July 26, 2021 · 23:09

Gator Bite

The first day back from a vacation can be it’s own special Hell. Today was survivable, but there were definitely some curve balls being thrown.

Of course there was the “back to work” thing. Remember, I really like my job and the folks that I work with, and they’re all really good at what they do and our corporate culture includes an expectation that folks who are off the clock are to be left alone unless it’s really, REALLY an emergency. We didn’t have any emergencies, so there weren’t any big surprises, just dealing with the upcoming end-of-the-month deadlines that were there before I left. And a couple of “out of left field” issues, but that can be true most any day.

The first more ominous issues came when Hissy wouldn’t start. At all. Six days of driving, somewhere between 800 and 900 miles through desert temps up to 115ºF, and she had performed like a champ. Now, with no warning, she was dead as a doornail. My first guess was that it was the battery, but I was a bit tied up with work tasks at the moment, so troubleshooting got put off until later in the day.

But I did see that she had taken a “gator bite” right on the hood.

We had a couple of things in those 900 miles that jumped up and tried to bite us. I remember suspecting that we had been hit by a “gator,” a long strip of truck tire that was lying in the middle of the freeway. It had gotten hit by a car in front of us, thrown up into the air, and bashed into us. I actually thought that it had hit at the top of the windshield (so maybe I should look for a second mark on the roof?) but right there across the hood is a nice, clear print of tire tread. Given that it could have hit the grill and busted out the radiator, or hit the windshield and shattered it (which in turn could have been problematic if I lost control of the car at 75 or 80 mph), I guess needing only a little cleanup on the hood is an acceptable outcome.

As for why she wouldn’t start? I had pulled out my jumper cables and went to attach them, only to find that the negative battery cable was completely loose. The clamp was still on the post, but barely, and the nut on the tightening clamp was ready to fall completely off. All I had to do was tighten it with my fingers and Hissy fired right back up. The navigation system was “lost” and needed to reboot and some of the radio pre-sets were erased due to the power outage, but all of that was quickly repaired. No muss, no fuss!

Some days “good enough” is simply good enough. Especially for a Monday, the first day back at work after vacation.

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Filed under Paul, Photography

July 25, 2021 · 23:35

Home Again, Home Again

It was an interesting foray back out into the “real world” and travel for six days in a time of COVID.

We were masked whenever we were indoors, and a lot of the time when we were outdoors. Other people? Not so much. In Las Vegas it might have been 25% to 33% or so masked in the casinos, about 2% or so outside, even in crowds. About the same in Palm Springs for the general public. In Las Vegas there’s a new mask order for employees, and about 99% of them were masked. I don’t know if there’s a new masking order for the Palm Springs area or San Bernardino County (Los Angeles County does have one) but it seemed that most employees were masked up.

My biggest concern is that the times when we were indoors and had to get unmasked were when we were eating. Of necessity, most everyone else (except the employees) were eating and thus unmasked as well. We’ll see if that bites us in the ass over the next week or two.

Finally, a potential sign of impending doom comes from my fondness for this, which was in the window of a very hoity-toity, upscale boutique in Caesar’s Palace, where I would walk by it a couple times of day:

They probably had someone putting in overtime to get my nose prints, finger prints, and drool marks off the glass.

It should be noted CLEARLY for the record that I do not know how to ride a motorcycle, I have not (to the best of my memory) EVER even been ON a motorcycle, and that even if I were to start to learn how to ride a motorcycle (which could happen, I guess) it would be extremely wise to start with a much, MUCH smaller motorcycle and work my way up with experience. A good analogy would be my flying – I have been trained to fly a small, single engine aircraft such as a Cessna 150 or 172 and no matter how much I might want to fly a P-51 Mustang or an F-14 Tomcat, there’s a serious experience and learning curve between here and there.

And yet… Drool marks.

No doubt signs of a long delayed and well earned midlife crisis, perhaps. Or serious, major league dementia.

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Filed under CoronaVirus, Paul, Photography, Travel

July 24, 2021 · 21:36

Highs & Lows

Big highs today – finally got to go up the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway to the top of Mount San Jacinto, then went for a hike.

The low was going to get a lemon-lime Gatorade out of the vending machine afterward and instead of the routine, standard, expected lemon-lime, getting this abomination from Hell:

There are some sick and demented product managers out there in Pepsiland. Just sayin’,,,

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Filed under Photography, Travel

July 23, 2021 · 22:14

Leaving Las Vegas

Our four days in Las Vegas were up. Leaving town we passed a site where I expect to return some day as a sworn enemy.

“There is evil there which does not sleep…”

But why “as a sworn enemy” you might ask if you’re not familiar with American professional sports? “Evil”?

Oh. Yeah. That.

My current masks have attracted a bit of  notice in Las Vegas. This is a good thing!

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Filed under KC Chiefs, Photography, Sports

July 22, 2021 · 23:27

Always An Interesting Place

It cooled down a bit (low 90’s) after sunset and we were out of other set plans, so I went out walking the Strip for a couple of hours.

(Embiggenate by clickenating, as always)

“Interesting” is a great descriptor of this place – in all of the many and varied interpretations of that term!

 

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Travel

July 21, 2021 · 23:26

Twentieth Anniversary

How does one celebrate one’s twentieth wedding anniversary? Well, some folks go to the French Riviera, some to New York, some just go out to dinner, some something somewhere in the middle.

