Gary Pearce
Back to Maui. We flew into Kahalui on Saturday and hit Cheesburger for dinner. Sunday saw another walk into Haleaka (but this time the spur trail to walk the perimeter of a crater). Monday was a quest for Julia's banana bread and a walk to the Nakalele blowhole, then a quick walk through Lahina, because the road around the north side of West Maui was closed for repair.
updated 9 years ago
I do narrate into the camera a fair amount, and it turns out that my voice is pretty much lost in the roar on some shots. It me, not you.
'Tomorrow' we'll visit an 'ice field' and go walk on a glacier. Day after that, a bit more Banff, and the drive to Calgary (followed by COVID!!)
This is the second of two days on the train, with this run from the overnight stop in Kamloops to the terminus in Banff, Alberta. We stayed there one more day for some excursions, but that's the next video. Here we get into the more serious part of the Canadian Rockies.
The day finally arrives! TRAIN DAY 1 (of 2). We depart Vancouver and hit the rails to the overnight stop in Kamloops, British Columbia. Most of the trip is alongside the Frasier River and Thompson River, and the terrain transitions from green to dry and brown.
We're still in Vancouver, not on the train yet. But this is out first organized tour. First stop, Grouse Mountain and a very crammed gondola ride to a hill overlooking the city where we see a couple of bears, close up. Then a stop at the Capilano Suspension Bridge and Nature Preserve.
Tomorrow we get on the train and leave Vancouver behind.
Today we rented a car to drive up to the Whistler ski resort and take the Gondola to the top. Turns out we rented a Tesla Model Y, which was cool, but it came with a bit of a learning curve.
We finally got it running. Along the way is the town of Squamish, with the 'Sea to Sky' Gondola and park. And we got Chimney Cakes.
Finally, Whistler. Whistler is a busy ski resort in winter, and it's repurposed itself to a major bicycle 'terrain park'. The bikes go up on the chair lifts and in the Gondolas. Finally, there's a 'Peak to Peak' Gondola that takes you... from one peak to another.
Day 2 saw us rent some e-bikes and ride around a big park adjacent to Vancouver, then along the shoreline around the city. Vancouver is a very bike-friendly city. Many areas have dedicated bike lanes, separated from traffic by more than the paint stripe found in other cities. Pedestrians always have their own path or sidewalk, but they need frequent reminders that they are straying onto a bike path.
We ended up going 23 miles, with frequent breaks to take pictures. And the e-bikes did a lot of the work, so it' didn't seem that long. But they haven't invented e-seats (or e-butts), so there is still a limiting factor.
'Tomorrow' (in Day 3) we rent a Tesla (not on purpose... oh, hey, from e-bikes to an e-car!) and drive to the ski resort of Whistler to ride some gondolas and ski lifts. That is, after we figure out how to 'start' the Tesla.
In this 'Day 1 - Raw Footage' video, Cyndi and I fly from Charlotte to Vancouver BC in preparation for our train trip on the Rocky Mountaineer. After arriving, we walk to a 'Tourist Zone' island not far from the hotel for dinner, and ride a water taxi back to the mainland. Then we walk back to the hotel. That's it!
I call this 'raw video' It's not quite. I strung every shot from my little video camera (and a few from my Pixel 6 Pro phone) into the Premiere Pro timeline, in the order they were shot. I cleaned up transitions, cut out bad shots and totally redundant shots, and trimmed some heads and tails. I added a few other graphics, but it's still mostly just sequential shots as they came out of the camera. I did some narration directly into the camera that is sometimes hard to hear over a noisy background. Eventually I'll edit this and the other 12 days of the trip into a single program.
Some details about the trip:
In late July 2022, Cyndi and I took a vacation trip that had been promoted in a meeting at our neighborhood, in Fort Mill SC. The trip was a two-day rail excursion though the Canadian Rockies on the Rocky Mountaineer train, with extra days and activities before and after the train segment.
When you think of extended train travel, you probably think of sleeper cars and spending all the time on the train. Rocky Mountaineer is different. It's not 'travel' per se - it's sightseeing. The cars are designed with big windows, and the top tier of their excursion has more-or-less 'domed' cars with seating on the top level, dining on the bottom level and excellent visibility. The lower tier has single-level cars.
There is no 'sleeper car'. You don't spend the night on the train, rolling past the scenery in the dark. At the mid-point, the train stops, you are bussed to a hotel for the night, and back again for the second day. Again, it's sightseeing, not 'travel'.
