Monarch Butterfly Migration

Thursday, 23 February 2012

There's a show on NOVA about monarch butterfly's called The Incredible Journey of the Butterfly's. It's 52 minutes and you can watch the full episode online.
I knew that they migrated to Mexico, but that turns out to be only part of the story.

There is a cycle of 4 generations to the Monarch Butterfly's:

• 1st generation is the start of the return trip, they fly from Mexico to Texas
• 2nd generation flies from Texas to Michigan
• 3rd generation flies from Michigan to Canada - each of these 3 generations live only about a month
• But the 4th is the amazing one. That generation flies all the way back to Mexico. They also live for 9 months, 9 times as long as the other 3 generations.

The show reminded me of when i saw thousands of monarch butterfly's on the shore of Lake Erie. It turns out that the hardest part of the journey is the start, flying over the Great Lakes to Michigan. The ones i saw had just completed that part of the trip. But they still had a 2,000 miles to go till Mexico.

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Happy 40th Birthday

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

This October my 1972 Honda CB500 motorcycle will be 40 years old. It is 4-cylinder and 50 horse power that gets around 45-55 miles per gallon. I've had it for 11 years. When i first got it, it had 12,062 miles. Today it's at 21,595 miles.
Here's what it looked like when i first got it in 1999. It had a big old seat and tall mirrors. Other than the exhaust it was pretty much original.
Since then i've learned a lot from working on it. Usually the process is: something breaks, i try to fix it, i make it worse, i try fixing it several more times before i realize what i'm doing wrong then fix it properly.
This is probably the furthest i've had it taken apart. Over the years i've replaced a few things: brakes, tires, oil filter, screws and bolts, chain and sprockets hand grips, jets for the carburetors (I had them apart and took 6 tries to get them back together before i realized i had the overflow needle upside down) throttle cable which broke in Arizona and lots more.
I wrapped the exhaust. This is my idea of form and function working perfectly. The exhaust works better because it stays cooler and i think it looks better too.
I made a new seat. It's thinner then the old one and a little bit harder, but it's easier to ride and the center of gravity is lower which helps.
Mackinaw Bridge
The 45th parallel near Traverse City. This was on the same trip to Mackinaw. I rode around the outer edge of Michigan, about 900 miles in 4 days.
The biggest thing i've ever done is my 2,600 mile, 13 day ride from Arizona to Michigan.
Continental Divide somewhere in New Mexico.
Camping on Thanksgiving by Foss Lake Oklahoma at sunset.
Just outside of Phoenix Arizona.
Riding through the Petrified Forest.
I don't remember where this was. Maybe Texas?
This is a picture of every state border i crossed on my ride from Arizona. The only 2 i missed were Arizona and Ohio. The Ohio border is on a bridge, over a river, in 4 lanes of traffic, i didn't stop. For that entire trip the only thing that went wrong with the bike was the throttle cable breaking as we unloaded it from the truck. It's quite amazing that a 40 year old motorcycle rode 2,600 miles (most of that at 7,000rpm) without any problems. And still today it's running great.

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Camping in the Manistee National Forest

Thursday, 12 August 2010

I went last weekend with my brother in law John who's walked the trail before. There were lots of other hikers, canoers and views of the river from high up.

Friday
we arrived at the trail at 6pm, hiked 5 miles then camped around 8pm

Saturday
we had all day to hike 15 miles, stopping for lunch and to fish in the river.around 2am it started pouring with rain and there was tons of thunder and lightning
it's hard to tell here but it rained so hard that my pack got a little wet, but was fine in the morning.
Sunday
woke up a bit sore but walked 5 more miles back to the car .

Typical part of the trail along one of the hills




Panorama views (click to enlarge)

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2,600 miles on a Honda - part 2

Wednesday, 2 December 2009

New Mexico border right after sunset
The next day i only rode 180 miles but it was one of the longest days on the trip for me, 10 hours on the road. My first stop was at El Morrow National Monument. I wasn't sure exactly what this was at first but i was riding by so i stopped. Turns out it's basically a puddle of water at the base of a rocky cliff. Well it's a little bigger then a puddle but not much. But apparently to people 100 years ago this was the main place to stop while traveling to get fresh water.
Then a few miles later i crossed the Continental Divide. Which as we all know is the dividing line between rivers draining into either the Pacific or Atlantic Oceans. Actually i only kinda knew that, i had to google it to be sure. And yes that's snow on the other side of the road. New Mexico is cold at 7,882 feet.

Just down the mountain from the continental divide was the Bandera Volcano & Ice Caves. Let me just say that the name and billboard are way more exciting then the place really is. The volcano was a big cone shaped hole in the ground. And the ice cave was a 50 foot hole that when you walked down into, it gets cold. Let me just say, don't go out of your way to see it any time soon.
I then drove through El Malpais National Forest to I-40. It was only 2pm and i figured i could drive another 180 miles to camp at Santa Rosa State Park. 30 miles down the road that idea came to an end. The traffic on the highway was at a complete standstill. So after waiting a few minutes i rode through the cars on the dashed lines for about a mile, to where i could see the accident. Turns out that two semi trucks collided, one caught on fire and the other spilled paint all over the road. In hindsight i should have immediately crossed the median, turned around and taken route 66. But i didn't, i waited...and waited. From 2:30 to 5:00 i sat, walked around and lied down on the highway next to my bike.


When they finally cleaned up the paint it was near dark so i rode through Albuquerque and stayed at a motel. The low temp that morning was 27 degrees and the bike was running poorly from the altitude so i decided to change the spark plugs in the Comfort Inn parking lot. By the time i left it was all the way up to 35 degrees. I stopped at Santa Rosa Lake State Park off route 66. Apparently New Mexico and I have a different opinion of what should qualify as a state park. It was a lake. Not very big, just a lake. But i guess that's cause i'm from Michigan and there aren't a lot of lakes in New Mexico. I ate lunch at the Route 66 Restaurant then rode to Tucumcari where i was going to buy some $4 mexican blankets from a mexican guy, but i didn't have room on the bike.

Another 50 miles and i was at the Texas border. I thought i should wear my cowboy hat i got in Nashville to try and fit in.

After that i had to hurry because it was almost dark and i wanted to see the Cadillac Ranch. From the pictures i thought it was tons of Cadillac cars buried half in the ground. Turns out it's only 10 but it was still really cool. I got there right at sunset and stayed for about a half an hour.

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