Stopping The Bounce

For the last couple of years I've thought the truck needed new shocks. The ride was really bouncy. Today I installed some Bilstien 5100 series shocks and what a difference they made! I compressed two of the old shocks and they were so bad they didn't even rebound. The new ones are WAY harder to move. The truck feels new again!

Black Gold

Michelle and I went for a sail today with our friend Patrick. We sailed the southern portion of San Diego Bay. On the way home we stopped by Coronado Brewery for a beer and a sandwich. At the bar we met the deckhand from a private yacht called "Black Gold". The deckhand said the yacht was owned by a family who made money from pavement (I thought it was related to oil). He said the family who owned the yacht has had multiple boats, and therefore were up to to Black Gold 2, 3, 4, etc..

I found this interesting because just last night I was visiting a website called Live Ships Map where you can  view the tracks of boats which have an Automatic Identification System (AIS) installed. This site provides real-time data on the location (and destination) of major ships....and I just happened to see "Black Gold" listed as a ship docked in Berkley, California.....of all the gin joints in the world...

You Can Have 25% Off

I remember taking a cruse with Michelle's family...nothing scarey happened. I remember leaving San Diego while a south ground swell was coming in. That made for a slightly rocky first night especially when you were sitting down in the main dining area...which happened to be at the far end of the ship. At most I felt a little seasick from the minor rocking around.

But it wasn't anything like the video below. Apparently the cruse line offered passangers 25% off their next cruse...

Sometimes Banging Your Head Does The Trick...

A prior post mentioned a new iPod Nano. That's only half the story....The Nano was for me because the lack of moving parts in the device allows me to use it while riding my bike. But the limitation is the hard drive...it only has 16 gigs. I have more than twice that amount of music.

I purchased an 80 gig iPod Classic for Michelle's car. I figured if I load it up with music then we wouldn't need CD's or satellite radio (which plays some really weird stuff anyway - what I really need is Pandora in my car....but that's another story.)

The only problem was the iPod didn't seem to work. It would lock up when syncing, it would freeze iTunes on my laptop, or lock up my entire computer. Aaaaauuuggghhh. I tried everything from restarting and switching cables to syncing just one playlist at a time. I was frustrated.

Then I started googling some of the error messages and found a post describing how to completely reformat the iPod hard drive using Windows. Once I did that, the iPod worked like a dream.

I synced 5350 songs onto the iPod for Michelle. That should keep us entertained for awhile and make for a really long road trip. Where to? Not sure :)

How long of a road trip? How about 16 days...you have to appreciate a software company that converts the amount of music value from hours to days once the value is large enough.

Its Getting Better All The Time

I ran my old iPod through the washing machine...oh well..but that gave me an excuse to buy another one. I found a used one online for pretty cheap and it came with a video camera. I took it to the skate park this morning and rode around with it in my mouth. Check it out... by the way I stripped the audio out...all you heard was my freewheel and some heavy breathing anyway :)

SkunkWars - The Humans Strike Back

First of all, I'm not a Star Wars fan....never was. Didn't collect action figures...would rather ride my bike. But I'm sticking with the theme.

Yesterday I put a concrete footing under the gate. 240 lbs. of concrete...turned out pretty good. I had to buy a special tool to put an edge on the concrete. Last night I watched a skunk try to climb under the fence...no luck (for him)!

I think we are in business. Next step...filling the gaps between the stones with seashells!

DreamKeeper

I found a website belonging to a couple who circumnavigated the earth in their sailboat. They left San Francisco four years ago and are finally making their way home up the coast of Baja. Their website is full of interesting stories, photos, and information about "blue water sailing". A pretty interesting story. You can check out their website here.

While at sea, they post short updates on their blog using a satellite phone and a laptop. Pretty cool. Want to drop in on what they are doing right now? They left Turtle Bay yesterday and are heading up the upper half of Baja towards San Diego. Check out their blog here.

Interesting factoid....they said if they added up maintenance, food, slip fees, licenses, transportation while in port, and all the other costs associated with sailing (besides the boat itself) it costs aprox. $35,00 per year to sail full time. The most expensive was the Medeteranian while the cheapest was the South Pacific.

As Mad As a Sitting Hen...

Today was a tough day at work....time to say goodbye to some good friends who are being laid off. But if there is a silver lining on this situation, it would be a figure of speech shared by Keith.