Our particular trip started in Vancouver BC. They have a few other routes. The overnight stop was in Kamloops BC, and the train finished in Banff BC, where we stayed for two days of bus tours.
Banff doesn't have a big airport, so on the final day we were bussed to Calgary for our flight back to Charlotte.
We ended our trip with a wimper, not a bang, as Cyndi developed COVID (the trip, the busses and the excursions had plenty of opportunity to be Super-Spreaders). I was able to fly home, but Cyndi had to quarantine until her symptoms abated. But I'm getting way ahead of the story.
This video is just Day 1 - getting to Vancouver. Days 2 and 3 and 4 were activities and excursions in and around Vancouver. We came in early, and Days 2 and 3 were our own plans. Day 4 was a RM provided excursion. Stay tuned.
Mike Ramsey KD4OKR was Field Day chairman in 1993, with the event moving back to Umstead Park.
The activity celebrated the 60th Anniversary of Field Day. Tim Buehlmann W4TIM (N4IQA at the time) and Bob Keys NA4G set up a bit of a museum from their extensive collection of boat anchors, and even had a working station operating using WWII era equipment. Both Tim and Bob are now Silent Keys, as are several of the other hams you'll see in this video.
One of those is my friend Jeff Wittich AC4ZO (SK). Jeff died from brain and lung cancer last year. As I was loading this video into the computer (real-time playback from a VHS deck), I saw one of the first conversations I had with Jeff. We went on to become best friends, collaborating on many more videos for RARS and my HamRadioNow podcast.
If your memory is triggered by someone or something you see in the video, perhaps you'll share it in a comment.
73, Gary K4AAQ (KN4AQ)
And again, you'll see a few hams who are current club members, many more who have moved or just moved on, and several who have become Silent Keys. You may have memories triggered by seeing old friends on the video. Feel free to share in the comments.
This is the last of the two 'Review' videos I produced for RARS. They were a lot of work, and I moved on to do other things with the club. I still shot some video here and there, and I'll publish them as find them and have time. 73, Gary K4AAQ (KN4AQ)
RARS, the Raleigh NC Amateur Radio Society, is the largest ham radio club in the state. Here in 2022, membership is in the 300s. In 1991, it was even higher, around 500. And those hams did a lot of stuff.
I moved to Raleigh in 1990 and resumed my career as a video editor, working for a small production company. And I had an 'Video 8' 8mm camcorder. So looking around at this busy, active club, I figured that I could contribute by documenting some of the things they did on video, and making a 'Year in Review' tape at the end of the year. I'm not sure that's what I had in mind when I first started recording club activity, but that's how it ended up.
I did this for two years - 1991 and 1992. This is the first, the 1991 version.
Many of the hams you'll see on this video have moved on, and more than a few have passed on - Silent Keys. Only a few are still in the club. You can help find our diaspora by sharing this video. I think they'll be tickled to see it again, or maybe for the first time.
I managed to stay behind the camera for the entire video, but you'll get a quick glimpse of the very first time I saw Cyndi - now my wife - in the process of becoming KD4ACW. You'll see her a second time at the Operation Santa Clause segment at the end of the video. 73, Gary K4AAQ (KN4AQ)
If you're a RARS member, or more likely in the RARS diaspora, you might recognize some of the many hams who appear in the video. Only a few are still in the club, and like Bob, more than a few have passed away. Some of the younger ones are now middle aged or even senior citizens! I was club President in '98/'99, but I have moved away and only visit now and then.
About the video: I had just moved to Raleigh in January 1990 to start a new job with a video editing company. My ham activity had been fairly fallow during the 80's, but I was jumping back in with the RARS club. I shot the video on my 8mm consumer video camera, and edited it on 3/4" video at my new company. I made a bunch of VHS copies for club members. This video comes from one of those VHS copies. Even if I had the 3/4" master, I'd be hard pressed to find anyone with a playback deck to copy it from (at least not without spending a lot of money). So the quality of the video was never that great. As it was, I had to dust off a VHS deck from my shelves and hope it worked, and the tape would play as I digitized it. Fortunately, everything worked as smoothly as it had before I 'decommissioned' my own 'antique' video hardware.
Interesting to note that while consumer VHS and 8mm video cameras had been available for about a decade at this point, they weren't exactly common. And editing capability for consumers was rudimentary at best. I was using the company's 'low-end' edit room, where I usually did pre-edits to send on to the main edit room. This project was finished in that low-end room. I could do rudimentary titles, but I couldn't do dissolves or other transitions, so it's all 'cuts'.
