Jason & Cherie's Blog

Building A Better Mac OS Backup Solution, Or A Time Capsule On Steroids... and ZFS

2009-07-27T22:58:00.008-04:00

Update:
I just noticed that in order for this to work, you do need to enable the workaround for unsupported network devices. I guess the recovery process works better with this solution, however, because I'm using AFP file sharing, rather than SMB that I was using on the Buffalo NAS.

Enable unsupported devices on your Time Machine client by running this command in a terminal:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

OK... on with the blog...

The Problem

For some time now, I've been thinking about a better backup solution at home. For a few years, I've been using a Buffalo TeraStation NAS, which although it does the job, is painfully slow... at least in the RAID-5 mode that I've been using.

When I finally upgraded to Mac OS Leopard, I was determined to make Time Machine work with the Buffalo NAS, which is not supported for use by Time Machine. After a bit of googling, I found that that there was a solution: after jumping through some hoops by creating a sparsebundle filesystem, making sure it's named properly, moving it to the NAS, and then changing some Mac OS system preferences on the command line, like magic, Time Machine can now make use of the NAS.

There are issues with this hack, however; and I recently found a big one when my Macbook suffered a hard drive failure and I had to replace the disk. Once I had the new disk in, I booted from the Mac OS install DVD and proceeded to attempt to restore from my Time Macine backup only to come to a harsh realization: this "unsupported NAS" hack doesn't work out of the box, meaning the system installer can't detect my backup archive out on the network. Oops. After a bit of fretting, I was able to copy the sparsebundle from the NAS to a USB hard drive. This was unbearably slow. Hours. Misery. But in the end, it worked... I was able to restore my system from the USB drive with no problems.

This experience taught me 2 things: First, that Time Machine is a friggin' awesome backup app. The restore process (once I got access to my backup) was smooth as silk, and a stunningly easy way to restore the system to a new disk. Once the restore process completed, I rebooted and it was like nothing ever happened. Magic.

The second thing I learned was that my NAS had to go. I wanted to replace it with a new solution that was hopefully much faster, and more importantly, *natively* supported by Time Machine.

The obvious choice would be the Apple Time Capsule. But, as a system administrator, and someone who has had a hard disk failure in just about every computer I've ever owned over the past decade, I have one major issue with the Time Capsule: it only has 1 disk spindle. I don't give a rat's ass if it's a (ahem) "Server Grade" hard drive that they're putting in there, it's still a single disk, and it's bound to fail eventually. Guaranteed. Just a matter of when. No... I want my backup solution to use multiple spindles, preferably in a RAID-5 configuration.

The Solution

Basically, this is what I cobbled together:

(1) Refurbished Mac Mini (2.0GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, made sure it had the FireWire 800 port) from the Apple Store refurb section
(1) qBOX-SF (4-bay, FireWire 800, disk chassis to be used in JBOD mode) from DAT Optic - UPDATE: qBOX-SF can apparently be found here now
(4) Seagate Barracuda ES.2 750-GB SATA disk drives

The Mac Mini will be running Leopard, so it will be seen as a native Time Machine backup server.

For this project, I also decided that if at all possible, I was going to use Sun's ZFS filesystem, as it has some really nice features, like ease of administration, data integrity checks, snapshots, compression, etc, etc. Unfortunately, the ZFS implementation in Mac OS Leopard is read-only. Fortunately, there is a ZFS port that provide read-write capabilities that the Apple developer's were kind enough to post at MacOS Forge. If you want to take this route, the necessary binaries - along with instructions to install - can be had from that site. Plus, ZFS would let me use RAID-Z, which is sort of like RAID-5, only better.

The qBOX-SF chassis uses 2 separate controller boards, each controls 2 disk, and has 2 FW800 ports. It also comes with a short FW800 daisy-chain cable to connect the two boards onto a single bus. Out of the box, the controllers are configured for JBOD mode - which is exactly what I wanted - but if you are so inclined, you can fiddle with some jumpers on the boards to configure each pair of disks in either a RAID-0 (stripe) or RAID-1 (mirror) volume at the hardware level. Whatever floats your boat. In JBOD mode, we're using "Just a Bunch Of Disks", and giving them all to ZFS on the Mac to manage. Daisy-chain the two controllers, and then plug one into the Mac, and now the Mac will see all 4 disks individually.

qBOX-SF, cover removed, ready for disks

qBOX-SF, disks screwed down and plugged in

I'm not going to go much detail on ZFS - there are other places on the interweb for you do learn that. But in a nutshell, here's the terminal commands used on the Mac Mini to set up the ZFS pool (you need to be root on the Mac, i.e. 'sudo su -'). The following command created a new ZFS pool called "tank" (yes, I used "tank"... the same name used in just about every documented ZFS tutorial... I wasn't feeling to creative... DON'T YOU JUDGE ME!). Besides, it's easy to rename a pool in ZFS after it is created.

