My Son is in Australia

My son is in Melborne on an assignment for his company. This is from an email about his trip there and his first day in "Melb."

I am south of downtown Melbourne ('Melb' for short). So far I am loving it.

Travel Review:

The second hardest part regarding yesterday (see below for the first hardest part) was the schedule. It started with a 10:40pm flight out of LAX (12:40am Dallas time). I ate dinner, then watched a movie or two until I couldn't keep my eyes open. I took 5mg of Ambien and woke up 4 hours later. (It's supposed to be good for 7 to 8 hours.) I took another, and woke up 2-1/2 hours later. I stayed up, played some checkers (won every time) and watched more movies. We landed and I went through customs. I arrived at the hotel before noon, checked in, and had one goal: stay out and about until 8pm so I can get accustomed to the local schedule. I didn't realize how difficult that was going to be.
I hopped on the Tram and went to Flinders Station (south end of downtown Melb). At the time I only had a Metcard Day Pass and wanted a Weekly Pass. I bought one, then went walking/shopping. I decided that I needed a watch since my mobile phone would only show me Califoria time. (How screwy is that?) I saw a store for Swiss Watches and crossed the street. Swiss Watch is not the same as Swatch, which is what I wanted; I kept walking. I found a Swatch store just after 2pm and left wearing my purchase. I needed food and coffee so I could stay awake. I passed McDonald's and looked for something local. My map showed a Greek section, so I went there. I had two lattes and a spanakopita (delicious). I left around 3:30pm and walked to Federation Square, which is a civic center with a tourism information shop. (I learned that from the Melbourne travel guide on the flight.) At 5pm I decided to give in to fatigue. I felt like I was a pedestrian vertigo, so I caught a Tram back to the hotel. I tried to stay up, so I watched TV until 7pm. I took 5mg of Ambien, and woke up at 1am. Went back to sleep and woke up at 3am. Went back to sleep and woke up at 5am. Went back to sleep and woke up at 7:30am. I got up and went to breakfast. I realize that I need 10mg of Ambien, and that I need to avoid drinking two lattes four hours before trying to sleep.
The hotel TV has ten stations. These are numbered uncomplicatedly from 1 to 10. A minimum of five channels are dedicated to sports, mainly rugby.
The first hardest part regarding yesterday was taking off my shoes after having worn them for more than 30 hours. I would have burned my shoes if it hadn't been a toxic hazard for the kookaburras.

Love,
E

I just wanted to eat my muffin.

Last week I conducted a customer demonstration of a 777 with one of our Asian customers. This customer is one of our toughest to work with because they are methodical to a fault. Their procedures actually interfere with understanding and testing the systems. What is normally a two and a half hour flight, stretched into almost a five hour flight. This tries my patience.

At the "post flight" meeting I didn't let my fatigue show, but it was there. When all questions are answered and a plan to handle the discrepancies that we've found, are established, I excuse myself from the conference room, congratulating the customer pilot and everyone else for doing a good job. (I'm sincere in this, no matter how it goes, it's a challenging task.)

I'd skipped the box lunch during the flight, so I was hungry. There were some left over pastries available. I grabbed a muffin, and walked across the parking lot to our office. I'd gone a short distance when the customer pilot called to me. He came up to me, and I thought, "What now?" He took my hand thanking me for my help. He wouldn't let go. He told me when he'd be back for the next flight, he wanted to fly with me again. He was still shaking my hand. With a stale muffin in one hand and the other captured, I was wondering, "What's going on here?" We talked for a while, then I was finally able to extricate myself. I have to remember that, what for me, is routine, for him is an epiphany. Mixed feelings. I was doing something right and I missed it.

Little League Hero

Warning: Treacly Grandkid stuff to follow.

My twelve year old grandson has done quite well this season in the Little League Baseball. He made it to the All Star Team and worked very hard to move up to second baseman. Two days before the All Star Playoffs, he took a hit across the bridge of his nose by a low hit ball. It slightly dislocated his nose, and opened a cut where it hit. For a few moments, he was stunned. The parents rushed to him and were impressed that he didn't cry. He's like that.

