The 1 hour ride to Clifton Forge is 1000 times better than the drive to Staunton on 81.  Rt 220 goes directly to Clifton Forge.  It was a delightfully scenic divided highway most of the way until the last 10 miles or so.  Going up I only passed one (maybe two) tractor trailers.  I knew I was early so I took my time and really enjoyed the scenery.  Because of weather delays coming out of Chicago the train ended up being about 3+ hours late.  I had to chuckle at the Amtrak customer service rep.  I asked when exactly the train would arrive in Clifton Forge, she said 3:30ish.  I just thought how silly that would sound to any European.  ish, now that is something I would say about when arriving for dinner but not for a train.  Seems it isn’t that much of an exact science.

Clifton Forge’s Amtrak Station/platform leaves a little something to be desired.  If you are looking for the full train platform experience then stay with Staunton.  But if it is a closer/easier commute from Roanoke with a descent parking area then opt for Clifton Forge.  The signage into the station is almost non existent.  I guess most people from there know where it is.

The town itself was a bit lost in time.  The downtown has a crazy one way two street pattern that didn’t seem to have that much traffic to control.  Not sure if we were just being directed to the second street of stores or why exactly the streets were like that.  One interesting place that caught my eye was the C & O Railway Heritage Center.  As I approached I was hoping that this was the train station.  You can see and learn about trains there but not Amtrak.  And then the other very odd thing that caught my eye was the Kroger.  The style of the building took me back to my childhood.  It was set up exactly as I remember the Kroger and SuperX (drugstore) in my neighborhood.  A long vestibule with storefront windows and then a small cramped store.  Definitely a flashback lost in time.

So after meandering around Clifton Forge for a short time Zoe and I went to find our spot to keep a lookout for Matt’s train.  First lots of CSX cars and trains at the very industrial railyard/Amtrak stop.  Then finally a light and an Amtrak train.  Matt was one of the first off.  He looked tired, dirty and very glad to be home.

With a full belly, a freshly showered Matt is already sleeping at 8:30 tonight.  Proving once again it is always so much fun to travel but even more wonderful to come home.

Usually at this time of year I’m boarding a plane, and it seems to be becoming a tradition for some thing to go wrong, like 18″ of snow in Virginia, or a bank of fog surrounds just the airport, or who knows what. This year I thought I had it all outsmarted, taking the train. But no. It still snows, and Mother Nature is maybe a little spiteful, since I outfoxed her this year. Or so I thought. The snow falls, and flights are delayed, and everybody tries to get home on the train, and of course that delays my train. So Mother Nature wins again, although not by the incredible margin she got me by last year (big snow storms on both ends of my trip, delaying departure from home and arrival home).

So because of the bad weather, and the 2 hour delay of my train, there was a crowd in the waiting area. There were about 200% too few seats. I only got to sit for about 15 minutes of the 3 hours I was there. Was I regretting not paying the extra cash for the sleeper car, which also comes with a very nice waiting area upgrade? Youbetcha. But then again I would have passed up the opportunity for gathering material.

Anyway, so there was a crowd. And I was sitting on the floor next to butt-crack betty, who was so cool by the way, which I only knew having read her shirt. And how do they have the waiting room set up? Right next to this sea of humanity, maybe 1000 people in a big waiting area that is nonetheless 1/3 the size it needed to be: A couple of union workers sitting in a huge (and empty, and roped off) waiting area full of chairs. These areas are literally right next to one another. Now putting travelers in those chairs wouldn’t have completely solved the problem of all the people without chairs, but it would have given 100 people chairs who had been sitting on the floor. And it would have given 200 people room to sit on the floor who had been standing. Go union.

It’s easy to see that someone is really in charge here at Chicago’s Union Station, because upstairs in the food court there was a big lack of tables, but I saw at least 3 areas stacked with tables with the sign “Area Closed”. Same guy running the show upstairs as down, it seems.

