Lunch today was at Saltgrass Steakhouse. We were originally scheduled to meet up there with our Alvin Opry group, but with one person afraid of the rain, and the other two maybe having CoVid, we decided to still have steak. Just as delicious as always, and our usual great service from Grace, our regular server.
25 years today, in 1979, T.S. Claudette came for a visit, and definitely overstayed her welcome. And stayed. And stayed.
And when she finally left a day or so later, she had left Alvin, TX, right down the road from us, with a continental U.S. record-setting 42” of rain in a 24 hour period. Only Hawaii, at 49”, has them beat.
Jan and I had just moved into our new house in Heritage Park a few weeks before, and I was working the night shift at NASA-JSC. It had been raining steadily all day, and though the water was filling the road edges, the road itself seemed to be clear.
So I headed out for work about 11:15, and getting to the end of our street, I made a left turn onto Pilgrims Point. As I did, I could see something large moving at the far reach of my headlights. Slowing to check it out, I realized that it was a wall of water, a mini-tsunami about 4 feet high sweeping down the road toward me.
I immediately put my station wagon in reverse and backed up, turning back onto our street, and then pulling up into the first house on the corner, still unsold, and got as close to the garage door as I could, and then waited.
A few seconds later, the wall of water passed by my street, and at the same time, spread out down our street, raising the water level from the street gutters to about halfway up our yard, a height of about 18”.
Luckily, our house was about two feet above the street, so we got no water in the house. But a lot of other homes in our subdivision did.
Getting soaking wet, I ran back to the house and called into work, telling them that I wasn’t going to be able to get into work. With a laugh, I was told, that it wasn’t a problem since they couldn’t leave
Jan and I are wondering if it was something we said. Back on July 1, the young man who has been living in his Class C since we got here in October 2017, pulled out. Then today the family on the other side left for Rawlins, WY in their camper.
Or maybe it’s all those loud, drunken parties we have.
Thought for the Day:
The fact that jellyfish have survived for 650 million years despite not having brains should give hope to many people.
Your Retro-Preview Highlights –
2011 – Buffalo Bill And Cody, WY
2013 – Mackinac Island
2014 – Damned If You Do
2015 – Code? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Code!
2018 – Taken For Granite
2022 – Another Unintended Consequence
And Now On To today’s Retro-Blogs.™
July 25, 2009
They’re Gonnnee!
Well, we drove down to Philadelphia today, and had lunch at Famous Dave’s BBQ before going to the airport to put Brandi and Piper on a plane back to Houston.
We had a great time seeing the sights of New York together and look forward to seeing them, and Chris and Linda, again in November when we get back to Houston.
Over the next few days, I’ll be catching up on the blog on all the things we did while they were here. We were leaving so early and getting home so late, that I didn’t have time then.
July 25, 2010
Hitting the road…
Today was our last day at The Rally, or half day really. I didn’t want to be trying to leave tomorrow morning along with 2000+ other rigs, so since there was nothing we wanted to see this afternoon, we decided to go ahead and leave. A few rigs have already started filtering out, and we won’t be far behind.
We did have a couple of early seminars this morning that we wanted to attend so we headed over to the hall about 8:30 am, and then afterward, we did one last pass through the vendor area, picking up a few last things.
Then it was off to lunch at Cottage Inn, the little local place we found the other day, except, apparently the Cottage Inn isn’t open on Sunday. So after a quick rethink, we headed over to Mark’s Feed Store, a really good BBQ place we ate at last Tuesday and wanted to try again.
On the way, we came across another of the Louisville horse mascots.
Here’s the one we saw the other day.
Mark’s Feed Store was just as good as last time, I decided to try a cup of burgoo, a local stew/soup in the Irish/Mulligan/Brunswick family. It had beef, pork, and chicken in it, along with corn, peas, and potatoes. Very tasty.
We also got an order of HoneyWings. These are chicken wings fried really crispy and then coated in a honey glaze. Really, really good, too.
