July 30-Aug. 2: Anne's Arrival and the Beginning of Our Car Trip

Anne arrived on Tuesday morning, July 31st. So Monday the 30th was an important day to get things to a point where I could take a break and know where I was when I resumed work on the project. I had log books to catch up with, and was trying to make progress with the charts, to get to a certain point with how I functioned with the program. Then Tuesday morning early I took the bus and train to the airport to meet Anne. It’s a long travel day from New York! We went to my apt. in Coogee, dropped off her luggage, and then went out to breakfast. After a walk and a short nap, we went up to the University, where she got a full tour of the acoustics lab; then there was a little send-off party for Fabien, a French student, at the end of his 3-month project.

On Wednesday, we spent most of the day making plans for our car trip: booking rental cars and the ferry to Tasmania, and confirming plans for meeting people along the way. In the afternoon we took a cab to the car rental agency in downtown Sydney (in the CBD) with my contra hard case, to make sure that the car we rented would hold my contra. Then we drove home to Coogee very carefully, on the left-hand side of the road.

There were so many little things to take care of that we didn’t get underway the next day until about 11:00 am, and even then, we had to make a stop at UNSW to pick up a fax that came in for Anne from Japan. But finally we were headed west, out of the city and towards Adelaide. We decided on a whim to go straight west over the Blue Mountains instead of driving the freeway past Canberra. The road up into the Blues was narrow and twisted, but finally we were in the hills and genuinely out of the city. Our first little side trip was to drive the little panorama road between Leura and Katoomba. We pulled into a turnoff at an overlook, and when we turned the car off we heard all kinds of birds in the forest that were fascinating. I don’t consider myself a birder, but the calls you hear from the birds in Australia are exotic and captivating.




















We had a picnic lunch at the overlook of the famous “Three Sisters” and then continued on through the mountains. After a steep descent we were into the cattle and sheep grazing country of rolling hills, which was really picturesque countryside. We took Hwy 24, the Great Western Highway, from Bathurst all the way to Hay, and it was a marvelous drive. The road is not cut through the landscape. It twists, climbs and dives through the rolling hills, and each new hilltop reveals a new valley with its own flavor.



We stayed the first night in the historic town of Carcoar, which is the third-oldest town west of Sydney. White settlement there dates back to 1829, and the town is nestled in a compact valley. We stayed at a lovely B&B, and the proprieters told us it was “Roast Night” at the hotel restaurant. We walked over there and when we sat down we felt like we had stepped about 75 years back in time. What a contrast to bustling Sydney. It was a great meal, by the way.



At this B&B we learned that breakfast is usually provided in a basket the night before, so that you can have it whenever you like in the morning, in your room, and then be underway. We liked that system—it was always nice opening the basket to see what was in it.

Contra Project, Week 4

Now it is already September, and I have a bit of catching up to do! A very intense five weeks have gone by, and I will catch them up in segments. This one will be about the last week of July.

In the fourth week of the research project at UNSW (July 23rd to 29) we did two sets of tests on a standard-system contrabassoon: a set of impedance tests and a set of live recorded samples. This made for a very intense week! Noriko Shimada, who plays contrabassoon in the Sydney Symphony was very kind to loan her instrument to us to do these tests. (Thank you Noriko!) I did two days of recording samples, but then discovered after the fact that one day’s recordings had a persistent hum in it, due to a microphone wire being positioned too close to a wall socket and the electrical grid behind the wall. I really wanted a clean set of data on the standard system contra so I spent another day re-recording an entire day’s worth of samples. Fortunately the impedance tests went very smoothly, thanks to Chen Jer Ming and his lightning speed with the computer.



At the end of the day of the impedance tests on the standard contra, we set up my instrument again and ran another set of tests documenting what happens when you reduce the size of a register hole. The machine shop had made a couple of tiny inserts for one of my register holes, which reduced the size of the hole. We ended up with a dozen impedance spectra charts which showed very distinctive results. These inserts will make for an interesting study, all on its own.

In the meantime I had been working up some charts of analysis using John Smith’s special program in Mathematica. With his help, I was getting more adept at using the program, and he offered that he could make it reveal even more things!

During this time there were four different projects going on at the same time in the lab, and it was a busy place. The computer work stations were always occupied. Sometimes it was even a bit chaotic, but there was a tremendous amount of work getting done. Joe Wolfe always kept a well-stocked bowl of fruit in the central hallway, which was very welcome whenever my energy level sagged, and a fresh cup of coffee was never more than two minutes away. Thanks for that, Joe!



In the off-hours, I was working on making arrangements for a car trip around Southeastern Australia with Anne my wife, who was due to arrive on Tuesday of the next week. In addition, the final week of the Tour de France was going on, and the Pyrenees mountain stages and the dramatic Time Trial on the penultimate day were very exciting to watch live on late night TV. The weather also warmed up during this week, classes started at UNSW, and it felt like spring!