Buds, Beaches, Bots, and Everything in Between

Sorry it’s been so long.  January came and, with it, some familiar faces.  Ben and Amanda and not-so-baby Ryson made the ridiculously long hop o’er the Pacific and landed here in sunny Auckland.  I’m not sure if these trips are ever without drama, but they certainly had more than their fair share.  They were bumped from flights a few times and had to make a detour through Sydney, but they eventually arrived and, truth be told, it was fabulous to see them.  Airplanes have made our world smaller and skype allows virtual viewing of loved ones, but to live for a long time in a place where you _never_ really see any of the people who are near and dear is a special kind of loneliness.   And now I have the sense that this kind of loneliness will ever be with me.  To be at ‘home’ in Canada will be to be apart from New Zealand and I know I will long for the friends here and for the special beauty of the oceans and countryside.

The arrival of our good friends officially kicked off a couple of weeks of holiday for us and we had a whirlwind of places to go and things to see.  After a short recovery in Auckland for the Dees family, we headed North to the Bay of Islands and the small town of Okiato.  Ryson wasn’t quite ready for the Kiwi pretzel roads and did his best to fill the back seat of their rental car with the former contents of his stomach.  We eventually arrived, though, and had a nice stay in a couple of rooms attached to a small estate near the water.  The kids were excited that there was also a small pool but we didn’t use it much because the weather wouldn’t cooperate.  (That little spot also has the distinction of being where I first learned the big news…) Things did clear before we left, and we made it out to the wharf to see some of the tall ships that were in the bay that weekend.

From there, we headed back to Auckland and had the fun of spending the better part of an hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic thanks to the Matakana traffic light.  Seriously, who puts a traffic light in the middle of a busy highway?  After a few years of multi-hour queues (ours wasn’t too bad, apparently), wouldn’t you think to put in an under-or-overpass?  The whole situation and the fact that it goes on that way for weeks at the peak of summer every year seems a little crazy to me.

We were correspondingly late getting back to Auckland and decided to dodge into Devonport for some fish and chips by the water.  I also got to see Benjamin Dees, International Pigeon Chaser, in action.  He’s pretty good but I mostly appreciate the role-model effect; watching the kids burn off energy in a totally harmless, clean, non-destructive, and pointless endeavour is somehow warming to a father’s heart.

The next morning, we went to Piha beach…  you may have heard of it.  It’s the most dangerous beach in New Zealand.  So wild and woolly that it has its own TV show and, trust me, it’s no Baywatch (did anyone ever watch that show?  I’ve never seen it but I still feel like it has a significant place in the pop culture of my 20s).  Piha Beach Rescue is a reality TV show about the regular occurrences of drownings and near-drownings at this famous & infamous surf spot.  The waves and the rips are not to be trifled with.  Ben and I set off to climb Lion rock which has set its enormous bulk in the middle of the beach where it towers above the waves and people below.  Unfortunately, the path up ended at about halfway.  It was barricaded and fairly apparent that some portion further up had previously fallen away.  Ben scampered around and went a bit higher while I gamely followed.  And now I have a confession to make: I’m afraid of heights.  I’ve been wondering whether I was, or not, and that time outside the bounds with Ben has confirmed it for me.  It’s not the kind of fear that terrifies or incapacitates me.  And it’s not a fear that comes just from being up high.  Rather, it’s a mortal fear of the danger of height.  I’m fine with heights when there are safety barriers or when I’m harnessed in or even when there’s a handrail or rope to hang onto.  Take away all safety structures, though, and place me a few feet away from a precipice and I am very conscious of the finality that would follow a slip.  And when I say precipice, I mean an edge of terra firma beyond which there is nothing but sky and the only land you can see is far away and far below.  And the interesting thing for me is that it doesn’t seem to be an irrational fear; quite the opposite, my mind calculates it out as being highly rational.  But I can’t deny that I would never have crab-walked down while grabbing roots and branches if the ledge had only been 4 feet off the ground.  And I can guarantee that I wouldn’t fall in that situation, either…  so maybe it’s not quite rational.  But it is likely to keep me a bit safer, I suppose.