Anyway, this creates the pool called "tank", in RAID-Z mode, and gives it the four new disks (whole disks, not just a partition):


# zpool create tank raidz disk1 disk2 disk3 disk4

Note: with four 750 GB disks, RAID-Z gave me a 2.0 TB pool.

If you were so inclined, you could just leave it at that if you wanted to. The pool automatically gets imported and mounted on the Mac as /Volumes/tank . You could start dumping your files right in there if you want. However, I wanted a bit more fine-grained control over different shares, compression, quotas, etc, so I created a ZFS filesystem within that pool:


# zfs create -o compression=lzjb tank/compress

This creates (and mounts) a new filesystem at /Volumes/tank/compress, and enables lzjb compression on it (gzip is not available yet on the Mac port of ZFS). There is currently a problem with ZFS filesystems showing up in the Mac OS Finder as symlinks, so to avoid runing into any problems with this, I created a new directory within "compress" that I will actually share over the network for Time Machine:


# mkdir /Volumes/tank/compress/Time_Machine

OK, at this point, you can enable file sharing in the "Sharing" system preference pane, and add this new directory to the list of folders to share. Be sure to check your permissions of who can access what on the share.

After mounting the shared volume, the other Time Machine clients on your network will be able to uses this shared volume for their backups (see update at top for unsupported devices). You will probably need to authenticate the first time you mount it, but after that Time Machine will automatically mount the volume as needed to do its incremental backups.

The Mac Mini and qBOX-SF Stacked

So... Does It Work?

Yup! And it seems about twice as fast as the old NAS solution I was using.

After doing a full backup, one of the first things I tried was booting off my Panther install DVD and doing a restoration dry run just to see if I could recover my system in the event of another drive failure. Happily, it worked as I had hoped!

I strongly suggest everyone else test this out for themselves, just to make sure there are no surprises later on when you really need this to work. In fact, I've gotten into the habit of creating two partitions on my system disks - one to use day-to-day, and one to use for testing things like this. If you have the disk space to spare, having a test partition like this to play around with comes in handy.

The actual restore process is fairly straight forward, with only a couple extra steps necessary for it to work off of a network share. Once you boot off the install DVD, the installer application launches, and you pick a language, you will then be able to perform the following 3 steps:

Configure your network settings.
Manually mount your backup share.
Start the restore process.

For step #1, you can use use WiFi if you want, but wired Ethernet will probably be faster in most cases.

For step #2, you will need to open a terminal (from the Utilities menu). At the prompt, the following commands will mount your shared volume:


# mkdir /Volumes/Time_Machine
# mount_afp afp://username:password@server.address/Time_Machine /Volumes/Time_Machine

Obviously, you will need to use whatever username and password you have set up for the shared volume, along with the address of your server. Once the volume mounts, you can exit the terminal app.

At this point, you should be able to select the option to restore from backup from the Utilities menu, and just follow the prompts.

NOTE: One odd thing I've noticed is that occasionally, the tools under the Utilities menu get "greyed out" and can't be selected for some reason. If this happens, all you need to do to fix it is go back to the installer screen and click the "back" button until you are back at the language selection screen, and then start it over. You're network settings and mounts should remain intact. A minor nuisance, it seems.

Monitoring

Having redundant disks doesn't do squat for you if they silently fail and you have no idea there is a problem. Single-parity RAID-Z will survive the failure of one disk, but if a second one fails, you're pool is not usable. So, as an effort to help monitor the health of the pool, I've written a perl script that can be set up as a cron job to run automatically, and email the results to you.