I’m riding the train today. Trains are old-school technology. There is a lot of new technology there, to be sure, but trains may have ridden these tracks I’m riding on right now for the last 200 years, roughly unchanged from those times. A little faster. A little less coal dust, but still the same view on the world – you can travel a thousand miles without seeing a single strip mall. You’re more likely to see an orchard than an office building. You’ll go through a tunnel you never knew existed – how does someone bore a 20 foot diameter hole through a rocky hilltop without it being a big deal? You see features of the landscape that are a little bit amazing, or you wish you knew how to get back to so you could explore, little canyons carved out by creeks, and moving water always holds a fascination for me.

From the train you can see that there are people with vastly different lifestyles and values from yours or mine. A small stack of bloody animal carcasses raises the questions how did it get there. Why so much blood. Were they killed by a man or a beast? What does it take to kill something like that, and then have the presence of mind to stack it like there was not some mindless crime of passion that created that bloody scene? An execution of duty to some perhaps. The carcasses could not even be identified, dogs, deer, sheep, calves, wolves, unwelcome visitors. They were bloody, and they were peeled, and they were stacked, and I saw this from the train at 50 yards and 80 miles an hour.
But violence is not something that callous men impose on nature. No. We are part of nature, and we have learned violence from her. From my perch on the second level of the Superliner car, I see the violence of water and gravity as they carve swaths of earth, rip trees from their places, and pile their wooden carcasses unceremoniously in a pile across a creek bed. Nature is a far more brutal killer than man, and she’s senseless in the way she combines beauty with terror and death.
My train ride took me to see an 8 year old boy who could sit in a room of adults just staring at his small rectangular window into someone else’s made up world. A 3 minute attention span spent flitting between various Facebook games. He didn’t go outside. He didn’t play with the dog. He didn’t use his own imagination to build or make up stories or wonder about things, or even investigate questions about life. He stared into someone else’s made up world and followed the pre-set pathways, following the steps the game laid out for him.
His world was filled with people 70 years or more his senior. One born immediately after world war 1. These people are not prepared to direct an 8 year old’s experience with technology. Their experience with technology is a cordless phone and a microwave oven.
Of course I write this critique of technology from the train, with a laptop, using a cell phone to bring the www to where ever I am. And you are reading it on your little window into someone elses made up world. The real world out there exists as if in a museum, behind the glass windows of the train. Who is being closed in? For the electrofied among us, we have made the outside something we can understand, we have made it part of our world of technology by calling it “the environment”.
Maybe I need to go outside, sweat in the freezing weather, dare nature to take a swipe at me, do something risky or primal. And then of course take pictures of it and put it on Facebook.

Because I’m trying to get work done while sleeping on the train going 2/3 of the way across the country, Kim talked me into getting a sleeper car on the train. If coach class on the train is nicer than first class on the plane, having a sleeper is like getting a couple of rows to yourself.  You’ve got a semi-private loo, a little shower, and a couple of cots, plus a table and enough room you can actually move around in. Your meals are paid for. You get a special waiting area with free refreshments and comfortable chairs.

The people that you meet riding the train are different. They are more recreational “travelers” than the hard-core type-A businessmen that infect airports. In general people are more laid back, less uptight, and more patient. I like that.

I’m here in the Chicago station reading and writing about the SolidWorks conference in San Antonio, and a boarding announcement is made for the Texas Eagle train that goes to San Antonio. I’m a bit relieved to be skipping the conference this year. There are a couple of individuals I’ll miss, and a couple of events I might wish I could have been at, but any information that’s worth having, I can get right from onboard the California Zephyr train in the middle of an Iowan cornfield. No ears popping. No seatbelts. No cheap thrills for otherwise unemployable TSA agents. No monotonous safety announcements. No deafness inducing blaring bings from the PA or jet noise. No long lines. No passengers stacked like Oreo cookies.