On the way home from Mark’s we stopped off at a Verizon Wireless Store to get another case and belt clip for my Blackberry Storm 2, and the PO to mail a letter.
Back at the Expo it took us about 45 minutes to get ready to leave, and by 2pm we were on the road. But not too far.
We went only about 38 miles north on I-65 to the Yogi Bear Campground in Scottsburg, IN. Tomorrow we’ve got a 270 mile day over to Vernon, IL to spend a few days with Jan’s sister, Debbie.
More tomorrow from IL…
July 25, 2011
Buffalo Bill and Granny . . .
Today was another ‘play tourist’ day, so after coffee at the rig and a quick stop at McD’s for a breakfast sandwich, we headed over to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center.
Today would be a ‘twofer’ with a 1 hour trolley ride around Cody, and then coming back to the Center to go through the five museums inside.
The trolley ride was fun and interesting, with a lot of good information from both Chuck, the driver, and Greg, the narrator.
It was interesting to discover that Cody (the town) was designed from scratch by Buffalo Bill to be a ‘tourist’ town. It was laid with very wide streets like the ones Buffalo Bill had admired when he toured Europe with his Wild West Show.
Also interesting was the story of his death and burial in 1917. He died in Denver, CO while visiting his wife Louisa. Cody hated Denver and its leaders with a passion because they had once foreclosed on him due to a debt he owed.
His 1906 will stated he wanted to be buried on top of Cedar Mountain just outside his beloved Cody. However, when he died in Denver, the town supposedly paid his wife $10,000 to bury him there.
To the public, they said that Cody on his deathbed had said he had changed his mind and wanted to be buried in Denver. The folks in Cody said “Yeah, right” and started hatching plans to steal his body back.
Hearing about this, the Denver leaders stationed the National Guard and a WWI tank at the grave. They kept this up for four years before finally sealing off the gravesite with 20 tons of concrete. You would think this was the end of the story, but it wasn’t.
Buffalo Bill died in January 1917 but wasn’t buried until June when the ground thawed out. Now as the story goes, a vagrant died in Cody who somewhat resembled Buffalo Bill, so the town mortician and several townsfolk got together and did some creative makeup on the vagrant’s body so he looked even more like Cody. They then put the body in an automobile, drove down to Denver, snuck into the funeral home where Cody’s body was being stored, swapped corpses, and hightailed it back to Cody.
They then buried his body on top of Cedar Mountain like he wanted, in an unmarked grave so Denver could not steal him back.
Now all this might seem kind of fanciful, but there was a break-in at the funeral home recorded in a police report, and apparently, no one thought to look closely at the body, which although it looked like Buffalo Bill, was more than 6 inches shorter than Cody’s slightly over 6 feet.
Now this story didn’t come out until after Denver had concreted over the gravesite, so there was no way to really check.
But the people of Cody, WY say they know for sure.
My favorite part of the Historical Center was the Firearms Museum.
In the main hall, they have over 1200 firearms on display, starting from the 1500’s to the present.
They also have rooms by manufacturer, with pretty much every gun that Remington, Colt, Winchester, Browning, Savage, etc., have ever produced.
They also have a number of unique firearms, like the very first production M1 Carbine from Winchester in 1941. During WWII they made over 800,000 of these.
Another very unique weapon is this Colt 1883 Gatling Gun.
It was acquired by Winchester in 1949 to test the feasibility of adding an electric motor to power it. This electric-powered Gatling Gun was the prototype of the M-61 Gatling Gun still in use on today’s military aircraft.
Except instead of firing 200 rounds per minute of .45-70 caliber ammo, the Vulcan fires 6000 rounds per minute of 20mm ammo (approx. .78 caliber)
I think one of these would be really nice mounted on the roof of our RV. Idiots would think twice about cutting me off.
Another little fact about Gatling guns. Custer had two of them with him at the fort before he took off chasing Indians, but he didn’t take them with him because he thought they’d slow him down.
