Cheap tailbag for the FZ1

As you can see, It's not quite a pretty as some of the newer GIVI bags, but for less than $60.00, delivered to my door, mounting plate included it is a great deal. It is fully water proof, lockable, and mounts solidly to its mount and the bike.



JC Whitney offers this bag in two sizes, this one being the large. It's a tight fit, but I can fit two Shoei full face helmets, med and small, in and close the lid.


I have only two complaints. One was a decal on the lid that was an iron cross. Very easy to peal off. The second complaint is the ugly orange stripe in the front half of the bag. The reflector portion seen from the back doesn't look bad at all, but that orange stripe has to be painted black.

Tongariro Crossing

Tongariro National Park became New Zealand's first National Park on Sep. 23rd 1887 when a Maori chief donated the land to the people of New Zealand with the agreement that it would remain public property for all time. In 1990 it was listed as a World Heritage Site. The crossing is 10.5 miles with about 3000' of climbing. As it is a through hike, you have to arrange for transportation. We opted to take a bus from Taupo that dropped us off at the Mangatepopo trail head and picked us up 8 hours later at the Ketetahi trail head. At first I was a little stressed due to the fact that we had to go 17 kilometers (at that time I was still trying to remember the conversion so I wasn't sure how far that was), we weren't moving all that fast, and I was not too sure how well Kriss would do on the hike. It didn't take long though to realize that Kriss was doing fine and we would be OK with time. In the end we slowed down to kill time so that we wouldn't have to wait too long in the parking lot and we still finished in 7 hours.




Here you can almost see Mt. Ngauruhoe, the youngest of the three volcanoes in the park which formed a mere 2500 y.a. If you could see it better you may recognize it as Mt Doom from the Lord of the Rings movie. Mt. Ngauruhoe last erupted in 1975.



Red Crater was in my opinion the most aesthetically interesting feature of the hike. It is a scoria cone replete with iron ore, hence the color, that was formed 3000 y.a. The most recent activity in this crater was between 1855 & 1890.



This feature is a dike that formed underground and was then exposed as the crater eroded away.

These are know as the Emerald Lakes.

This is a basaltic lava flow.


In this photo you can see just how much traffic this trail gets. Although not immediately obvious, the ground behind Kriss is vertical. This was a trench dug by many years of hikers using the same trail.

This is one of several mountain valleys that the Track crosses.

Lichen growing on rocks.

Nearly every stream originated at a hot spring and often you would know of its presence in advance due to the steam.

For about the last mile the trail dips below the tree line for the first time and you get to experience a natural New Zealand forest with all of its exotic flora.

White Island

White Island is an active volcanic island that is located in the Bay of Plenty approx. 30 miles from the town of Whakatane (the fun part of the Maori language is that wh makes an f sound, therefore Whakatane is pronounced fuck-a-tonny). It takes about an hour and a half for the boat pictured below to get to the island.

Once we reached the island we all took turns piling into this inflatable that ferried us to the landing area.

After clambering onto the jumble of concrete blocks that is the landing dock we all meet up in small groups and the guide, surprisingly knowledgeable of the geology for a girl in her early twenties, proceeds to walk us around the island. White Island is shaped like a horseshoe with a crater rim that drops to sea level where the boat lands and there is only a slight elevation gain from there to the crater lake. The photo below was taken from the landing area looking toward the crater lake.

Because of the geological hazards of White Island the New Zealand government has restricted access to only four different guiding companies. Part of the agreement was not only to have limited group sizes, but they also insist that everyone wear a hard hat and at least carry a gas mask. They also pass out "lollies" (hard candy) because sucking on them helps to ease the scratchy throat caused by the sulfuric gas that pours out of fumaroles scattered throughout the island.

Where the sulfuric gas hits rock the sulfur precipitates out and crystals form.

One thing I learned on this trip is that ph levels can drop into negetive numbers. The ph level of the water in this lake is said to be -.5, pure acid.

Kriss is the one with the black tank top.

Here's some group shots to give scale.

The colors here are from minerals precipitating out of the water that periodically flows through here. Mostly sulfer and iron ore.

This is the remains of an old sulfer mining operation.

Sulpher mining on White Island began in 1885 and was finished a year later when the Tarawera eruption covered the island in a blanket of ash. It was feared that the elevated activity may mean that White Island was next. In 1898 mining resumed for four years producing about 1500 tons per year, then was closed down again until 1913.

In 1913 the island was purchased by a Canadian company and mining operations were once again started up. In September 1914 a section of the southern rim of the crater wall slumped, causing a massive lahar that wiped out all the buildings on the island as well as the men who were living there. This disaster halted production again until 1923 when the miners came up with the brilliant idea of making camp on the coast side of the crater rim thus affording themselves some protection from landslides/eruptions. 10 years later the company went bankrupt due to the depression and the island was declared a private scenic reserve in 1953.

New Zealand

Kriss and I had a great time in New Zealand. We were busy just about every waking moment. We did a few of the typical touristy things such as a "Maori cultural experience" and the Waitomo Caves, but for a geology student like myself, the best part was the fact that New Zealand is one of the most vocanicaly active areas of the world. What this means is that my wonderful wife and I spent a lot of time checking out volcanoes and their related formations. It is times like this that I really know I found the right woman for me. Not only did she not mind spending her vacation looking at stinky (sulpher) rocks, but she claims to have enjoyed it as much as I. Kriss has done an excellent job of covering our day to day activities on her blog http://krissjohnson.blogspot.com/. So instead of going over everything again, I am going to pick a few of our highlights and cover them in a little more datail. The first post will cover our trip to White Island which is one of the most active volcanic islands in the world. Then I will cover Tongoriro Crossing which is a 17km hike through a UNESCO World Heritage site that is the most volcanicaly active area in New Zealand. I also encountered more than 30 species of birds that I have never seen before and shot pictures of most of them. All together I took over 1100 pictures while in NZ and while I obviously can't post them all here, I will over time cover most of the best.

