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Author Topic: Thursday -- No build tonight  (Read 2093 times)

JimH

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Thursday -- No build tonight
« on: March 06, 2003, 12:20:52 pm »

I lied last night.  I thought it might make you happy.  I'm sorry.

Tomorrow night.

I heard today that Lake Superior is 90% covered with ice.  That's pretty unusual.  It normally freezes around the edges.  People plow roads on the ice out to the nearby islands and drive their cars across.
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Doof

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2003, 12:29:14 pm »

I smell an ice dive coming on... :)

I was supposed to cut a hole last sunday on Lake Winnepesauke in NH to go check out the Lady of the Lake (http://www.wreckhunter.net/DataPages/ladyofthelake-dat.htm), an old wooden steamer that sunk over a hundred years ago. I dove it once last summer, but it's just not the same as being under the ice. It's a pretty interesting little wreck. Because of the cold fresh water that it's in, it's still mostly intact.

They were using it as a passenger ship to carry people across the lake until they decided to scuttle it. So they filled it full of rocks and towed it out into the lake. The intention was to scuttle it in the deeper part of the lake, but unfortunately (fortunately for us divers, though!) the weight of the rocks pulled it under a lot sooner than they had planned and now it rests in only 30' of water, so it's a realy easy dive.

But Lake Superior... that would be interesting.
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KingSparta

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2003, 01:21:40 pm »

>> I heard today that Lake Superior is 90%
>> covered with ice.  That's pretty unusual.
i seen a show on this about 2-3 months ago.

they have Ice breakers in the lake to help shiping

I live it up there it was nice and quite.
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TimB

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2003, 01:21:47 pm »

Quote

I heard today that Lake Superior is 90% covered with ice.  That's pretty unusual.  It normally freezes around the edges.  People plow roads on the ice out to the nearby islands and drive their cars across.
This would make me nervous.

:)

-=Tim=-
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MachineHead

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #4 on: March 06, 2003, 01:50:31 pm »

Quote
I smell an ice dive coming on... :)

But Lake Superior... that would be interesting.

And just about as cold in the summer as the winter.

We used to go fishing on Superior quite a bit when I was younger. Downriggers and the whole nine yards. It was always amazing to see the cannonball 30-40 ft below you on calm days, and probably the right conditions.

If you ever do get a chance, look for agates on the bottom. The beaches are usually picked clean, but it would be tough to get all the ones laying below a few feet of water!

The Lake Superior agate is also thought to be one of the oldest semi-precious gemstones on earth. Geologists (some) figure the oldest could approach a billion years old. There are few others gems that top this, one is the diamond.

I have a five gallon bucket full, waiting to get tumbled some day. Many are bigger in diameter than a golf ball, with a few close to tennis ball size. I love the look after they are finished off in the polisher. A billion years of beauty in the palm of my hand.
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LanManCan

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #5 on: March 06, 2003, 02:10:13 pm »

I love the smell dairyair in the mornin'.   I'm just really glad I put my feet up before opening this thread... ;D
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JimH

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #6 on: March 06, 2003, 02:21:43 pm »

Quote

I was supposed to cut a hole last sunday on Lake Winnepesauke in NH to go check out the Lady of the Lake (http://www.wreckhunter.net/DataPages/ladyofthelake-dat.htm), an old wooden steamer that sunk over a hundred years ago. I dove it once last summer, but it's just not the same as being under the ice. It's a pretty interesting little wreck. Because of the cold fresh water that it's in, it's still mostly intact.


Hi Doof,
For the last twelve years, there has been a similar  steamboat on Lake Minnetonka here.  It was on the bottom for a long time, pulled up in 1980, and in service again.  It's quiet and beautiful as it passes me when I'm out sailing.



Here's the story:
In 1905 the Twin City Rapid Transit Company began construction of a 65 acre picnic and amusement park on Big Island in Lake Minnetonka. They also implemented a streetcar line to Excelsior and built six fast express boats in 1906 and added a seventh in 1915. The boats provided streetcar-like service to 27 locations around the lake. Designed to resemble street cars, the boats were an extension of the Twin Cities Rapid Transit Company. They were 70 feet long and could carry up to 135 passengers. Big Island park only lasted until 1911. However, the streetcar boats served as an extension of the streetcar line for 20 years.
Three of the boats (the Como, the White Bear, and the Minnehaha) were scuttled off of Big Island in 1926. Three more (the Harriet, the Stillwater, and the Excelsior) were dismantled in 1927. The Excelsior was stripped of its upper deck and used as a tug. The Hopkins was sold to a restaurant, renamed the Minnetonka and worked under steam until about 1942 when it was converted to use an internal combustion engine. It served on the lake until 1947 and then, in 1949 was sent to join the others at the bottom of the lake.

