Monthly Archives: July 2006

Big digger

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I got to see something you don’t find everyday while traveling north of Beulah the other day. A very large piece of equipment was making a slow, steady journey from one part of the Coteau mine to the other…what made it interesting was that it had to cross the highway. How does something so big, with enormous metal tracks, pull that off?

The first neat thing you should know is that this baby’s electric. Yes, that’s right…no engine. See that trailer being pulled behind it by the road grader? That’s a generator, a very large one at that…it’s kicking out enough DC current to drive that behemoth.

Now that’s a big extension cord! The operator of the grader gets to pull the generator just fast enough to keep up with the guy in front of him and maintain slack in the cable. Once they reach their destination at the other part of the mine, they’ll plug into a cable running back to the power plant. In the case of a “mine mouth” power plant such as this one, where the mine is located adjacent to the mine from which its coal is supplied, the power plant itself drives the diggers. That goes for those big draglines that you see from the highway as well as a smaller (yet still huge) digger like this one.

The section of road they cross is made of concrete, not asphalt; otherwise it wouldn’t survive something like this. Even so, they have big rubber mats that they pull across the road using a little skidsteer loader. I call it little because it isn’t even as tall as the track on that thing. See it down there in the foreground?

Anyway, they have a couple of trucks hold highway traffic from either direction, inch this thing across the road, and pull the mats back over to the side until they’re needed again. The whole process takes several minutes…a machine that large still moves very slowly.

I would have loved to have seen them take the big dragline crane across Highway 83 when they did that a while back…those don’t have tracks, they have giant feet that “walk” from one place to the next. Oh, and the cord is a lot bigger, too! They have a tractor dedicated just to tugging that cord around behind the dragline as it moves. Someday I’ll get pictures of that, too.

A promise should be kept

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This is a picture from 1948, when tribal chairman George Gillette wept after signing away the best of the reservation lands to the Corps of Engineers. They were paid a paltry sum for the land, denied mineral and shoreline rights, and promised a health care center that never materialized. Sounds consistent with our track record of keeping promises made with indigenous peoples, doesn’t it?

This picture has always stuck in my mind because it illustrates an important point: when we think of treaties broken before the ink was dry, or other consistent mistreatment of the Native American people, we tend to think of the US Cavalry dealing with people still living in tipis or earth lodges. As you can see, that isn’t so. My parents were alive when this last one happened…maybe some of you were as well.

I got the opportunity to work with Tex Hall again this week, who’s the chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes. I asked him about this health care center that was supposed to be built, and he indicated that Senator Dorgan actually pulled some appropriations strings to get the ball rolling. Like Chairman Hall told Senator Dorgan, this isn’t an appopriations priority…this is a promise. A promise made almost sixty years ago.

I can only think of a few ways in which I’m not proud of my country, and its broken promises are one of them. This is one that hopefully will be rectified in the near future. A promise should be kept.

Storm front on the move

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So there I was, encoding a DVD for a client well after hours. I heard a rumble outside and had to check it out. It was already time to get out of the chair to prevent my posterior becoming one with the upholstery, so I poked my head out the front of the building to find this menacing scene.

Of course, this storm seems to have skipped Bismarck just as the one a few days ago. At that time I was south of town in my truck getting hailed on in rain so heavy that traffic was stopping…yet the roads north of the Bismarck Airport were bone dry. Crazy, huh?

What I like most about this photo is that the power line towers look as if they’re lining up to brace against the assault of the storm.

Drowning my sorrows in fun

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Stacy left me this weekend…no, not for good, of course! She had family business out of state. It was very difficult to give her that last hug and kiss and watch her go thru those gates at the airport. So what did I do to cope? Everything!

While I missed my wife, I also saw an opportunity to “get it out of my system” and spend my every waking moment on bachelor-style activities. After all, I lived alone, except for the bird, for over ten years…marriage is quite an adjustment, no matter how happy we are.

So I rode a lot of mountain bike. I rode a lot of motorcycle. I played a lot of Xbox. I played some tennis, drove my little nitro RC trucks (see above), went stargazing until early Saturday morning, the whole works. Ah, to be a kid again.

One realization I had this week was that, although I really love doing all those things, there’s something I choose to do before all of them: be a husband. Marriage is when it’s time to make good on all that stuff you promised your girlfriend you’d do. And not begrudgingly so, either. Now that we’re married, my wife and I share some of those things that were so fun to do on my own. Some we don’t. But what it all comes down to is that a guy has to be a husband first…soon I’ll add “father” to that description as well. And when I get a few days to play around like this, it’ll be a nice vacation. And it’ll help keep my mind off missing my wife for a few minutes!

I should be under water

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…or treading it, at least. This picture was taken while I was standing in what used to be Lake Sakakawea. I actually walked over and touched those dry spillway gates…I remember water lapping over the top of them in the not-so-distant past. If memory serves me correctly, that’s over a forty foot difference.

Note the absence of Conrad, Dorgan, or Pomeroy. Note also the absence of any results of their hard fought battle (I mean, they ARE fighting for us…aren’t they?) for equity in Missouri River management between the northern states, who rely on its lakes for tourism, and the southern states, who rely on it for floating casinos and barges.

Yes, I know there’s a lot of talk about the barge industry…but that barge industry doesn’t account for a fraction of the combined financial interest of the northern states’ tourism and hospitality industries. But the riverboat casinos? They’ve got a little more dollars attached. I have a friend who, while he worked in the gaming industry, clued me in to that little tidbit when this debate first started raging a few years ago. I haven’t seen one mention of it in the newspapers.