73, Gary K4AAQ (formerly KN4AQ)
This year (2021) we went back with our friends Jeff and Bobbie Wittich. Jeff is dying of brain cancer (sucks), with maybe a couple of years to live. His mobility is already limited by the cancer and the therapy that's prolonging his life. We asked him if there were some places he'd like to see while he had time, and the KCS was at the top of his list.
So we all flew down to Orlando and drove over to the Cape for a two day visit. We expected them to be short days because Jeff doesn't have a lot of stamina. We maximized his energy reserve by getting a wheelchair. At home, he doesn't use one, but is beginning to use a 'rollator' for stability while walking. And he surprised us - and probably himself - by hanging in there from opening to closing both days, not to mention the travel days before and after, getting through the airport (security was interesting). I visited them the day after we returned, and he was doing well - no heavy price for all that activity.
The KCS has seen some changes since our 2012 visit. This trip came while much of the country was 'reopening' from Covid-19 restrictions. Being a Federal facility, the KCS was still mandating masks indoors and in lines outside. Most of the facilities were open except the bus tours to the Vehicle Assembly Building and launch pads (you can see those in our 2012 video).
In 2012, we saw the Space Shuttle Atlantis in the VAB, getting ready to be installed in a new building then under constructions. This year, that building was complete, and the Atlantis display and much more was way more than I expected. it was awesome. There were a couple new rockets in the Rocket Garden, and I think the Mars building was new.
The busses were running to the Apollo/Saturn V center. That big building is located a few miles from the main Visitor Center. You'll see how wheelchair patients are accommodated on the bus. In 2012, I was the one in a wheelchair because a hernia limited my ability to walk long distances, but I was able to get on and off the bus on my own.
The Apollo/Saturn V Center is an homage to NASA's history. Much of the rest of the Visitor Center exhibits are focused on the future, with a return to the Moon (as a stopping-off point) and Mars as near-term goals. NASA acknowledges their partnership with commercial companies often. I think I see a strong Public Relations effort there, though actually the whole Visitor Center is a PR effort writ large.
Our second day in London, and the last day of this epic adventure.
We stopped at the Tower of London (pretty short tower), the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, and a quick stroll on the London Bridge. So now I've been on *both* London Bridges - the one in London, and the older one in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
We ride the high speed train from Paris to London on Saturday, then tour a whole lot of London on Sunday. Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. Interiors at Kensington Palace. Lunch at Harrod's. Walk-by's at Picadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. Ride on the London Eye at sunset.
These are purely home movies, lightly edited.
Our second and final day in Paris. We hit the two biggies on Wednesday (Eifel Tower, Arc de Triumph). Today was a few lesser known spots, followed by another A-List site, the Notre Dame Cathedral (3 years before the fire).
Another barely edited home movie - just the raw footage lined up shot after shot, with a little trimming to remove the whip-pans when I put the camera down before pressing the stop button, and one fairly long stretch on the Paris Metro subway where I never did stop. But credit is due: I put in about 4 hours just reviewing and trimming for this 40 minute video.
Barely edited home movie
Just like the others, this is the barely edited, raw footage of Day 10 of our 2016 Rhein River Cruise on Ama Waterways. Basically a home movie. There is some on-camera narration, but don't expect a travel documentary. That would be too much work.
This was the last day of the cruise. The AmaCerto arrived in port overnight. We had a short tour of the town of Basel, Switzerland - a mostly commerce and industrial city, but it does have an old-world tourist zone.
Then we boarded the TGV (High Speed) train for the trip to Paris. We spent a couple of days in Paris, and another couple days in London following the cruise. While Ama Waterways does have off-river excursions, this was not part of their package. We were on our own after leaving the ship.
This is the barely edited 'home movie' footage. Gary does a little on-the-scene narration now and then, and sometimes you can get bits and pieces of the Tour Guide's description (we made no effort to capture it or have it make sense), but mostly it's just the video.
Here in 2020, on our 22nd Anniversary, I decided to just grab an "I do" excerpt from our wedding video for Facebook. I never put the whole thing on YouTube because it had lots of copyrighted music, and the video was never intended to be anything but a VHS keepsake for us and family. Back in 1998, YouTube wasn't even a lab project.
As I looked at the original edit, I realized that there was a lot of time with no music, so I edited around the music to come up with this version. The only song I had to leave in was Joe Cocker's "You Are So Beautiful", the song we danced our first dance to. I'm hoping they'll just 'monetize' it and not take the video down or silence the track.
