The Firecloud Report

Sweet Memory

2009-12-12T12:59:00.011-05:00

There's a killer on the road

His brain is squirmin' like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If ya give this man a ride
Sweet memory will die

At age 66 I seem to live more and more within a memory palace and think about the past.

My first memory is of a snake sticking its head out of a hole in the front yard of my grandmother's house in New York. It was probably the Spring of 1945. I also remember attacking my father with a toy hoe after he came back from Germany in early 1946 and tried to assert his authority. I was astounded with the ease with which he disarmed me. I have lots of other childhood memories. I hope they don't just slip away.

Mom's memory is gone at age 86. She knows who I am so far, but that may not last long.

I remember the Junior High School hazing that we had to endure. They painted us with lipstick on our way to class in the seventh grade. Then there was the bully Billy Mitchell. He had been held back so many times that he towered over everyone else. Also there was Provo, a very muscular bully who was later fried in the electric chair for murder. I had to fight them both, knowing I was doomed to lose...but A man has to do what a man has to do.

It was double session Junior High school for me so I was left alone in the morning. My brother and sister were in regular sessions in grade school and both Mom and Pop were working. Sometimes I made donuts with a can of Crisco. I remember doing push ups to try to develop my strength and playing 45 RPM records very loud like Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire".

The girl next door was really hot and she often sat with me in a tree and tried to make me interested in her, while not really being interested in me. I often wonder what she looks like now at age 66. At 13 she was special. There's a certain memorable fire in being 13 and getting your first fondling and French kiss from a pretty girl. Maybe I won't forget.

Anyway, most of my friends are dead already. Some at 19, some at 21, some in airplane crashes, some at 35 and others at 53. I sometimes think that my life is somehow charmed and I'm immune from death from lung cancer or other causes. If I died somehow, the universe would immediately cease to exist.

Last summer I took Mrs. Phred to Jurarez, sister city of El Paso. There are 3,000 murders a year there related to drugs and we are the only Americans crossing the border that day. We bought some wallets and had lunch. Last night Mrs. Phred saw a TV program about the out of control Juarez murders and chastised me for taking her there. I explain that by standing tall with a steely-eyed glint it protects her from cowardly miscreants

We lived on a Tampa street where the city kept dumping oyster shells to keep the street passable. The Mosquito control people kept coming by with the Fog trucks and we all ran behind them breathing in the poison. At least we didn't get Yellow Fever or Malaria.

Howdy, Pilgrim!

2009-11-26T05:34:00.012-05:00

If you live in an RV, the chances are that you haven't allocated any space for a rolling pin. Here's a hint from Phred...You can use a wine bottle to roll out your pie crust. I'm making a blueberry with French vanilla ice cream for the à la mode. I wanted to do a home made pumpkin pie, but the shelves were empty of ingredients yesterday so I did store bought with a can of whipped cream for a topping.

Corporation T-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday
Man you've been a naughty boy
you let your face grow long

I am the pieman
they are the piemen
I am the walrus
Goo goo g' joob

It is widely believed that America's first Thanksgiving took place in December 1621 as the religious separatist Pilgrims held a three-day feast to celebrate a bountiful harvest. Thanksgiving became a formal national holiday in 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November as a national day of thanksgiving. President Franklin Roosevelt clarified that Thanksgiving should always be celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month to encourage earlier holiday shopping, never on the occasional fifth Thursday.

It has become a tradition for the sitting President to pardon one turkey each Thanksgiving and a flock of others upon leaving office. This helps with the fund raising for the Presidential Libraries which we enjoy visiting so much...Good luck, Bernie Madoff!

There are three places in the United States named after the Thanksgiving holiday’s traditional main course. Turkey, Texas, is the most populous with 492 residents; followed by Turkey Creek, La. (357); and Turkey N.C. (269).

on average, Americans consume about 18 pounds of turkey each year...about one turkey each. The price of turkey is still very reasonable at about $1 a pound (bones and all), although some cuts, such as processed deli turkey breast may be priced closer to $6 a pound. Only a few million turkeys are imported and 96% of the imports are from Canada.

In college, when money was short, I often made turkey neck soup in a pressure cooker, since a corollary of "some cuts are expensive" is that others are very cheap.

In my my morning search for turkey jerky recipes, I ran across this cartoon gem from 1945 called "Jerky Turkey".

Happy Thanksgiving...

Is Thought the Mother to the Deed?

2009-11-25T09:09:00.003-05:00

Sarasota, Florida

If so, my brain is still mostly pregnant.

The weight room is a few steps away, and I think about working out every day. So far, I've walked over once to look at the weights and work out equipment.

There's a dive trip to Normandy coming up. 50 degree water, poor visibility, strong currents, extreme depths and lots of unexploded ordinance. I'm definitely thinking about it.

The old folks play sand volleyball barefoot all day right across the street from where we are parked. They scream and cavort like grade school kids. It looks like fun. Definitely worth thinking about.

The pool mostly clears out about dark and I've been seriously thinking about swimming some laps to get in shape. Most nights I take my old fins and dive booties down to the pool and order a dark rum and coke at the tiki bar. Once I actually jumped in and did a few laps...mostly fin kicks and backstokes.

I've been reading about three books a day for the past few weeks. The county library is nearby and I've been discovering new authors. One way to do that is to look for an author with a bunch of books on the shelf and sample one. Another way is to check favorite authors for something unread or just something good that one hasn't read for awhile. I reread "Blood Work" by Michael Connally yesterday. It was almost as good as the first time.

My cousin Kate came by last week and spent a couple of nights with us. We had a picnic with Mom, but she didn't remember Kate or quite understand how they were related. I used my James Bond picnic basket with the cute plates, linens, wine glasses and silverware. We had Pinot Grigio, chocolate fudge, fruit salad, potato salad and a baked chicken. It was a nice visit in a deserted park on the Withlachootchee River. I think "chootchee" must be Indian for river.

We're heading out to pick up some pies and things for Thanksgiving tomorrow.

I'm thinking about building more sandcastles.

