The Great Outdoors

There is nothing like a good hike and it's wonderful when the weather is cool and crisp like it was this day. We hiked for about 7 miles in the Smokies. This is a stitched panorama for about 5 pictures. For more pictures, click here.

Pure Fun!

Pure Fun!
Originally uploaded by phil_hall.

I went out this weekend to Haw Ridge. This wonderful park is a mountain biker's dream. Fast trails through wooded hills. Impossible, steep uphills, and insane, adrenaline pumping down hills. It feels great to be alive here. Once day when I was riding, I was just reminded, vividly, of when I was 11 or so. I was riding my bike on trails almost like this. It's just as much fun now as it was then! It's great to get muddy and feel like a kid again.

Bridal Veils

It's a wonderful time to enjoy the outdoors here in Tennessee. I captured hese waterfalls on a hike in Frozen Head state park. Using a slower shutter speed makes the falls look much more majestic.

Kill THAT Televison

What a great device. The TV-B-Gone was featured this week on wired.com. It will turn off almost any televison by going throught the codes that turn off most televisions. Now I know that there are other people that are bothered by loud televisions in public areas that no one is watching! I put in an order for one. It will be interesting to see how it works.

Friendly Fred

(Move your mouse over the image)
I almost walked right into this Marbled Orb Weaver Spider yesterday, while going for a hike. I turned around and he was right in front of my face! Fortunately he is harmless, but captivating. I have never seen a spider with colors this vivid. After a while he crawled right inside it's leaf home. You would never know he was there, except for the web.


The weather here in Tennessee has been just amazing the past several days. The trees are just beginning to change color. It's a great time to be in the outdoors.

Voyage to Antarctica

This is a photograph of a tabular iceberg drifting in the Neumayer Channel, located on the Antarctic Peninsula. These big chucks of ice have broken off from massive glaciers that meet the sea. The majority of the mass of this berg is below the water!

One of the more intersting places that I have visited is Antarctica. I worked on a NOAA reserach vessel for a couple of years in the Southern Ocean. I love photography and this was a wonderful place to shoot pictures. I took about 30 rolls of slides on my two trips to the south.

Darwin Dispute is Picking Up

A few years ago, I attended a men's lunch gathering at my church. Usually the speaker is a local Christian professional athlete. This time the speaker was talking about 'Intelligent Design'. This movement proposes that the incredible complexity and wonderful diversity found in natural organisms can not be explained by Darwin's Theory of Evolution alone. The more science shows us about the building blocks of life (such as DNA), the more it points to creation by some intelligence beyond ourselves.

The cover story for October issue of Wired is all about the controversy. It's available online now, although I have not read the entire article yet. I admit that I do not know much beyond my single high school biology class (and I received a D one quarter!), but have always struggled to believe that humans evolved from single-cell slim. I can fathom small changes within a species, but not the large jumps in evolution between the species of animals, and humans. What do you think?

Alien Invader

When I pulled in my driveway the other day, I felt noticed this huge praying mantis strutting around in my driveway. He shuffled more that he walked, and had no fear of a me, a mere human. When he wanted to, he could move very fast. Fascinating little creature, it helped me to appreciate the incredible detail of God's creation.

Technical Details

For all you technologists out there, here is a link that will tell you more than you want to know about the ET probe that we deployed for hurricane Ivan last week. The data also looks really good. The probes measured windspeeds as high as 105 mph. Our probes did not experience the worst winds. We were several miles inshore, and the probes were not high enough to get the unimpeded winds. Click here for the ET Probe.

Nice to Be Home

Damaged Gas Station in Alabama

It is really nice to be here in Tennessee. I pulled into my place around 7pm last night, after driving from Tallahassee. It was a lovely cool, clear evening. I tried to take some pictures of the damage when I was driving around in Alabama. It's difficult to take pictures while I'm driving. To see all the pictures click on the Ivan Album.

A Day of Detours

It has been a long and tiring day. I just got back to Tallahassee. We spent most of the day driving. It took almost 7 hrs to get to the instrument site. Since everything going into Pensacola was either closed or restricted, we were detoured in to Alabama.

I saw hundreds of big trees down over power lines and roads, and power was out all over within 100 miles of Pensacola. Gas very was hard to find, cell phones didn't work, lots of traffic, and a hot day. The good news, the instruments hadn't budged. Everything seems to have worked.

The emergency crews are everywhere, and all the roads had been cleared off. I was amazed at the response. However, I would not recommend to anyone to try to get into a disaster area the day after a hurricane. Tomorrow... homeward bound.

