AIRMUX TEST VANCOUVER <>NANAIMO
FIELD REPORT, Nanaimo Site
In attendance: Mike B, Matthew A, Deborah M, Andy A, Cornelius E, the landowner and a bumblebee.
Regrets: shade, webcam driver, lake, port-a-potty.
This new volunteer enthusiastically picked up Matthew at 4:45am and headed to Horseshoe Bay for the 6:20am ferry due to a predicted 3 sailing wait. Cheerful idle conversation was attempted but quickly became futile when this volunteer realized that Matthew’s mind was ‘hibernating’ and his screensaver would be blank until adequate coffee was consumed.
An uneventful but visually stunning ferry trip ensued, putting us in Nanaimo at just after 8am. We carefully evaluated several sites for biological refueling, and settled upon a quaint independent restaurant somewhere on a street in Nanaimo. The tomato juice was great, but the rest of the meal was rather inedible.
With some time on our hands, Matthew suggested that we check out possible future sites, so we drove to God-knows-where and hiked around, while he muttered to himself incessantly.
With time a-wastin’ and the hour of truth approaching, we picked up Mike B, his very cool battery supply thingy he got at Canadian Tire, the full-length mirror from his bedroom, various cords and adaptors and headed to the very official site of somebody’s future house; a dusty rock-covered lot in a new residential subdivision. The gentlemen collaborated diligently on site setup issues while Sisyphus here unloaded the gear, set up the chairs, got out the cooler of food and creativity-sustaining beverages and generally worked her tail off.
Due to copious amounts of dust, we spread the gear out on a blanket, assembled the dish, fought with the much-needed shade from a soccer umbrella, and began connecting cables to all sorts of things. Recollection has it that we turned the thing on, and it pretty much started beeping and was connected within minutes of our initial attempt. There were; however, several disparaging remarks about my laptop’s operating system and stupid inexpensive webcams, but the sandwiches were a hit.
It was at precisely this point when the day began to pick up with a visit from Cornelius E, a shirtless elderly German fellow who was picking up garbage and bottles from the surrounding lots with his self-fashioned fishing rod-hook thingy. As fellow novices to the technology, we engaged in light-hearted conversation about the origin of Cornelius’ surname, the beautiful weather, and why young people don’t play outside anymore. As he was leaving he looked thoughtfully at the dish and remarked: “I guess that’s how you kids are doing things nowadays; setting up the TV before you even build the house?”
The Muxes were ridiculously easy to align, and began communicating seamlessly with throughput of up to 5 point something-or-other, and signal strength of -69 & -67… which Matthew says is pretty good. There was some tweaking involved via bizarre numerical cell phone conversations, but for the most part, everything was a success. There appeared to be some horse-ing around taking place at the Cypress site as seen via webcam, but we were nothing but professional on our end.
Late afternoon approached unexpectedly, and we procrastinated terribly about re-packing the car. A near fist-fight occurred when reimbursement of some equipment was discussed, but mediation quickly diffused the situation. An unexpected visit from the future home-owner completed the afternoon, and discussion was had about how to approach him for setting up a link permanently. Ultimately, he drove away before we could pitch our undoubtedly successful idea to him. Maybe a t-shirt would do it, says Mike.
With the car again loaded, we sought a suitable venue for dinner and debriefing, but not before I dropped my shoe in Mike’s toilet and drove over our new sign (not to worry, nothing to see here….) During dinner, ardent discussion was had about how to recruit the two very intelligent-looking young ladies at the next table as volunteers. This apparently is my new role as a volunteer in the application approval process. Side note: Matthew would still be at the restaurant pining over his seafood chowder if it were not for the quick-thinking of Mike and I in changing the subject to BCWNS asset allocation.
We arrived on home turf sometime after midnight, exhausted and dusty but with an acute sense of triumph. So basically, the stuff worked. Someone will fill you in on the details pertaining specifically to the technical aspects of the test, and this rookie wishes to thank everyone for their hard work and dedication to the project.