A Man for All Seasons

2009-11-15T16:54:00.012-05:00

It was 44 years ago today that I met Mrs. Phred. It was at a Tallahassee cast party for the play, "A Man for All Seasons". I knew by the U.S. Army gas mask bag that she was carrying for a purse that she was special and different from the Southern blonds with the penny loafers. She was between causes. The civil rights thing had petered out although she had many arrests in New York City and Tallahassee to her credit. The Viet Nam thing was just heating up

I asked her home to play Monopoly. She dumped her date and the rest is history. Heloise and Abelard. Anthony and Cleopatra, Napoleon and Josephine, Mr. and Mrs. Phred...

The thing about the play was that it had so many interesting characters that were struggling in the 1600s with the same issues that still face us today. Wolsey. Thomas More, Richie Rich. Oliver Cromwell, The Duke of Norfolk, Henry VIII. Then there was "everyman" who played so many parts.

As a matter of conscience, Sir Thomas More found himself unable to endorse Henry's wish to divorce the barren Catherine of Aragon and marry Ann Boleyn.

The Duke of Norfolk: Why do you insult me with this lawyer's chatter?
Sir Thomas More: Because I am afraid.
The Duke of Norfolk: Man, you're ill. This isn't Spain, you know. This is England.

Cromwell: The King wants Sir Thomas to bless his marriage. If Sir Thomas appeared at the wedding, now, it might save us all a lot of trouble.
The Duke of Norfolk: Aaahh, he won't attend the wedding.
Cromwell: If I were you, I'd try and persuade him. I really would try... if I were you.
The Duke of Norfolk: Cromwell, are you threatening me?
Cromwell: My dear Norfolk... this isn't Spain. This is England.

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

That brings us to the impending trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Before this Arab scum was ever waterboarded he bragged to Al Jeezira about personally decapitating Daniel Pearl and planning and coordinating the 9/11 attack that killed 3.000 innocents.

While a bullet in the back of the head might have been my own preference and saved money, even the devil deserves the rule of law for our own safety's sake.

This isn't Russia, you know, this is America.

Everyman

Nothing to Report

2009-11-12T13:24:00.006-05:00

Sarasota, Florida

Veteran's day has come and gone. I hope our President will support our troops by bringing them home. That's all I have to say about that.
The tiki bar has resumed normal hours of operation with happy hour from 11am to 11pm.

The pool has been resurfaced and refilled. The deep end is now 6', 3". I can stand on the bottom and stick out my nose.

Hurricane Ida has influenced our weather for the last week. Lots of overcast skies, wind and rain.

We went to the Sarasota marina this week. O'leary runs another outdoor tiki bar there with nightly live music.

The 2010 calendar is at the printers. Hopefully it will be in the mail by December.

A village in Poland was being troubled by a male and a female pair of marauding bears who were eating the village children.

The village elders placed an advertisement in the Bear Hunter's Gazette.

Three hunters answered the ad: A German, a Russian and a Checkoslovackian. They all went out bear hunting and none of them returned.

The village elders called in the Polish Army who slaughtered the bears with machine guns.

The bears were taken in for a necropsy and when they cut open the female bear they found parts of the Russian and the German bear hunters.

One elder turned to the others and said, "We can safely assume that the Check in in the male".

I could trade in the RV and live on a boat.

We would need a dive platform on our new boat.

You Say It's Your Birthday?

2009-11-01T16:59:00.007-05:00

Sarasota, Florida

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again
Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free

I can visualize the 2010 calendar. Mrs. Phred has her birthday today. She tells me she is 39 today. I cannot doubt it. Sometimes I believe six impossible things before breakfast.

We have a reservation at "La Europa" at 7:30 tonight. I can already visualize a bottle of chilled Savignon Blanc. We've been going there together for 40 years. Apparently she was very young to start.

Jackson Hole has some great scenery. The Grand Tetons, Yellowstone and other places.

Maybe some of these pictures will make the calendar. Maybe not.

This is somewhere around Utah near the Dinosaur National Monument. The in situ Allosaurus bones were not very pretty.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

Pike's Peak

You Can't Keep the Wild Ones

2009-10-29T07:47:00.011-05:00

Sarasota, Florida

Salmon fishing in Oregon is good. We cut though the cool fog on the Pacific Ocean for an hour or so, then catch our limit of six Coho salmon in a couple of hours. We can only keep the hatchery salmon with the clipped adipose fins. We throw the wild ones back.

The Oregon sand dunes extend for miles. The weather is very cool on the coast, even in July.

There seems to be a prevailing wind.

This is called Devil's Churn. You get some strange wave effects as the tide changes.

I have an appointment with the Veteran's Administration this morning. They will provide Mom with a pension to help pay for her care at the assisted living center. The application takes five or six months to grind though the bureaucracy. You have to be a combat veteran or a veteran's spouse to receive this assistance.

This seal is clapping for fish parts. He hangs around where the fishing boats clean fish for the customers.

The "feels like" temperature in Sarasota today will be over 100 degrees.

The Columbia River near where Lewis and Clark spent a dismal winter eating salmon until they were sick of it.

The Columbia a few hundred miles to the east of the ocean.

Sunset.

Along the Pacific Coast

2009-10-28T15:10:00.006-05:00

Sarasota, Florida

Sometimes you feel like a Hobbit. Then you hear a bustle in a hedgerow. It's just a spring clean for the May Queen. This is a medium-sized redwood in the Ladybird Johnson grove. The human figure is 6 feet in height and approximately the same in girth.

These flowers grow in the dark redwood "groves". Sometimes they catch a sunbeam.

The California coast has lots of rocks.

In Oregon, driftwood takes on strange shapes.

This is a "Stellar's" Jay. Stellar also has some seals named after him.

We went out of our way to find some of Oregon's tidal pools.

It was worth the search.

The waves carve strange fin shapes facing the Pacific.

These birds like the safety of a rock face. The white stuff is bird dukey. (Sweetheart, I'd like to kiss you but your breath smells like dukey.)

I'm picking way too many pictures for Calendar candidates.

California in the Summertime

2009-10-27T07:49:00.009-05:00

Sarasota, Florida

It's still hitting "feels like" numbers of 97F. here in Sarasota, due to the humidity.

We played doubles tennis last night. The mosquitoes are still fierce. Sometimes we would halt play for a few seconds when someone got one in the eye.

On November 1 the big pool should reopen after renovations and the bar should start serving at 11am again instead of 4pm.

Still going though the summer pictures, looking for calendar picks for 2010.

Mrs. Phred is off with her tennis pro again, working on her game. She takes two lessons a week and has a hard time getting up for the 8:30 appointments.

