Old Quito: The Cure for Altitude Sickness

Feb. 17th 2012

I popped out of bed starving and ready to get some food in me. Cary rolled out wondering what the hell was wrong with her. We made our way downstairs and as we had breakfast the effects of altitude sickness took hold of Cary. After politely excusing herself from the table, Cary rushed back upstairs to eject what little she had already eaten. She allowed me to eat the rest of her meal, which in addition to 3 cups of Luis’ fabulous coffee, made me all right with the world. Cary demanded a ‘pharmacia’ to get some ‘ibuprofeno’ for her headache, so we hobbled on down to the local drug store for provisions before moving on toward the attractions of Old Town Quito.

The Churches

We made our way first to the Plaza Grande as Luis had suggested. When we arrived the Iglesia de San Agustin had just opened, so we paid the nominal fee and went inside. The church grounds feature the room where the declaration of the independence of Quito was signed and a small museum featuring local Catholic artwork, much of it dating from the 17th and 18th century. Of special note is the wooden remains of the figure that used to adorn the dome. Sorry folks, few pictures here as ‘photografia es prohibitada’ in the churches.

We left San Agustin and headed for another church, El Sagrario, situated on the South end of Plaza Grande just past Quito’s Cathedral. The sanctuary of Agustin and Sagrario are very similar, though Sagraria is much larger. The Sagrario is more richly adorned than Agustin, and feels more active in terms of parishioners.

Exiting the Sagrario we found ourselves directly across from the Ciudad Municipal. It looked surprisingly modern inside, so we stepped in to check it out. We found ourselves immersed in the modern day educational lives of young Ecuadorians. In the central hall there is a library of books translated into Spanish, rebound from earlier editions, on subjects ranging from Physics to Computer Science. We wandered around for a while viewing various art galleries and verandas, before exiting.

As we stepped out onto the street a parade of Carnival celebrators was passing by. A small marching band accompanied by dancing residents dressed in traditional garb, the parade marched on carrying the banner of their troop. The celebrators ran around spraying a colored soap, which is a bit like silly string, on spectators. Cary and I were gawking and naturally made easy targets. I was blasted furiously but it was all in jest. After the parade had marched away Cary perused the fabric and yarns marts nearby. We wandered the streets for a few more hours, down the main stretch of the Ave Agostos de 24th.

Cary had finally acclimated to the altitude and the light breakfast had caught up to her, so we went in search of some lunch. We made our way to La Ronda, a rejuvenated area of town filled with restaurants and art galleries. We stepped into one of the nearby restaurants and had a traditional lunch. I ordered a fritada, fried pork chunks. It’s a bit like carnitas in an American Mexican restaurant, served with mote and toasted corn. Mote is a boiled white corn, each kernel about the size of a thumb. The toasted corn tastes a bit like corn nuts. Together they make for a unique side dish. We split a Pilsener, the local beer, and headed out for the Panecillo.

The Panecillo

The Panecillo is a hill in the middle of Quito, that divides the city into Northern and Southern halves. It features a statue of the Madonna trouncing a chained dragon. It offers a fantastic view of the entire city, especially if you climb the stairs inside the statue and walk out onto the veranda. The name Panecillo means “little piece of bread”, reflected by the round shape of the hill.

We made two attempts to reach the Panecillo. Our city map pointed us in a direction that took us around the hill before ascending a side street and up a few switchbacks. On our way a local stopped his car, rolled down the window, and politely cautioned us to be careful up ahead; their were thieves about. We thanked him and promptly turned around. The map showed a few ways to get their so we decided another way might be best. Cary suggested we just get a cab but I refused. I wanted to walk the hill.

We met a similar fate on our second attempt. Near the base of a hill is a long stair case, which seemed to be the most direct route up the little piece of bread right to the top. We began to ascend (much to Cary’s chagrin), before being stopped by a group who informed us that unless we were traveling with a larger crowd, this wasn’t the safest way to go. We turned around and walked with them back to the base of the hill, passing a very obvious sign indication to gringos that the way was not safe. It stated bluntly

Caution Tourists

Robery Zone

Do Not walk

This Street

Danger

I shrugged while Cary scolded me for being so reckless.

Finally, near the base, we flagged a cab and paid the $3 for a ride to the top. We took in the view, climbed the statue, and descended the little piece of bread safely in our cab.

The Basilica

Daylight was in short supply so we took off for our last destination for the day, the basilica. We had saved it for last because we were told you can climb all the way to the top of the tower for a fantastic view of the city. We figured we ought to spend some time walking around the city and acclimating to the altitude before climbing higher.