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# zfscheck.pl
#
# Intended to be used as an automated cron job to periodically
# check the health of ZFS pools, and send the result as an email.
# Tested on Mac OS 10.5.6.
# Needs to be run in root's crontab.

use strict;
use Net::SMTP;

#### START CONFIG SECTION

my $server='smtp.domain.com';  # change to your SMTP server
my $from='someone@domain.com'; # Sender address
my $to='someone@domain.com';   # Recipient address

#### END CONFIGS


my @line;
my @zpool;
my @zfs;
my $status='ERROR DETECTED'; # assume an error unless zpool tells otherwise
my $control=0;

open (ZPOOL, "/usr/sbin/zpool list |");
while (<ZPOOL>) {
chomp;
push (@zpool,$_);
if ($control > 0) {
@line=split;
if ($line[5] eq 'ONLINE') {
$status='OK';
}
}
$control++;
}
close ZPOOL;

open (ZFS, "/usr/sbin/zfs list |");
while (<ZFS>) {
chomp;
push (@zfs,$_);
}
close ZFS;

my $subject="ZFS Status: $status";
my $zpool_head="ZPOOL STATUS:\n\n";
my $zfs_head="\n\nZFS STATUS:\n\n";

my $smtp = Net::SMTP->new("$server") or die $!;
$smtp->mail( $from );
$smtp->to( $to );
$smtp->data();
$smtp->datasend("To: $to\n");
$smtp->datasend("From: $from\n");
$smtp->datasend("Subject: $subject\n");
$smtp->datasend("Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1\n");
$smtp->datasend("Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\n");
$smtp->datasend("\n"); # done with header
$smtp->datasend("<html><body><pre>");
$smtp->datasend($zpool_head);
foreach (@zpool) {
$smtp->datasend("$_\n");
}
$smtp->datasend($zfs_head);
foreach (@zfs) {
$smtp->datasend("$_\n");
}
$smtp->datasend("</pre></body></html>");
$smtp->dataend();
$smtp->quit();

This script needs to be run from root's crontab. I'm running it once a day, and also automatically at system boot. The crontab looks like this:


# crontab -u root -l
@reboot /usr/local/bin/zfscheck.pl
@daily /usr/local/bin/zfscheck.pl

Caveats

I've only done this with Mac OS Leopard (10.5.x)

I have no idea what the Snow Leopard release is going to bring. Full ZFS support was supposed to be added to Snow Leopard (Server, at least), but lately it seems that Apple may not be delivering that. I don't think anyone will know for sure until that release debuts.

If Snow Leopard does manage get proper ZFS support, the good news is that it should just work with the pool we've already created here. ZFS pools created on one system *should* be able to be imported on any other system that uses ZFS - even different OSes.

If Snow Leopard doesn't have full ZFS, will the MacOS Forge zfs build work? I haven't the foggiest idea. That would be a good thing to test out with that test partition I mentioned earlier, though.

Also, this probably goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway... you can't use Panther on your backup server. Time Machine can only backup to Leopard (or presumably versions after Leopard).

ZFS Pools Using Whole Disks

In my example, I chose to give ZFS the entire disk (disk1, disk2, etc) rather than a slice - or partition - on a disk (disk1s2, disk2s2, etc). There are a couple issues with this, which I felt were pretty minor. First, when the Mac boots up, the FireWire is connected, or the sytem otherwise detects the presence of the disks, you will get a series of pop-ups (one for each disk) that an unknown disk has been inserted, and asking you what to do about it. I just ignore these.

The second issue I've seen with whole-disk pools is that the current Mac implementation can not import these automatically on system boot. In other words, when the system starts up, the pool will not mount. In my case, I really didn't care much about this and I'm using this as a fileserver that will constantly stay up, except for maintenance. The process of manually importing the pool is simple enough, however:


# zpool import tank

ZFS UI integration, features

While the core ZFS functionality is there, some the bells and whistles are missing from the current (zfs-119) build available from MacOS Forge. For instance, compression is there, but only LZJB, not gzip. There is also an issue where ZFS child filesystems show up in the Finder as links rather than separate filesystems or even directories. The Finder can still browse down into these filesystems though. And I've already mentioned the issues with whole-disk zpools above.

You can also check out the list of issues over at MacOS Forge.

ZFS not browseable locally by Time Machine

This sort of scared me at first. When I first started playing around with ZFS on the Mac, I fired up Time Machine on the same machine that was hosting the ZFS pool, and tried to back up to it. This doesn't work. You can probably hack it a bit to get it to use it as an "unsupported" device, but I wouldn't recommend this for the same reason I mention up at the top of this blog post.

Fortunately, when I tried sharing the ZFS volume over the network, I found that the clients *can* use it with Time Machine OK. Whew!