Sunday we took Mom for a picnic on Silver Lake and a walk on a trail along the Withlacootchee River. She seemed to enjoy it.

Where to go next summer. I'm not liking the price of euros very much. Maybe will just skip all that and head for Alaska again? Maybe not.

Oh Dear! More pictures than willingness to type drivel.

Amelia Earhart - Death by Parallax?

2009-10-23T17:10:00.005-05:00

Now that the new Amelia Movie has been released, I feel that it is time to republish my own theory about what happened that day. Just to confuse things, my unprovable theory is interspersed with pictures from our 2009 summer travels.

Amelia Earhart's disappearance on 2 July, 1937 has been the subject of much speculation over the years, with theories ranging from the plausible to the wildly fantastic. Here is a look at a reasonable explanation of why Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan failed to reach Howland Island on that fateful day(1).

Understanding Parallax-Human 'Depth Perception'

Parallax allows us to estimate the distance of objects that we can see. Hold up a finger approximately three inches in front of your nose and look at it closely. Then close first your left eye and then your right. Repeat this rapidly. Notice how your finger rapidly moves (or appears to move) from right to left, depending on which eye you use to observe the finger. Our brains deftly integrate information received from the parallax of our two eyes, and this allows us to estimate distances to objects. Parallax is therefore very useful in surviving on the motorway, picking fruit, playing games involving balls and in numerous other ways.

Stellar Parallax

Stellar parallax is another use of parallax and was an early method of estimating the distance of nearby stars. In this case, the angles for a nearby star are measured six months apart while the Earth is on opposite sides of its orbit. This parallax error defines a parsec (2), which is one second of arc and a little over three light years. This method of measuring stellar distances is useful for up to about 11 parsecs.

Photographic Parallax Errors

Here parallax begins to reveal its darker side. We find that what the observer views through the eyepiece may not exactly correspond to the size and dimension of the image that will end up traveling though the lens and falling upon the camera's film. This type of parallax error may be most noticeable on close-up photography when the viewfinder and lens of the cameras are on different lines of sight. Better cameras provide help with parallax correction features, which may be as simple as a visual box in the viewfinder indicating the size and shape of the eventual photographic image.

Geocentric Parallax Errors

Geocentric parallax can have fatal consequences for the unwary traveler. An adjustment is required to compensate for a false apparent angle between a celestial body and a human observer. The moon's observed altitude angle is usually misleading due to parallax because the moon is very close to the Earth. The sun and the stars do not require a correction because they are so far away that the parallax error approaches total insignificance. Failing to apply the parallax correction to celestial navigation observations can result in a really bad sun/moon fix or just a wildly incorrect speed-line or course-line(3) from the moon alone.

The amount of the celestial parallax error is at a minimum when the moon passes through the meridian and is also directly overhead (ie, on the same latitude as the observer). The amount of the parallax error can be as much as much as 60 minutes (4) (60 nautical miles or about 69.046767 English miles) when the moon is near the observer's horizon.

A 60-mile error on the moon observation can become a much greater error in determining your position on the Earth if the moon and a second body being observed have lines of position that cross at other than a 90-degree angle, which is almost always the case.

To get a picture of how it works, think of an observer on the equator, and the sun and the moon both circling about the equator on one of the equinox days. The moon rises exactly in the east and passes directly overhead to set in the west. The sun follows the same path. We will ignore the sun's insignificant parallax, due to its greater distance from the Earth. However, the moon can have an error in the observed altitude angle of approximately one degree (60 nautical miles) on the horizon. There is no geocentric parallax error at all when the moon is directly overhead and the observer is on a direct line between the moon and the Earth's centre.

The need for the parallax correction arises because navigation tables compute the altitude angle of the moon based on an angle between the celestial body and the exact centre of the Earth. The navigator/observer is hopefully somewhere else and on (or above) the surface of the Earth, so there will always be an 'error' in the observed angle of nearby bodies (ie, the moon) unless the body is conveniently passing exactly over the observer's head. The amount of the error can be computed from a table which is provided to all navigators who have not yet transitioned to the use of the infinitely more convenient and inexpensive handheld GPS devices.

My Own Experience with Geocentric Parallax

In 1966, as we prepared for a 4.00am local time take off from Wake Island, heading to Guam, the pre-flight revealed that our APN-9 LORAN(5) was broken. The APN-9 LORAN is perhaps good for 150 miles near an island under ideal conditions, but that can be critical if one is looking for an island from an 8,000 foot altitude. Islands usually pop into sight about 30 miles out. The LORAN is the somewhat inappropriately named 'Long range Over water Aid to Navigation'. In 1966 the 'Long' part of the name was certainly optimistic.
I told the pilot not to worry, since this would be an ideal day for celestial navigation without the APN-9 and both the sun and the moon would be up. My first sun/moon fix about three hours after takeoff placed us 75 nautical miles off track. I checked the drift meter and saw none of the whitecaps which might have indicated a strong but unanticipated crosswind. There was no evidence of a compass malfunction because both the autopilot's gyroscopic compass and whiskey compass agreed, so I concluded that there must be an error in my celestial LOPs from the sun and moon and we continued to 'dead reckon' and head in the original planned direction.

All of my measurements for the next four hours showed us being about 75 miles off course. I decided to ignore them. I was eventually glad to see the island, exactly dead ahead and about 20 miles out, rather than open ocean. I remembered much later that day after privately reviewing my manuals that the moon is so close to the Earth that it needs a special correction called the parallax correction. On this day, the parallax correction makes for a 75-mile mistake.

Amelia Earhart and Parallax

Amelia's navigator, Fred Noonan (6), should have been relying on sun/moon celestial 'fixes' during the last hours of the 2,556 statute mile flight to (or toward) Howland Island on 2 July, 1937.

Amelia and Fred had been flying though the night toward dawn (7). Fred should have had good celestial observations from stars and later the sun and moon (8).The sun rose near Howland 6.10am local time (Howland had an 11.5 hour time difference from GMT), about two hours before Amelia was due at (and still about 300 miles away from) Howland. The last quarter-moon rose at 12.18am. The moon transited overhead and about 20 degrees to the south at 7.01am and set at 12.43pm local time. Fred would certainly have used both the sun and moon (9). Both celestial bodies were available, it was an historic flight, the first of its type, and Fred would not have ignored the moon in the early daylight morning hours almost directly overhead (and to the south) or the sun rising in the east nearly dead ahead while making the final three-hour run into Howland. Fred probably got a several final fixes that morning using both bodies.