The Minnehaha was raised from the lake's bottom in 1980. Ten years later, in 1990, Museum volunteers started restoring the Minnehaha. The work was completed and the boat sailed for its maiden voyage in May, 1996. The restoration took over 80,000 hours of volunteer time and thousands of dollars in donations. Today, the Minnehaha sails from its homeport of Excelsior during the summer months.

http://www.mtmuseum.org/index.html?body=excelsior/
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Carl

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #7 on: March 06, 2003, 02:55:00 pm »

Oh well, no new build for me to break tonight. Guess I'll just clean up my system in preparation for tomorrow afternoons major system upgrade. One more night with the old reliable Tyan Trinity 1854 1.4Ghz PIII. Maybe I can find bugs faster after the upgrade.  ;D But before that, since we are mentioning lakes, I'm off tomorrow and plan to spend the morning on Sebago Lake 'hea' in Maine. The ice is still thick and the fish are hungry. Unlike Doof, I'm not planning on a swim.   ;)

Carl
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JimH

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #8 on: March 06, 2003, 03:01:07 pm »

With ski's?  Or snowshoes.

Sebago.  They make shoes, don't they?

Greetings to the moose.
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Carl

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #9 on: March 06, 2003, 03:20:05 pm »

No need for ski's or snowshoe's, just some good old LL Bean boots.

I'll not be using my Sebago's out on the ice. But maybe this summer..

I had  some Moose steaks that we cooked while fishing for smelt on the James Eddy, in Dresden Maine, a few weeks back. Tasty..

Carl
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Dan Da Man

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2003, 05:21:42 pm »

Well, I'll be jiggered!

After all the time I've been hanging around here, I guess I never really thought that JimH and crew were up here in the Cities.

Kewl.

Yeah, so I just thought that was cool.

Dan
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Doof

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #11 on: March 07, 2003, 05:01:52 am »

Ice diving is a lot of fun. Once you get past the cold, which really isn't bad at all if you have the right gear, there are a lot of really unique things to experience under the ice.

For one, all of the air pockets look and act a lot like mercury. It's really neat to just play with the bubbles, bat them around and watch them come back together.

Plus the ice itself just looks really neat. Most of the time I spend on one of these dives is just right at the surface, just looking at the ice and, providing there's no snow on top of it, being able to see the rest of the world through the ice. You can swim around under other people and watch them walk around above you. How often do you get to see what the floor feels like? :P

But my favorite thing to do is to just stand on the ice, upside down, and walk around. You inflate your suit and your BC (bouyancy compensator) and it just holds you against the ice like gravity. It's awkward at first, but eventually your brain kind of flips, and it feels like you're actually just walking around right side up. Only there's water all above you. And then when you start walking, it's kind of like what it must have been like for the Apollo astronauts to walk on the moon. Gravity isn't quite right, and you tend to bounce a little higher and feel a little lighter than normal. You tend to actually forget that you're really upside down.

Then, it's kind of a mindflip to walk over to the hole you just came in, and look into it, and see other people standing completely opposite of the way you are, looking back down at you. And then you jump down into the hole, and your feet coming popping out onto the surface, and at that moment your brain realizes that you've been upside down the whole time, and just whoosh... you're back to normal. It's quite a rush.

But the fun doesn't stop there. You swim out as far as your tether will allow you to, get upside down again, and send the signal to your line tender, who then starts pulling you in as fast as they can. And there you are, upside down, under the ice, and you're skating towards the hole. If your line tender's good enough, you won't even crash into the hole. ;)

I have a few pictures of my first ice dive on my (really poorly made - and all but abandoned) website. Nothing from under the ice, unfortunately, and none of them are really very flattering, but it gives you an idea of some of the logistics involved with getting an ice dive together, and all of the team effort that goes into getting the hole cut and keeping the divers safe. You can check them out if you like. http://doof.webryders.com/ice_diving.htm
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Doof

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #12 on: March 07, 2003, 05:09:23 am »

Quote
If you ever do get a chance, look for agates on the bottom. The beaches are usually picked clean, but it would be tough to get all the ones laying below a few feet of water!


If I'm ever diving there, I will definitely keep my eye out. I love collecting little things like that on my dives. Sometimes I collect the weirdest stuff that I then have no idea what to do with. Like this one dive in the Ct. River... there are clay formations there that, because of the water flow, have come to look and feel a lot like rusty pieces of metal. When I first saw them, I thought they must be leftover metal scraps from something that were dumped there a long time ago. It wasn't until after I got some out of the water that it was explained to me what it was. A little elbow grease and the rust color came right off, leaving the familiar greyish color of the clay. It even sounds metallic when you bang two pieces together!

Quote
Hi Doof,
For the last twelve years, there has been a similar  steamboat on Lake Minnetonka here.  It was on the bottom for a long time, pulled up in 1980, and in service again.  It's quiet and beautiful as it passes me when I'm out sailing.


That's really cool. It's too bad it was converted over to an internal combustion... It would have been a lot of fun to take a ride on a steam ship... I'm not even sure if there are any left... Probably. I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to boats. My interest in them usually starts once they've sunk. :P
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JimH

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #13 on: March 07, 2003, 05:39:32 am »

No, it is still steam and really quiet.
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Doof

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #14 on: March 07, 2003, 06:43:10 am »

Is it? Even cooler. If I ever decide to travel west (so far all my travels have taken me south), I'll be sure to check that out. :)
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KingSparta

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Re: Thursday -- No build tonight
« Reply #15 on: March 07, 2003, 10:26:02 am »

Quote
It was on the bottom for a long time, pulled up in 1980

Not very comforting, knowing on what you're riding in sank once.

Hey Everybody, lets take a ride in the titanic.
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