The next day, at the urgent care facility, the doctor suggested that he not play. He cried. He's like that.

Saturday, we watched him play in the tournament.

This is a boy that Hemingway would be proud to have for a son. I know this Poppa is proud to have him for a grandson.

How to adjust your rear view mirrors.

I've tried explaining this to people, but was never convincing. Maybe this will get the job done.

You Never Know What Form Art Might Take

Rock Stacking

I Can Live With This

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

Take My Photo's, Please!

This Site wants you to use their stock photo's, and only asks that you provide a link to them.

High Altitude Photo's

This is a slide show of a student project to launch a ballon to an altitude above 60,000 feet.

So Much Music, So Little Time

One of the nice features of Pandora is that you can email one of your personalized stations to a friend. With a couple of more steps, you can post your stations to your journal or web page. Just send the email to yourself, then open your mail and copy the URL to the appropriate location.

Here's a station I built around Jane Monheit.

Here's one based on Natalie MacMaster.

Besides Pandora, there are a couple of more sites that offer interesting music.

GarageBand.com offers indipendant music and free downloads.

Falling You has some amazing ethereal music available to stream or download.

What are your favorite sites?

Firefoxflicks

A very cool commercial by a Firefox fan. He did this for free to show his support for Firefox.

Hawaiian Sanctuary becomes a National Monument

This is good.

Here's a little inspiration.

More Chickens

Another Joseph Campbell Quote

The ego that sees others as "Thou" is different than the ego that sees others as "it."

From Wandering Visitor

The Music Genome Project

We had the chance to attend the Town Hall meeting with Pandora.com founder Tim Westergren at Seattle's Experience Music Project. If you are not familiar with Pandora, you should check it out.

The Music Genome Project now has more than 400,000 songs in the database and over 2 million subscribers.
Pandora.com has only been online for six months. That's a staggering growth rate!

• (Side note: Legally they can only allow US residents to subscribe; they use zip codes to verify residence. According to their demographic statistics, Hollywood, zip code 90210, has 4 million residents.)

Here's a summery of the meeting along with some of my thoughts in Italics:

They are working on the Classic music genome and will have it available soon.

Near and dear to their hearts is giving unknown artists a chance to be heard.

If you seed a station with an artist, expect to go through a process of sorting out the different styles that artist has used. Imagine (pun intended) seeding a station with the Beatles.

They are aware of the tendancy of a station to morph into "mush" over time with the use of thumbs up and down.

• If you want a station to stay close to a style, seed it with a song instead of an artist and avoid the temptation to adjust it with thumbs up and thumbs down. You can add a track to your favorites if you want to capture it for future study.

The business plan, for now, depends mostly on advertising, with Amazon, iTunes, and paid subscriptions, helping. Tim mentioned that if you link to Amazon from their site and purchase music, they get a percentage, but if you stay on Amazon and buy anything else, they also get credit.

• They're not profitable yet.

A long range goal is to have universal access to their music.

• I think this is a long way off, but I would love to be able to listen to my stations on my commute.

• It occurred to me that they have a huge database of what we, the subscribers, are listening to, the same way Google knows what we're searching for. This disturbs me a little, but not enough to quit using Google or Pandora. The potential for database mining seems very high to me. I also worry that some deep-pocket, like Yahoo, will buy them out.

I'm not an expert on this service, but, if you have a question or a suggestion about them, please leave a comment.

RC Plane video on YouTube

This is worth watching.

In Memorium

The F-101, "Voodoo", was the second of the so-called Century Series fighters. Starting with the F-100, "Super Sabre" and ending with the F-110, "Spectre", which was later re-designated the F-4, "Phantom II". As you can see from the photo, the rudder and pitch control are on a tail boom behind the engines. Just forward of the tail boom and above the engines, are five fuel "cells" plumbed together to make up the fuselage fuel tank.
To refuel the aircraft, a fuel truck would make a sealed connection to the body of the plane and pump fuel into these cells at a moderate pressure.
(You can watch a similiar operation from the windows of the waiting area of the airport terminal.)
Since the hose connection is air tight, the cells must be ventilated. They accomplished this with ducting from the top of the cells that are connected with "T" fittings so that fuel vapors and air could exit at the back of the tail boom.