After our abbreviated climb, we came back down and joined the girls and the kids playing in the water and the tide pools near the rocks.  We found a great spot where water would rush in to about the height of Everett’s knees.  It would hang around for 30 seconds or so and then the sea would draw it back out with such force that you would sink right into the sand where you were standing.  We found a starfish and I caught a couple of small burrowing crabs and the kids loved it.

That afternoon, we packed up and flew off to Wellington.  In a bid to save money, I had booked a minivan from a very small rental company and had then invested a fair bit of time trying to make sure the van would be at the airport when we arrived.  I hadn’t anticipated Jetstar’s efficiency, though, and we had about a 10 minute wait with our bags before the Aluminum Oven final arrived; a 20 year old Toyota minivan with only one sliding door and lazy air conditioning.  But, it carried all 7 of us and all our gear around for the next 6 days and the price was right, so I don’t think we can really complain (but it did earn the name we gave it).

Anyhow, we had a couple of nights in Wellington in a fabulous two-level apartment above the shops of a cool little market community (kind of like Westboro in Ottawa).  We spent a morning at the National Museum trading off time with the kids so that we could actually read and absorb a bit of the content.  After that, we went for a walk along the waterfront and we found a staircase to nowhere (almost as exciting as an escalator to nowhere).   It went back and forth and up a couple of flights before stopping in mid-air.  Below it was nothing except for a large hole in the deck we were walking on.  And, at the bottom of that, was the ocean.  Ben was all for it and I told him he was crazy.  I wasn’t dressed for it at all and I would only be a big, soaking, sopping mess afterward.   It did look like fun, though, and my arm is pretty rubbery when it comes to jumping into water on a warm day.  So, I emptied my pockets and walked straight up the stairs and off the end (didn’t want to lose my momentum or have to think about it too much)…  The water was fabulous (at least temperature-wise; best not to think about how dirty it was) and the kids haven’t stopped talking about crazy Daddy and Uncle Ben for the last several months.

Leaving Wellington, we drove the Aluminum Oven onto the ferry and set sail for the South Island.  It was a beautiful day and we had fabulous views as the ferry came up Queen Charlotte Sound into Picton.  We then headed West toward Nelson and took the scenic route along the coast.  Once again, New Zealand has done a fabulous job of winding a ribbon of road along the most indirect terrain you can imagine.  How many hairpin turns can you pack into a kilometre of road?  I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if NZ holds the record.  The views were amazing, though, and the three of us most prone to carsickness (Ben, Ryson, and me) all managed to keep our lunches down.  So, hooray!  The one great regret of the day was that we never stopped to take pictures.  We had thought we would come back the same way but then discovered that we could take all straight roads back and still arrive at the same time (but cover twice the distance)…  so we let happy tummies trump photos.

The end point of this trip was Riwaka and we arrived there to a nice big house with a trampoline in the front yard and a chicken run against the fence.  The next day, we set out for an Abel Tasman adventure.  We took a water taxi along the coast and saw split-apple rock before spending some time seal-spotting. 

Eventually, we arrived at the start of our planned 3 hour walk that would take us through beautiful forest, along stunning coastline, and over a long rope bridge before arriving at a beach where we would be picked up by another water taxi.  Such a hike is a bit daunting with kids in tow, but they did really well.   Annalise walked pretty well a whole 5ish kilometres by herself, but needed Mommy and Uncle Ben to carry her for most of the remaining 2.  Everett rode on my back and was reasonably content for most of it.  The sights, companionship, and conversation were pretty great and it was a really good day.

The next day we were hit by rain and spent most of it inside wishing it would go away…  Before the kids drove us crazy, though, we hatched a plan to get in the car and drive along the coast back in the Nelson direction.  I had read about the Rabbit island ferry and figured it might be the thing to do in the rain.  When we arrived at the Ferry spot, though, it was shut down due to weather.  Nonetheless, there were still a couple of shops open and we browsed for a bit before, wonders of wonders, the skies cleared.  We went down to the water and spent the next hour or so throwing rocks.  Everett was in his glory.  We decided to have supper there and watched many people jump off the pier into the rising tide.  My rubber arm once again provided weak resistance to Ben’s enthusiasm and we again took to the water while I wondered why on Earth I didn’t just wear a swimsuit all the time.  Again, the water was great and it was a blast jumping off into the swiftly moving tidal flow.