In my case, this isn't a problem, because I don't care if the OS disk of the backup server itself gets backed up or not. I'm not loading anything special or irreplaceable on it. If the server's OS disk gets cooked, I'll just reinstall Leopard fresh, and reapply the ZFS code bits. Maybe not as convenient as a Time Machine restore, but certainly nothing to lose sleep over.

Headless Mini

I guess this isn't really a caveat, but more of a tip. In my environment, I'm running my Mac Mini headless - that is, without a monitor attached. I don't even own an external monitor anymore, unless you count my TV. If you also want to run the Mini headless, here's what you need to do to set it up.

First, you need a USB keyboard. Any old keyboard should do. Connect the keyboard to the Mac, and turn on the power while holding down the "T" key. This will place the Mac into "target disk mode", which just means that you can use it just like any other external FireWire disk. FireWire is important here... target disk mode does not work over USB. Anyway, once in target disk mode, cable the Mini to your Macbook, and then on the Macbook, tell it to use the Mini as it's startup disk (in System Preferences) and then reboot. When the system comes back up, it will be running the OS that's loaded on the Mini, and you can configure it however you want. The key things to set up at this point will be networking (give the Mini a static IP on your network so you can easily find it remotely) and Screen Sharing. I also enabled Remote Login so that I could access the Mini via SSH for remote command-line administration.

Once the OS on the Mini is set up to your liking, shut down, disconnect the FW to your Macbook, remove the keyboard (if still present), wire it up to your network, and power it on. Once the system boots, you will be able to connect to it via screen sharing, or alternately, via SSH. I wish I could do everything via SSH, but some things - like configuring sharing - I've not been able to figure out how to do from the command line. All ZFS admin can be done from the command line, however.

Last But Not Least...

Time will tell, but I'm hoping this is a reliable solution, but I'm not sure if any backup system is perfect. Never put all your eggs in one basket. If your data is hypercritical you would be wise to keep multiple copies. If you really can't afford to lose the data, you might want to consider keeping additional copies on something like tapes, and storing copies of those tapes in a safe deposit box.

Restaurant Review - Dim Sum Garden

2008-04-10T09:45:00.001-04:00

Hi - Jason here. I just had a restaurant review published over on inafunk.com. Below is an except. Click on over if you want to read the full article. Thanks!

Dim Sum Garden

A rose by any other name…

Over the winter, a new restaurant opened up in Chinatown, and has quickly become my go-to place when I’m in that area. The place is easy to overlook, as it sits in that dark cavern on 11th Street, between Filbert and Arch - right next to the Chinatown bus terminal. So, as you might tell, it’s really not much of a garden at all, but what’s in a name? I’m more interested in what’s inside...

Click here to read the rest of this article.

Old School, meet New School

2008-04-07T21:14:00.000-04:00

Spring has sprung here in Philadelphia, and the weather is (slowly) getting nicer. Time to spend more time outside. This means it's also time to start ramping up my on-bike training for the Livestrong Challenge ride, which takes place in August.

A few weeks ago, I pulled out my Trek 1200 road bike from the basement and started cleaning the crud off of it. I haven't ridden this bike in over a decade, and while it's in pretty good shape (thankfully, aluminum doesn't rust), it needed a good cleaning, and to have some of the consumables replaced. I replaced all the cables, and also the chain. All the bearing seemed to be rolling smoothly still, except for the headset bearings, which were badly indexed. To put that simply, the steering bits were toast and had to be replaced. As this required expensive tools that I'd probably only ever use once, I decided to drop it off at a local bike shop and have them take care of it.

In fact, I just got it back from them today... good as new! And a surprising thing happened at the shop... as the mechanic pulled my bike of the rack and gave it to me, he said something along the lines of, "wow... that's a pretty light bike!" I said, "yeah... especially considering it's 18 years old.". Now for you non-cyclists or casual bike riders out there, mentioning the apparent lightness of someone's bike is roughly equivalent to telling a woman she looks 10 years younger than she really is. In other words, I could feel myself on the verge of blushing and getting all giggly.

