Serious Thought For The Week

A day without sunshine is like. . .

Well, night.

NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!

I don’t wish to offend anyone or upset their beliefs, but I think it’s time we let a little reality soak into religious worship habits.

I remember attending church with my wife once when her Bible study class was into a lengthy discussion of whether a particular verse in the Bible contained this word or that one. I remember the minister asking different people who obviously owned a different printing to read the verse as written in their particular version.

I left wondering why.

I am no scholar, but I am sure the Bible has been translated through several languages, as well as written by different people whose views of the described events may vary from another’s perspective.

There used to be a party game - before we were old enough to buy beer or chase girls - where one person would whisper something to the next and it continued around where the last person would relate what was whispered to him and compare it to the original statement.

Sure made you wish for the beer - but enlightening enough to shake your faith in believing everything you hear. Two things have brought this to mind today -

I am currently reading Dennis Croukamp’s The Bush War in Rhodesia, which details the author’s combat experiences, much of which was as a member of the elite Selous Scouts, the Rhodesian equivalent of our Delta Force. During one battle, Croukamp was able to recover an enemy’s written journal, which he included in the book. The journal described a famous battle of the war from the terrorist’s point of view, and included passages such as, “. . . the nato guns of sophisticated make sent flying in all directions swarms of deadly bees.” This is an eyewitness description of what was probably a light machine gun - by an African tribesman.

Now let’s further confuse our written words with the introduction of translating from one language into another. Yesterday I wrote the post complaining about attempting to buy articles manufactured in Mexico with labels printed in Spanish. I originally titled the article How To Piss Away a Morning (and grouch about it) but got “cutesy” and popped it into a language translation program and put it up in Spanish as Como a Orina Lejos una Mañana (y cascarrabias sobre ello)

To really blow our faith in the printed word, if we drop the above Spanish translation back into the software for conversion back into English, we get this little gem; Like to Urine Far one In The Morning (and grumpy person on it)

At the risk of sounding completely sacrilegious, if you consider the multiple translations the Bible has gone through, it may, in actuality, just be the owner’s manual for a Ford Fairlane.

Como a Orina Lejos una Mañana (y cascarrabias sobre ello)*

Having agreed to cover the wings of an Ercoupe for a friend who runs the Marion airport, I began running down some of the supplies that I would need. This morning’s shopping list included a couple of high quality, pure bristle paintbrushes, a quantity of “throw away,” one-inch bristle brushes and a gallon of MEK.

I usually shop in Carbondale, but as I was to drop the stuff off at the airport, I went to Marion’s Home Depot. My first set back was finding pure bristle brushes. Seems all the stuff comes from Mexico now, and as part of what seems to be the goal of discontinuing English as our national language, all the labels are printed in Spanish. I ran into this problem last summer while remodeling the upstairs bath. I needed to add a light switch on a finished wall and was searching for an electrical box made for this installation. All of the wall boxes were packaged in cardboard with Spanish labels and, with Spanish not being my second (or first) language, I ended up having to open some twenty boxes to find the right one.

Here we go again with the paintbrushes. The higher quality ones are all packaged in cardboard where you can’t see the bristles to tell if they are pure bristle, nylon, polyester, or some combination of the three, and the labels are (once again) written in Spanish. Finally finding a brand that were of pure bristle, there were only 2″ wide ones (which I needed) but no 3″ (also needed.) They did have a quantity of the cheap 1″ ones, but no MEK.

Being hard headed, I refuse to buy two or three items from someplace that should carry all of this. So . . .

South Side Lumber in Herrin, who don’t have MEK or cheap 1″ brushes and have a poor selection of quality brushes - but again all Spanish labeled.

Next stop - Ace Hardware, where I find the most expensive MEK that I have ever seen, and all of their brushes were plastic handled - which melts in aircraft dope. Also, their cheap 1″ brushes were $1.69 - the same ones I usually buy for 35 cents.

I gave up and came home where I am studying my Spanish dictionary in preparation for this afternoon’s trip to Lowe’s in Carbondale.

* How To Piss Away a Morning (and grouch about it)

Can You Spell Alzheimer’s?

Yesterday morning at breakfast, I skimmed through a new motorcycle toy catalog and ran across the gloves that I usually wear. I was surprised to see that they had upgraded the gloves with some pretty significant changes; carbon fiber replaced the old leather pad across the knuckles and the overall construction was different.