We went out and beat the shit out of bottles, VHS tapes, dishes, a computer monitor, a printer…

It’s like a scene out of “Full Metal Jacket.” “Let me hear your war cry!!”

The protective gear is necessary – glass, plastic, metal shards flying everywhere. Along with every muscle, tendon, and ligament in my body. I’m going to need a fork lift to get me out of bed tomorrow.

There was much destruction. And sweat. And soreness tonight. It was worth it.

Dinner was at the Top of the World restaurant (rotating!) at the top of Stratosphere. Occasionally you would see someone plummet by past the 106th floor on the express route from the 108th floor to the 63rd floor (or someplace down there). We did not do that adventure for our twentieth anniversary. Maybe for the fortieth.

After that extreme destruction, hand to hand combat with inanimate objects earlier, an unusual amount of walking through casinos, and enough great food to sink a ship, we ended up with some amazing dessert.

Happy Anniversary, Ronnie! It’s been an adventure every day, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the next twenty bring! Love you!

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July 20, 2021 · 23:09

No Survivors

Long day, but some fun stuff and new sights. At the end of it all was a large ice cream treat with novel toppings.

It was called “The King Shake.” Not sure how the banana and bacon tie in with that name…

The end result had a look that reminded me of Chihuly Garden & Glass in Seattle.

On the inside, there were no survivors. But my cardiologist will be a winner!

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Filed under Photography, Travel

July 19, 2021 · 23:45

Laugh Track

I think my most hated thing on television is the laugh track.

There are shows that I used to find absolutely hilarious. “Two & A Half Men” and “Big Bang Theory” are two good examples. Then I realized that: a) the characters are real assholes, and b) there’s an omnipresent, relentless laugh track. It’s not a spritz of a couple chuckles here and a hint of a few guffaws there. Nope, it’s like being rolled over by a 250 ton Laughter Express bus and squished flat like a bug.

Once you have that switch flipped in your brain, once your perception has been re-tuned… Well, you’ll never watch it again.

Some favorite shows still have laugh tracks, but they handle it differently. “M*A*S*H” for example never ever has a laugh track during the scenes in surgery or with incoming patients. It really makes a difference.

On the other hand, while an episode of “Friends” was on last night and I walked into the room, the laugh track mugged me, stole my wallet and watch, and left me bleeding in the gutter. It was like swimming with piranhas. The worst part once I was being inundated was again realizing that: a) the characters are ALL real assholes, and b) they weren’t saying ANYTHING funny. There wasn’t even the slightest one-liner even approaching “borderline humorous,” but the laugh track would have us thinking that the funniest joke in the history of mankind had just been uttered. But if your brain can filter out the laugh track but still listen to the dialogue you can hear the “posturing one liner,” brief pause with medium laughter, response to set up the “joke,” brief pause with light laughter, punchline delivered in character from a self-centered, annoying jerk, longer pause with 100% over the top levels of laughter, rinse and repeat ad nauseum. But, again, if you could cut out the rest and just listen to the dialogue, it’s moronic and annoying.

That might be my standard moving forward. A laugh track might be an instant deal killer for any new show.

You know what show never had a laugh track but still had me laughing every show? And crying? And singing along? “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” that’s which show. It’s a freaking CRIME that it was cancelled!

[Insert laugh track here!]

 

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Filed under Entertainment

July 18, 2021 · 23:46

No Context For You – July 18th

Well, maybe a tiny little bit of context.

This isn’t exactly “Find That Lizard” quality “no context” material (that makes sense in my head – you’re on your own) but what I wanted to show you is that mask. I found them early in the pandemic and lockdown. They’re custom printed with an FAA VFR map for the area of your choice. Mine are for Camarillo Airport.

These days the folks who do these are also doing shirts, hats, pajamas, all sorts of things with your choice of maps on them. That’s clever. That’s ingenuity at work. I hope these guys are making a fortune.

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Filed under Flying, Photography

July 17, 2021 · 23:29

Creeping Back To Normal At CAF SoCal

It’s been a long sixteen months at the CAF SoCal hangar in Camarillo (remember, I’m still on Staff there for the 8th year as Finance Officer) but we’re slowly creeping back to normal.

Our planes were all mothballed and our museum closed. We got a lot of maintenance work done, on both the facilities and the aircraft, but it’s time to get back to our mission.

The museum is open three days a week instead of six, but we’re getting some decent visitor traffic on those three days as word spreads of our soft re-opening.

We’ve had our first aircraft rides and have more being booked for the near future.

The Camarillo Wings Association will be moving ahead with the Wings Over Camarillo airshow on August 21st and 22nd. We’ll be flying our PBJ bomber, F6F Hellcat, Spitfire, and Zero. Plus all of our other aircraft and museum and PX (and the beer garden) will be on static display down at our hangars at the west end of the ramp, along with the STEM pavilion being in our “new” hangars.

(Clickenate to embiggenate!)

From left to right: The aforementioned “new” hangars, PBJ (gray bomber), F6F Hellcat (dark blue fighter), someone’s Cessna (white plane behind the F6F), YAK-3 (gray/blue camouflage fighter), AN-2 (huge yellow biplane), C-46 (silver cargo plane), MIG-17 (red jet), SNJ (yellow trainer), jeep & trailer.

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Filed under Airshows, CAF, Panorama, Photography