The "New School" mentioned in title of this post is the new bike computer I recently got - a Garmin Edge 305. Now, I tend not to fall all over myself when it comes to gadgetry, but this Garmin 305 has serious "Gee Whiz Factor". In a nutshell, it will tell me speed, distance, altitude climbed (and grade), pedaling cadence, heart rate, and countless other types of data that I'll probably never use. The clincher for me, however, was GPS capability - not to tell me where I'm going, but to record where I've been. What's cool about that, you ask? Well, it lets me do nifty things like import the ride data into Google Earth and view my route... like this:

That's the route of my first ride on the old Trek that I took tonight. Starting at the "Rocky Steps" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I headed up along West River Drive, across Falls Bridge, and then back down Kelly Drive. 8.5 miles, according to the GPS. What a difference a proper road bike makes! I did the same ride on my slick-tired mountain bike recently, and tonight was ~17 minutes faster for the loop on the Trek.

It's not all sunshine and happiness, though. The extreme riding position is going to take a while to get used to again. Plus, my butt really hurts now. Hopefully, both issues can be solved simply by getting some training under my belt.

__Jason

Kickboxing 101

2008-02-09T22:23:00.000-05:00

Today was the 3rd session in an 8-week kickboxing class that Cherie and I decided to take at the gym. Don't misunderstand... there are no dreams of participating in some mixed martial arts tournament, or getting a guest appearance on a future episode of TapouT. Nope, this is sort of a beginner's non-contact course, primarily intended more for fitness rather than combat training. We thought this would be a good way to mix things up a bit and kick-start our bodies heading into spring, so when the weather warms and the time comes to venture back outside, we can hit the ground running.

The question I have is this: If this is a non-contact class, why do I leave each week feeling like I just got my ass kicked?

We did this circuit course today, and one of the exercises involved moving up and down the length of a rope ladder on the floor, jumping in and out of the "squares". Fun, right? Actually, that's not bad. The part where we had to lift a medicine ball over our heads on each jump "in" was slightly less fun. OK, even that's not too bad, as it's not a particularly heavy ball. And this was a circuit course, so you only spend about 2 minutes at each exercise before moving to the next. Somehow, the 2 minutes I spent on the medicine ball thing lasted exactly 72 minutes, at least in my head. Remember that scene in the movie "Risky Business" where Joel is staring at the clock, waiting for the bell to ring at the end of class, and the clock suddenly ticks backwards and he's really pissed off? Yeah, well if Joel had been jumping around hoisting a medicine ball over his head, that would have been how I felt.

And so it goes in the struggle to build Jason 2.0. It's all for the best, however. The way I see it, the more pain I endure now, the easier it will be fore me when I ride the 100 miles in August. Eye of the tiger. I'm hoping that next week, we can play "catch the chicken."

2008 Livestrong Challenge

2008-01-27T18:38:00.001-05:00

As mentioned in my previous post, this August I am planning to ride 100 miles as part of the Livestrong Challenge charity event. This will be a big milestone for me, because even when I was a young lad that rode constantly, I never once attempted to tackle a 100 mile ride before. I'm not sure what I'm getting myself into...

At any rate, if you would like to show your support for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and support me while I train for this event, a you can donate online here: http://philly08.livestrong.org/tuckerjw.

(Note: donated money goes to the LAF, not to me! However, the more donations I can get, the more motivation I'll have to successfully complete this ride!)

Thanks!

Building Jason 2.0

2008-01-23T00:01:00.000-05:00

It was around May, 2007. I finally had enough. Enough struggle. Enough suffering. Enough pain. I was also sick of being winded from climbing a couple flights of stairs, and having to suck in my gut to button my pants.

That's right. I was sick of being fat and lazy.

As you can see from the diagram of Jason 1.0, I was primarily composed of fat and weakness. Those rolls in the diagram are not from a billowing shirt. Nope. Fat.

Now, I know... some of you might look at me as say "Jason, you're really not that fat." Well, yes and no. While I certainly wasn't to the point of having to wash myself with a rag on stick, I was most certainly overweight. You have to understand, I'm what they call an "ectomorph". That is to say, I'm a thin person - or should be a thin person. Common descriptors of ectomorphs are things like "delicate", "lean", "thin", "Hard Gainer". I've been skinny most of my life. To put that in some sort of perspective, when I graduated from high school, I was 6' 2" and probably less than 170 lbs. See? Skinny.

The other thing to note is that I'm one of those people that puts all of their extra weight on around the waist. This is not good. They say that people that distribute their fat evenly around the body can live long and healthy lives, even though technically, they are overweight. I'm not one of those people. People like me that put all their weight on around their trunk are much more likely to suffer from thinks like heart disease, stroke, cancer, etc.

