Haleakala Visitor Center

Haleakala Visitor Center
Originally uploaded by RichFuel

llz=20.759711, -156.246512

Night before our expedition

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Despite only getting 8 hours of sleep last night, I felt fine most of the day. Other than a near-flat tire, which was quickly repaired, it was a good day.

We had lunch at my folks house, and then Gary and I went shopping for some fresh goods and some impromptu hiking sticks. Gary had to replace his entire supply of eggs because each and every one was broken, despite being in a hard plastic egg carrier. Tells you how our bags were treated!

After that the kids played and I packed, repacked, repacked again, and generally fiddled with my gear all day.

Now we're all in bed, and I think I'm the last one awake. In the back
Of my mind are questions about myself, my training, our planning,.... Last time we did this we were 18 & 19. How different will it be at 42 & 43? Did we train enough? The only way to know, is to go.

Pushing aside those thoughts, we are hoping for beautiful, clear skies, a gentle breeze, and abundant water on the trip.

I will do my best to share the adventure, but of course access to the Internet may not be reliable. If can, I will.

Getting sleepy now as I type this. Our adventure begins in the morning.

Good night.

Fwd: Uh oh....

Fwd: Uh oh....
Originally uploaded by RichFuel

> llz=20.892805, -156.438779

> Are cars supposed to hiss?
>

Civilian MREs

Civilian MREs
Originally uploaded by RichFuel

Our first day in the crater will be a long long walk, and when we
arrive at the cabin we are going to be able to enjoy a hot meal right
away, courtesy these Meals Ready To Eat (MRE). You just add saltwater
(included) and a chemical reaction begins the makes a hot meal ready
in 10 minutes! Click the link to see videos of it at work and get
more information.

This box contained 10 meals and cost $72.

2:30am...Done packing.

So much happened today but it us going to have to wait. So tired.
Packed our 3 backpacks. Brad's is 23lbs, Bry's is 24lbs., and mine is
only 39lbs out the door. I'm sure it will be more by the time we get
to the trail, but I'm encouraged. Right on target.

Got the MREs today and tested the solar panels with the iPhone.
Worked like a charm!

More tomorrow. The adventure begins after a 2 hour nap. Goodnight.

Peace, Love and Weighty Plans,

Rich

(Sent from my iPhone. Please forgive brevity or typos.)

Motion X GPS app

Motion X GPS app
Originally uploaded by RichFuel

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Up late preparing

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Stayed up very late tonight making lists and gathering materials. Spent much of tonight updating our first aid kit. It will be top notch for this trip! Also made a long shopping list for Friday (payday). Em's gonna help me out with some of the non technical shopping tomorrow. I've still got quite a few loose ends to tie up. I'd show you pictures, but I've got to get to bed. The final rush has begun!

Power To Spare!!

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Power To Spare!!
Originally uploaded by RichFuel

Hi Everyone!

I have great friends! I went to my buddy Hank (KH6HAK) here at work
to try to help me think through a power solution so I could keep my
iPhone on all day as a GPS tracker. He surprised me instead my
offering to let me use this Innergy Power IP15B which is rated at 15
watts at 10 volts in direct sunlight. I tested it with my ham radio
and it worked great! I still need to test it with my iPhone but I am
missing my 12v iPhone charging cable, and it looks like I'll have to
pick up a new one tomorrow.

Without having to worry about power during the day, I can leave the
iPhone on to track our GPS progress, upload photos, navigate, and just
be the happy hiking geek that I want to be.

I am so looking forward to this trip, but there is still so much to
do! Tomorrow is payday, and I have a lot of last minute outfitting to
gather up. I'll be visiting Gary tonight and we're going to have a
backpack packing party.