Driving out here is monotonous. At least on the train I don’t have to watch where I’m going. I can see individual trees probably 3 miles away.

The trip doesn’t come at a convenient time. Stuff like this never does. We don’t – or I don’t anyway – plan for stuff like this. I’ve got a book deadline at the end of this next week, and it may turn out that I’m on the train coming back on that deadline. So that means that this is a working trip. Again, working trips aren’t new to me. I’ve written chapters in the passenger seat of a rented minivan as Kim drove to Florida. I’ve been found typing away in the living room of a Williamsburg condo so I could spend some time with my parents on vacation. Typing on the train is nothing new.

What is new is tethering my computer to my cell phone to enjoy web access on my laptop where ever I can get a cell signal. I intended to not be traveling this week, having skipped SolidWorks World in part to meet this book deadline, but here I am traveling anyway. I hear some of the tweets of folks at the convention carrying multiple devices (iphone, iPad and netbook for example) which sounds ridiculous to me. Technology may never lose its appeal as a status fad, but it eventually figures out more optimized form factors. I think we’ll see phones that are more like bluetooth earpiece, with the phone built into a single portable device that is powerful enough to work like a “real” computer, yet has all of the convenience of the tablet with a cellular connection.

Anyway, I’m writing this as we travel through the wilds of West Virginia coming to Charleston. We passed the Greenbrier resort, followed the Greenbrier river, passed through back yards, farms and we’ve seen some amazing looking trout water. West Virginia is a great place to have as a backyard, although it’s not exactly very cell-signal friendly. It’s important to be able to function while you’re disconnected. We’re raising a couple of generations of folks who don’t know what to do without a plug. Going to see my grandmother, born in 1917 in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, brings up ideas like this. While I don’t exactly yearn for the good-ole days of the depression, I do value what her generation has to teach us about what life is, what communication is, and what’s really important.

Travel these days is so undignified. I keep saying my last flight is going to be my last flight. The train seats are more comfortable than first class on the plane, and the ride is smoother. You have more flexibility with walking around and where you sit. You don’t have to get felt up by a government employee, and the seat next to you is generally open unless you want someone else to sit there. True, the train to Nebraska takes 40 hours, but it costs half of what it would cost to fly, allows me to work, and is so much easier on the nerves.

Matt decided to catch the train in Staunton, Va (Matt’s old stomping grounds) partly because it was familiar to us.  He booked his reservation and packed his computer and suitcase and off we went.  Zoe and I drove him up to the station.  She doesn’t care much for driving on the interstate and high-speed (70 MPH is fast to a dog), beside tractor trailers and under bridges.

After a quick lunch and stretch through the park we were off to the cramped parking lot at the Staunton Amtrak Station.  It is one of the unmanned stations that has a small waiting lounge that was full of people trying to stay warm on such a cold day.  We opted to wait it out on the platform.  Zoe stayed in the sunshine in the car and offered her support through bark fits anytime anyone got near the car.

The first train showed up headed east bound on its way to Washington DC.  That was train number 50 – wrong train.  That cleared out most of the passengers.  Few got off if any but about 30 or so got on.

Then about 10 minutes later Amtrak’s westbound Cardinal #51 rounded the bend and pulled into the station.  Several attendants helped about 20 people off the train.  And Matt lined up with the rest for boarding.  No strip search, no security line,  just a quick once over look by the attendant and up you go.  So much more civilized if you ask me.

Matt grumbled a little at the bag of food my Mom and I put together for his trip.  But looking at the people in line they almost all had their reusable grocery bags with various chips and whatnot peeking out.  The guy in front of Matt even had a hard-sided cooler.  The stories of train food along with our own personal experiences encouraged us to send him on his way a little better prepared.  By the time he makes it to Chicago I would guess that his load is much lighter.

So as the train loaded up and pulled out.  I could see Matt through the window settling into his seat.  I hope he has a good trip and his Grandma is in good spirits and feeling well.Click to view slideshow.

