In Antarctica

I'm in Antarctica now and have started a new P.G. blog about it. (it's fer me Ma!)

http://adamonice.blogspot.com

Give it a read if you are so inclined. Hopefully there will be pictures soon.

Underwater Archeology

I spent the past weekend SCUBA diving on the Burlington waterfront right between the EPA superfund site and the sewage treatment plant. The scenery on land isn't great but the number of wrecks underwater is fascinating.

The superfund site is an old barge canal that was built back when Burlington was the third largest lumber port in the U.S. and was the main stopover for cargo traveling between Montreal and New York City. Extending from the canal into the lake are two breakwaters that would keep waves from hitting canal boats as they entered the canal. These breakwaters extend for a couple hundred yards into the lake and after the canal closed became a place to tie up old boats which would eventually leak and sink. The result is a large number of wrecks sitting in 10-15 feet of water.

The lake water is cold enough to preserve the wooden wrecks so as part of an underwater archeology class run by the Lake Champlain maritime Museum and my favorite dive shop Murphy and I spent the weekend mapping artifacts on an old lake schooner called the Excelsior.

The double-masted boat was built in the 1850's was retired and then sank off the breakwater as a result of neglect around 1895. In the early 20th century with canal closed its breakwater was only getting in the way of boat traffic and a hole was opened in it using heavy equipment or explosives. (probably the former) The hole was opened right where the Excelsior was, ripping off its rear half.

This made for an interesting wreck to dive since there are boat pieces mixed in with the big logs and rocks used to make the breakwater. We spent most of our time over the forward portion of the ship where we could document the locations of artifacts like shoe bottoms, pieces of iron rod and chain, jugs that held who knows what and odd things that we drew for the archaeologists to identify. One artifact Murphy found was completely out of place for a commercial boat of that age and figuring out why it would be there drove the archeologist leading the class nuts.

There were two classroom sessions along with the weekend of diving: An introduction last Wednesday and one tomorrow on how to conserve artifacts that have been removed from the lake. Of course any artifact found on a wreck in Lake Champlain must stay on the wreck by state law unless it is removed as a part of an approved archeological expedition. On the side of the lake belonging to New York State no human-made item may be removed from the lake bottom. In Vermont stuff sitting on it's own is fair game. (so we Vermonters can pull golf balls and old beer cans out of the lake without becoming criminals)

I got to drive the float.

Last week I was confronted by two delemas: 1) I am not hiking right now so I have to find other things to do. 2) I tend to complain about the state of politics but find I can do little about it aside from voting and when I am in Antarctica I am actually not allowed to express a position for or against any candidate in a U.S. election.

As a solution to both of these issues I spent a couple of days last week volunteering for Scudder Parker: Vermont’s democratic candidate for governor. (I voted for the Republican incumbent in the last election but his ability to do what he promises for Vermont has been disappointing)

I spent most of Thursday on the phone with volunteers getting people to commit to marching with Scudder (that is his real name) in a parade on Saturday.

On Saturday morning I showed up and was put in charge of driving the float. The float is called the “People Powered Engine” and looks like a cross between a locomotive and an Airstream camping trailer. When I first heard there was a bicycle-powered float I was a bit worried it would look as unprofessional as some of the other “great ideas” I have seen local groups enter in parades. The PPE, however, was solidly built, (even using rivets) can be towed on the interstate up to 65 MPH and is a huge hit with the parade audiences who have seen enough restored John Deere tractors to last them for a while.

Four bikes have been bolted to an old boat trailer that makes the chassis of the float. A person sits on each of the bikes and pedals to power the float. About 20 feet ahead of them a bicycle seat was welded to the frame behind a set of handle bars that turn a couple of 12-inch tires.  There isn’t a floor to the float so if we needed an extra kick I could get off my seat and push but the pedal power was very effective at getting us moving. The hardest part was trying to steer while looking through a four inch hole that was four feet in front of me.  The best way to keep on the road I found was to keep the yellow line on the road between my feet but that didn’t work so well on the dirt roads.

In all it was a really fun way to spend a Saturday and I’m looking forward to driving the float again tomorrow.

Pictures of the float can be found here and here.

P.S. If Simmons was in charge of confetti he obviously didn’t show up.

Update: Walking distance to Canada

An updated version of my essay on hiking the long trail is now available on my new web page.  This version has pictures.

I was hoping to post a PDF but alas I no longer have a PDF creator. The process did give me practice with GooglePages but I really miss the “print to PDF” function in Word. Does anybody know of a good free PDF maker that doesn’t leave a watermark on the page?

Cheers