As Fred and Amelia approached Howland island after a gruelling 21-hour flight from Lae City in New Guinea, her last words indicated that she was at 1,000 feet (one explanation for flying that low would be to get under the scattered cumulus clouds while searching for a small island)(10) and running on a line (157-337) north and south. This researcher's theory is that Fred, clouds permitting, would have had a shot at the sun in the east and the moon in the south and would have been able to get a set of perfectly crossed lines of position any time after sunrise from those two bodies. However, Fred would have been relying on the moon for the course line and parallax error could have caused him to veer off course enough to miss the island by a fairly large margin. It is certain that, as Fred approached where he thought Howland should be, heading east, he failed to see the island appear where his sun/moon observation and dead reckoning indicated that it should be. Fred must have logically assumed that they had missed the island to the north or south. Amelia then began her run on a line 'north and south' hoping Howland would come into view.

The Electra used by Amelia had a speed of about 150 MPH and an endurance about 24 hours(11). The flight from Lae to Howland was 2,556 miles. In this researcher's view, it is totally improbable that Amelia would have agreed to add over six hours(12) to the flight by diverting to over-fly Truk to make clandestine photographs of Japanese military installations for the American military, as some conspiracy theory enthusiasts have suggested(13).

While she was alive, she was celebrated for what she accomplished and for what her example meant to women and aviation. Once she was presumed missing, Amelia Earhart the role model for women was increasingly replaced by Amelia Earhart the lost aviator, and attention was shifted away from her strongly articulated feminism to speculation about the circumstances of her fateful last flight.
- Susan Ware, Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism, 1993, p206

Earhart's Electra had a new radio direction finder but Amelia was not trained on the use of the new RDF and failed to use it effectively. Her additional inability to receive voice messages may have been caused by damage on takeoff.Here is a link to a takeoff video, which may show the belly mounted voice antenna breaking off on takeoff. These critical problems, combined with the scattered cloud cover, low cloud bases, very small island, sun in the eyes, possibly inaccurate charts, lack of an alternate landing site, crew exhaustion, a possible hangover (14), an inadequate fuel reserve, no autopilot to maintain a consistent track. (15) and Fred's possible parallax correction error, certainly resulted in enough cumulative issues to kill the crew several times over.

Research Footnotes

1 The Executive Director of TIGHAR, which has expended great energy on this investigation, states: "That parallax was a causal, or at least contributing, factor in the Earhart disappearance is an interesting but, unfortunately, untestable hypothesis. The same could be said for any number of theories about observational or computational errors that Noonan could have made. The indisputable fact would seem to be that an error or errors of some kind were made."

2 A parsec is a unit of astronomical length based on the distance from Earth at which stellar parallax is one second of arc and equal to 3.258 light-years, 30,860,000,000,000 kilometres, or 19,180,000,000,000 miles. Assuming that a highly modified Pontiac is good for 100,000 miles of travel, it will require about 200 million Pontiacs to drive one parsec and the driver will still be a light year short of the nearest star.

3 American Captain Thomas H Sumner invented the concept of a celestial line of position, while bobbing about in intermittent fog and very rough seas in the St George channel between Ireland and Wales in 1837. The new concept conveniently occurred to him in a flash of genius and allowed him to head into port in terrible conditions. Some experts wonder why it took so long for humans to discover this simple trick and put it to work.

4 The nautical mile is a result of the size of the Earth. By convention, the Earth is divided into 180 degrees from pole to pole. Each degree is divided into 60 minutes and a minute is a nautical mile.

5 LORAN was invented by British boffins. The APN-9 was introduced into American B-29 bombers during the war. The APN-9 was still being used on some older USAF cargo aircraft in 1966 during the Vietnam conflict.

6 Mary S Lovell, the Sound of Wings (1989, p272) indicates that Fred was an almost pedantic navigator who planned the Lae takeoff at 00:00 GMT for ease of celestial calculations. However, some believe that the 00.00 GMT takeoff only a coincidence since it had been rescheduled several times due to an inability to get an accurate time check. Lovell states that Fred three chronometers on the flight. However, Lae maintenance records indicate that there might only have been one (three seconds slow upon time check).

7 The Lockheed Electra model 10E departed Lae at precisely 10.00am local on 2 July, 1937. It crossed the international dateline and made its last transmission two time zones and one day earlier at 8.42am, also on 2 July, 1937. If they had been heading East to West, 2 July would never have happened for them on many levels, in this researcher's opinion.
8 Reports from Howland Island indicate that there were fairly normal weather conditions. Scattered cumulus with bases at about 2,300 feet. The Itasca Commander wrote the following summary of radio log transmissions from Amelia at 2.45am local: '...cloudy and overcast.' Again at 3.45am: '..Earhart to Itasca, overcast.' However, the actual radio logs do not indicate the word overcast.

9 My own 1938 edition of Bowditch's American Practical Navigator states that 'Many times during daylight a position line with the moon makes an excellent cut with the sun' (p. 212). Page 384 contains the parallax correction tables. Did Fred refer to them?

10 The Itasca's Captain to concluded that Amelia would have seen Baker Island if she was off to the southeast so he began his search to the northwest of Howland.

11 The TIGHAR Executive Director states: 'Earhart flight-planned the airplane at 150 mph and its expected endurance with the 1,100 US gallon fuel load it had upon departure from Lae was a little over 24 hours (computed according to Lockheed Report No. 487 "Range Study of Lockheed Electra Bimotor Airplane" by C.L. Johnson and W.C. Nelson, dated June 4, 1936).'..

12 The total distance From Lae City to Truk to Howland island is 3,250 statute miles, compared with 2,556 statute miles when flying direct from Lae.

13 Randall Brink, Lost Star: The Search for Amelia Earhart, 1994, suggests that Amelia's Electra was heavily modified by Clarence L (Kelly) Johnson in the Lockheed 'skunkworks' to add speed, altitude and range. (The Lockheed 'skunkworks' is generally credited with producing numerous high-performance aircraft, including the U-2, the SR-71 'Blackbird' and F 117 stealth fighter.) He suggests that Amelia was captured by the Japanese and became one of the voices of Tokyo Rose, a rumour which circulated among Pacific theatre Gls in 1943. A disturbing picture in his book shows an emaciated woman who appears to be Amelia. Brink claims the photograph was taken by a Saipan native in 1937. He also quotes workmen at Lockheed who claim to have installed high-resolution military cameras on the Electra.