The front gate of course has self-closing hinges. Just a little preloaded spring in both top and bottom hinges. I used a latch that you can’t see from the outside, and if you enter from the outside, you have to reach inside the gate and dare that snarling terrier not to shred your fingers.

The gates were just sections of fence that I took apart and reassembled, and added hardware. After putting the fence sections on hinges, we let the gates settle for a few weeks, and allowed them to see some weather. We noticed that rain causes the wood to swell and makes the latches come out of adjustment to some extent. Each gate has also required some bracing. We used wire supports to keep the lower outside corner of each gate from sagging. This consisted of a couple of angle braces, a wire and a turnbuckle.

Just a word to non-engineers about bracing – don’t believe in fairy tales. The strongest angle is 45 degrees, even if one support is not at the end of the gate section. Here’s a picture of the setup. I had to add a small block behind the picket at the top to hold the angle bracket, and then the lower bracket fit over the fence cross pieces. The wire had to be clamped to itself, and the kit from Lowes included the hardware to do this. You could do it two ways: with a long wire, and 2 short loops, one on either end with one clamp per loop, or with a shorter wire with 2 clamps on a single loop. The advice here is that 2 clamps on a single loop gives you far less chance of the wire connections failing, and the 45 degree angle is the strongest. So while aesthetically, you might have wanted to make the wire go from the hinge to the lower corner, it really just need to go from the bottom to the top at 45 degrees. It doesn’t really matter if it attaches at the hinge or at the lower corner. The brace going the other direction (to make an X with the wire) really would add more in weight than it would in strength, so I left that out.

Even the wider fence just got a brace at 45 degrees. It took a while to convince Kim of all of this engineering, but we agreed that I would not try to argue with her about architecture if she would not argue with me about engineering.

The walk-through gate in the back was going to see a little more use, so we got a different latch. This one you could open from the outside. To make this work, I had to drill a hole through the gate for the thumb lever to move the latch on the inside of the gate.

With the wire brace and the turnbuckle, the gate is highly adjustable. With the spring loaded hinges, it closes itself. So it wound up to be a nice set of latching, self closeing gates.

The big gate for the riding lawn mower and truck in the back was a little different. We needed to gate the entire 8 foot width, so I hinged a 5 foot section for the most common usage – the riding lawn mower. This section just has a dead bolt type of mechanism that goes straight down and into a little pipe in the ground. The remaining 3 feet were on a bit of a hill, so a hinged gate really wouldn’t work here. I built an angled section of fence which is held to a post by a couple of brackets, but you can remove the panel if you need the full 8 foot opening for the truck. Then another sliding bolt latch connects the top of the 5 foot section to the top of the 3 foot section. A picture is worth a thousand words, really, so here’s the pic of this arrangement.

The hinges were harder to select than you might think. You have to think of how the hinges will attach to the fence, which direction they will open, and if you will have enough range of motion in that direction. Of course self-closing hinges are one option, but there are other options for springs or weights with pulleys to get gates to close automatically. Because this fence does not have a solid outside (there are gaps between the pickets), the hinges had to be on the inside, which limits the motion in both directions. We might have solved this another way by adding pickets to the areas of the fence and gate near the hinges so the hinges could be placed on the outside of the fence, which would have been much easier and cleaner. But now we’ll know that for the next fence we build.

He was unable to give me more than direction and that it did exist.   So for the last week I have been keeping an eye out for the weather predictor.    Yesterday, we saw three!  All three had the similar marking so here goes my reading of the 2010 wooly worm….

This guy is heading to the right in the picture.  So his head definitely has more black than the tail.  Meaning we should expect a harsher winter in the beginning and a brief harshness at the end of winter.

The wooly worm that Matt saw earlier in the road was heading in a northerly direction indicating that it would not be a very harsh winter.