All too soon, our travels drew to a close and we made our way back first to Wellington and then to Auckland (the big news didn’t have much impact on our travels, thankfully).  I’m sorry to say that we were highly unsocial on the last night Ben, Amanda, and Ryson were in Auckland.  We left them busily packing to go and see ‘The Hobbit’ in 3D.  I had read nothing and seen nothing about it going in (that is to say that I had seen and read nothing about the movie; I read the book many years ago and remember thinking that I liked it better than the Lord of the Rings as far as reading entertainment goes)…  And so I presumed that the movie was the beginning and the end of the Hobbit’s tale (after all, it’s a fairly small book).  So, you can imagine my consternation as we were still nowhere near the dragon after 2 hours of movie.  And then even greater consternation when the movie stopped mid-story… I honestly had no idea!  Crazy!  But I suppose they have to milk it for all it’s worth.  I didn’t mind it too much, but I don’t think Sheri’s a fan and I do have to say that they overstretch plausibility a bit too much for my liking.  Ah well, I’m very glad that I got to see NZ’s biggest recent movie in its home environment.

And so we finally said goodbye to dear friends after having a fabulous time together in one of the world’s most fabulous spots.  We parted with plans for a Corkery campfire in July but I now know, with regret, that won’t happen.  Ben has taken a job in Calgary and they will all leave Ottawa long before we return.  ‘Tis sad, but c’est la vie, non?

Rested and replenished with sun and fun, I was all set to return to my lab.  Things were starting to heat up as my new airframe (100% designed by me) was almost ready.  Plus, the control circuit board was back from the manufacturer and was being assembled by Jian (who designs my circuit boards and provides technical assistance on anything I need).  I think I said last time that I was hoping to be flying by the end of January.  That was definitely ambitious.  I didn’t even have all the parts assembled by then.  And when I finally did have everything together, the fun of testing a new circuit board running an unfamiliar operating system (Angstrom Linux – taken from the OpenEmbedded Linux stream and somewhat tailored to run on our gumstix processor) began.  For anyone who has never done it, I’m sure that lab debugging of a new system must seem like it takes far longer than it should.  I mean, I just had to test all of the usb ports and peripherals, make sure all of the uart’s were working, test the adc channels (including the ones on the connected i2c interface device), develop a spi protocol to communicate with the pressure sensor, figure out how to properly thread the motor controller serial communication, test the primary position and orientation sensor, calibrate the motor controllers, setup the wifi and Bluetooth networking, test the gps antenna, …  how long could it possibly take?  Well, quite a while…  and once I had done all of that, I was ready to start working on the flight software and begin the tuning of the system parameters.  I am happy to say, though, that I was only a month off.  By the end of February, Jumbo QBot (he weighs in at about 5 pounds and spans about 3 feet from rotor tip to rotor tip) had left the ground.

 

March was then the marathon effort to move toward autonomous flight.  I desperately wanted to let go of the controls and let my ‘robot’ fly on its own.  After all, I didn’t come here just to develop a remote control helicopter (although, with humility, that is much more of a feat than I previously realized).  And so, my stretch goal has always been autonomous flight; at least automatic position hold (latitude, longitude, altitude) but hopefully full autonomous takeoff and landing as well.  I was beset by issues.   For example,

·         The first time I tried to fly it outside (which I need to do for gps lock), it flipped over instantly; that’s something it’s never done indoor.  Having fixed that problem, I could hardly hold its position and the wind nearly blew it into a building.  I had to land it hard and bent all of its landing gear.

·         I did extensive gps testing and kept getting random position jumps that would make the robot a bit squirrely.

·         I tried logging data directly to the flash disk and experienced a huge lag hit that flipped my bot and destroyed my first propeller.

·         The next week, my wireless communication link froze and my program responded by flipping over and running the propellers hard into the wooden decking; one was still going full speed when I got to it and pulled the battery.  That was 4 more propellers down.