Peace, Live and Preparation,

Rich

Utterli Audioblogging test

Mobile post sent by Richfuel using Utterli. Replies. mp3

New Member at Small Group

New Member at Small Group
Originally uploaded by RichFuel

Position: llz=21.437011, -158.023267, 18

We have a great time at small group every week, but this week Vance
got to meet our newest member Koa!

iPhone to Flickr to Blog

iphone to Flickr to Blog
Originally uploaded by RichFuel
Testing if I can just email a photo to Flickr and have it post to my
blog with position data. So far no luck. Das Why Hard!

I'm a Geoblogger Now!

Position: llz=21.444505, -158.024262, 18

I seem to have it working, but now the challenge is to become a Mobile GeoBlogger. It really isn't too hard to do from a computer attached to the internet, but I want to post GeoTagged blogs from my iPhone in the middle of Haleakala crater. That is my next challenge! This blog post is my first experiment with that.

More Geotagging Testing

This is a geotagged blog entry. Theoretically I can search for it by location. We'll give it a shot. Testing continues. The tag code looks like this:

meta name="geo.placename" content="KITV, Honolulu, HI 96814, USA"

meta name="geo.position" content="21.290389;-157.840000"

meta name="geo.region" content=""

meta name="ICBM" content="21.290389, -157.840000"

But the real code is embedded in the HTML of this post. I derived this meta-tag from this really cool website:

http://mygeoposition.com/

It's a little late to be working on all of this, and I hear cell phone coverage in the crater is sketchy at best, but the geek inside me is driven to find a solution to have a hike map with all the blogs and photos in position where they occurred on the hike, along with a track of our actual route. Might be a bit too much to accomplish without ruining the "outdoors" experience. If I could at least record the data for later assemblage, that might work better.

Peace, Love and Cyber-hiking

Rich

48 Hour Weather Data for Haleakala

Looks like the high will be around 52 (12 C) and the low around 40 (6 C). Very high humidity means likelihood of fog, as evidenced in the webcam, even at noon. Not much wind.

Manana Ridge Trail hike

BlurbBit

Today we did another 'warm up hike' along the Manana Ridge Trail. It was beautiful! I can't believe it has taken me this long to enjoy this trail! Gorgeous. I would love to take it all the way to the end someday!

We invited Hayden, Bradley's friend from school to join us. We had all our packs and such on because we were in training for Haleakala, but Hayden just carried a bottle of watter. Irt was kind of funny actually! He always was tallking and energetic, while at time we were struggling up a steep incline. Ha! Glad to have him along.

I wanted to test post a few things from the hike.

All the photos can be seen on my Flickr page here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fueldepot/sets/72157622338297755/

Peace Love and Long Walks,

Rich

Testing TrailGuru

Giving this app/website combo a try.

Preparation continues

Hi Gang,

I picked up what will be Bradley's backpack from Gary on Tuesday. I have to go through another sizing session with the boys to get their packs fitting correctly.

We will be buying our tickets on Friday. Gary is doing almost all of the trip with frequent flyer miles. We have been watching the ticket prices closely, and unfortunately they've started going up. It should be our last large expense.

I'm trying some new software for tracking the hike. Looking at TrailGuru now. Seems to be a fairly mature product. Here are some samples from this morning's walk:

And here's another:

Hmm.. Doesn't work . I was expecting a graph of my elevation versus pace. This is exactly the kind of problem I want to solve now, rather than when I am really counting on it!

That's it for now. Stay tuned!

Geotagged map of Haleakala

For the hike, when I am able to post photos, they will appear on a map like this one, but I'll constrain it to only be my photos. Every photo will have a GPS geotag with it and so hopefully you can see where every single picture was taken. I've never played with this kind of tech before so I still have to do some more testing. Stay tuned.

Haleakala Map with Geotagged photos

Not Impressed

Not impressed with the hike tracking software. It shows promise, but under-delivers. I think I may be inclined to stick with my fitness walk-run software and Flickr for geotagged photos.

Here is a test link to a Flickr Map.

http://www.flickr.com/map?&fLat=21.4382&fLon=-158.0169&zl=3&order_by=recent

Gotta Run!

Rich

Our adventure will be here

Here is an example of an Accuterra map.