I thought no more about it until about an hour later I pulled the bike out, donned boots, jacket, helmet and gloves to go for a ride.

Gloves?

WTF?

And I’ve been wearing this pair since the 1^st of April and haven’t noticed this?

I bought a pair of the upgraded ones last year and when I pulled them out of my glove bag this year, ended up with a little more variety than I would like. I can’t believe all the places I’ve been - and people I’ve ran into while riding the last couple of weeks. They must think I’m really gone.

Maybe so.

Serious Thought For The Week

If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a big weapon and a friend with a big weapon.

Serious Thought For The Week

If god wanted us sober, he’d knock the glass over…

This Is Your Wakeup Call(s)

(As well as additional proof that I’m a Sweet Guy)

Wakeup calls this morning seemed to come pretty regular - and repeatedly - and early.

First call from Charles Richter at 4:36 AM was enough to get us all up and going as his call coordinated shaking of our bed with Nan’s jumping up and turning on the light. My instant response was to ask, “Where’s Sophie?”

Our Golden Retriever used to have seizures and while these have not appeared in a year or so of treatment, the trembling of the bed seemed to correspond with one those. We had always suspected they were a result of exposure to Hubie’s WMD attacks during the Sky-Raider construction. (See Sophie’s Health)

However, Nan replied by pointing to Sophie lying on the floor, head slightly raised and one big brown eye looking up with that, “What-the-hell-are-you-people-up-to-now” expression. “She’s alright - I thought she was having a seizure.”

Me too, except my sleep muddled brain now zeros in on the probability that some giant bird had fallen on the balcony outside our bedroom and is beating it’s wings against the wall in a desperate struggle to get away. As I was wondering why my wife would be so stupid as to stand close to that wall where the monster bird might any second come crashing through, she asked, “earthquake?”

While we were agreeing that the earthquake possibility was the lesser of the evils (I didn’t mention the bird attack) and getting back to bed - our second wakeup call came in at 4:46 AM. This one from daughter Dani who is spending the night in a St. Louis hotel in order to catch an early morning flight to Cleveland. She informs us that the hotel was swaying pretty well and there was nothing on TV but bad horror movies and she had been up all night.

Typical of her, as we have long suspected vampire genes there. She always works (or plays) nights and sleeps days - and her career centers on lab work including a lot of research with blood.

After that call, we chat for a second or two, wondering “who next?”

At 5:02 AM, the third wake up is again from daughter Dani who cannot overcome the desire to have her parents well informed of current events and tells us that the internet has already posted the occurrence of a 5.4 earthquake centered in Evansville, IN.

Good to know these things instead of wasting brainpower sleeping.

Followed by the fourth wake up at 5:44 AM by Nan’s nephew near Cincinnati, inquiring about our safety. Giving him a little credit, he is in a different time zone.

Nan announces that she quits and is getting up. We begin to wonder who we can call to annoy with worthless information and she suggests we call my brother and ask if he has fled to his basement.

Proving that I am, in fact, a sweet man we don’t make the call. (See One Sweet Guy)

Interesting footnote strengthening my faith in science are several news releases already on the Internet, pinpointing the epicenter of the (from 5.2 to 5.4) quake at 6 miles from West Salem, IL; 6 miles from Mt. Carmel, IL; 3 miles from Belmont, IL, etc.

Nice to have choices.

Take a Ludovician to Lunch Day

This will have to be a short post, as I have to get out and buy a supply of AAA batteries for the tape recorders I am using in my non-divergent conceptual loop. I should probably replenish our supply of Tylenol while I’m at it, too.

Yesterday I read Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts.

I started to throw it away several times, but somewhere after page 83 I realized that it was a lot like waking up in the morning - or leaving a warm house on a cold rainy day (such as yesterday - which prompted the reading). Morphing from sleep to awake takes a bit of adjustment - just as from a dry, warm environment to cold and wet.

You may also know that it takes some adjustment to leap back and forth from sanity to. . .

By page 83 or so, I think I was comfortable with that adjustment.

It also helped to pop a Tylenol every third chapter.

Crosswind Component

In my pilot’s logbook, dated 16 October 2004, is the Clint Eastwood of logbook entries. It simply says: Poker Run, winds 270 at 25 - gusts to 34

Here’s what it doesn’t say.