My poor wife has had to live with me through the ups and downs (“I want it all! The terrifying lows! The dizzying highs! The creamy middles!”), from dejection to elation (sometimes within a few hours of one another).  Finally, I got altitude hold working indoor (it uses air pressure and doesn’t need gps lock).  That was a big step forward.  Last week, I was finally ready to do more outdoor testing.  So, Jian, Loulin (my thesis advisor), and I booked a University car and headed out together.

My Jumbo QBot was brilliant.  He took to the air and was holding steady right off the bat.  There was a breeze, but I bravely engaged latitude lock…. And he held!  He was fighting the breeze all on his own… it was working so well… and then he crashed and burned.  Literally, unfortunately.  One of the motor controllers actually caught fire!  That was really crummy! (!!!)  So, five minutes after arrival, we packed up.  I spent the noon hour madly building up and calibrating a new motor control.  I got it installed and did a quick flight test; it all looked good.  So, we piled back into our car and headed back to the field.  The first flight lasted 30 seconds and I lost connection with one of the motors.  I should have stopped there, but I rebooted and got it working again.  The next flight lasted 20 seconds and my robot crashed and destroyed another propeller… this time we found a problem in the motor controller cable; one of the connector pins was loose.  With that fixed and a new propeller installed, I was ready to fly again (having now used my last clockwise prop).

Last Saturday, April 6, 2013, we took Jumbo QBot to the park.  Sheri started out on camera as I tested altitude, latitude, and longitude independently.  Rowan and Sarah joined us and Rowan picked up the camera.  I flew it up and engaged full position hold… And it worked!  Hooray!!  But Rowan didn’t catch me letting go of the controller.  So, we had to try it again.  And it worked again!!!!  (I’m not using exclamation marks spuriously.  It’s pretty exciting!)  Then we goofed around a bit and flew it up to 17 meters and then threw an iPhone into it to get some inflight video.

That was really fabulous, but I now wanted to make it fly even better and to see if I could get it to take off and land on its own.  More problems ensued, but finally yesterday (which was Wednesday, April 10^th as I type this), Jian and I got out to the park and we tested and flew, tested and flew.  Jumbo QBot went up to about 25 meters at one point.  And the pinnacle of the day was that he took off on his own, flew up to 8 meters, hovered, and then slowly descended before bouncing on the ground a few time and finally landing!  Ultimate success!  …. And now I want him to fly just a little bit better and farther…  it’s so hard to stop now that it’s so exciting!

But, my time is up.  I have 6 weeks in which to write a 30000 word thesis.  That’s a tall order… this blog post is just getting squeezed in before I switch to technical writing mode.  So, the next time you hear from me, it’ll all be done…  for better or for worse.

When I haven’t been in the lab or the field, we have continued to travel around.  The summer here was absolutely incredible.  I have had several Kiwis tell me that this was the best summer of the last 20+ years.  Beautifully warm and dry, it was a tourist’s dream; unfortunately, the tourist’s dream is the farmer’s nightmare and drought conditions were officially declared and farmer bailouts announced by the government.  For us, though, we couldn’t have asked for better and we filled our weekends with hikes, waterfalls, caves and beaches.  One of my favourite beaches for just swimming and playing with the kids was Long Bay on the north side of Auckland.  A lot of Auckland’s beaches are full of crushed shells and floating crud (at least near the shore), but this one is perfect smooth white sand washed by clear water that doesn’t get deep too quickly (or too slowly) and that had fun whitecaps rolling in.  Poor Everett loved it to bits, but his small body mass cools quickly (fun whitecaps come with wind) and he started turning blue and shaking like a leaf.  For those who don’t know little E, he has a bit of a volatile personality; he desperately wanted to be in the water, but hated that he was cold… and the result was a shivering, screaming little boy that simply could’t have his cake and eat it, too.  And our attempts at explanation somehow failed to assuage his frustration.  Mercifully, Long Bay has a nice big playground and we retired there for food and cosier play.

