Tales of an Aspergian Bus Driver

Syonyk's Guide to Winding Roads in the Ames, IA Area

For those who enjoy driving fast on winding roads (dirt or paved), the following may be of use.

Enjoy.

So, you live in Ames, or go to Iowa State. And you have a sports car. Iowa roads are really rather boring, aren't they? Long, straight, flat. Fortunately, there is hope. There are a few scattered winding roads in the area, and one particularly "loop of joy" that can be followed.

Some of the winding roads are paved. Some are gravel/dirt. Some people don't enjoy taking their cars on gravel, or ride a motorcycle (and aren't crazy enough to ride on gravel). Not a problem. It's entirely possible to avoid gravel completely.

However, if you drive something resembling a rally car, don't mind getting your car dirty, and want some nice winding dirt roads to travel on, there are options. The Dragoon Trail north of Boone is your road. Take Hwy 30 west to the 4 way stop (Story St.) and go north. After you clear Boone, continue following Dragoon Trail signs. You'll find some nice dirt roads. Once you clear the YMCA camp, and a small town, the road continues to be a winding rural dirt road with very little traffic or housing. There are some areas with steep drop-offs, so scouting the road out before driving it hard is a good idea.

For those who don't enjoy getting their cars filthy, or just prefer pavement, follow the Loop of Joy. Speeds listed are the suggested speed from the road warning signs, and not in any way my suggested speed.

This loop starts in Ames, though it could be started from elsewhere. Start by taking North Dakota Ave north. Past the railroad tracks it turns into a winding residential road with several good corners in it. The road is heavily wooded, and as a result is often damp and somewhat slick. The final corner at the north end is almost always slick or gritty, and should be taken at a lower speed than it might appear.

Once the road straightens out, you can either continue north, turn left at the T intersection, turn left on R38 (where the pavement ends), and continue south to Lincoln Way, or you can run down North Dakota again. When going south, be especially careful of the first corner. It's slicker than it appears, and is a perfect place to set up an accidental braking drift, or spin out - depending on your skill. The ditch will generally keep you from damaging anything, but it's not the easiest thing to get out of.

Regardless of how you get to Lincoln Way, go west. It eventually turns into Hwy 30. Continue west until you reach the 4 way stop in Boone. Turn left.

Follow signs for the Dragoon Trail. You'll make a right at a stop sign, and then continue along some high speed curves. Once you make a sweeping 45mph left with a large drop-off on the right, the fun starts. The speed limit gradually decreases as the corners get sharper, and it culminates in a steep S-curve 20mph uphill section. From here, you eventually reach a T intersection. Several options exist.

If you turn right, you enter the only gravel section of the Dragoon Trail on this loop. It involves 2 right angle turns, and several reasonably sharp S curves before rejoining paved road.

If you turn around, you can take the 20mph section as a downhill. The first corner is almost always wet, and is a completely blind corner. Going down it is significantly more hazardous than going up it.

If you turn left, you stay on pavement and approach the entrance to Ledges State Park. If the canyon trail is open, I highly suggest it. It's a one way road that makes a fairly steep winding descent into the canyon, followed by 3-4 stream crossings (4-6" of water normally). You exit the canyon run, turn left, and pick up the road you drove on previously, giving another shot at the 20mph uphill section.

If at the entrance to Ledges you turn right, you head out to 17. This is the suggested path for people who want to avoid the gravel segment. Turn right on 17, right on 270th St (right outside of Luther, with signs pointing to camps & such), and you'll rejoin the Dragoon Trail where the gravel section spits out.

Now you're on the Dragoon Trail again, having either come from the gravel or avoided it. The next section involves a number of 45mph curves and several nice hills. Some corners are sharper than they first appear. Eventually you'll come to the outside of Madrid. As always, following the speed limit in town is highly suggested. Follow the Dragoon Trail signs. You'll come to 17 and turn right. A mile or so later, you'll see another Dragoon Trail sign pointing left. Follow it.

The next segment is a winding highway with some 45mph curves and reasonably long straightaways. Be aware of your brakes, because this stretch is quite capable of causing brake fade on normal brakes if driven hard. There is a side road labeled with a 20mph winding road sign and a dead end sign. It's some fun 90 degree turns on gravel, but has residents who do not appreciate cars speeding down their road. You've been warned.

You'll cross a bridge, and the Dragoon Trail continues on straight into Polk City. It gets boring from here, so turn left right after the bridge. There's a parking lot on the right that can be used to allow your brakes to cool, if needed.

Continuing along the road, you'll see Hugg Drive just past the bridge. Continue going straight, and you enter a several mile stretch of park road. It's all 35mph with very few straight parts. There are multiple side roads, but I don't know if they actually go anywhere or are dead ends. This is a road you'll have to double back on, so drive accordingly. If someone sees you and decides you're going too fast, they just have to wait for you to come back out. At the end you reach a parking lot/turnaround, follow it around, and come back out the way you came in.

Now you can turn left on Hugg Drive. It's slightly under a mile of winding 30mph road. When you reach the stop sign, turning right will take you into Polk City to get gas, and turning left will lead you back towards Ames. To get back to Ames, follow the road (it had a few curves) until it crosses over a railroad track. Turn right at the flashing yellow warning light, and make the first left. You're now on R38, and if you follow it you will end up on South Dakota entering Ames from the south.

Enjoy, and don't get busted.