In October, 1980, I was into the second day of Air Defense Alert at New Orleans Naval Air Station when the phone rang. Not the "Bat" phone, just a regular land line. New Orleans was not our home base. We deployed there from Houston for a 48 hour shift. We would take off from Ellington Field, have a short training session then recover to the Navy base. I answered the phone, and was told that two of our squadron members had been killed that morning on a training flight. At the time, all we were told, all that they knew, was that the plane had nosed into the ground just a moment after taking off. There was an unconfirmed report of an explosion before it hit the ground. Greg was the front seater, and Jerry was in the back. The eight of us in New Orleans, four crew members and four mechanics, stayed close to the phone for the rest of the day. The thoughts we all had centered around the loss of our friends and the questions of How? Why?

Weeks later,after the investigation, we got our answers. The fuel vent at the tail of the plane had becomed clogged, allowing the refueling pressure to force a clamp, securing a"T" fitting, loose. This let a small amount of fuel to collect in the tail boom. A perfect mixture of fuel and air, all that was needed was ignition.

We never found out what the ignition source was. Something, maybe the afterburner, touched it off. The explosion severed the tail boom. The horizontal stabilizer and the rudder were no longer a part of the plane, pitch control was gone, the nose dropped, and it flew into the ground.
There was some evidence that suggested they had tried to eject, but there was not enough time and altitude. What was also clear, was that this condition had been in place for a very long time. This plane was a time bomb. We had all flown it. In fact, I had flown it the day before the accident on the flight that took me to New Orleans.

Krupa on the Tom-Tom

I'm not that big a fan of Big Band era music, so when Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing" started playing on the local Jazz radio, I almost switched it off.

After a minute or two, it started getting to me and I wasn't sure why. About half way through it, I knew. There was a drummer banging away on the Tom-tom that was relentless. He turned out to be Gene Krupa.

Krupa does, what I found out later, to be the first extended and most famous drum solo ever recorded. If you've never heard this, you owe it to yourself to listen to it at least once in your life.

I defy anyone to not get caught up in the beat.

Recorded in 1938, you can listen to it here or watch a cool video here. I now have a copy of Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall and the track runs twelve minutes!

Everyone Loves Cirie

Me, too.
That would be Cirie Fields from Survivor Panama.
In an interview, she said that she had been underestimating herself for 35 years. That resonated with me.
It's almost a universal human condition. Sometimes we break out of the pattern by joining the military, signing up for something like "Outward Bound" or choosing some kind of adventure that puts us to the test.
Yogi Berra said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." I think he meant, choose adventure.

Pandora Update

Reference to my previous post about the music streaming site, Pandora.

I've had a couple of friendly exchanges with the "Listener Advocate" at Pandora support desk and have learned a few new things about how it works.
Here are excerpts from our emails:

Q: I'm a little curious what happens when I seed widely different genres into the same station, for instance, Diana Krall, and Gipsy Kings?

A: If you seed a station with Diana Krall and Gipsy Kings, you should get a station that plays "sets" of matches by each one. One set of 4 Krall-esque songs, and then one set of 4 Gipsy-esque songs.

Q: So now, the next question is, what if you enter two not so widely different artists, Joni Mitchell and Jane Monheit, for instance?

A: If you seed a station with similar-sounding artists, your station will be a lot more homogeneous. I personally have both types of stations; ones that whip around wildly, and ones that stick to a specific style of music.

A general understanding of their system can be gleaned from their FAQ, and a very thorough
review of their project can be found here.

I mentioned that I checked out two web sites in the previous post, but I didn't mention the other one. It's Protopage. It is a kind of Widgets for your browser. It only works with Internet Explorer and Firefox. I've tried it on Safari and Opera and sure enough it didn't function. I mention it now, because I was able to add a web page widget within Protopage that has the Pandora site embedded in the page. It works just fine, but I'm still not ready to give an unconditional endorsement to Protopage. Pandora is definitely thumbs up!