The next time our congressional delegation start tooting their collective or individual horns about what they’ve done for the state, please invite them to come to Riverdale and play in the state’s largest sandbox.

The path I’ve chosen

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Well, at least the one I chose Sunday night…it’s the bike path above Pioneer Park, which had its heyday in the mid 1990s. That’s when it was developed and expanded to serve as the course for the Prairie Rose State Games mountain bike race. It’s one of three really nice mountain bike trails in Bismarck-Mandan, and I’ll highlight the other two down the road. This is where I tend to join the trail, just off the paved path above River Road. You can see this big pointed hill if you look down from the lookout point accessed from Burnt Boat Road.

This trail isn’t all grassland; it dips down into the trees numerous times. There are some nice drops and climbs in there, some old car bodies, and some welcome shade on a hundred degree day. There are a number of different possibilities on this path, winding all over the place.

Once you pop back up out of the trees there are a couple of loops along the hill, over by the Interstate, and then even back up the BSC side and around that area. I didn’t choose to do that part Sunday night due to time constraints. This trail overlooks some of Bismarck’s best river scenery. On much of the trail I was able to hear the live music from Merriwether’s.

There are some fun parts like this…don’t end up falling on your head and tumbling down to River Road! You have to look out in some places, because the city has closed certain parts of the trail to protect against erosion. Points like this can clearly be seen from River Road, although they don’t look nearly as serious from the bottom.

If you’re looking for a workout and have moderate mountain biking skills, hop on the trail above River Road…it’s a challenge! If you think it isn’t, do three laps sometime. That will change your mind.

Tower City

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No, not the town west of Fargo…the cluster of broadcast towers south of Mandan, just north of Huff Hills. Chasing the meteor shower and a few deer took me out there last night.

These towers include the local Cumulus FMs, KNDX (Fox), KBMY (ABC), KBME (PBS), KXMB (CBS), KFYR (NBC), and KYYY (Y-93). Most of them are on Tokach land, except for the KBMY tower. They can be clearly seen from Bismarck and much of Mandan, unless you live below some sort of hill.

Local viewers who don’t have cable are actually quite fortunate to have the tower situation set up in such a way. Guys like me who have satellite TV and use an off-air antenna to pick up the local stations can aim that antenna once and forget about it. You see, TV antennas are quite directional in nature…and if the towers for different stations were located all over the place, you’d have to rotate your antenna to optimize your signal from one station to the next. As it stands, I just bought a rooftop antenna for $20 at Menards and mounted it inside the attic of my house, facing towards “tower city,” and forgot about it.

Those flashing lights that cast such a nice glow up the tower sections are very specifically regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration. There are obstruction lights in groups of three and flashing beacons in regular intervals. In addition to transmitter operation telemetry and other things such as building security alarms, the tower lights are monitored remotely from the control point. Should the beacons of a tower go out, the FAA must be notified; flying into a tower without lights on it would really ruin someone’s day. But if you fly into a tower or guy-wire out here, you’re asking to; they’re all grouped together.

While out here, I saw something I don’t recall ever seeing before: a meteor streaking down out of the sky so slowly, so close to the ground, that I could actually see the wisps of flame coming off it before it disintegrated in a flash. It was amazing! There were lots of shooting stars last night, so I’ll probably be out chasing more tonight.

Midnight

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When one’s wife unexpectedly says, “Let’s hop in the truck and just drive,” one had better jump on the opportunity. I did tonight, and one of the meandering routes we took had us playing around on the soggy county roads south of Mandan.

At one point the clouds broke, the stars poked out, and I made one stop to point the camera back at Bismarck. The city lights bounce off the clouds so nicely, and can be seen from many miles away. By playing with the white balance on my camera I was able to get a pretty unusual color bounce.

Thank God it’s Raining (TGIR)

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We caught this double rainbow tonight thanks to my friend Erica, whose pounding on the front door awoke me from a nap that had gotten out of hand. This rain has been GREAT – a few days of constant soaking would be such a blessing right now, but we’ll take what we can get. This may be too late for many small-grain crops, but we’ll see. Even those of us with lots of outdoor hobbies are willing to set them aside for a while if we could just get some extended rain!

Wednesday night sunset

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This was the sunset from east of Bismarck…it’s how a tractor views the sun setting. It’s not every day a person gets a tractor’s point of view…or has an experience like the photo brought.

I parked on an approach east of Bismarck and walked to the fence line to get this photo. I’m a big proponent of property owners’ rights, so I don’t go anyplace I’m not invited…that’s why most of my “Fallen Farm” photos are taken from a distance or at an angle. After I got this photo and some others with an old threshing machine in the background, I ran back to the truck…literally. Despite the mostly clear sky, it was sprinkling on me and my camera!

At that point there was southbound traffic stuck at the train crossing on 66th Street, waiting for a train to pass. I backed out of the approach onto 66th, drove up the road a ways, then stopped on the shoulder to get an even wider shot featuring the silhouettes of some Bismarck landmarks in the distance. I got back in the truck to continue to my destination: a friend’s house, where I was doing one of those “will fix computers for Mountain Dew” calls. I saw a couple of cars following me, but didn’t think much of it.

I was well into the computer when the sheriff’s deputies knocked on the door, asking who owned the truck in the driveway. They explained to me that someone had seen me off-roading on their property. I told them what really happened, and they explained that a dog belonging to someone on 66th Street had just been shot, and they thought I might be responsible! I showed them what I had been up to, and it was all cleared up right away…we figured that they’d been stuck on the other side of the train and didn’t see that I was only parked on the side of the road. All’s well that ends well, I guess.