I imagine he was rethinking that decision a little while later.
According to the one of the museum displays much of how we see Indians of that era, tipis, warbonnets, warriors on horseback. etc. comes from Cody’s Wild West Show. But these only applied to a very few tribes of the Plains Indians.
I guess this is like supposedly much of the way we visualize Santa Claus today comes from Coca-Cola advertisements of the last 100 years or so.
And apparently like many of today’s rock singers, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show did ‘Final Farewell Tours’ for a number of years. An ad in the Stockton Evening Mail of October 8, 1910 states that “Buffalo Bill Positively Bids You Good-By”. But 3 years later the show was still on tour around the country, including another show in Stockton 18 months later.
I’ve got a lot of other pictures but I’ll save some for later on a slow news day.
Leaving the Center about 2:30 we had a light lunch at McD’s before heading back to the rig to pick up Jan’s cat, Emma, and take her to the vet
Lately, she’s been losing weight, always hungry, and always thirsty. She’s about 15 years old and we wondered if she had diabetes.
But after blood tests and $200 later, it turns out she had hyperthyroidism which should be treatable by a pill twice a day.
I do want to give a big thumbs up to Lifetime Small Animal Hospital here in Cody, and Dr. Erin Pedersen, our vet. She was great!
Two of our other friends recommended Lifetime and they were right.
After getting back to the rig, and a nice nap, we headed out for dinner about 8 pm, and ended up at Granny’s Restaurant. It was very busy, and very good, just good down-home cooking.
Coming home we stopped off at Albertson’s to get a large disposable aluminum roasting pan to use as a secondary cat litter box.
Tomorrow we’re going down to Grand Teton National Park for a couple of days and this will make sure we don’t have any messes to clean up when we get back.
More tomorrow from Jackson, WY.
July 25, 2013
Three Things to Do When Visiting Mackinac Island . . .
1. Watch Where You Walk.
2. Don’t Step In Yellow Puddles.
3. Bring Plenty of Money.
After one of the muffins we got at Tim Horton’s yesterday, Jan and I headed about 50 miles south to St. Ignace, MI to catch the ferry over to Mackinac Island. To allow plenty of time to catch the 10:00 run, we left about 8:15. But making good time we got there about 9:15, just in time to catch the 9:30 trip.
Heading across the lake we found a lot of people already out there ahead of us.
One of the reasons we wanted to make the 9:30 or 10am ferry, is that these two make a quick detour over by, and under the Mackinac Bridge.
The two towers are 550 feet tall, and the suspended roadway between them is over 8600 feet long, making it the longest suspension bridge in the US, and the third longest in the world.
The supporting cables are 24-1/2 inches in diameter and are made up of over 12,000 smaller cables woven together. And even though the roadway is open grillwork to let the wind blow through, the bridge can still sway up to 15 feet during high winds. Hopefully not this Saturday.
Finally approaching the island, the first thing you can really see is the world-famous Grand Hotel, the site of two movies, including 1979’s “Somewhere In Time” with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.
Pretty much everywhere you look is a postcard view.
Getting our feet back on dry land, we spent some time walking the streets and checking out the scenery.
There are flowers everywhere you look.
Except for two police vans and three fire trucks, no motorized vehicles are allowed on the island. So this wagon is the UPS delivery van. There is a driver for the wagon, but a real UPS guy in his brown shorts actually delivers the packages.
And this is why you need to watch where you walk when you’re on the island. I also think it’s why the flowers are so bright and the grass so green. They’ve got to do something with all that ‘fertilizer’.
Taking the Carriage Tour, we drove past the Grand Hotel, the only hotel I’ve ever seen that charges you $10 just to walk into the place. Needless to say, we didn’t visit.
Our next stop along the tour was Arch Rock which looks down on the beach way below.
Finally leaving the carriage tour at Fort Mackinac, we decided to have lunch at the Tea Room there that overlooks the harbor.