My summer project

For many years I have wanted to build a garden pond but being a renter it just wasn't feasible. Last year Kriss and I bought our first home and for the first time I can create some great features, pond, sauna, climbing wall, etc., and if and when I move again I will get some benefit instead of an ungrateful landlord. I have the climbing wall well under way and I am currently planning the sauna. The pond on the other hand has been my summer project, or as some have said, my summer obsession. For the site I chose a preexisting depression in the yard.



On the first day I used a level and spray paint to mark out the perimeter of the pond, then it was time to remove sod.



After quite a bit of digging, the liner was placed and filled with water.



This is the beginning of the first waterfall which was later torn down and rebuilt.



At this point you can see what was initially going to be the finished product.



Within weeks the pond was teeming with wildlife. Frogs, dragonflies, quite a variety of birds, and a couple of garter snakes moved into the waterfall and hatched their young.



This is the point where obsession starts to take hold. Just when I thought I was finished I came up with the brilliant idea of a second pond with a stream. Of coarse that also means a bridge to get to the other side.



This stream originally flowed into a sump that I built by burying a garbage can in the ground. The problem with the design was that if both ponds and the sump were full I would turn on the pump and the sump would be pumped dry before the water started to flow sufficiently. In other words the sump was too small. Rather than making a larger sump, it was much easier and more cost effective to build a third pond.



For about three weeks we had literally thousands of these little toads everywhere on our property.






This is the pond as it stands today. You can see the new waterfall that is being constructed in the background.



The addition of plants brings the whole project to life. I also have several goldfish and there were two Hypostomus Plecostomus until a Great Blue Heron decided he liked one of them more than I.






My thoughts for anyone who wants to build a pond: It is a lot of fun, creates a very relaxing environment, and can be done very economically if you do your own labor and collect your own materials. I have spent about $600.00 for the entire project and that was all for pumps, filters, and liner. I saved well over $1000.00 by collecting my own rock as opposed to buying it. I also saved a fortune in labor. To have this pond commercially constructed would cost nearly $20,000.00. The biggest warning I would give is that it can be addictive. I spent more of my summer working on this pond than climbing mountains. Anyone who knows me understands the implication of that statement. Another warning, part of the cost savings was due to the fact that I did nearly all this work by myself without any kind of machinery. This can be very back breaking work. Many of the rocks in the waterfall are in excess of 300 pounds and I placed every one of them by hand. It took a lot of time and planning, but if you use your head more than your back it is amazing what one person can accomplish.

OBSIDIAN (nature's glass)

Kriss and I decided to take a little extra time coming home from our trip to California, so I did a little searching and found a couple places that as a new geology student where very interesting to me, and I even managed to get Kriss a little excited about it. The first place is a rather geologically active area known as Newberry Caldera.
Here you can see a relatively young lava flow made up of obsidian grading to rhyolite. This lava flow was mostly homogenous so the obsidian and rhyolite have a nearly identical mineral composition. Actualy, the only difference between these two rocks is that the cooling was so rapid closer to the surface that the minerals had no time to crystalize and the end result is obsidian. Deeper within the flow the lava cooled much slower allowing time for crystylization which created the rhyolite.



Here you see the lava flow, the obsidian is the black and the grey is mostly pummice.



In this shot you can see the black obsidian layered with grey pummice.



This is the trail that winds across the lava flow with Paulina Lake in the background.



Here Kriss kneels next to a wall of obsidian along the trail.






It's amazing where life can sometimes crop up. This tree is growing out of about an inch of soil.

After leaving Newberry Caldera ,where it is illegal to pick up rock much less take it home, we dicided to go to Glass Buttes. This is probably the most aptly named mountain I have ever seen since it is actualy two buttes about two thousand feet tall, from the base, and made entirely of obsidian. There are two things that set it apart from Newberry, first there are many different types not just black, and secondly, it is perfectly leagal to collect. Unfortunately I was so busy collecting obsidian that I didn't take time to shoot many shots.



A scree field of Mahogany obsidian.

Wedding

On Friday, July 13 Kriss, myself, and several of our friends and family met at Lassen Volcanic National Park for our wedding on the summit.
Kriss at the trailhead.

Gabe was kind enough to pack a couple folding chairs up the mountain for Kriss' aunt and mother.

After two and a half miles and nearly 2000' of elevation gain everyone made it to the top.



This is Gabe surveilling the area for the elusive mountain goblin which is know to attack large groups on the summits of south Cascadian mountains.



This is my idea of a church.

Kriss' little sister performed her first wedding. Thaks Jess.








In the far background you can see Mt. Shasta and in the near background is Mt. Lassen's crater rim.

The ceremony was actually held on level ground about 40' below the summit. After the ceremony several of us climbed the remainder of the way to the top. In this photo we see Kevin on the summit looking down at the area where we held the ceremony.

Kriss nearing the summit.

Jessica on the summit

Gabe...need I say more?