It doesn’t say that I arrived at my hangar at Carbondale airport early that Saturday morning and preflighted the Acro Sport in preparation to participate in the EAA Chapter’s annual Poker Run. After pulling the plane out and buckling in, I started up and tuned to the ATIS while the engine came up to temperature. I let the recorded message play through a second time, as I wasn’t sure I had heard the wind announcement correctly - but second time around didn’t improve my hearing, he was still calling 270 at 25 with gusts to 34.

Well, okay - I’ll think about that on the long taxi from the T-Hangars to runway 24.

The log entry also doesn’t mention that I waited at the entry for 24 while several airplanes attempted to land and failed to do so, going around to try again - and once more failing.

My takeoff, while somewhat less than perfect, was still not bad - considering the 30-degree, 25-knot crosswind. I noted that it took a lot of crab angle on takeoff, and gust turbulence was a bit above moderate. Climbing into smoother air and turning toward the first poker card pickup at Pinckneyville, I tuned the radio to the Sparta AWOS to get a better feel for what Pinckneyville winds might be.

270 at 32! That’s in knots.  Ouch! This is going to be fun - 90 degree crosswind and blowing somewhere between what I’d estimate at 30 to 39 miles per hour with the gusts.

Straight in approach to runway 36 at Pinckneyville, at about a 30 to 40 degree crab into the wind and the left wing down quite a bit. Straightened it out with right rudder at the flair and it set down pretty easily. Surprised me - and the taxi into the ramp was actually more difficult than the landing - taking a lot of rudder and several brake “taps” to keep it straight. Picked up my poker card and off to Benton for the next stop. Might as well get the two hard ones out of the way. There was a fleeting moment on takeoff where I wondered exactly what I was doing . . .

Nowhere in the logbook entry does it say anything about the super-fast downwind trip over to Benton, or the radio traffic from a light twin that attempted and failed three approaches into Benton due to the winds.

Again a rough, cross-controlled final approach to runway 36 at Benton with a 90-degree crosswind. However, this time as I straightened everything out at flair, the wind lifted the Acro up into about a 10 foot hover and turned it about 45 degrees from runway heading. Feeding some power in, it floated in this position for a second and just as I thought I might be able to ease the power out and settle it in, the bottom dropped out between gusts, and we plopped down pretty hard, headed across the runway. Our forward speed was almost nothing and we just continued a U-turn and taxied in for our poker card.

Takeoff was another “grit-your-teeth” affair, and on to Mt. Vernon where the 150 foot wide runway 23 was almost directly aligned into the wind. I managed to get about four bounces while landing at about a 30 mph ground speed. What should have been the easiest landing turned into the worst.

On to Harrisburg where I found the wind tee pointing about halfway between runways 24 and 32. Attempting to be analytical about this, I chose to use 32 due to the large trees on the north of runway 24 just at the touchdown point. I figured there would be a lot of turbulence there and I preferred to take my chances with the steadier crosswind I thought I’d find on 32. Landing must have gone all right, as I really don’t remember any details. My memories of Harrisburg are filled with doing a magneto run-up while building the courage to depart. I remember checking the mag drop while listening to another plane on the radio trying to decide if he should attempt to land - when the metal lid on a very large dumpster by the airport office was blown off and flipped end over end across the parking lot and into a field.

As I shoved the power in I was wondering if a better idea would be to look for a storm shelter.

Long, upwind trip to Marion where we met for a hangar cookout and where I found I was the only aircraft to fly all five airports. Most people were smart enough to know when to quit, and only made one or two airports.

My poker hand?

I had a nine high card!

I need a temperature thingy

It’s supposed to be Spring, and yet I’m sitting here typing this instead of riding the Aprilia or flying the Acro Sport, both being activities I have planned for today.

I have never liked cold weather, and the older I get the less tolerant of it I am. I don’t even like chilly and come to think of it, cool kinda sucks, too. While it is supposed to get up to an official 69 degrees today, it’s now just barely 50.

So here I sit - waiting.

I’ve been driving BMWs for ten or twelve years, and all seem to have an annoying feature in the onboard computer that sounds a “ding” alarm when the outside temperature drops below 38 degrees. You start out in the morning and just about the time you get on the high way, this loud bell goes off - scaring the crap out of you while inspiring a mad search of the dash to see what has blown up. The warning bell on the new car is a little softer than the old one, but still . . .

I am convinced that this will shock you into a heart attack long before an icy road gets you.

What I really need is the same feature, but one that will jumpstart me when the temperature gets up to 70 degrees.

“Ding!”

Warm enough to come out and play.