanks for stopping by.  Have a good one.

Interesting stuff

Well, not all that interesting!  Mostly we've been thanking the air conditioner for keeping us cool!  It is either 9 or 10 days in a row of over 110F (43C).  Not all that much fun outside!  There is something in the paper practically every day about some idiot leaving either a kid or a dog in their car while shopping.  Jeez!  And they vote!

I did get up to Amargosa Valley for another deal with the Nevada Test Site's citizen's board.  It is kind of remote up there. 

They are probably the first who would get radioactivity in their groundwater from the tests done back in the day.  The Department of Energy does a lot of testing and there is next to no chance anything will ever leave government owned land.  The test site is nearly surrounded by the Nevada Test and Training Range which is run by the U.S. Air Force.  It gives any groundwater a heck of a long way to travel before it reaches land that is used by the public much less owned by individuals.  Plus the water is moving only about a foot a year!  We were up there to help people understand that there is no real danger.  Happily most folks already are on board and know they won't be turning green anytime soon.

One of the things we have a lot of around here is dirt.  Overnight the wind really picked up and, though you can't really smell it, the air is full of dust.  Here's a photo I took on our walk this morning - that's the sun not the moon!

That was taken about 06:30.  Sunrise was about 05:45 so it's not like the sun was on the horizon.  This time of year we walk as soon as we get up.  Even at that hour the sun feels hot but not today.  Even now at 4 pm I can't see the mountain though it is clearer.  

This week has been 'donation' week.  First we made our monthly trip to the supermarket for food for the VFW Food Bank.  The guy working there says they help feed 35-40 families every week and another 5-7 individuals - and they are only open 4 hours a week!  Two hours on Wednesday and two hours on Friday is all they can do.  In the winter when the snowbirds are down here they have more donations so are open two more hours on Monday.  Today was the day for school supplies.  There are lots of kids whose parents can't afford to buy them all the stuff they need for school.  So our local electricity co-op runs a drive every fall to help.  Every year we ask the volunteers if they are short of something special.  Last year it was backpacks, this year it was antibacterial wipes.  Who knows?  But it gives us a starting point and we can go from there.

Well, that's all the news that's fit to print.  Thanks for stopping by.  Take care.

More catching up....

So we made it back from the latest Pacific Northwest trip on July 14th.  On the 15th I had a meeting of that advisory board  of the old Test Site.  These days it is called the Nevada National Security Site but all but a few sticklers call it the Test Site.  (Please note that the famous Area 51 is NOT part of the site so don't expect to see any little green men if you choose to visit!)  Like any governmental unit they love acromyms which drive the rest of us crazy but we all try to get along.  The meetings are in the late afternoon-evening starting about 4 p.m. and ending around 9 p.m.  This one was mostly about transportation of contaminated waste.  I got to learn all kinds of wonderfulness about the required signage and good stuff like that.  Of course I already knew that this stuff is radioactive but that the packaging is sufficient to make it safe to handle.

On the 19th we celebrated Number One Daughter's birthday.  I won't offer the number but it's getting up there!  Then on the 20th-22nd my wife and I attended a three day class driving to and from Las Vegas every day to learn about the Community Monitoring program.  This is a bunch of volunteers who oversee weather stations planted around the Test Site.  I wanted to learn more about them and the Desert Research Institute which oversees the program and does a lot of the physical work at the Test Site - taking measurements and that sort of thing.  When we hear that radioactivity in the groundwater is nearing the edge of the Test Site; they are the ones making the measurements.    It turns out they do a lot of environmental research and are part of the state higher education system. 

That gets me to the last week of July and by this time I was ready for some time off!  Of course that means I have time for stuff like smoking some pork, making a couple more trips to Las Vegas for normal 'shopping' and the like.  In addition, in August my wife will turn 65.  This means she is eligible for Medicare; there are quite a few hoops you need to jump through especially if you aren't taking Social Security and she isn't.  I'm wanting to spend some time at home!  We'll see how that works out.  Don't hold your breath!  In fact we are off to Vegas yet again today. 