Tame in Tallahassee

It's been a relatively quiet day here... some gusty winds, a few rain squalls. You would not even know there has been a disaster 200 miles away if it wasn't for the news. I just had a look at the Pensacola News Journal images. The damage looks bad for Pensacola. Bad flooding, wind damage and tornadoes.

It's a different world here. I've spent a lazy day, hanging out at a bookstore. Tonight I found a nice coffee shop, with high speed internet, and downloaded a audio book to listen to on my trip back to Tennessee.

Our plan for tomorrow is to set out early and try to get the instruments, if they are still standing. They may have even measured the eye of the storm from the storm tracks I've seen. The lead scientist wants to make an attempt at getting to the instruments. It doesn't look like a great day to travel to me. Many of the bridges are closed, and a section of the I-10 bridge collapsed. We'll see..... more to follow.

Retreat

Tonight, I'm in a comfortable and dry hotel in Tallahassee. I've got electricity, phone, and television service. We are for the most part out of harms way. It's interesting to see the 'imbedded meteorologists' on the weather channel. I wonder if they get hazardous weather pay? Tomorrow will be a day off for us, while we wait out the storm. We are hoping to go and dismantle our instruments on Friday afternoon if we are able.

Sunset At Night - Sailor's Delight?

I don't think the this sailor's rule of thumb applies when a hurricane is near by. Last night we were treated to a beautiful sunset. These high cirrus clouds are formed as Ivan approaches the mainland.

Ready for Ivan

We finally finished both towers at around sunset. They look the same, but use different ways to measure the winds. We've decided to overnight in Pensacola, since we need to come back out here on Thursday to start up the computers for data collection.

Hurricane Proof

Yesterday was a long day setting up the instrumentation. We drove from Tallahassee to Pensacola, to this remote naval training airstrip in Alabama, just west of Pensacola. About 1 out of every 10 buildings downtown was boarded up. Lots of people headed east out of Pensacola.

It was hard going to set up these towers. We had to install these mobile home anchors in the ground with an electric auger attached to a generator. We snapped one of the anchors trying to get it in. Then there was pinning 4 sinter blocks to each leg. It was just a challenge to get things lined up and make it all fit. The first tower took us about 3 1/2 hours to put up.

This project for us is still in the beta testing phase. There is another group making wind measurements with standard wind anemometers from Texas Tech. They swung in with 3 huge 4wd trucks and trailers, erected their tower in about 45 minutes and left for their next site.

Tree Clearing Convention in Tallahassee

I received the word yesterday that this hurricane landfall experiment is going to attempt to study hurricane Ivan. So, today I drove the government van from Oak Ridge to Tallahassee, Florida. It was a long day, about a 9.5 hour drive, I'm glad I could get my ipod to play into the van's radio to keep me company. It wasn't a very comfortable ride, this van is old and tired. I asked why we were not taking one of our nice late model 4wd vehicles? Apparently, if this one gets damaged by the storm, it won't be missed. That's encouraging.

I've been impressed by how dedicated the scientists are that are involved in this study. It's a lot of work. We loaded the van to the hilt with 36 sinter blocks, 14 car batteries, generators, and an assortment of other heavy equipment for the experiment. I have a very rough idea how this will all go together. The principal scientist and another team member are flying in from Idaho tonight. This is their project, and there is another team from Texas that has a large amount of these ET wind probes (ET for extreme turbulence) as well.

While I was checking in, about 30 Asplundh tree clearing trucks arrived with their crews. They've been cleaning up after hurricane Frances, and are getting ready for Ivan. It's ominous, destruction seems imminent, especially if it remains a category 5 storm. To me it's very interesting to see the weather on the TV and the satellite images on the internet. But, it does not seem real, that this storm is on the way. I can understand why people don't take the warnings seriously, it's easy to ignore (like Y2K). Thank goodness for the ability we have to predict where these storm will hit. I can't imagine what it was like to be surprised by these storms.

Ivan's Coming and I'm Going to Meet Him

On Friday at work I was asked if I could help out with a hurricane research project. I was the alternate's alternate. The project is to use research instruments to measure high winds in of hurricanes. We would only go if the hurricane chose not to hit the Florida peninsula, as logistically it's too difficult to set up there after all the damage that has occurred. So instead of the relaxing weekend I thought I was going to have, I'm getting ready to leave as early as Sunday to help with this project.

There's Nothing Like a Fire...

... when you are in the outdoors. Alex and I went backpacking last weekend in the Great Smoky Mountains. We were blessed with wonderful weather, and some excellent camping. We were not really that cold, but it makes for a better picture. There are more images from that trip at my home page.

Welcome to my Blog. I've been thinking about doing this for a while.
Barefoot Billy has been doing a really neat one for a while now. He inspired me. Thanks Billy.