14 Mary S Lovell, The Sound of Wings, 1989, p270, describes a petulant drinking binge by Fred in Lae. However, the Executive Director of TIGHAR states that there is no historical evidence to support Fred drinking on Lae or elsewhere. He believes that Lovell's comments are based on a single interview decades later. My own experience was that pilots and navigators of my day often drank to excess.

15 Amelia was able to leave her seat during the long flight but sometimes passed notes to Fred using an improvised bamboo fishing rod when he was in the rear navigator's compartment. The Electra had an autopilot and Fred was also a pilot who spent much of his time in the copilots chair. They were both able to climb over interior fuel tanks to reach a rear lavatory, in case you were wondering.

Death Valley

2009-10-22T16:07:00.010-05:00

Calendar Nominations

I was leafing though the photo albums, looking for something special for the 2010 Firecloud Calendar.

When I got to the Death Valley stuff, I realized that at least one might rate the June cover page.

We drove though last June on the way to the California Redwoods,

The RV dash air-conditioner was kaput again, but the midday temperatures of 110 degrees did not bother us.
We saw some Chevy Volts out on a desert test drive. Actually, they were "mules" with the volt drive train in a Cavalier body.

The Death Valley National Park is a strange and oddly lovely place.

No Zombies here.

It's a worthless, blasted place except for the Borax.

Still, it has it's own strange beauty.

I drove 200 miles to see Mom today. We walked about two miles in a park and then had lunch at Chili's. We had tortillas soup and half a turkey sandwich. I ordered a margarita and they brought me two in accordance with their 24/7 happy hour policy.

גַּ֤ם כִּֽי־אֵלֵ֨ךְ בְּגֵ֪יא צַלְמָ֡וֶת לֹא־אִ֘ירָ֤א רָ֗ע כִּי־אַתָּ֥ה עִמָּדִ֑י שִׁבְטְךָ֥ וּ֝מִשְׁעַנְתֶּ֗ךָ הֵ֣מָּה יְנַֽחֲמֻֽנִי׃

Someone had blunder'd:

Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

A Taste for Flesh

2009-10-21T17:56:00.010-05:00

Zombieland, USA

The movie was a tremendous disappointment.

One might expect moviemakers to treat the subject of Zombies with respect and constant action.

Some of the great recent Zombie flicks would include "Dawn of the Dead" and "Legend" with Will Smith. Legend had a nice twist with supercharged Zombies rather than shambling corpses.

Zombieland was filled with many long, boring periods of nothing happening and the Zombies were not treated with respect. They were too easy to kill and the overlay of attempted humor was heavy-handed.

Bill Murray made a cameo appearance. but failed to add much to the movie. Woody Harrelson overplayed his role, which seemed to have echos of his "Natural Born Killers" masterpiece.

I have high hopes that the movie in making, "World War Z", will treat the Zombie population with the respect and fear to which they are entitled. Abberations like "Shawn of the Dead" and "Zombieland" are a disgrace to the genre.

The finale in an amusement park was extremely stupid. Why would any rational person turn on the lights in an amusement park and attract every Zombie within a two mile radius?

Anyway, I'm still sorting though the 2009 pixs for the magical 13 to make up the Firecloud Calendar. My SIL is now on the mailing list.

I think the reason I like Zombie movies so much is that they offer simple solutions in contrast to the complex problems we don't know how to deal with. What do we do with AIDs, poverty, Zombie banks, the recession, unemployment, global warming, peak oil or nuclear waste storage? No Idea. Zombies present simple problems...just shoot them in the head
Zombies have a much shorter literary tradition than vampires or werewolves. Nevertheless, "American Werewolf in London" had some great music and visual effects.
My favorite horror movie of all time was "Jacob's Ladder" a truly frightening movie in which you never realized until the end that the images and experiences you were seeing were in the dying mind of a wounded Vietnam soldier given an experimental battlefield drug by the government.
In the event of an actual Zombie outbreak, my M1 Carbine and a machete would be useful and preferred tools. The local press will attempt to cover up a Zombie outbreak initially. The latest documented Zombie outbreak occured in 2003 in St. Thomas, but it was only a class-2 outbreak, easily controlled and extinguished by Homeland Security.

There are many simple things you can do to prepare for a Zombie outbreak. For example, I have in my Zombie kit a SCUBA wetsuit I can wear which is nearly bite proof as well as leather motorcycle gloves and a crash helmet with a visor. The important thing is to present as small a bite opportunity as possible.

Blessed are the Cheesemakers

2009-10-20T16:38:00.008-05:00

Sarasota, Florida

Mrs. Phred and I invented a new game today. We started going though the prime numbers in ascending order. You get a point if your opponent misses one or names a number that's not prime. The other game we invented is going though the alphabet naming two animals for each letter. We got stumped on "X" but I have a species of horseshoe crab to spring on her next time. A varient of this game would be naming four animals per letter with two players and alternating who goes first.

Sirius radio is having a Monty Python channel this week. They're having trouble absorbing their acquisition of competitor XM Radio and paying for the merger, so their stock is down to $.63 per share, a 90% drop.

I'm still culling our 2009 pictures for The Calendar.

Of course, I called today to sign up the new Sirius Radio that came with the RV. I'd been thinking about it awhile, but the Monty Python week spurred me to action. I was a little stunned that they gave me six free months without asking for a credit card or agreement. After the six months, the cost is $100 a year. Sirius stock is up 15% in the last ten days. You can buy 100,000 shares pretty cheaply.

I listened to the "Chunky Frog" skit and the "I had it tough" skit by the four Yorkshiremen. Laughing out loud is always a good thing for your mental health. Monty Python is channel 105 for another week.