A World Tour - Sort Of

In the Fall of 2004, four of my coworkers and I started on an adventure that would take eighteen days to complete. It would involve a trip around the world, but not in the usual sense of east to west. This trip was north to south, almost pole to pole.The map shows where we went, but to get a proper idea of what we did, you need to lay it out on a globe. Our task was to prove the long range reliability of a new and stretched version of the Boeing 777. We left Seattle on Oct 20, and flew south along the coast, then turned north to a tiny island in the Aleutian chain. We spent much of this flight with one of our two engines shut down -- on purpose! We landed at Cold Bay, taxied to the end of the runway, turned around, and took off again without opening a door or shutting down the engines. Our next destination was Tokyo, again most of this was flown with an engine shut down. If a jet engine could have a soul, these engines should. I've always been partial to General Electric engines, but these give me goose bumps. During this trip, we would be flying on one engine for over 28 hours! Before this adventure was over we would make stops in Dubai, Teipei, Singapore, Mauritius, Perth, Sidney, and Recife, then one final push back to Seattle. This will be something of a photo travel log of this trip.


Tokyo:
We arrived late at Narita, after 16 hours of flight time. The interior of our plane was like a cross between an RV and a computing laboratory. Except, it didn't have beds and it didn't have showers and it didn't have a kitchen - - well it wasn't that much like an RV. A normal cabin would be outfitted months later. We had sleeping bags, and foam or blow up mattresses on board, to get rest when we could, but it's just enough to get by. After landing, there were about twenty five of us, engineers, pilots, and mechanics, packed onto a too small bus for a very long ride to our hotel in downtown Tokyo.

The next day was for rest, but sightseeing took precidence. After a tour of the Tokyo Tower we went to the Ginza. It's what I think Times Square would be like, crowds of busy people, all moving quickly with somewhere important to go. I liked it very much, and insisted we find a local place for lunch.





Singapore:
The next leg of the journey for me and one other pilot was a commercial flight to Singapore where we would wait for the rest of the crew to bring the plane from Taipei. We used a method of crew leapfrogging so that pilots and mechanics could be in place and rested, to begin a series of repeated flight rotations scheduled as rapidly as a crew change would allow. The plane didn't get any rest.
Singapore was warm and humid. In fact, that was why we were there, to demonstrate that cold-dry to hot-humid cycles could be tolerated. By now, jet lag and long days had caught up with me, so my sightseeing consisted of strolls through the nearby shopping district and an outing for lunch at Raffles. Singapore is very modern with a huge amount of western influence. There were, of course, McDonalds and Starbuck's, but there were also many other recognizable American places, like Subway Sandwiches and Tony Roma's.



Dubai:
An "Oh, God:30" wake up call on Oct 28 for an early departure from Singapore to Dubai. This is absolute desert on the banks of the Persian Gulf. The only thing breaking up the uniform sand, is man made buildings. There were about thirty of us, so it took a long time to clear immigration and customs. The UAE, of which Dubai is a part, is very westernized. The region has close ties with the United States. When I was there, I thought, "Maybe there's hope."
We visited the "Burj Al Arab" Hotel . To get a tour, we were charged for tickets to get in, but they also allowed you to credit the price of the tickets against shopping at the hotel; more souvenirs! After exploring the pool area, and admiring the high tech fountain in the lobby, we took a cab to the Dubai Hard Rock Cafe for supper. I'm indifferent to it, but my co-workers seem to enjoy a chance to get some comfort food, burgers and barbecue. Of course it's cool to collect t-shirts from Hard Rock Cafe's from all over the world.




Mauritius:
Our next destination was a very welcome break. Mauritius is in the Indian Ocean, about a thousand miles east of Mozambique, with Madagascar half way between. Mostly agricultural, tourism from Europe is a big part of the economy. It felt, to me, very much like Hawaii. The rooms were four to a villa, with the villas widely scattered over the grounds. A beautiful pool was just steps from the lagoon beach.