I can't make this post a total whine so I'll include a photo I took back in June.  When you go to Las Vegas from Pahrump you leave our valley and go up over a 5400 foot pass (1,650 m for the rest of the world).  Then you come back down into the Las Vegas valley.  If the weather is nice and it isn't too windy you can get a balloon ride across the valley.  Here the balloons are coming back to earth just before the mountain gets pretty steep.  This was taken about 07:00 on one of my commutes into the city.

Take care.

Not dead yet but close!

I keep falling off the blog-train.  Sorry about that.  We had two stops left before arriving home.  The first was Petrified Forest-Painted Desert National Park.  It was pretty cool.  There is a road through the park with stops where there are lookouts and some short walks.  You go into one park and exit from the other!  We started with Petrified Forest and sure enough there is petrified wood.

We went through the gift shop and actually bought a couple hats since we had stupidly left ours in the trailer.  The rest room had a sign I've never seen before!

We had a fairly cloudy day so it was really quite pleasant.  The views are amazing.  The rock layers, the way they are eroded, it's just really cool. 

At one stop you are above this canyon; maybe 50-60 feet above the floor where there are rocks that ancient people used to tell their stories.  Real petroglyphs just being there does something to me.

The rocks are quite a distance but that's why they can just sit there as they have for so long and people aren't defacing them.  That was pretty cool. 

After all this we needed one last stop to drain our tanks so we decided to try the Oasis Las Vvegas RV Resort.  This is definitely NOT the kind of place we usually stay but thought we might give it a try.  First it is huge - over 700 spaces!  It was also kind of expensive but not outrageous.  They had lots of rules of course and wifi was $6 a day extra.  This is Vegas after all.  Would we stay there again?  Yes, I guess, but only because it is really convenient for us. 

So what's been happening in the last month?  Lots of not much but one kind of interesting thing.  I got appointed to represent Pahrump on the Nevada Site Specific Advisory Board.  It sounds like typical government speak and it pretty much is just that.  Part of the desert north of Las Vegas was used to test nuclear weapons from the 1950's to the 1990's.  Everyone just calls it the 'Test Site'.  There are other sites around the country where nuclear weapons were made or stored.  Each site has a board of 15-20 people from the surrounding area to advise the Dept. of Energy on what people are going to think about things they are doing on that site.  (I'm still confused about how this became a Dept. of Energy site but maybe it will become clear sometime.)  It's pretty easy stuff:  go to a meeting once a month or so, read up on what's going on and tell them if anything stands out as really stupid. 

These days the Test Site is still used for testing that doesn't include actually setting off a bomb; they call it 'subcritical' testing.  The scientists have plenty of room to play and security is pretty tight.  They also have a bunch of cars, trucks and planes lying around that are used to train first-responders on what to do if there is, for example, a guy with a bomb on a plane.  They are trained to find the bomb and how to deal with it safely.  More than 150,000 people have gone through this course.  I thought that was pretty cool.  They also have what is basically a garbage dump for low-level nuclear waste.  When they say 'low level' they mean it.  Trucks bring stuff from other DOE sites, like Oak Ridge, TN.  The radioactivity level is so low that the drivers don't need any safety gear.  They have a dosimeter but that's it.  The trash, and a lot of it is just that, is in barrels or even containers like you would see on a ship.  It is stacked carefully in a huge hole then when the hole is getting full it is covered over with dirt.  The one thing they don't allow is any liquid waste. 

Personlly we are now getting set for winter.  This morning is the first morning I've seen ice on the bird bath - about a quarter inch.  The desert still looks pretty much the same but we'll have snow on the mountains soon.  Those neighbors who love to decorate for Christmas should be starting soon.  I'm just going to say "Bah, humbug!"  But I'll try to blog before then!  Take care & thanks for stopping by.