Hey, welcome back!
First, I need to apologize. Day 0 is a bit of a misnomer. Instead of referring to a single day, I'm using it as a sort of "catch-all" term to refer to the days (plural) spent in Melbourne leading up to my departure.
As such, I'll divide this particular post into some categories: The city of Melbourne, the motorcycle (I'm thinking I'll call it Stylo), and my work in solar physics.
Melbourne. Oh, wow, where do I even begin. Let's try taking it from the start.
I landed in the Melbourne international airport on April 13, 2023, following an 11 hour flight on Jetstar from Honolulu. Jetstar ... I have some seriously mixed feelings about.
On one hand? Their prices are great. To and from Honolulu, they tend to have these remarkably inexpensive flights - mine here was only $265 including luggage. On the other ... they had no charger ports in economy, other than a USB-A port on the display that manages only about 0.5 W. So this was mostly a sleep and read flight.
After landing, I made my way into the city on a bus from the airport. It was around 5 PM local time, and the sun was just starting to set in brilliant shades of yellow, pink and gold.
The bus arrived downtown, and I crashed at a local hostel from there - Selina Central.
Real talk, if I had to point to a single factor that tends to make or break a hostel experience for me? It tends to be pillow quality. Selina's pillows were plush yet still firm, large and malleable and felt like you were sleeping on childhood dreams. Amazing.
Anyway. In the coming days and weeks, I explored the city. My impressions?
Melbourne is rad.
Rad in the surfer-dude sense. Rad in the radiant sense. Rad in all the best ways you can imagine.
First? Melbourne smells great. The city doesn't have the ever-present slightly smoggy sense that you experience while in places like Denver or New York. The air is open and smells like the nearest restaurant or like the air in the parks that are scattered about.
Next? Melbourne has a lot of libraries, including the Victoria State Library. Of any building in all of Melbourne, this place is my favorite.
I've spent a lot of time here. It's nice, climate controlled, has plenty of power, and there's always something new to look at. The plentiful libraries and coffee shops definitely help my inner introvert be satisfied here.
Now, I'd like to take a moment to mention Melbourne's coffee scene. For context, I grew up in Seattle - home of Starbucks and thousands of software developers, many of whom consider coffee shops to be holy Churches of Software Development. Walk into any coffee shop in Seattle and you'll generally see at least four or five people hammering out code on a laptop at any given point.
Now, enter Melbourne. This place doesn't just "do coffee" - they've perfected it. Coffee is an art in Melbourne.
Initially, ordering was a bit challenging - back in the States, most shops tend to have a large menu displaying all their various coffees with witty names and convenient price points. Melbourne shops generally don't do that - they expect you to walk in knowing exactly what you want and how you want it.
I walk in to Duke's Coffee Roasters, headphones on. Coffee sounds ... good ... I glance around - men and women in suits and stylish dresswear surround me. At the end of the shop, a man reclines and reads a newspaper. I'm underdressed.
Baristas move about with professional intent behind the register. I blink. Oh. I'm in front of the register. "Hello, welcome" the lady at the register says to me. She has a professional smile. Panic. Oh crap. Um! Menu. I look around for a menu. Nothing. "Hi, I'd, um, like a ..." WHERE IS THE LIST OF FASHIONABLY NAMED COFFEES "... coffee please?" The barista looks at me blankly. "What type?" she asks, a small smile on her face. I feel my face heating up. Oh man. This is bad. "... a ... help I'm not really from here and don't know what to order terribly sorry" I rush out. She laughs. "Okay, no worries. Do you like milk in your coffee? If so, I'd recommend a flat white to get started, it's a popular choice."
Coffee in Australia is different. Here's a helpful chart I dearly wish someone in the airport had shoved in my face and emphatically said to read (Courtesy Let's Do Coffee).
Once you get to the point you can order, though, oh man. It's like catnip. My favorites so far have been Duke's Coffee Roasters in the CBD and Little Rogue. next to the Vic. State Library. Both are relatively little shops that take their art seriously.
Now. Let's talk about public transport. Public transport is probably going to be the first thing you notice as you enter the city - it's hard to miss. Trams are everywhere. As of 2017, the city of Melbourne has 493 trams and nearly 250 kilometers (around 160 miles) of tram routes alone. Not to mention that, wherever there isn't a tram, there are busses, and railways for long-range travel along the East Coast.
It's a really nice system, and well developed ... maybe with the exception of the payment system. Payment for most trams is done through the myki system - payment cards developed by the PTV (Public Transport Victoria). Myki is ... a bit complicated.
The short version is, myki is a NFC-enabled chip that most people carry around, like a tap-to-pay credit card. There are two types - the myki pass and myki money. Money is a reloadable credit - you "top it up" whenever you run low. Each tram scan-in costs betwen $4 AUD and $7 AUD, with the cost varying on your current zone. The myki pass is designed to allow for unlimited transport, but you pay a large flat fee early on for unlimited rides for a week, or 28-365 days.
There is a surprisingly large online community surrounding the myki, and all anyone can really agree on is that it's a system that gets unfortunately complicated if you're trying to be budget conscious. I went with the pass, but found myself running really low really quickly. I wonder if this is a common optimization problem for Australian calculus classes.