One of the other ferry companies uses jet boat ferries, giving them this distinctive “rooster tail”.
There’s even this beautiful two-masted schooner tooling around the harbor
Sometimes there are so many ferries coming into the harbor it’s almost a traffic jam.
Looking down from our restaurant perch, seeing all the neat, colorful houses, manicured lawns, and brilliant flower gardens, I almost expected to see a large white ball named Rover go bouncing by.
Walking back down the hill from the Fort, we once again walked along the quaint streets, checking out the many shops, and even stopping to buy some of the famous Mackinac fudge from Murdicks.
Later we spent an hour or so sitting in the rockers on the big front porch of the Lakeview Hotel, just people watching. Very nice.
A little later we caught the 4pm ferry back to St. Ignace on the mainland, giving us this great view of the Mackinac Bridge, a bridge that we’ll be crossing in our rig this coming Saturday as we head for Elkhart.
Before getting back on I-75N we stopped for gas, giving Jan a thrill and ending her day on a very moose note.
Taking our exit off I-75 into Sault Ste. Marie, we drove through a nearby Holiday gas station to check out rig access to tank up with diesel when we leave here on Saturday.
July 25, 2014
Damned If You Do . . .
For dinner Jan heated up our Chili Hot Dog dish from the other night, She added another can of Wolf Brand Chili to stretch it out some, as well as some more heat. Along with some garlic bread, it was a great meal.
And Damned if you don’t:
In case you haven’t heard, there’s a big drought going on out in California. And the state has asked people to cut back on water usage, especially for watering your lawn.
So this couple tried to do their part by taking shorter showers, doing bigger wash loads, and only watering their lawn twice a week.
And the State of California Water Board has now authorized fining people up to $500 a day for wasting water. In fact the Board Chairwoman said, “A brown lawn should be a badge of honor because it shows you care about your community.”
But now the city of Glendale is threatening to fine the couple $500 because their lawn is brown and not green.
You’re Government At Work.
Under the heading of “We’re gonna need a bigger boat”, check out this video of orcas racing a speedboat off the coast of Mexico. But not only chasing, but keeping up with the speedboat.
Thanks to David Cross for posting this.
We’ve been really surprised with what Landon is learning at his daycare. (He says it’s not daycare, it’s SCHOOL!) And I think he’s right.
Not only has he learned his numbers, his colors, and the alphabet, but right now they’re talking about the Revolutionary War, and learning the 13 Colonies.
And he won’t be 4 until next month!
July 25, 2015
Code? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Code!
A little before 3pm we lost power to the rig, so after waiting a minute or so to see if it would come back on, I went outside to check the pedestal. I expected to find a popped breaker like we had earlier in the week. But both breakers were fine.
So next I double-checked our Progressive EMS to see if it had a problem, but it was dead with no power coming in. Looking at our neighbors 3 sites over, I could see they had an oscillating fan going, so they had power.
I then took my test plug and found that the sites on either side of us also had power. So it was just me. Then after I called the park ranger, I ran my AC breakout extension cord over to the empty site next door so we’d have at least one AC running while we waited.
Jason, the ranger, showed up about 10 minutes later and I saw him doing something at a large tree two sites over.
So that explains it. Our electrical system here at the park is run by Keebler Elves. But it turns out it’s even worse than that.
I walked over to see what he was doing and found a main breaker box on a pole right beside the tree. So, no Elves, I guess.
Looking over Jason’s shoulder as he reset our breaker, our 30 amp breaker, I asked him about these ‘fake’ 50 amp sites. He laughed and said they, ‘the park’, didn’t want to spend the money to upgrade panels for 50 amp service, so they just put 50 amp receptacles in the pedestals but kept the 30 amp breakers. So we have this ‘50 amp pedestal’.
But wait, it gets worse.
It turns out that this ‘50 amp’ pedestal is actually being fed by the 30 amp one behind it on the same post.
And by ‘fed’ I mean it goes through the same 30 amp breaker that also feeds the 30 amp receptacle in the box.