Keith, a teacher at our school, was responsible for sharing a "good bye" story about Noel, an outstanding teacher who is loosing his job due to budget cuts. Keith was sharing with the group how Noel was an advocate/champion for his students. Keith remembered when he questioned Noel about a student Keith thought might have been a troublemaker. Noel surprised Keith by quickly standing up for the student.

Keith (who is from Indiana) described Noel's reaction by saying "I might as well have pissed on a sitting hen".

Wondering if that's how some people from the midwest describe the act of ruffling someone's feathers!!!

The Judas Goat

Michelle and I were sailing around San Diego bay a couple weeks ago and we saw a B-17 Flying Fortress fly by. It was just one B-17, but MAN was it loud!

There are less than a hand full of B-17's that are still flyable. A couple belong to a non-profit group called the the Commemorative Air Force which specializes in restoring WWII aircraft.

During WWII, B-17's would fly in large groups during air raids on Germany. The photo below shows dozens of B-17 flying in a "combat box" formation. So many planes would fly in formation, they couldn't take off all at once. The military would use retired/used bombers painted in psychedelic colors as "controllers". These planes, known as the "Judas Goat" (a morbid nickname) would take off first and fly in circles while others would get in formation behind them. Once everyone was ready to go, the Judas Goat would land and the formation would leave on their bombing run.

Something to see!

The photos below were originally taken with black and white film but touched up to match the original paint schemes.

This one was known as the "spotted cow".

...I lifted a bunch of these photos from here.

Wanted to provide a follow-up on this post. My parents responded to this post with the following comment:

I enjoyed your photos of the B-17, my favorite WWII bomber.  Your mom and I "walked" through a B-17 at the Palm Springs Air Museum a number of years ago.  The docent was a former B-17 crew member during WWII.  In response to mothers question whether he flew on this plane, he said, "No, my plane is at the bottom of the North Sea"."

Skunk Wars - Round 1

We are comitted to winning the war against the skunks who tear up our plants. Right now they are getting into our yard under the gate. Our plan is to put a concrete footer under the fence. Yesterday I did the first part....installed a drain. Next week I'll complete the second half...the footer!

Stay In The Lane

Someone named Casey decided to make a video commentary on bike lane laws in New York City. Check it out.

Jump In A Ditch

I remember hearing somewhere that if you are stuck out in the open during a tornado while driving, a safe suggestion is to park your car and climb up under a freeway overpass. I'm from California...what do I know?

Turns out that is a dangerous urban legend promoted by a video shot by a TV crew in Kansas during 1991. Since then, people have attempted to hide under overpasses....with less than desirable consequences.

Flying debris is one of the most dangerous aspects of a tornado. Being under an overpass actually increases the odds of being hit by debris because:

• you are higher off the ground than you would be if you were lying a ditch....and therefore more likely to be hit by something
• wind speeds can increase due to the shape of the bridge itself

Parking under an overpass also creates a traffic jam for emergency vechicles and others fleeing the tornado.

Below is a collection of photos of storm damage. The majority consist of objects pierced by debris. The blue and white truck actually has part of a refrigerator in it. I threw the record in for fun... though I'm pretty sure that's a urban legend too.

What should you do? NOAA says park your car, find a ditch, and lay down in it. Oh...and if you are in a mobile home...your toast so you might as well go outside and find a ditch. Don't worry about opening windows in your house to equalize pressure. Odds are a flying 2x4 will do that for you.

Follow this link for more info on the freeway overpass myth.

Atacama

Following the extreme theme....the driest place in the world is the Atacama Desert in Chile.

The driest place in the world is the Atacama desert near the Andes in South America. It's marked by an almost "lunar-like" landscape, nearly devoid of plants, animals and insects. The average rainfall there is less than a millimeter a year.

This is an average. Apparently some weather stations in this area have never recorded rainfall.  NASA uses the area to test their Mars landing craft. The lack of people and clouds makes it an ideal location for telescopes (that's whats in the photo above and below). In 1973 Pinochet used an abandoned mining town in the area as a prison camp. The empty swimming pool below is from a different abandoned mining town in the same area.....not sure where the water would come from :)

Waiʻaleʻale

I was reading about weather when I bumped into an interesting fact. Mount Waialeale, Hawaii, is the rainiest place in the world, with an average of 460". I wondered what that looks like and googled this photo. That's a lot of water!

As you know, I love weather. NOAA has a cool website for people who want to learn more about how weather works.  Check it out sometime. There is an interesting section on how waves are made.