Anyways. That's Melbourne. Here's some more pretty pictures of the city.
I'm thinking of calling the bike Stylo.
I woke up this morning with exactly one goal in mind: to build the luggage rack to rule all DIY luggage racks.
Storage has been on my mind for a few days now. Driving 4000 kilometers sounds great and all, but I need places to store a tent, sleeping bag, food, camping gear, photography equipment and my clothes. Just, stuff in general.
This storage spot should be expandable. Modular by design if possible. Stable. Water resistant to deal with the tropical storms up north and overnight dew, and, most importantly, stylish. Also, it should be securable for when I'm in cities.
Now, Melbourne, as is the case with many modern cities around the world, has one principal defining characteristic of the 21st century: legions of food delivery drivers. Often, these drivers putter around the city on bikes and mopeds, with a large canvas bag mounted on a metal grid in on the back of their vehicle - sort of like this.
So, taking inspiration from them, I decided to throw a rack on the back of Stylo. Drove up to Bunnings, the Land-Down-Under version of Home Depot, and picked up a few things.
Boom.
Secure, with two little slottable Masterlocks. Water resistant. Modular, with the use of ratchet straps to expand if need be, and even slightly stylish.
It's more or less stable - the platform is a sort of mock-cast-iron type, repurposed from garage shelving, and is secured underneath Stylo's passenger seat. It does pivot slightly, but that's a consequence of the seat itself, and as long as I'm not leaning down any huge turns it should hold up just fine over long distances.
Tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM I'm taking it in to get the Australian Roadworthy Certification - an inspection by someone who knows what to look for, as a necessary requirement to be driving on any roads. If that passes alright (hopefully it should), I'll be getting it registered with VicRoads, then ... hopefully leaving by Thursday.
Fingers crossed 🤞.
I got the roadworthy back.
Residual anxiety loops through my mind.
At least, an invoice for the roadworthy.
I can't afford this shit.
$1,600 AUD worth of repairs and labor. Apparently, the previous owner removed the bolts securing the rear wheel cover to the frame, in order to fit a larger wheel. Not only does that suddenly make it very much not roadworthy, it's dangerous and feels ... stupid. Like, actually though? You needed a bigger wheel badly enough that you remove some lets-keep-the-bike-from-disintegrating bolts?
So. Need a new tire. New brake pads. Brake fluid. Number plate is secured with ropes instead of bolts. Clutch is a bit stuck.
Also, the foot pedals are aftermarket. And apparently not super great aftermarket. Bad enough that they also need to be swapped.
Ugh.
Common sense says, no way. I can repair these things myself. Foot pedals? Psh. Ebay. Tire? Has to be cheaper than $300 somewhere.
And then I remember, right. I'm in Australia. It's ... harder to ship things here. Don't have many tools to work with either, nor a garage.
So ... yeah. I'm going to sleep on it. Stressed and a bit nerve-wracked now - not a great state to make decisions in. Is $1600 worth it? Avoid the hassle? Maybe.
After doing a healthy bit of panicking on the cost, sat down and did some thinking. Stared at the bike a bit. Read a few online posts. Looked at it some more. Nah. $1600. I could do this for way less.
Here's a review of the past few days.
The rear cover, I ended up securing with some 2" stainless steel bolts.
I did some looking about online, and found out the default Honda Shadow footpeg was really nothing more than a long metal pole with some rubber sitting on it - you can see it in the far left image below.
So, given I already had a long metal pole, all I needed was the rubber! Fixed it with some little rubber door stoppers from Bunnings.
Brake pads were a bit more of a purchase, but only $40 for the pads, fluid, tube and a bottle of delectable orange juice which, once empty, was used to store the old brake fluid.
Finally, the rear plate. Grabbed some bolts and a $10 reflector.
Took the cycle back in for the RWC.
Flying colors.
Boom 😎.
Anyway. Next step, is to register it. I just discovered that registration timeslots are actually booked out for weeks - which, colossal ugh. I'm trying to get in touch with the original seller of the motorcycle to see if he'd be willing to renew and transfer - saving a ton of time and effort.
Renewed the registration and transferred it today. Here ... we go.
I'll probably be talking a lot about this particular subject in the coming days, so I figured I'd start now. As of today (April 30, 2023), my current employment is a remote research position with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), working with Dr. Kevin Reardon and Dr. Gianna Cauzzi, on the identification and classification of chromospheric fibrils, curvilinear features that can be found on H-alpha width images of the surface of the sun.
Yeah. That sounds like a lot, I know. Fortunately, a few years ago we whipped up a nice presentation to give an overview of the project, that can be found here: Characterization of Hot Fibrils in the Solar Chromosphere.
Right now, I'm working on the temporal component of the project - how these little curvilinear features evolve over time. The 7 minute 19 second video shown below is an animation of this.
There are 120 frames in this video, so it's about 1 photo taken every 3.65 seconds. Our goal is to find out how individual fibrils - the little curvilinear segments you see in the video - change over time, including how properties like length, spatial breadth and h-alpha width change on a per-coordinate and per-fibril basis, over this entire sequence.
My current approach is to apply OCCULT-2, a coronal loop tracing program, to each individual frame. We match fibrils from frame A to frame B, and look at how their properties change.