The Basilica del Voto Nacional was commissioned in the late 1800’s and like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. remains unfinished to this day. Wikipedia says that locals believe the world will end when the church is completed, but none of them mentioned it to us. Finished or not, it is the most beautiful sight in the city.

The caretakers of the Basilica were clearly going through their end of day rounds, but we had a little more than an hour before they closed, so we made our way around climbing various belfries and towers, and taking in the city from the top. The climbs, up ladders made of rebar with “mesh reinforcement” couldn’t possibly pass inspection in America, but oh well, “When In Rome”. Braving the clearly unsafe ascents was well worth it however, a the vistas of the city were better here than at the Panecillo.

After climbing we made our way to ground level and into the sanctuary itself. The enormous sanctuary was completely unlit, and I imagined this is what most medieval churches must have felt like. To round out the unfinished look, the once colored panes in the stained-glass panels have been replaced with clear glass. We roamed around as the last visitors inside, peeked inside the much small inner sanctuary (which is off limits to tourists), before an attendant let us out onto the streets again. This is the only church we visited that allowed photography inside.

The day had come to a close so we cleaned up, grabbed a quick dinner at a restaurant near Jumbo, and took a cab to the New City. We stepped into the Ghoz Bar, a Swiss-owned 80′s themed bar. We grabbed a few more Pilseners, played a round of foosball and billiards, then caught a cab back to Jumbo. Tomorrow we would rise early for a trip to Otovalo and the northern side of the country with Luis.

Center of the Earth: Coming in Hot

Feb 16th 2012

"We’re coming in kinda hot, aren’t we?"

"Uhh, yeah"

The little display embedded in the seat in front of me indicated Time remaining to destination: 25 min. I glanced up seconds later and it read 19. Moments prior the captain had indicated that we shouldn’t be concerned with the woman lying in the aisle, and that she was well taken care of. He kindly asked that we stay seated while they rush her off the plane after we land. He didn’t mention we’d be landing almost an hour ahead of schedule.

"The way Quito is situated at altitude, in the valley, they have to be very careful when they land"

Our neighbor on the plane, a native of Quito had struck up a conversation to take our minds off of the dicey landing we were about to make. He picked a brilliant ice-breaker. We moved on quickly to topics ranging from work-life balance and former jobs, but mostly he focused on recommendations for things to see in Ecuador. We were grateful for the suggestions and the conversation, and hardly noticed as the plane dove from cruising altitude and roughly touched down. It raced down the runway in the rain much longer that it should have, and when we came to a complete stop, the cabin erupted with applause.

On our way out of the plane, a passenger asked the obviously harried pilot how much runway he had left. 3000 feet. We would later find out that we almost landed in Panama instead of Quito, Ecuador to get the woman in the aisle off the plane. Luckily the passenger in front of her was a doctor, and took good care of her while we sped towards our real destination. We got off the plane and headed for the taxi stands, unsure of whether or not our hearts were beating too quickly from the altitude or the landing.

A ten minute taxi ride later and we were at our Hotel. It would be a mistake to call it a hotel of course, we weren’t staying at the Marriot. Cary found a place called Jumbo Lodging, a highly rated bed and breakfast style lodging in Quito’s Old Town. Despite its name, Jumbo has four rooms, a kitchen and a common area, which is very similar to the havelis we stayed in while touring India. The rooms are brightly painted, open to the street below, and feature few unnecessary adornments. There isn’t a TV in the place (though wifi is available). Luis runs Jumbo with his wife and daughter, and is an extremely knowledgeable native of Quito with an endless supply of suggestions. This next part is very important. Luis makes the best cup of coffee I have ever had in a hotel anywhere. It turns out that he has his own coffee and chocolate bean farm, which is the source of his fantastic brew. With any luck I can talk him into selling me a batch of green beans to roast at home before we leave.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we could experience the coffee we would need to sleep. And sleep we did. Tomorrow would be our first day in Ecuador.

Casio MG-510 Midi Guitar

Back when I documented the repair of the Casio PG-380 MIDI Guitar, I had no idea that this post was going to dominate the traffic patterns to my little home on the web. Fully 1/3 of all visitors to this site come to that post, asking questions, posting comments, and requesting repairs. One request I’ve gotten over and over is a repair on the Casio MG-510.

The Casio MG-510 is like the little brother of the Casio PG-380. The base functionality is similar, but the 510 lacks some of the extra features that the PG-380 offers. The 510 has no space for an expansion slot, and no internal synthesizer, which for most software synth users is just fine. The biggest differences you’ll notice between the 380 and the 510 are hammer on sensing and the ability to perform pitch bends. The 510 is strictly chromatic; when you bend it assumes the same pitch until you bend far enough to change notes, in which case a note off and note on message are sent and interpreted. The 380 will perform a pitch bend at even the slightest pull of the string.