Praline	(producing box of chocolate) If I may begin at the beginning. First there is the Cherry Fondue. This is extremely nasty, but we can't prosecute you for that.
Milton	Agreed.
Praline	Next we have number four, 'Crunchy Frog'.
Milton	An, yes.
Praline	Am I right in thinking there's a real frog in here?
Milton	Yes. A little one.
Praline	What sort of frog?
Milton	A dead frog.
Praline	Is it cooked?
Milton	No.
Praline	What, a raw frog?
	Superintendent Parrot looks increasingly queasy.
Milton	We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and then sealed in a succulent Swiss quintuple smooth treble cream milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose.
Praline	That's as may be, but it's still a frog!
Milton	What else?
Praline	Well don't you even take the bones out?
Milton	If we took the bones out it wouldn't be crunchy would it?

Milton	What about our sales?
Praline	I'm not interested in your sales! I have to protect the general public! Now what about this one. (superintendent enters) It was number five, wasn't it? (superintendent nods) Number five Ram's Bladder Cup. (exit superintendent) What sort of confection is this?
Milton	We use choicest juicy chunks of fresh Cornish ram's bladder, emptied, steamed, flavoured with sesame seeds, whipped into a fondue and garnished with lark's vomit.
Praline	Larks vomit?
Milton	Correct.
Praline	Well it don't say nothing about that here.
Milton	Oh yes it does, on the bottom of the box, after monosodium glutamate.
Praline	(looking) Wel I hardly think this is good enough. I think it's be more appropriate if the box bore a great red label warning lark's vomit.
Milton	Our sales would plummet!
Praline	Well why don't you move into more conventional areas of confectionary, like praline or lime cream; a very popular flavor, I'm lead to understand. (superintendent enters) I mean look at this one 'cockroach cluster', (superintendent exits) anthrax ripple! What's this one: 'spring surprise'?
Milton	Ah - now, that's our speciality - covered with darkest creamy chocolate. When you pop it into your mouth steel bolts spring out and plunge straight through both cheeks.
Praline	Well where's the pleasure in that? If people place a nice chocky in their mouth, they don't want their cheeks pierced. In any case this is an inadequate description of the sweetmeat. I shall have to ask you to accompany me to the station.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.

SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

THIRD YORKSHIREMAN: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN: And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
ALL: They won't!

Pure genius!

Life is But a Dream

2009-10-19T15:14:00.008-05:00

Hillsborough River State Park, Florida

Mrs. Phred and I took Mom on a canoe ride yesterday. She's 86. As far as I know, this is her first time in a canoe.
I made a Sockeye salmon spread for sandwiches, with eggs, onions and mayonnaise for our picnic on the river. I brought Mom a bottle of chocolate milk to wash it down with.
The river is beautiful. It's undeveloped with ancient cypress and Spanish moss. I forgot the camera. There were some great reflection shots on the still river, great lighting and lots of interesting air orchids and reptiles.
I'm going though the 10,000 shots I took last year for the 2010 Firecloud Calendar. It's a tedious process. I'll probably pick out 200 shots I really like, then winnow them down to thirteen for the actual calendar. That includes one shot for the cover.
So anyway, the pictures here are from our trip to Spain in April, instead of the river. Just a few I liked the most. The flowers are from the Rock of Gibratar.
Today the doctor took a two-inch diameter cancer off my chest. It wasn't one of the really dangerous ones, but no SCUBA or swimming for about three weeks.
He asked if I had fallen in the last year. Thinking back, I did tumble down the hotel stairs in Madrid and land in the marble floored lobby. Then there was the time a few days later when I stepped off a raised sidewalk in Gibraltar and tumbled onto a bunch of broken concrete blocks.
I damaged my camera during the falls and had to buy a new one in a Radio Shack in the little town of Fort Davis, Texas. They didn't ask for ID for the purchase. Apparently, the don't get much debit card fraud in Fort Davis or they maybe hang the ones they catch.
Because of the training I got in learning to fall in the Air Force, I am immune to injury from falling (probably up to a drop of 17 feet).

Row, Row, Row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily...

Getting Rid of Columbus Day

2009-10-12T13:53:00.026-05:00

On a Yet to be Named Continent....1142 AD

I went to the bank this morning to take care of the debit card fraud only to learn that it was Columbus Day and the banks were closed. What a worthless holiday. Like it doesn’t matter that 80 million people got here first over the Siberian land bridge, eating hairy mammoths and battling saber tooth tigers. We just go ahead and celebrate good ole Chris who arrived somewhere in the Caribbean and enslaved the natives.

I decide to do something about it. First a trip to Wall Street to cash in 5 billion in credit default swaps. I’m glad I saw the credit crunch coming and bet heavily against AAA rated collateralized debt obligations made up of baskets of toxic sub prime mortgages. I wondered for awhile if AIG would cough up my winnings. With the cash bundles of cash I can buy the suppressed energy technology owned by Big Oil.

Adding the wormhole drive to the RV is no big deal. The cold fusion power plant slips in neatly in place of the big Ford V-10 and provides the power of a mini-sun. The really tricky part was generating a black hole the right size and then programming the laptop to send us to the right time and place.

Wrapping the whole thing around the RV made a lot of sense because we can use the RV generator to make turkey soup in the crock pot when we travel to the past and also because we need to keep the laptop powered up for the return trip. The navigational math is a little complicated, but I've been doing sudoku for the last few months to sharpen my wits.

We arrive on the beach of "San Salvador" on the morning of October 12, 1492 and set up our offensive positions. Mrs. Phred is checked out with the black market RPGs that are stuffed in the RV storage compartments. Mrs. Phred suggests adding orzos, celery, onions and carrots to the turkey soup while we wait. We grab a few coconuts, splash naked in the surf for an hour and eat the chicken sandwiches we packed for the time jaunt. We catch a few big spiny lobsters for the RV freezer. Eventually we hear voices cursing in primitive Spanish.

The crew was cursing because Chris had promised a fat lifetime pension in gold to the first man to see land. Chris claimed to have seen lights several nights before and put the promised reward in his own pocket. Considering the recent behavior of bankers, perhaps the "Columbus Day" bank holiday is understandable. His ethics were a model.

We let Chris and his boys pull their shitty little boats into range and then hole them at the waterline. The RPGs blow big holes in the hulls and we watch the crews swim to shore with no weapons. We figure they’ll have a good time learning to live with the natives this time around.

We hit the return button for the morning of October 12, 2009 and drive back to the bank. The building style has changed to Mediterranean and the bank’s name is now Banco Popular. A sign in Spanish says that the bank is closed to celebrate Vasco da Gama day. Da Gama now gets credit for discovering the new world. He landed near what was New York City on October 12, 1498.…the whole continent is a diseased and corrupt Spanish colony. It's called Gamaland, of course. The city that was New York is now the cesspool "Neuva Madrid".