The Shandrani Hotel provided canoes, kayaks, and power boats to give skiers a short pull around the lagoon. First come, first served, but it was free. After a day of rest, swimming, and photography, we had a fresh seafood supper before retiring for the night. The next day was all PR work. We opened the plane to tours by the "Air Mauritius" executives and employees. We expected around a hundred people, but got four times that many. Everyone was conscripted to help answer questions by the visitors. We were a hit! I found out after we left, that we made a splash in the local paper, partly because we pulled a "Look, Ma, no hands" stunt when we took off from a convenient intersection of the taxiway and runway, instead of backtaxiing to the very start of the runway, blithely ignoring a thousand feet of usable runway. With our performance, we didn't need it! That got their attention.



Perth:
What was about to happen over the next four days, I'll remember forever, and will, no doubt, bore my grandkids, and anyone else who will listen, to tears, for the rest of my life. From Mauritius, a seven hour flight took us to Perth, Australia. Australians are every bit as fun and hospitable as their reputations indicate.We had the quickest and easiest customs process yet.
One of the first things I was aware of while exploring Perth and Fremantle, was that "I could live here!" Perth was bigger than I expected. Their population is about 1.5 million. Fremantle is a boat ride from Perth, and is preserved as a historic harbor from the last century. Uh, no, check that, the one before the last century. Tourism is big. It's a good place to buy a didgeridoo and opal jewelry. No, I didn't buy a didgeridoo, yes, I bought some opal earrings for C. It was their Spring, and the temperature and sunshine were perfect. A lot more walking and picture taking on that day and the next.
But wait! There's more!




Ayers Rock:
We, of course, didn't land on Ayers Rock, but we saw it in a way that few have. Our next leg of the journey was actually two flights, one from Perth to New Caledonia, then a short back track to Sidney. Well, by now, a four hour flight was short! The stop in New Caledonia was just like the one on the Alaskan island, land, turn around and take off again. What happened on the flight from Perth is the most amazing thing I've ever experienced. Our test conditions called for a simulated catastrophic engine failure, rupturing the pressure vessel. That means that we pretend the engine blows up, damages the wall of the cabin, and we lose pressurization. Now, if you are a white knuckle flyer, don't panic, this almost never happens. =insert steely eyed killer grin here=
Here's what that meant to us. Leave Perth, and climb to 30,000 feet, cruise for a while, then shut down the engine, and rapidly descend to 10,000 feet. Once we are at low altitude, we are no longer under the control of any air traffic service. No one can see us on radar, no one can talk to us unless we use the satalite phone system. We're on our own. By the time we made our descent, we were over the red outback, pointed at the heart of Australia. This is where I start channeling Nevil Shute. We will fly over Ayers Rock, now known as Uluru, and Alice Springs.
When we approached Uluru, everyone grabbed a camera and scrambled for a window. Without much persuasion, the crew at the controls banked the plane so we could get a better look and eventually made a couple of turns around the rock. Since the top is over 1000 feet above sea level, we came within nine thousand feet of it. In the picture, you can see a road encircling the formation, with vehicles, buildings and a small town at the top. This is the second time I've seen Uluru from the air. Someday, I'll see it from the ground....


Sidney:
Another place I could live! Imagine the scenery of Seattle and the climate of San Diego. Over twelve hours after leaving Perth, we arrived in Sidney to another warm welcome. It was dark when we checked into the hotel, so we all met in the bar on the 24th floor of the Shangri La Hotel.
The nighttime view was spectacular. The next day was my turn to be the "Designated Pilot" at the PR event. When I could break free of my duties, there was no way to rejoin my companions, so I had the cab driver make a detour by Bondi Beach on my way back to the hotel. I was still in my uniform, so I only spent a few minutes taking pictures. This is headquarters to one of the famous lifesavers clubs. Once back at the hotel, it was a short walk to the harbor. This is THE harbor. The opera house is right there, just as impressive in person as in the pictures. I took a boat tour of the harbor and got a few more pictures.
But wait! There's still more.