So what we have is a 30 amp breaker in the main breaker box feeding through another 30 amp breaker in the 30 amp box and then through another 30 amp breaker into the 50 amp receptacle.
Note the cable looping between the two boxes, even though both boxes are also being fed via conduits from underground.
So even using my AC breakout, everything was still running off the same 30 amp breaker, or breakers, actually.
Whoever decided to wire things up this way wouldn’t know the Electrical Code if it bit him.
“Code? We don’t need no stinkin’ code!”
I’m really surprised the whole thing doesn’t just burst into flames.
So I told Jason I was going to keep my AC breakout hooked up to the pedestal next door, and he said he’d tell the office to take the site out of service until we leave next Sunday.
Hopefully it’ll all hold together for the next 7 days.
July 25, 2016
Simple, Quick and . . .
Delicious.
Just to keep an eye on things, I checked my electric meter yesterday to see where I stand at the 3 week point. So far I’ve used 1316 kWh’s which at $0.12 a KWh gives me a total of $158, a $50 increase over last week. So I guess I’m looking at about a $200 bill when we leave next Sunday.
About 2pm Jan and I drove into Columbus for a Whataburger lunch and then a few things at Brookshire Bros, as well as a lottery ticket for Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing for $422 million. You can’t win if you don’t play.
Of course even if you do play, you probably won’t win.
Coming home I swung by the Colorado Oil Co Co-op to check the price of their diesel. Until recently it was always the cheapest place in the area, but not now. In fact now they are one of the highest. Don’t know what happened.
But maybe that’s why their diesel digital price sign no longer works. Which is why I was checking it out at the pump today. We want to top off our rig’s tank before we go too far so we don’t take a chance with our generator and A/C’s quitting when we head to Gulf Shore this Sunday.
And once again, while Brookshire Bros. has diesel for $2.03, Colorado County was at $2.09. No wonder their sign doesn’t work.
Getting into the park, it started to rain, coming down fairly heavy for about 30 minutes. The really nice thing was that it lowered the temperature all the way down to 82 degrees. Nice!
Then about 7:30 the bottom dropped out for a while, with a lot of wind and thunder. And then this knocked the temp down to the high 70’s. Nicer!
After we got home Jan whipped up one of her Pineapple Angel Food Cakes. Just combine a box of Angel Food Cake Mix and a 20 oz. can of Crushed Pineapple, juice and all. Mix it up and dump it into 9” x 13” ungreased cake pan. 350° and 30 to 40 minutes later you’ve got this.
As I said, Simple, Quick, and Really Delicious! Especially with some whipped cream on top. YUM!
Give it a try.
Our daughter Brandi says this is her serious “I mean business” face. I guess she was psyching herself up for the 5K (3.1 miles) Blacklight Run 2016 that she did Saturday night. She did say she ditched the ears after about a mile.
She said she’s going to do a half-marathon (13.1 miles) sometime in November. I know she’ll do it.
And apparently she wasn’t too tired, since she, Lowell, and Landon spent Sunday afternoon at the nearby Typhoon Texas waterpark in Katy.
July 25, 2017
Down To Clear Lake . . .
We were up about 8am and out the door at 8:45, for our two hour trip down to Clear Lake to meet up with our son Chris.
But our first stop was the Jack in the Box so Jan could get a Supreme Breakfast Croissant and me an Iced Caramel Coffee for the road. Then it was to Brandi’s.
We were hoping that the new Katy Buc-ee’s might be open, but no luck. But maybe when we get back from Alabama
Getting to Brandi’s, we found Lowell finishing up yard work before he headed up to Dallas on a business trip. While we were there, Jan took several photos of me so I can add myself to the Reunion Family Photo. More later
We also picked up our Amazon order that was delivered on Saturday. One thing new was the fact that this was actually delivered by Amazon themselves, not UPS, FedEx, or USPS. And just to prove it was delivered, they send you a photo with your tracking info.