-=Russ=-

Why Mac laptops are better than Windows laptops

Having made this post on Arstechnica forums, I decided it would probably be a good thing to post here as well (given the ongoing debate).

The context was a thread asking "Will the [spiffy improved x86 chipset based] new Windows laptops finally get around to killing Powerbooks?" available here.

One thing Mac laptops do *really* well is talk to other Mac laptops. There may be some features like this on the Wintel side, but certainly not stock with Windows.

Some examples I can come up with off the top of my head that I don't believe exist on the Windows side (I may be wrong at this point, please correct me if I am):

Auto-switching Gigabit ports - I don't need to carry a crossover cable to direct connect between two computers - the network port will perform the crossover internally if needed. I believe some x86 laptops have this feature, but I don't believe many do. Also, gigabit is nice for high speed transfers.

Firewire Target Disk mode: Turn your laptop into a big external hard drive. Useful for doing repair work on a laptop, transferring large amounts of data back and forth (gigs upon gigs), and retrieving data if the mainboard has problems (target disk mode usually will still work).

Booting from Firewire drives: Apart from the geek factor of booting a Mac from an iPod, if the OS X install somehow gets FUBAR it's trivial to boot from another disk (and since the drivers are all included in the OS, even another Mac in target disk mode works - quite well).

Rendezvous/iChat & wireless: Out in the middle of nowhere, one laptop creates a wireless network, the other one connects, bring iChat online, say "Hi" to the other person, and transfer files around. To my knowledge, there is no parallel in Windows - you can create networks and join them, but you still have to use SMB shares or FTP. Not a problem for geek types, but still more steps, and iChat/Rendezvous is easy enough anyone can do it.

Wide range of screen brightnesses: Not a big deal, but it beats the 2-3 brightness levels I see on a lot of x86 laptops (some may be better at this, I really don't know).

Backlit keyboard: Probably present on some Windows laptops by now, but doing presentation work in dark rooms it is *very* useful.

Standard power adapters: Since the TiBooks (and I believe the toilet seat iBooks too, but I'm not positive on those), all the Apple laptops have used the exact same power adapter plug. The newer ones have the light band, but old adapters still work. This is a significant improvement over the "Widget of the day" x86 laptop power adapters. If you forget your Apple power adapter, the chances of someone else having one (at a conference or such) are significantly greater than someone having your particular x86 laptop power adapter.

Linux/BSD compatibility: Some of the more recent x86 chipsets have not been Linux friendly. The Centrino wireless support comes to mind - there's all sorts of interesting hacks to get it to work under Linux. Power management, speed stepping, display drivers, and assorted other things tend to cause problems on some x86 laptops (not all, but a lot have some sort of problem that's not trivial to fix). Many of the local Free Unix Group members have various types of Apple portable hardware, running some *nix. The hardware is standard enough that there are no real problems with it.

I've personally made use of all these features, and some others I'm sure I'm not remembering. They're mostly small things, but combined they add up to a functionality that I haven't found in the x86 laptop world.

-=Russ=-

FERRET ATTACK!

(Picture, for those on the RSS feed)

More photos available here.

Yes, I own a ferret now. Your shoes will never be the same again...

-=Russ=-

I guess "Driving in the storm" stories are in fashion now...

So, I'll throw mine in.

Left Chicago around 9:30 AM, headed to Ames. Illinois roads weren't great, but they weren't horrible either. They were well salted, and mostly just wet. Enter Iowa, and everything changed. My little FWD Subaru wagon was sliding all over, the tire tracks were domes of ice, and at one point my car was slipping it's tires in 5th gear at 45mph... at partial throttle. It was slick.

I ended up giving a ride to someone who was stranded at the Iowa 80 truckstop - their car had slid off the road in the process of trying to avoid someone else who went nearly sideways, and was quite stuck. They were going to DSM, so I gave them a ride (since I was headed that way anyway). It involved a lot of 40mph travel, a lot of countersteering, and a lot of prayer. It was also somewhat amusing, looking at a car going zipping by, commenting "They'll be in a ditch in 20 miles," and 15 miles later seeing them off the side of the road.

Ames was reached safely. I have no desire to repeat the driving experience. And, come the 14th, probably won't legally be able to for 6 months.

-=Russ=-

Well... I'm no longer everyone's favorite bus driver.

This will likely be the last "Bus Driving" entry, and the end of "Humorous bus stories from Russ." At least *new* bus stories from Russ.

I'm no longer a bus driver. Due to my driving record having a "Severe Speeding" violation and an "Upcoming suspension", it was decided that I was no longer worth having around.

Anyone know of places hiring?

... anyone even read this blog anymore?

-=Russ=-

Highway trips & lessons learned

I brought the Subaru back to IL today. It ran fine, and I learned a few things.

1. I need a tire inflator. I stop to help people change flat tires. Most people never fill the spare tire with air. They're usually flat.

2. I need a prybar (small and cheap is fine) to separate wheels from their hangers (van-style spare tires) when they've been rusted together for years.

3. Less than 84HP flywheel is a far cry from the 150+HP flywheel or so I'm used to.

4. Merging into the left lane from being stopped on the shoulder in a low powered vehicle is nearly impossible to do without pissing people off.

-=Russ=-

When Worlds Collide

The following was my living room on the afternoon/evening of the 1st.

(yes, there's a photo, for you RSS geeks)

That would be a radiator (for my Subaru), some keyboards, an RX-7 throttle body, and the TV computer. Plus some other stuff laying around.

-=Russ=-