Also a matter of note, for natural insect predictors…. this past summer while we were building the fence we ran into a hornet’s nest.  Literally!  After the shouting (and stinging) was over, I did notice that it was rather close to the ground.  Meaning, we won’t get much snow (if any) this year.

So since Matt pulled up the last of the tomatoes just yesterday, summer is hanging on but it won’t be long.   We are enjoying these last days while we can. A cold snowless winter is approaching fast (by snowless I mean no deep snows like last year but perhaps ice), with a mild middle winter and then a brief blast at the end.  At least that is what the wooly worm said.

Figuring out what type of fence, and realizing we were not building a fortress against the Cherokees was the hardest thinking part.  Finally it came down to what mixed best with the rest of the neighborhood.  While there are many different styles around our neighborhood, the French Gothic seemed to be the most common in our area.  The 4′ high worked best with the house, the dog’s reach and our budget.  Since there are both flat and hilly sections of the fence line, straight panels weren’t going to work in all sections.  We had to adopt a two prong approach to the fence strategy.  Premade panels came in 8′ x 4′ high from Home Depot.  They were special order, but only took a few days to come in.  The sloped sections would have to be stick built.

Once we figured out how big the panels would be then we knew how far apart to set the posts (in theory).  We ran neon string around our proposed perimeter and marked each 8′ section with a flag.  We had 40 sections and some questionable terrain.  I think it was at this point that Matt got a bit discouraged and doubtful about digging holes through rocks and roots in the fencerow area.  We made the first of many trips to the hardware to gather supplies.  40 – 8′x 4″x4″ Posts, 20- bags of Quikrette and some gravel.  We later discovered that the gravel was not really necessary.

A quick call to Miss Utility to mark any underground lines and we were ready.  That was an easy no brainer to assure that we would not hit anything unintentionally.

Then came the post hole digging.  thankfully Matt, in true engineer/male testosterone  style, selected the biggest machine at Northwest Hardware for a weekend rental.  This Gas Powered Fulcrum Auger was towed behind the car and was self propelled once unhitched. It was a 9 hp Subaru motor powering the hydraulics.  That saved a tremendous amount of pushing and pulling and cussin’ and swearing.

The moment of truth had arrived, the first hole with a post hole digger.  I could not wait for Matt to see how easy this was going to be.  Auger down, power on…… spinning, spinning not much coming out, spinning, more spinning.  Oh no, this isn’t going to be easy.  Turns out that the first hole was one of the hardest.  We just lucked into the worst spot in the yard full of rock hard dried out clay, unlike anything else in the rest of the yard.  With hesitation I was able to convince Matt to try the next hole.  Auger down, spinning and viola….. lots of dirt and a nice clean hole.  Great only 39 more to go.  Soaking the first hole with water for an hour or two was all it needed, and the auger eventually brought it up as easily as the rest.

We used a 6″ auger bit.  In hindsight, we probably should have used a slightly larger bit, say 8 or 9″.  It would have given us more room for more  concrete around the posts.  Some of the soil we hit was a bit unstable unlike the clay soils I have hit in past hole digging experiences.  So more concrete would have been better.

The post hole digger was rented for a full 24 hours.  It was the beginning of some really hot weather we have had this summer.  Fish was nice enough to come help on most of the holes.  It made the job alot easier.

Setting the posts came next. This handy level, designed for post applications was the best $5 we spent on the job.  The rubber band came with it and made it hands free.  Neat trick. It says “Magnetic” on it, but that only works for iron wood (or metal studs).

Finally we used the wheelbarrow enough in mixing the concrete to chip up the newish paint a little and make it look like a real wheelbarrow should.  Mixing the Quickrette was simple and had a wide margin between too wet and too dry.  Matt developed a skill at this so much that should he ever give up Solidworking he has something to fall back on.