We met our son Chris at King Food a little after 11 for a great lunch. Jan and I both got our usual Chicken with Hot Garlic Sauce XXXXXX Spicy with Jalapenos.
And it was a big enough serving that we had leftovers for supper tonight. Finishing up we followed Chris back to the house to pick up our mail, and also our rearview camera monitor bracket that he welded back together for us.
Getting there we were happy to find Miss Piper home early from work so we got to see her before we headed out. And after a stop at the bank and a nearby O’Reilly’s, we were on our way back to Columbus.
Leaving the Katy area we got a good look at Amazon’s new fulfillment facility being built just west of Katy.
At 1 million square feet, it’s the 3rd one here in Houston, with a 4th one right behind it. When it’s finally open, I wonder if they’ll have a Will Call desk so I can just drive over and pick up my orders.
We got home about 3:30, and started getting ready to head out to Alabama tomorrow.
July 25, 2018
Taken For Granite . . .
Ended up spending part of the morning at work helping my client’s wife with a problem she was having with her laptop.
Most of it due to the fact that her laptop is circa 2000 and is running Windows XP! The system is maxxed out on RAM at 1GB, fine for when it came out, but today’s programs are much more RAM-intensive, and 1GB just won’t cut it.
I’m trying to get her set up with something newer, but she is really reluctant to switch to a new computer.
I also found out that I’m working both tomorrow as well as Friday because my client will be out both days taking CE courses for his medical license. I will have to duck out for a while about 1pm to meet the last potential buyer for our house, and then we’ll probably make a decision this weekend. But we’ll see how that goes.
Several readers have asked about Karma the cat.
She doing fine, and as of our last RV trip, she’s finally settled down and doesn’t run and hide when she hears the rig engine start up. Now she either lays on the rug between our two chairs, or sleeps on the sofa.
And she’s grown up to be a good-sized girl, at 13.2 pounds. We know her exact weight because the digital scale in the bathroom is one of her favorite places to sit.
And when I’m at the computer she normally sleeps on her perch right beside my chair.
And she’s turned out to be a much better kitty than I had expected from a half-feral stray.
Chris’ wife, Linda, sent over some pics of their new home up in Kingsland, TX, and it looks like it’s really coming together.
And they’ve got Tonto, the real wooden Indian, in his new spot out on the front porch (shouldn’t he be called Kaw-Liga?).
And this is what 3-1/2 TONS of crushed granite looks like. Chris hauled it in, got it unloaded, spread out, and leveled.
Really looks great.
You all know I can’t resist a new toy, and this is my new one.
It’s a Digital Voltage/Amp Meter that I want to connect to the rig’s shore power input. Actually I got two of them coming in from Amazon, one for each leg.
My Progressive EMS has an ammeter indicator on it, but it’s out in the electrical bay. The newer models have a remote display but it wasn’t available when I got mine.
I’ll mount these back in the bedroom, probably connected to the output of the transfer switch. That will let me monitor both the shore power and generator power. Of course that assumes that I get it working again. LOL
Last up, here’s a neat website that lists RV Salvage Yards by state around the country. Check it out.
July 25, 2019
All Alone Am I . . .
Well, not completely, Karma’s hanging around too.
Jan and I headed for Katy about 1:30 with our first stop the El Pollo Loco just off I-10 south on Mason Rd. Jan wanted to stock on a couple of their 2 Piece White Meat Chicken Meals with Pinto Beads and Side Salads.
Then it was a little further south on Mason to the HEB for more Pet-Sitting survival supplies. For my part, I was happy to encounter the sales guy for our favorite Lola Savannah coffee.
Told him that our HEB at I-45 and FM646 no longer stocked their coffee, and we had to go to another location to pick it up. He noted the address and said he’d check it out, since all HEB are contracted to carry it.
He also told me that they’re introducing some new flavors, and gave me a 1# bag of one of them, Cinnamon Stick. Since all their coffees are only sold as Whole Bean I went ahead and ground it up right there. And the smell was just fantastic.