In other words, what I'm trying to say is that I was really a skinny person trapped in a spare tire. My "fragile" body was going to collapse as a result. But Mr. Fat's days were numbered. I was formulating a game plan.

Step 1:
Adjust how I eat. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I have a thing for food. All kinds of food. I don't do diets. I've tried, and failed. You will not be able to sustain any kind of diet that deprives you of the things you love. And I love all kinds of food. So, my plan is to keep eating whatever the hell I want, but use my brain a bit more in doing so. For instance, in stead of skipping breakfast, and then getting so hungry at lunch that I gorge on junk, I will now eat smaller, regularly spaced meals throughout the day. The trick is to eat something relatively small before you get hungry. That way, you're body's not going into a defensive mode and forcing you to eat more than you need, just because it doesn't know when food is coming along. I'm not religious about this, but much better than I used to be, and it makes a difference.

Step 2:
Get active again. Back in the day when I was truly skinny, it was easy to stay that way. Primarily due to the fact that I typically cycled 100+ miles a week. For whatever reason (laziness?), I stopped riding regularly close to 15 years ago. Huge mistake. Well, I'm getting back in the saddle again... literally. A couple years ago, Cherie and I bought some new mountain bikes, but this starting last summer, we really got serious about putting them to good use. The fact that we live in Philadelphia, which has the largest municipal park system in the US, certainly helps. We have a lot of bike-friendly places to ride. There is even a mixed-use recreational path that goes from our doorstep (practically) all the way to Valley Forge Park - a round trip of ~42 miles. No more excuses. And now that we've made it a habit, we really love riding regularly. Well, I always loved it... but now Cherie has developed a fondness for it as well.

Step 3:
Get back to the gym. I've been going to the gym on and off for years. Which usually means, a few months on, followed by a few years off. Starting last July(ish), that's changed. Cherie and I are both going regularly now, and the results are starting to show. Part of my motivation for hitting the gym? Simple: muscle burns more calories at rest than fat does. That means, if I can keep my overall body weight approximately the same, but lose most of the fat while replacing it with muscle, my basal metabolic rate will naturally increase. What does that mean? It means I'll burn more calories without even trying. Which means, it will be harder to gain fat as long as I keep my eating under control. Nice.

Step 4:
Set goals. I'm the sort of person who needs to set goals. Setting a tangible milestone to work towards really helps keep me focused. Last fall, Cherie and I were to take part in the City of Hope charity bike ride here in Philly as part of the team from Sutter Home. It wasn't a super long ride - only 25 miles - but we made sure we were in good enough shape to pull it off with ease. Here we are with the Sutter Home group, including 5 time (and currently reigning) National Criterium Champion, Tina Pic from the Sutter Home women's pro team.

It was a fun ride. Alot of good people.

This year, I've decided to bump it up a notch. My goal for this year will be the 100-mile Livestrong Challenge "century" ride, which is scheduled for late August here in Philadelphia. Even when I used to ride all the time, I never once banged out a ride of this distance. 50 miles is about the most I've ever done in one day. But this year, I've decided to pull out my old road bike from the basement, blow the dust off it, and get some serious training in once again.

That's my goal. For now. The fact that I'm putting it in writing here for the world to see just helps to solidify my commitment.

It's a somewhat personal challenge, but the fact that my success will help contribute to a good cause gives me even more motivation.

Oh, and my overall fitness progress so far? Since last June, I've lost 25 pounds overall and went from ~23% body fat, to ~16%. By August, I hope to be close to 10%.

Wish me luck.

Bermuda - September 2007

2007-09-10T20:29:00.000-04:00

With the low pressure area which would eventually develop into tropical storm Gabrielle lurking nearby, Cherie and I started our Bermuda vacation on September 5. Ultimately, the storm moved off towards North Carolina and was no threat to Bermuda, but did cause our first day to be a bit drizzly. No worries, however, because all we really wanted to do on our first day was pretty much nothing at all.

Last year, on our first trip to Bermuda, we stayed at Coco Reef Resort, on the south shore of the island. While it was nice to stay literally steps away from Bermuda's famous pink sand beaches, the hotel experience for us wasn't the best way to stay. Hotels on Bermuda are expensive, and really all we need is a comfortable place to sleep, because during the day we're out and about - not sitting around the hotel room. I don't even think we used the pool at Coco Reef last year, as it was always full of people... including one obese fellow who always seemed to be floating around like a bloated corpse.