Da Gama sailed the ocean great
In fourteen hundred and ninety-eight

This is not what we had in mind when we scuttled the Pinta, the Nina and the Santa Maria. We’re going back again. We’ll go back further this time. I’m determined to teach what were the Iroquois Nations of what was to have been New York State about advanced metallurgy, steam engines, central banking, medicine, agriculture, credit cards, ice cream, sliced bread, nuclear energy, Teflon, steel ships, velcro, gunpowder, Pink Floyd music, aquatic mines and radio.

The Iroquois also refer to themselves as the Haudenosaunee, which means "People of the Longhouse." Oral tradition indicates that the six-tribe nation was formed prior to 1142 AD. This estimate is based on a tribal stories about a solar eclipse. It's a shame that we'll miss The Great Peacemaker, Ayonwentah, but we need to get an earlier start to crush and subjugate Europe. It should take maybe 60 years. Sorry about that, Beowulf...Sorry Shakespeare...Sorry Mr. Hitler...Sorry Douglas Adams.

I'm making several trips back with a complete curriculum of home-schooling textbooks and advanced engineering and scientific textbooks. I've got firearms to show them from the simplest antiques to the best modern weapons I can buy on the black market. The Iroquois had a Nation going that rivaled Athens. I think they'll see the point of the AK-47 and night vision goggles and be motivated to study hard, especially when they read future history.

I'll show them Chief Joseph's surrender speech after his brilliant 1400 mile fighting retreat...I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say, "Yes" or "No." He who led the young men [Olikut] is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are -- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.

We're taking benign philosophy books like Santayana (no Germans, no Kafka) and geologic maps that show where the richest deposits of strategic materials are located. It may take us a lifetime, but we’ll just see who discovers which "new world" and if it is to be the Last of the Mohegans or the Last of the viciously inappropriate bank holidays.

Firecloud Hit By Debit Card Fraud

2009-10-06T07:05:00.003-05:00

Sarasota, Florida

This Sunday, someone bought $300 worth of petroleum products in small towns in North Florida and used my bank debit card to do it. That was a good trick because the card never left my wallet. My guess is that the thief bought diesel because 125 gallons needs a big fuel tank.

Until recently, I always thought my debit cards were fairly secure because of the PIN number thing. What I failed to realize was the the card the bank gave me only requires a PIN number for ATM withdrawals. If you slide one into a gas pump, it just goes ahead and dings your account.

Credit card numbers, debit card numbers and PIN number are not very secure anyway. TJ Maxx and Hannaford Groceries have both lost millions of card numbers to hackers. A man named Gonzalez in Miami stole and sold 130,000,000 card numbers this year. The data is often sent over IP in an unencrypted form and hackers find it fairly easy to exploit SQL weaknesses on the servers of processors and banks.

I went to the bank and filled out a form. They think they will put the money back in my account eventually. I turned in my debit card and requested a traditional ATM card good only for cash withdrawals at ATM machines. I'm not sure I'll use the new card except when traveling. I may just go inside from now on and cash a check like in the old days.

No telling how this guy got my number. For a few hundred dollars anyone can buy equipment to make a counterfeit card. Gas purchases are untouched by human hands, so the card doesn't have to be pretty.

Writing paper checks again...how back to the future is that?

A Good Run

2009-09-28T18:11:00.011-05:00

Sarasota, Florida

We'll be here six months until March 31. In April I'd like to fly to London and then take fast trains, ferries and planes to Ireland, Paris, Rome and Istanbul. Maybe we'll do New England and Eastern Canada this next summer?
Our last six months were pretty much ok. We spent the first month of our vacation in Spain and then drove the RV around the US for five months though New Orleans, Abbeville, Las Cruces, Silver City, Mono Lake, Death Valley, Yosemite, Las Vegas, the High Sierras, the Redwoods, the Oregon Coast, Hell's Canyon, Winslow Arizon, Jackson Hole and other pretty places.
We did some whitewater rafting and I caught tasty fish in Oregon.
The Sun and Fun RV park is fairly dead right now. We find it hard to get a doubles match of tennis going in the morning or evening before it gets too hot.
Sometimes we play round robin two on one side and one on the other. In a pinch, Mrs. Phred and I can play singles.
They are refinishing the pool here. It should be ready by November 1st. Meanwhile, the hot tubs are functional but the tiki bar doesn't open before 4 PM.

Stairway to Heaven Played Backwards

2009-09-28T17:02:00.004-05:00

Sarasota, Florida

The first time we heard it was an experience. Mrs. Phred and I had just driven 250 miles very fast to Tallahassee from Tampa on a borrowed Honda 750 and arrived at midnight.

We were visiting our dead friend, Ken. He had a completely disassembled Harley 74 on the floor of his apartment and a high-end quadraphonic stereo playing at 4 AM. He was just back from Viet Nam where he had purchased the quad system at the PX.

The quad FM station floating over the gulf from Pensacola starting playing this incredible haunting song about bustles in the hedgerow being a spring clean for the May Queen. Then the guitars kicked in and always made me turn the volume knob to the limit...

20 years later, a Tampa station opened with the promise that they would only play that one song. I listened to it for a week until they reneged and started playing Leonard Skynard and the Eagles.

Much to my surprise, "Stairway" has a satanic verse when you play it backwards. I guess that makes sense because it never made sense of any kind forward although it's a very beautiful piece of nonsense lyrics.

Evenings with Grandchildren

2009-09-23T12:15:00.004-05:00

Falls Lake State Park, North Carolina

We spend eight days with the grandchildren. Each night we take two or three back to camp with us in the RV. The lake water is nice. We have a lot of fun playing in the water. I like to grab them by the feet and drag them screaming to the deep water.

Bridging Generation Gaps

2009-09-11T06:19:00.007-05:00

Banner Elk. North Carolina

We're up in the Appalachian Mountains. It's very cool here in the late summer. Verizon has a strong retail presence because cable and DSL are not widely available for broadband so lots of the locals are forced to buy air cards to get decent internet speeds.

Our old Verizon card plugged into a USB port. A few times we have dropped the laptop when I hit the brakes too hard and it finally broke in half. We panic at being cut off from the net and roll down the back roads in the Toyota looking for a leaking wireless. We spot some unsecured wi-fis, but it seems impolite to stop outside a farmhouse in the dark and log into their wireless.