Like their Texas Pecan has big chunks of pecans in it, the Cinnamon Stick has large pieces of cinnamon bark in it that get ground up along with the coffee.
We got to Brandi’s about 3:45, and after I got all her stuff unloaded, I got her laptop and Kindles logged in the house WiFi, and her device charger hooked up to keep her phone and Kindles topped off with juice.
A little later, after Lowell and Landon showed up, we drove over to have dinner once again at Astor Farm to Grill. Our first visit was when we were on the way from our Waco trip about a month ago after getting together with our long-time friend’s Bill and Carol Alverson, and Bill’s cousin June.
Jan got the same thing this time as last, the Lemon Chicken Breast with a side salad,
I went with something new, the Monster Pork Chop with Mashed Potatoes and Grilled Squash. as well as their homemade BBQ Sauce made with Macallan Whiskey.
Delicious, and the first time I’ve ever gotten a little buzz from a pork chop.
Back at Brandi’s, I killed a little time to let the traffic die down, finally getting back to the rig about 8:30, about 15 minutes late due to road construction at FM517 where I normally get off I-45.
Tomorrow I start hitting my chore list.
Oh Boy!
I mentioned that Brandi, et. all, are going to Costa Rica for a week, leaving tomorrow afternoon. Which is why Jan is pet-sitting.
But this afternoon we finally got a look at where they’re staying. And all I can say is WOW! This place is fantastic!
It’s the Manuel Antonio 10 Bedroom Villa.
There are a total of 17 people going down so they’ll need the room.
And it comes complete with a chef and a sous chef. And just about anything else you can think of.
Click on the link above for all the amenities and more photos.
Landon’s looking forward to all the monkeys that will come to the porch to get treats.
July 25, 2020
Nice Forehand . . .
First up, I’ve got another very imaginative Comet NEOWISE photo for you.
July 25, 2021
Sour Grapes?
After we sat outside with our coffee this morning I prepped our Weber 200 grill for the hot dog roast this afternoon. Actually the prep just consisted of wire-brushing off the charred remains of our BBQ ribs from a few weeks ago. And it still smelled really good.
Since 2004 and up until July 20th of this year, the FAA said that a person who flew above 50 miles, or 80km, was entitled to Commercial Astronaut Wings.
Yes, there was that little quibble about outer space not really starting until 62 miles, or 100km (also known as the Kármán Line). But the rules are (were) the rules.
At least up until July 20th.
On July 9th Richard Branson, along with 5 others flew a 53 mile high sub-orbital flight on his SpaceShipTwo, qualifying them all for Commercial Astronaut Wings.
At least up until July 20th.
Then on July 20th Jeff Bezos and three others, including both the youngest (18) and the oldest (82) crew members ever, flew over 62 miles high, again on a sub-orbital flight. Qualifying them for both Commercial Astronaut Wings and the honor of actually making it above the Kármán Line (62mi/100km) and officially into outer space.
At least up until that same July 20th. That’s the day that the FAA suddenly decided to change the rules.
Now you have to fly above 50 miles and that would-be astronauts must also have “demonstrated activities during flight that were essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety,”
Well, I’m sorry, but I think ‘civilians’ putting 10 people ‘safely’ into space and bringing them ‘safely’ back to Earth should qualify. Plus the rules weren’t changed until after Branson’s flight, so he and his crew should still qualify.
Otherwise, it just seems like Sour Grapes. I mean, the last time NASA even put anybody into space was 10 years ago, in 2011 with the last shuttle flight. Since then all US astronauts sent up to the ISS went on Russian rockets, or more recently, on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, another one of those ‘civilian’ companies.
I may need a new front A/C or maybe not. Sometime during the afternoon our front A/C just up and quit. Every now and then over the last couple of days, Jan and I both thought we smelled something electrical getting hot, but I was never able to narrow it down to a specific location.