We did eventually find the ideal solution for Everett: a hot water beach!  As the name suggests, this is a beach where you can find hot water and it’s the perfect thing for little ones that get chilled before they’ve had enough.  The one we went to is on the east side of the North Island partway up the Coromandel Peninsula.  We managed to append ourselves for a couple of nights to Rowan and Sarah’s vacation trip to Pauanui.  That’s a neat little community with a significant population of truly wealthy people; it boasts an airstrip surrounded by houses where the owners park their planes right outside the door.  And there were lots of cool planes parked around; notable were a biplane and several WWII-style warbirds.  One morning, we went for a walk past the airstrip and saw some aircraft lining up to take off.  3 of the warbirds roared down the runway in formation and left the ground directly opposite us at a distance of only about 50 feet away.  Pretty cool!  But I digress…  we trucked off to the famous hot water beach on a sunny Saturday and found it absolutely overrun with a mass of people.  We entered the fray and I ran around for a while digging holes and trying to find some hot water.  Eventually we clued in that all of the hot water was where the people were jammed closest together; no room for us.  But, the moon was on our side and was busy pulling the water back, so I eventually picked a spot right in front of someone else at the edge of the water and started digging and building walls.  There I stood, shovelling madly, locked in battle against the sea.  It lashed out and knocked down my walls a couple of times, but the moon continued on my side and I eventually stood a foot deep in a nice little pool of toasty water.  Rowan tagged in and finished the battle and we found ourselves with a good little tub, big enough for us and the kids.  And they absolutely loved it.  How fun to sit in the water and play in the sand and remain nice and warm for as long as you like?!  Pretty fabulous.

On another weekend, we decided to check out Whatipu.  We had determined to go for a walk and I did some quick searching that said this was a place almost entirely disconnected from civilization but still only a 45 minute drive from Auckland.  It boasted sea caves and a variety of different walks.  Sadly, I didn’t take much note of the walk descriptions as I presumed that local signage would be sufficient to direct us.  You’d think that after the better part of a year in New Zealand, I would know better.  Even the drive to get there suggested that this spot wasn’t at the top of any public works agenda; once again I was glad that Buster has all-wheel drive.  We got there, though, and I thought I had some understanding of what the signs said, but I had in mind that it was an easy 45 minute walk to the ruins of the pier from which they had once sent timber harvested from the coastal forest.  It wasn’t long, though, before what was obviously the main trail turned upward.  20 minutes later, there was no denying that this was anything but ‘easy’.  I reckoned (Kiwis (and Aussies, it seems) prefer ‘reckon’ to ‘think’ or ‘figure’ for most situations) that we were nearing the end of the uphill since a pier must be at sea level and we were now pretty high (great views, though).  And still the uphill continued.  20 minutes later, we continued to ascend and I was getting frustrated, Everett was getting mad (okay, I maybe was a bit, too), and Annalise and Sheri were getting sore feet from their slip-on shoes.   Sheri and the kids took a break while I jogged ahead to assess the situation.  5 minutes further up, the trail finally levelled out.  So, I retrieved the rest of the family and we carried on.  Our effort was finally rewarded (an hour or so in), but not with a pier; rather, with a cliff looking over an open valley and the sea below.  And we were high!  (Google maps suggests around 240m.)  Pretty stunning, but not what we had intended.  At least the return trip was much less gruelling.

Back at sea level, we took the 10 minute track over to the sea caves and those were pretty fun as well.  All in all, it was a great day, but we would have been much happier if we had known what we were in for at the outset.  As it was, Sheri’s poor feet suffered the worst and she rubbed one toe raw, then managed to grind a bunch of fine dirt into it.  By the next day, it was clearly infected and she set off to a clinic once the kids were abed for the night.  A week of antibiotics was a bit of a nightmare (enter the big news) for Sheri as the ones prescribed had significant eating restrictions.  And showering without getting your foot wet also seems to be a bit of a trick.  She persevered, though, and her foot cleared up fairly quickly.

The main adventure for us at Easter was finding a ham.  We invited several people over and wanted to do things a bit more Canadian-traditional, but ham is not a common Easter food over here (lamb is the thing).  I eventually had to settle for a fully cooked one that we heated up and glazed (with Maple syrup, of course) for supper.  It was actually quite yummy and we had a houseful to share it; what more could be asked for?