Recife:
We might as well set a record while we're at it. Made the papers again. Our next leg was 17,314 kilometers (10,690 miles). 18 hours, 25 minutes from lift off to touchdown. No one had ever flown from Australia to Brazil before. By the way, lets tag the Antarctic circle, too. We flew due south from Sidney, down to Latitude 65 south. Then east, uh, west, wait.... I'm confused. We turned left! Now we're on a beeline for the Straights of Magellan. Beneath us is the outer reach of the south polar ice sheet. Icebergs just barely show up as bright white flecks. Once we arrive over the southern tip of South America, it seems like we would turn left to fly up its east coast, but a turn is not necessary. It's a trick of "Great Circle" navigation. But fly up the coastline, we did. Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, Uruguay, then Brazil. We overflew Rio, and could make out Sugar Loaf through the scattered clouds. Recife is located just on the north eastern shoulder of Brazil, just before the coastline bends back to the west. More beaches, more pictures, more souvenir shopping, more sightseeing... ho hum.
No, I never get tired of it. On the drive from the airport to our beach front hotel, we saw the slum areas, that convinced us to stay away from the interior of the city. This is, again, a recreation area for Europeans, as well as Americans. The cost of living, or vacationing, here is so low that it compensates for the extra airfare.
We had a day off to rest up from the long flight and to get ready for one that will be almost as long. Mostly, I just walked the beach, some of us took a cab to a mall-like shopping area, then, later that night, we went to a "Gaucho" style restuarant. The emphasis is on roasted meat served on a sword-like skewer. We all ate way too much, but had a lot of fun.



Home:
One last early checkout for another long flight home. Not a record, but extraordinary, never the less. Fourteen hours from Recife to Seattle, across the mouth of the Amazon River, we touch US airspace over Florida, only six more hours, and we'll be home, and we're all ready!

A Cool Music Streaming Site

I recently discovered the Podcast, "Inside the Net"
Catching up on the earlier podcasts, I was interested enough in episode 6 to check out two of the sites they talked about.

One of them blew me away. The developer is a musician by training and profession.
Movie and TV producers would hire him to compose music for segments in their shows.
They would bring him music that they had compiled from commercial releases and say, "This music would work in this spot. Can you compose something like this for us?" This got him thinking about classifying the attributes of the different kinds of music.

The result is explained here.


He generated a site that you can "seed" with music titles or artists that you enjoy, and it will create a playlist that has an uncanny ability to play music that you like, whether you have heard of it or not. I've now discovered a number of artists that I've never heard of or listened to before.

Try it out! Music Genome Project

You can sample my preferences here.

There are a collection of metaphores that refer to a persons intellectual or neurotic quirks:

Everyone has heard, "He's not playing with as full deck."

You may have heard the more hip, "He's not the sharpest knife in the drawer."
or the similiar, "He's not the sharpest tool in the shed."

My all time favorite, "He's one taco shy of a combination plate."

I just heard a new one, "Chalk don't stick to his blackboard."

My Fate!

savage chickens

Science Fiction vs Fantasy

I've always preferred Science Fiction to Fantasy. I recently ran across this entry from John Scalzi's blog defining the difference between SF and F:

Call me unbearably shallow, but here's how you know the difference. You walk up to the main character of the story in question and say: "Hey! Main character! That deus ex machina doodad you have on your belt, does it have, like, a battery?"

If he says "Why, yes, there's a tiny nuclear fuel cell in there that will power this baby for 10,000 planetary revolutions," well, then, you've got some science fiction there. If he says, "Of course not, it was forged in the eternal flames of Mount [insert typewriter spasm here] by the dwarves who serve the elder and/or fallen god [insert second typewriter spasm here], and holds captive his immortal soul" or some such, well, that's fantasy. Everything else is pretty much elaboration and variation on the point.

It seems like there is not that much difference after all. However, I've always been a fan of SF ever since reading "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" by Heinlein. To me, SF is more the "What if civilization took this path because of one or more futuristic events." Where Fantasy tends to morality tales of epic proportions. One of these I liked was the "Thomas Covenant Chronicles" by Stephen Donaldson. Firefly/Serenity fills both squares.

The Baby Gift

My daughter, S, became interested in a medical career after she had her first child. While taking nursing classes, she met a young female doctor from Pakistan. They became close friends. Even after they moved away from each other, they kept in contact by email. One day S got an email that Simi, the doctor, was pregnant. They began a correspondence that lasted for the rest of the pregnancy. S was the counselor now, and Simi the student. All the fears, excitement, expectations were shared over the internet. S had saved all of it, both sides of the conversations. When the baby was born, my daughter found some decorative printer paper, printed all the emails, bound them in a book, gift wrapped it, and presented it to...
the baby!