At first I thought it might be a bad breaker, but when I switched it over to another one, it popped back off immediately. So my first thought was that the A/C compressor had a dead short.
But then I got to thinking that the A/C compressor shouldn’t be coming on then anyway because the A/C was turned off at the thermostat. Plus even if it were turned on, there’s a 2-3 minute delay when you put power back to the unit before the compressor would come back on anyway.
So now I’m wondering if it might be the same control box up inside the unit that I replaced back in March after it burned out.
So I’ll pull it down tomorrow and take a look at it.
But I’m beginning to wonder if there’s not a problem with these boxes, since everywhere I’ve looked online either shows them Out of Stock or Back-Ordered.
If it’s a burnout relay like the last one, I may end up kludging in a new one. I’ve got the schematic of the box,
so the first thing I’ll do is short across the NO and COM wires on the Compressor Relay. If the A/C comes on, then I’ll know it’s not the A/C Compressor, but the Compressor Relay.
But if I get a big, blinding arc, then I’ll know the AC compressor is shorted, and I’ll be looking at $800 or so for a new rooftop unit.
We actually weren’t too uncomfortable today. Our rear AC is ducted to the front. Plus the humidity was low and with all our fans running, it only got up to about 83° in the rig, so not too bad.
I did go ahead and grill the dogs and brats outside and they were delicious.
And we’ve still got enough for a couple of more meals.
July 25, 2022
More Unintended Consequences . . .
Tomorrow I have my 3rd Physical Therapy session, and I told Jan that I’ll probably do one more, next week, and then call it quits for a while.
By then I should have a nice repertoire of exercises to work with, saving me both the time lost at the class, and the $80 a month the sessions cost me.
Then after the class, we plan on lunch at SnoozeAM and a Costco stop.
Recently I’ve been reposted some old blogs that I wrote about “Unintended Consequences”
You know, like in British Colonial India when the government started offering a bounty for dead cobras, hoping to reduce the deadly population. For a while it worked . . . until people started breeding cobras so they could turn them in for the reward, saving them actually having to catch them in the wild.
Then when the government scrapped the program, all of the now-worthless cobras were released, resulting in more cobras in the wild than they were to start with.
Oops!
Or when in 1859 an Australian imported 24 wild rabbits from England and released them into the countryside so he could hunt them. But apparently they could make new bunnies faster than he could shoot them, because by the 1920’s, less than 70 years later the population was estimated to be over 10 billion. That’s BILLION, with a B.
By the 1890’s they had devastated over 2.5 million acres of Australia. Today, due to heavy eradication efforts, the rabbit population numbers around 200 million.
And now it looks like they’ve done it again.
Back in 2019, New York state outlawed the catching of Atlantic menhaden using drawstring purse nets, hoping to increase the Menhaden stocks that were down from overfishing. But what they failed to realize was one of the other reasons that the menhaden stocks were down.
Sharks love menhaden.
And now that the menhaden stocks are flourishing, the sharks are flourishing too. And very close to shore.
This drone photo was taken over water only 3 feet deep.
And now six beachgoers have been bitten by sharks and there have been a slew of shark sightings from Rockaway Beach to the Hamptons, just in the past three weeks. On Wednesday, the corpse of a 6- to 8-year-old shark washed up on the beach in Quogue.
However, Assemblyman Steve Englebright, who sponsored the bill along with state Sen. Todd Kaminsky, said he didn’t consider the possibility it would lead to increased shark activity.
“I’m not sure that one could have predicted there would be the seriousness that this has become.”
And now scientists say the menhaden stocks are dropping again, not due to overfishing, but overeating.
By sharks.
it’s not nice to mess with Mother Nature.
July 25, 2023
Still . . .
Feeling A Little Peaked,
so again, not much blog today, either.
I did come across this fun video of, I guess you could call it an aerial demolition derby.
RC plane enthusiasts come from all over to Ohio to participate each year.
Check it out!