But I digress.

This year, we tried something different. We decided to go the bed & breakfast route. We booked our lodging at the Granaway guest house, and we're very happy we did. This place has all the charms that you would expect from a 273 year-old house. Actually, because the few guest rooms in the main house were booked up, we ended up staying in the cottage, which served as the slave quarters back in the day. Again, with a full kitchen, this was a bit overkill for us (we're on vacation, after all) but the added privacy was nice. Next time around, we would probably choose to save a few more bucks and stay in one of the rooms in the main house.

Courtyard behind the Granaway's main guest house

Inside of the Granaway Cottage

The private garden next to the cottage

Each morning breakfast is prepared by the hosts, Michael & Carol, along with their helper, Fransisco, who also resides on-site. They give you the choice of eating with the rest of the guests outside when the weather is nice, or having your breakfast served privately. If the weather doesn't cooperate, the Granaway's beautiful dining room inside the main house is put to use. Fortunately, we had all but one of our breakfasts outside, where we got to meet some of the other guests.

After breakfast on our 2nd day, we called Oleander's to rent a pair of scooters, or "cycles" as they are referred to on the island. They have a location nearby, and within a few minutes they picked us up in a van to take us back to get the cycles. Bermuda's narrow and windy roads aren't really well suited for heavy automobile traffic, so as a visiting tourist, you simply cannot rent a car - in fact, foreign driver's licenses are not recognized at all on the island. There are 3 options: hire a taxi to take you everywhere (expensive), rely on the bus/ferry services (cheap, but you have to live by their schedule), or you rent cycles. As long as you are at least 16, all you need is a credit card to rent a cycle, and once you do, the island is your oyster - you can go where you want, when you want, for however long you want. Perfect! And for those that are unsure of your two-wheeled skills, keep in mind that the only bikes available to rent are 50 cc, and they will provide an area to practice in, if you need it.

Even though the engines are all the same size, the "premium" bikes we rented from Oleander's this year had *much* more pep than the bikes we rented from their competitor last year. Those bikes had us feeling like road hazards, with traffic stacking up behind us, but the bikes we got this year had no such problems. The posted speed limit on the island is 35 KPH (about 22 MPH), but these bikes has no problem pushing 50-60 KPH. These bikes allowed us to keep up with traffic with NO problem, however, we still got passed every so often as the Bermudian residents are allowed to own cycles up to 150 cc, and they are fearless riders on those twisty roads.

Posing with our trusty cycles

Video: Cruising down Harbour Road (sorry, no sound!)

So, with our cycles secured, we were ready to roll - and over the next few days, we saw the island top to bottom and end to end. From snorkeling at Tobacco Bay (east end) to buying rum cakes at the Royal Naval Dockyard (west end), and as much as we could manage in between. One of the more interesting stops was at Crystal Cave.

Crystal Cave

The cave was pretty cool, and the water gave it an interesting appearance. As it was explained to us, the water provides a magnifying effect due to it being primarily salt water, covered with a thin layer of fresh water that was continuously dripping from the stalactites. Because of this effect, things like rocks or ancient stalagmites that look like they are just below the surface, are actually 20 or 30 feet down. At its deepest point, the pool is close to 60 feet deep, and crystal clear.

Our main preoccupations on this trip had to be eating and swimming, however. With our breakfasts taken care of, we still had to deal with lunch and dinner. A couple lunch stops at the famous Swizzle Inn, or "Swizzle Inn and Swagger Out", as the staff's t-shirts say. A few dinners in Hamilton, with the star attractions there being the Barracuda Grill (pan roasted hogfish, with vanilla-roasted baby fennel and carrot spaetzle... yum!) and the new Yashi sushi bar, which is inside the Coconut Rock restaurant. However, September 1 marks the first day of spiny lobster season in Bermuda, so we had to get our fill while we could. Last year, we had good experiences at the Lobster Pot in Hamilton, but this year they seem to have a problem with over-broiling the poor bugs. Fortunately, we found another place that more than made up for it. On Sunday, we stumbled across the Black Horse Tavern, way out in St. David's for lunch. Wow... what a lunch it was! The best fish chowder (a staple at just about every meal, every restaurant), stellar conch fritters, and the catch of the day. While we were eating lunch, we kept seeing all these huge broiled lobsters being served, and they looked good. Based on the quality of our lunch, and the looks of the lobsters that others were eating, we decided to come back for dinner as well (it was our last night on the island, so now or never).