The panels went up with a little effort.  The rails on the panels are smaller than a 2×4 width and are made from very dry pine.  There is not alot of room for error when placing screws.  We ended up splitting a few until we got the hang of it.  But here is the thing that they don’t tell you about the panels.  8′ panels are not exactly 8 feet long. Some are shorter some are longer, slightly.  The only way I can figure to get around this is to set each post as you work around the yard, but that would take forever.  And as much as my architect brain say – yea yea, that is the way to make sure of a perfect fit. It just isn’t worth it.  Some we had to cut and some we had to reach with a simple angle bracket.  In the end it isn’t that noticeable.

The stick built sections went together much quicker than we expected.  It was somewhat daunting to see the big pile of 200 pickets laying under the tree, knowing we had to touch, align and put 4 screws in each one.  As we worked, we developed a rhythmical system that made it go by quickly.  There were times that we didn’t talk but communicated effectively.

This morning we worked on the gates.  We have two of three up.  They still need the latches but that can happen, when it happens.  Self-closing hinges make sure that the gates don’t just stay open. Maybe the next post will address those.  We are pleased with our complete enclosure and as for Zoe she played so hard the first day that she slept well before her usual bedtime.  We will hold on to the satisfaction that comes with a finished job for this Labor Day Holiday.

Everybody say Happy Birthday to Kim, coupla days late.

Anyway, so Larry Keel has an “opening act”. You know how that goes. We never did catch the name of the band, but I called them RockBass just to have something to call them. Larry Keel is what they call “alternative bluegrass”, and his opening act was possibly in that same vein, but probably closer to rockabilly (spelled rockin-hillbilly). Just to give you an idea, when we came in, they were doing a rendition of Old Crow Medicine Show’s Cocaine (Tell It To Me). If RockBass was not Larry Keel, neither were they OCMS.

Here’s a picture of the band not called RockBass:

I want you to notice a couple of things here. First is that this is a bit of a rock band with a banjo and a mandolin. Which makes it, uh, not sure about that. The second thing to notice is that the band brought their own fans. You can see one between the first and second guys on the right. Very cool fans. Then, notice that the banjo player is barefoot. These boys have Craig County written all over them.  Next notice the bass player (the ‘bass’ in RockBass – the one in the blue) in his best Craig County Mennonite Laundry Day get up. Yikes. And then the drummer. Yes, there is a drummer. The drummer is also barefoot, and wearing a shirt like the banjo player. Hand me down I’d be willing to bet. These two have to be brothers.

But none of that really matters. I was treating Kim to a night out to hear Larry Keel, and not even a band not named RockBass was gonna stand in the way.In case you’re curious, though, here is what RockBass sounded like. It took me a while to identify the song, but this is “Down in a Hole”, by Alice In Chains. Somehow the sound on the camera turns out so much better than live. Live it was just distorted and nasty, it sounds so much cleaner in this recording.

I think we decided that RockBass ought to cover some Primus tunes, where quality of singing really doesn’t matter that much, and they can sing about stuff they like – fishing for example. Plus, the bass player would really get off on Primus, I’m sure.

It takes guts to get up on a stage, especially when you sing like that, and especially when there is no protective chicken wire between you and the audience, and especially before Larry Keel comes on.

Anyway, here’s Larry Keel and Natural Bridge doing a Del McCoury tune about moonshine. And a bear.

Everybody’s wearing  shoes, no shirt sharing, and most of all, the music was excellent. Larry’s known for his mesmerizing flat picking. He’s the next best thing to Tony Rice, and a generation younger. Larry has played with many of the big name bluegrass acts out there, and lives locally in Natural Bridge, VA, central to a lot of bluegrass action. Nothin’ Fancy is from the same area. I first saw Larry at Snowshoe resort in West Virginia on July 4th, 2008 at a great bluegrass festival there, along with Del McCoury and Steep Canyon Rangers. I don’t actually own any of Larry’s CDs, and I don’t hear him on XM radio Bluegrass station at all. He’s definitely worth hearing, along with the rest of his band. The fiddle player I thought was particularly good.

Anyway, happy birthday to Kim!