Easter Monday we set our sights on Karangahake Gorge.  Our new American friends, Andy and Catherine (here for at least 5 years with the Navigators) let us ride with them as we followed old (well, I suppose, less-new) Kiwi friends, Scott and Sarah, to the gorge.  At one point, a moderately successful gold mining company had operated in that area and the natural beauty of the river and the cliffs is mixed with the legacy of human industry; mining shafts cut through the rock (and are now home to glow worms), paths are carved along the rock walls cradling the river, and foundational ruins are all that remain of buildings that once covered the hillsides.  I’ve never been anywhere that let you walk as far into abandoned mining shafts as we managed at Karangahake; pretty neat for me but a bit scary for the kids.  After lunch, we followed the path of the former rail line through a 1 km tunnel.  That’s a long way for a walking tunnel!  Made more so for me as I was carrying Everett and he fell asleep halfway through…  You try walking for half a kilometre in the near dark with a 28 pound sack of potatoes hanging around your neck and you’ll have some idea of what the experience was like.  And on top of that, I’ve watched too many Roadrunner shows and I kept having the sensation that a train was about to come barrelling toward me even though that was clearly impossible.  Arriving back at our cars, we made our way into Waihi to reward ourselves with some artisan ice cream at the restaurant of Sarah’s Uncle.  All in all, it was another great day of amazing views (I’ve inherited some of my father’s wit, so I would say they were gorge-ous!), good friendships, exercise and conversation.

Last weekend, we made a trip on our own down to Hamilton for the ‘Balloons over Waikato’ festival.   We went specifically for the grand ‘Night Glow’ finale that boasted lit up Hot Air balloons and fireworks.  There was a small air show with a group of acrobatic airplanes performing stunts with smoke trails in the sky.  There was also a small midway and Everett had his first amusement park rides.  He was a fan of riding in the car on the merry-go-round but really did _not_ like the spinning tea cup even though Mommy was right beside him.  Once the rides were over, we grabbed some mini donuts (mini donuts! Mmm…) and set up our picnic blanket in good view of the balloons as darkness, ever so slowly, fell (note: tired, over-stimulated kids (/Daddies) hopped up on sugary donuts would generally prefer quicker sunsets).  At last, amidst blasts of fire from huge burners ringing the balloon area, we reached the countdown!  10…9… …etc… 1… 0!!!!  And… nothing.  The balloons sat there.  They were all inflated, which was cool, and they would blast their burners to keep themselves upright… but they never left the ground.  I assumed there was some issue that they were sorting out but after 15 minutes, we did another countdown and then they all deflated.  Apparently it’s too dangerous to take off at night in the middle of a crowd, so they don’t.  The night glow is just about glowing… not flying.  I didn’t know that, but now I do.  Still kinda neat, I suppose, but I wanted to see liftoff.  To curb the disappointment, though, the fireworks started.  Neither Annalise nor Everett had ever seen fireworks live before.  Big Sister loved it!  Little Brother was terrified and wrapped himself around Mommy with all the strength he could muster.  You’d never know it the next morning, though, because he couldn’t stop talking about seeing the hot air balloons and the fireworks.  Like so many things in life, what’s scary one moment becomes an exciting tale ever after…

And that pretty well catches us up (and all in (almost) less than 5000 words!).  You’ve probably guessed the big news by now.   Four heartbeats left Canada in April 2012, 5 will come back in June 2013.  Sheri is pregnant (!) and due early September (because September in our families doesn’t have enough significant dates already).  Our personal raise-a-Reader campaign will take it up another notch.

The days are now going by far too quickly and our happiness to be returning home is mixed with a longing for more time with our good friends here.  I know this for certain: we will miss New Zealand sorely.  But it will be good to be home.

p.s. For those curious about our travel plans, the broad strokes are as follows: We will leave Auckland at the end of May.  We will travel South for a couple of weeks, hopefully getting as far as Dunedin before springing back to depart Christchurch on June 14.  We then land in Edmonton and will spend a week in Alberta before heading East to the great province of Manitoba.  After a few weeks of annoying my family around there, we’ll fly back to Ottawa and expect to be back on Corkery before the middle of July.