Anyone is welcome to use, link, embed, download, edit and re-use this video for promoting Amateur Radio.
- Gary KN4AQ
On February 13, 2012, Cyndi and I and our friend Cliff Broughton visited the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Armed with twin video cameras, Cliff and I both shot footage of all the cool stuff we were seeing, and I put it together into this 'home movie'.
A few things have changed since then at the Space Center. A real space shuttle is on display. It's time to go back.
You'll see me getting wheeled around in a wheelchair. I was 'coming down' with a hernia, but Cliff and I were scheduled to launch the HamRadioNow show at the Orlando HamCation. I toughed it out for the weekend hamfest (Cliff hauled the camera gear most of the time), but I was hurting by Monday.
Those lava flows are not a 'tourist attraction' - at least not yet. At some point the state and the USGS may establish a viewing area, formal or informal (you'll see a previous one in this video), but for now, the flows aren't stable enough for either safety or picking a spot to watch them. Plus 'Fissure 8', the current active spot, is in the middle of a neighborhood. So access is restricted to residents and officials. We did see 'red sky at night' - the glow from the lava is easy to see.
Also, Volcanoes National Park is completely closed (we checked). But there was fun to be had. We'll visit Uncle Robers's Wednesday Farmer's Market, a bit of Mauna Kea, and we did some family stuff that's not on the video.
This year (2018), we got a (somewhat) earlier start, and we made it (spoiler alert). This is our documentary of that hike, and an amazing sunset.
As we note, this was a day spent mostly in the mist - little visibility of that amazing terrain. The 2017 conditions were crystal clear, so go look there, too:
youtube.com/watch?v=Xh5144yxw9U&t=1644s
Want another view (and somewhat better blowhole action)?
youtu.be/46ytItvbhqE?t=25m3s - our 2017 visit
Cyndi had a business conference in Amsterdam. Afterward, she took the train to Berlin while I (Gary) flew from Raleigh to London, then on to Berlin. We met our friend Rodney, an American ex-pat living in Paris (who also took the train).
We took two different walking tours, one on Friday and another on Saturday, and walk we did.
My 'narration' included several mistakes, so no one will hire me as Tour Guide. One big one is at 10:24 at a memorial site to Jews murdered in the Holocaust. I says "six thousand". it was more like six million (he knew that... it was cold).
Also, my narration is neither continuous nor complete. Again, 'not a tour guide'. What you'll hear from our actual guides is hit and miss. I wasn't trying to 'record the tour'. They make their living giving these tours (and they're very good at it). Ask Cyndi for contact info.
Got a question about what you see? Ask us (mark the time). Maybe we'll have an answer.
The Berlin Wall dominated my scant education about Berlin. it came and went during my lifetime. If you seek it out, it's a significant presence, but as you walk around the city, it is not.
Out second tour guide, Manfred, pointed out that much of the former East Berlin looks a little 'nicer' than West, not the drab, Communist inspired residue you might expect. Germany has poured billions of Euros into new construction in the East. We didn't get into the countryside or any other towns in our three days, so we're just talking Berlin, and within a few miles of the Wall. Some online research noted that employment, property values, and family wealth in the East still lag the west, 30+ years after the Reunification.
This is another 'edited in the camera' home movie. That means short shots with almost no post-production editing. I did catch one spot where I left the camera running and recorded a few minutes of shoes walking. After ascertaining that was NOT what I intended, I cut it out. But I didn't review the entire 'reel,' so it may have happened elsewhere.
32:45 And a hike into Pololu valley (that's a rerun - we do this every time we come to Hawaii).
We recommend this group!
fhvnp.org
Then we headed down to the end of Chain of Craters Road just to see what's changed. To our surprise (and Cyndi's disappointment), a LOT had changed. Some day I'll pull up video of previous walks there and compare. (Yeah, I'll probably never do that, but we remember...).
43:22 Finally, a quick stop at the Jagger viewing area after dark for a look at the active lava at Halema’uma’u. You'll see a lot of red glow and smoke, but only a few splashes of lava rise above the edge of the little mini-crater. It's still pretty cool. Or hot.
I shoot vacation video that's mostly 'edited in the camera' - short shots, a little narration directly to the camera, and that's what you see here. I trimmed about a second from the head and tail of most shots to remove camera shake from pushing the stop/start button and an annoying audio pop. And I balanced the audio level for a few loud shots. Otherwise, you're seeing just what I shot, in the order I shot it. Relax, we're on vacation!