The 510 and 380 share one major flaw though: the electrolytic capacitors used for the pitch envelopes. These heinous little surface mount caps tend to leak over the years, especially on the 510, leading to corrosion and in most cases total failure of the MIDI capabilities in the guitar.

I finally got around to repairing one of these guitars, and the process is so similar to the PG-380 that it would be a shame not to document it. If you’re new to this you should probably refer to the post on the PG-380 before getting started.

You will need:

• 6 x 1 uF non-polarized electrolytic capacitors
• 4 x 10 uF polarized electrolytic capacitors
• 1 x 22 uF polarized electrolytic capacitor
• 1 x 4.7 uF polarized electrolytic capacitor
• 1 x 33 uF polarized electrolytic capacitors
• Anything you need to unsolder old capacitors and solder on new ones

First, crack open the back and take a look at the boards:

You’ll see two double-stacked and plugged into three header cables.

Take both boards out (unlike the PG-380 you have to operate on both):

 

Take a look at the capacitors on both boards below:

Top of PCB 1 – C9, C18, C33: 1uF non-polarized electrolytic

 

Bottom of PCB 1 C42, C52, C63: 1uF non-polarized electrolytic

 

Top of PCB 2

• C4, C22, C29, C12: 10 uF polarized electrolytic
• C30: 22 uF polarized electrolytic
• C31: 4.7 uF polarized electrolytic
• C48: 33 uF polarized electrolytic

Basically, for both boards, replace the capacitors with the caps above using capacitors of identical value. It shouldn’t matter if you use polarized caps for the entire repair, since the frequencies are not high enough to affect response times, but use non-polarized where needed above if possible.

You will find that you have 2 "extra" caps (seems like 2 for each string plus 2). I know that one capacitor is used for CPU reset (C30), but I’m not entirely sure what the last one is for. I replaced it anyway.

Some notes:

• The traces on the top board are very small. You might find yourself pulling them while unsoldering the old caps. Not to worry, there are plenty of places to solder the new caps.
• Corrosion makes for crappy contacts. If you find that your caps have corroded, particularly on the lower board, you will need to sand the corrosion down with steel wool or other light abrasive until you can expose some copper to solder to. On the guitar I repaired the corrosion was severe, and I spent a lot of time scraping out leaky capacitor guts.

That’s really all there is to it. Plug the boards back into their headers, screw them back into the guitar, and adjust the trim pots as needed to calibrate the guitar again.

Coffee Sack Sound Baffles

Several years ago I began acoustically treating my studio for recording drums and mixing. I did some research and pricing; it didn’t take a spreadsheet to discover that acoustic paneling was both overpriced and hideous. I searched some more and devised a solution that was both economical and classy.

Acoustic paneling is simple stuff. You get some kind of absorbent material, optionally covered with sonically neutral fabric, and hang it on a surface. You can use spacers to increase the gap between the wall and the panel to increase the amount of absorbency, and of course your choice in material will affect the frequency range, amount of reduction, and all that. Let’s skip the science though and get right into the implementation.

You will need:

• An Absorbent Material
• 1″ x 3″ boards
• 1″ x 2″ boards
• Fabric (see below)
• Nail or screw gun
• Stapler
• Dry wall fasteners (wing nut style)

First, select an absorbent material. You could go simple and use the pink stuff. You know, the insulation they sell at Home Depot with the panther on it. Good ‘ol R-30. This material is fine and all, but from the perspective of space it is far from ideal. It’s bulky, and in a space as confined as mine I wanted something that wasn’t going to shrink my studio by more than a few square feet. I went with Owens-Corning 703 but you’ve got some other options, like Roxul RHT 80, which is much cheaper. 

The material I bought comes in 24″ x 48″ x 2″ by default, but can be cut smaller using a razor blade. Wear gloves and long sleeves if you decide to cut it, unless you like that itchy feeling. I went the lazy route and planned my room sans cutting.

The next step was to build a frame to contain the panel. Sure, you could just duct tape it to the wall, but a frame gives it a cleaner look and allows you to space the panel away from the wall. The frame also gives you something to attach the fabric to. I used 1″ x 3″ cedar boards because they’re extremely light and inexpensive, and the panels fit perfectly in them. No need to get fancy with dovetail joints and wood glue, just cut some straight boards and join them together with a nail gun, stapler, screws, or whatever you have laying around. You’re dog might casually sniff your frame:

After your frame is built, you’ll want to attach your fabric. You have a lot of freedom here to dress these panels up, so long as you choose a fabric that will allow most or all sound through. Many tight weave fabrics will reflect frequencies preventing them from even reaching your absorbent material, which kind of defeats the purpose. I went with coffee sacks since I had a ready supply of them, they’re sonically neutral, and I think they look cool. Your dog might question your selection:

Using a staple gun or a fastener of some kind, stretch the fabric across the front of the frame and staple each side. You’re probably not going to learn to be an upholsterer here, but try to get a drum-tight frame across the front of the panel, leaving the back open. After you’ve stapled the fabric around the frame, stuff the panel into the it. Eventually your dog will get tired of whatever it is you’re doing an leave.