Shuttle Commander

I work with some interesting people. One of them will be retiring next week. He joined us about thirteen years ago, from NASA. He was a Space Shuttle commander with three missions to his credit. A genuinely nice guy, he never played the "astronaut card." One had to ask him a direct question to get him to talk about his experiences. Enough people asked that he agreed to bring in his slides and give those that wished to attend, a fascinating briefing on his career at NASA. He began his discussion with his selection as an Astronaut Candidate, dubbed "Ass Cans". There may be some life lessons from his experiences, like:

The Ass Cans that thought they were shoo-ins, weren't. The ones who were just glad to have made it this far, made it farther.

"Count backwards from 100 by 7's." (The trick; subtract 10, add 3.)
A very handy tip, that.

Of numerous personal photo's he took, several were of the damage to the biosphere from pollution and habitat destruction.
Astronauts may be environmentalists at heart.

A Grown Man

Living and working in the Puget Sound area, almost everyone I know has taken a crack at the famous STP.
Four years ago, C and I took one of our road trips to Texas and back. One morning on the trip, we were in West Texas, just south of the panhandle. Since we were practically in Larry McMurtry's back yard, it was appropriate that we stop for breakfast at a Dairy Queen. While we were ordering at the counter, a local couple came in. They were about our parents age. As C and I took our place at a booth, a second couple came in. The four were friends and sat down in the booth directly behind me. C and I ate our breakfast quietly, listening to the sound of their conversation. We weren't eavesdropping, just enjoying the dry, slow drawl of their voices.
Then, one of the women said to her husband, "Tell them what you saw yesterday." This caught our attention. In a tone of disbelief, the old man said, "Well, I saw a grown man ridin' a bicycle through town!"
C and I couldn't look at each other. The strain of stifling our giggles brought tears to our eyes.

Texas = Walmart

We were back on the farm in Texas for a week. We made the required daily trips to WalMart.
Except for one day we missed, so we made two trips the next day. It's a law or something.

Cowboy Bob

In the Fall of 1972 we went to Phoenix, Arizona to start my training in the F-4 at Luke Air Force Base. That's where I met Bob. Bob was the real thing. He was raised on a 10,000 acre ranch in Wyoming. He would ride his horse into the mountains for days at a time to bring the herds down to safe pastures for the winter. He participated in the local rodeos. A Catholic, for a time he considered becoming a priest. I was a student pilot and Bob was a student Weapons System Operator. We were paired together as a crew.

At first, I wouldn't have anything to do with him other than our training. I didnt mean to be rude, although I probably was. Thinking back, I was frightened and in over my head. I usually put up walls when I'm feeling like that. The other student crews were becoming friends and they took notice that Bob and I weren't. Some of them asked me about it. I just didn't see that bonding was necessary.

Perhaps someone said something to C, or perhaps her instincts kicked in. She had me invite Bob to dinner one night. The evening started off cordially. Then C started working her magic. She brought us together, so that by the end of the evening, a close friendship had started.

We went through the rest of the training together and had many rewarding, and sometimes hazardous, flights. Once, I almost ran us out of fuel. We made it to the base with so little gas that the indications were unreliable. I expected the engines to flameout while we taxied in. It shook me up that my incompetance had put his life, as well as my own, at risk. He told me that whatever I did, he was proud to fly with me. If that meant we became a smoking hole in the dessert, so be it. I would have never had that kind of courage.

At the end of training, Bob went to South East Asia, and I went to Europe. Three years later, Bob was reassigned to my Wing, but to a different Squadron. So we connived to get the chance to fly together again. It was wonderful to fly with him, both of us now much better at our jobs, but still like kids with a new toy.

It's been years since we've heard from each other, but we both know that a phone call would make the time disappear.

Stick With Me

"Stick with me, kid.
You'll be wearing rocks as big as diamonds."

I say this when I get something right. It happens sometimes.