Now, part of me is reluctant to post about the Black Horse - or at least reveal it's name. This no-frills tavern is mainly a hangout for locals, and they keep it packed for one very important reason - the food is friggin' amazing! The lobsters we had for dinner could not have been cooked better - perfectly plump and tender, including the knuckles... and even in that spine thing sticking out of their heads (spiny lobsters, after all). I'm afraid of this place getting too much publicity, because I don't want it to change. I don't want it to be flooded by the hoards that are coming in on the cruise ships - you know the ones... you can usually spot them by their matching neon-colored t-shirts that typically have some sort of catchy slogan on them, like "I'm not as think as you drunk I am" or some nonsense. No, I liked the fact that we were the only tourists in the joint that night. The place is special, and shouldn't be spoiled. However, the fact that this place is out "in the country", the only way tourists will get there for dinner would probably be by taxi ($$$) or cycle. I think that the place is far enough off the beaten path, that hoards will avoid it for the time being. I hope. The locals seem to give it more than enough business, so I don't think they'll miss the "boat people".

OK... enough about food. Swimming. Bermuda is famous for its pink sand beaches. Yes, they are pink, but what they don't advertise so much is how *soft* this sand is. Really, it feels like baby powder. It's hard to believe that we have parrot fish to thank for it (more on that later).

Cherie at Horseshoe Bay

Sergeant Major fish while snorkeling at Church Bay

The beaches on the south shore are beautiful, wide expanses of pink sand with some hard-to-reach tucked-away coves mixed in for good measure. However, the surf on the south shore can be a bit rough at times, and one of the most famous and picturesque beaches - Horseshoe Bay - tends to get overrun by the aforementioned "boat people" when the cruise ships are docked, so aside from some good snorkeling at Church Bay, most of our time was spent in the northeast section of the island, at Achilles Bay and Tobacco Bay.

Cherie at Tobacco Bay

Tobacco Bay was amazing! We never stopped there before, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because the on-beach bar (and music), or the all of the families that come with their kids to take advantage of the bay, which for most of the bay is only waist-deep. It just seemed kind of "loud & touristy". However, the best part is just beyond the rocks at the mouth of the bay. Swim out past that area, and there is a large section of reef to explore. The amount of fish out here was amazing... no sooner did I pass the rocks at the mouth of the bay when I was enveloped in a huge school of small fish. Thanks to the underwater housing I recently got for my camera, I even managed to get some decent video.

Video: Snorkeling at Tobacco Bay

We saw a pretty good variety of fish here, many of which I've never seen snorkeling in other sections of the island. At one point, I saw a barracuda slowly cruise by. Unfortunately, didn't think to get a photo until he moved out of range... oops! One of the strangest things we saw was a school of cuttlefish, all about 6" long. It was weird... they were all lined up, and looking right at us. I tried to get some video of them, but they were careful not to let me get too close, so it was a bit hard. You can check that video out here. There was a small porcupine puffer fish... he was really tricky to get a picture of as well.

Bluestriped Grunt at Tobacco Bay

Parrot Fish at Tobacco Bay

Now, back to those Parrot Fish and the pink sand. We saw a lot of these guys while snorkeling all around Bermuda. Even when you can't see them, you can tell when they are nearby because you can hear them. "MUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH MUNCH" These guys live on algae, and the algae they like grows on coral and rock. So, they eat the coral and rock. You can hear them scraping the coral with their "beak". They munch on the coral, digest the algae, and what they can't digest, well... I'll just come out and say it - they poop pink sand. We saw it - the magic of nature... a 3 foot parrot fish pooping pink sand right in front of us. I've read that a single large parrot fish can produce a ton of sand per year. Think about that next time your strolling on a coral sand beach.

Anyway, our vacation was great, and there's a good chance we'll make this a regular yearly trip. Michael, our host at the Granaway, suggested that if we really like snorkeling, that next time we should charter a trip out to the off-shore reefs, as that's where the real action is. We did a SCUBA "resort dive" on our honeymoon in Mexico, and were thinking about getting our dive certifications, but Michael said that SCUBA is overkill for the Bermuda reefs - much of the good stuff is easily accessible with simple snorkel gear. Sounds good to us! Can't wait to go back...

By the way, additional photos from our trip can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/jasonwtucker/Bermuda2007