Your panel should look something like this:

And it probably looks something like this from the front:

Technically you could build a stand or mount of some kind and move this around wherever you wanted, but I opted to hang mine from the walls (and ceiling). I used 1″ x 2″ boards to hang all of my panels. A 1″ x 2″ attached flat to the wall provides a 3/4″ standoff between the wall and your panel when you hang it. First, I cut 2 1″ x 2″ boards just long enough to fit inside the back of my frames. Then, I drilled two holes and inserted a bolt appropriately sized for these wing nuts:

From there it is a simple matter of hanging the standoff wherever you want your panels to hang. Mark your holes on the wall, drill where the marks are, press the bolts (already attached to the 1″ x 2″), then tighten:

Take your panel and hang it on the 1″ x 2″. You can attach, with screws or nails, the panel to the 1″ x 2″, but I find it unnecessary. Plus if you leave them free hanging you can move them around if you get bored with the way they look.

That’s pretty much it. I realized that this wasn’t particularly novel when I realized that this guy did almost the same thing independently, but I think the coffee sacks were a nice touch.

Oh…and ATS Acoustics offers their own coffee sack acoustic panels…for a price…

Another Southern Odyssey

Exhausted, sore, and half-asleep, I stare into the read-view mirror of our van. While I wait for Jeremy to appear on the horizon behind me, I strike up a conversation with a much younger version of myself.

“We enjoy this?”

“Hell yes!”

The young me grins from ear to ear, gripping a roll of quarters at an all-night arcade lockin. A bearded, haggard, and much older me smiles back before I run off into a maze of video game consoles. Probably to play Tekken.

Jeremy’s head pops up over the ridge, and I’m back in the van. I rub my eyes and hop out into the dewy morning grass, stomping around to warm up. Jeremy is moving slow. Part of me wants to urge him on rather than take his place, but he’s already picked up almost six miles of the eight mile run, he needs a break. In a few minutes, a slap bracelet wraps around my wrist and I’m off again; the two mile run ahead of me will be the shortest and most difficult.

A year ago, I ran the Southern Odyssey, my first 24+ hour relay race with a group of friends from High School. It was a tiresome saga full of ups and downs, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. When John sent out the APB to get the team back together I was all in. We paid our way into the race and had what looked to be a full team. We all looked forward to a milder, less intense Southern Odyssey in 2011.

A year later as I hobbled down a country road toward my next pit stop, I recalled how we still managed to end up with eight runners. There were dropouts related to injuries just weeks before the race. John, initially the organizer of the team, had moved to Malibu several months prior and couldn’t make the trip out to Atlanta to join the team. Then we had injuries along the way. Drew, one of our strongest runners, struggled to get by with a taped up calf. Aaron, himself a sub for a runner we lost to injuries before the race, was run off the road during his third leg. He rolled his ankle so badly it looked like a grapefruit was growing from his leg. We divided up the extra mileage and persisted.

As I rounded a curve on what seemed to be a neverending hill, I heard a long low note. The vuvuzela.

Jeremy, perhaps the most upbeat person I’ve ever met, had brought a host of toys along for the ride. One was a vuvuzela. By the end of the race this $.60 plastic horn would become the sound of mercy on the horizon for our team as we approached a pit stop. You can hear it bellow a half mile away, and the sound means one thing. You’re getting close.

The vuvuzela urged me on. I woke from whatever half-dream state I was in and found new energy to continue. It was a reminder that weariness and exhaustion can easily be overcome with the right stimulation. In my case, the sound of a $.60 plastic horn.

And so it was another Southern Odyssey. Many of the trials and tribulations are the same from year to year, but to truly understand you must experience it yourself. I always come away from it feeling deeply satisfied. Perhaps its the binge eating afterwards. Whatever the case, I can offer this advice:

Buy a vuvuzela. Buy six of them and leave them around the house. Leave one in your car. Leave one in the bathroom. Take it to your kid’s basketball game. Take it to your next board meeting. Use it to annouce the birth of your daughter to the rest of the maternity ward. No matter what the occasion, the vuvuzela is the most appropriate way to celebrate it.