We are surprised to find a big Verizon store in a little mountain town open late at night. Our sales person is a 22 year-old geek in a pinstripe suit. He sells us a wireless Verizon router the size of a credit card that will power up to five computers and creates its own hot spot.

Somehow we get onto the subject of easy questions and I ask him. "who's buried in Grant's tomb?" He looks blank and I explain it's an old Groucho Marx gameshow question. He's never heard of Groucho Marx. He tells me about "Who wants to be a millionaire" easy questions, but I've never heard of it. We settle for a common ground and discuss Quentin Tarrantino movies for 15 minutes. I proved my merit by mentioning one he hadn't seen...."From Dust Tll Dawn"...a vampire flick in a Mexican Cantina.

Last night Mrs. Phred and went to an all-you-can-eat pizza place and then took in "Inglorious Basterds". It didn't dissapoint. The German detective called "The Jew Hunter" was phenomenal. Best supporting actor Oscar for sure. I liked the alternative ending to WWII...There are many long Tarrantinoesque conversations in the movie filled with unbelievable building suspense. You will remember the Le Big Mac conversation in "Pulp Fiction". Everyone does.

Mrs. Phred goes in first and buys her ticket. I follow after her a few minutes later and, automatically, the kid at the counter gives me the senior discount. I pay $6. Mrs. Phred gives me the change from her ticket purchase. The kid charged her the full adult fare of $9. She's pleased, of course, but when I point out the disparity, she goes back to the counter for her $3 refund. Dinner and a movie for two...$24...Not bad, but we remember Groucho and when movies were a quarter and fast food was twenty years in the future.

Password Security

2009-09-09T12:56:00.005-05:00

Natchez Trace State Park, Tennessee

After talking to my IT mentor, Jason, in Mountain Home, I decide to change all 32 of my passwords on the internet. Jason brought Windows 2000 to my organization ten years ago on a disk with no key....and hundreds of episodes of South Park for me personally.

Each new password on each application is completely unique and has four random letters, four random numbers and two special characters.

I carefully record each new password in a Word file and make the file a hidden file deep in the bowels of my laptop. The file name is all random numbers and hidden in a file folder deep within my directory structure.

I register each password of the 32 applications with my fingerprint software. Just in case, I register my left big toe as the key to each login in case some psycho decides to cut off my fingers. This means putting the laptop on the floor for each login and removing my sneakers, but Hey! You can't have too much security.

I'm not going to be the doofus that loses his identity and credit rating by using the same password everywhere only to have someone in Bulgaria hack the Twitter password file.

On the One Hand...

2009-09-05T08:13:00.008-05:00

Lake Norfork, Arkansas

We're parked on the shore of Lake Norfork. Our campground is provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. When they build a dam and create a huge recreational lake, they usually throw in a few nicely engineered campgrounds.

You probably read about the incident in California where an old man punched a health care supporter in the nose and had his little finger bitten off in return. It wasn't me. I'm strictly a nose-biter. Sure...it's true I could have put on a pair of adult diapers and driven 30 hours to the California rally. But I didn't...really.

The old guy didn't like the idea of government being involved in health care. One of the biggest worries of this type is that the wrong kind of people might get treated for illnesses or injuries. Then there is also the concern about "death panels" denying treatment to registered Republicans. The irony is that the the old guy got his finger treated with his Medicare card. The doctors couldn't reattach the pinky because of concerns about bacteria. Medicare will cover a tetanus shot.

The lake is lovely. Paul and Diane loaned us their pontoon boat. We go out every day after tennis and read, picnic and swim in a sheltered cove. We used to be boat owners. Due to a long series of expensive disasters, Mrs. Phred and I really appreciate the concept of "other peoples boats" and feel very lucky to have such generous friends.

The boat is called the "ratty bastard". We are a little disappointed that Paul has removed the tiki torches. It's a long boat, with a turning radius similar to an aircraft carrier. As we try to dock it, Mrs. Phred gives me a stream of shouted instructions. I try to turn the helm over to her, but to no avail.

The prime rib at Keller's cove was excellent, as usual. The tattooed waitress tells us that she had her baby since our last visit. They no longer have karaoke, which is an annoyance since I had seriously rehearsed "Billy the Mountain" by Frank Zappa in preparation for the visit.

Pardon the Brief Interruption

2009-08-28T05:45:00.004-05:00

Tampa, Florida

We'll be back on the road Sunday after arriving at a temporary solution to our Tampa issues. We have promised to return by October 1st.

We want to see our friends in Arkansas and go to North Carolina. Three or four of our grandchildren have birthdays in September. We want to be there to celebrate those. It's a shame all six couldn't have been born within a seven day window, but you have to take what you get in life.

I'm looking forward to a cookout on Paul's pontoon boat, the "Ratty Bastard". The Arkansas lake water should be ideal for swimming in early September.

Evenings in Enid

2009-08-22T18:23:00.004-05:00

Enid, Mississippi

We leave at dawn and drive though Tulsa, Oklahoma; Little Rock, Arkansas and Memphis Tennessee. About 100 miles south of Memphis, after 13 hours on the road we see a little camping sign on I-55 near Enid.

We pull in and see a big lake and dam. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has prepared the most lovely campground we have ever seen on the banks of a Mississippi lake.

They have sculpted the campground with fantastic concrete pads surrounded by rolling well-kept grass and punctuated with forest. There are basketball courts, swimming beaches and boat launches. It's all been sculpted and engineered by U.S. Army bulldozers.

After paying $70 a night in Colorado to be crammed onto an ugly gravel pad with neighbors five feet in every direction, the $8 camping fee for a site worth $300,000 on the open market makes me love my government once again. They know how to build a campsite and are not constrained by profit.

So we pop up again at dawn and drive another 12 hours to Bonifay, Florida. That's another story.

Evenings in Cow Pastures

2009-08-21T12:01:00.004-05:00

On the Oklahoma Border

We should be somewhere south of Memphis tonight and back in Tampa tomorrow. My family asked us to return to take care of some urgent matters so we blew off the rest of the trip to do 12 hour driving days back home.

Mrs. Phred has the helm and that leaves me free to peck out a blog while we roll down I-80.

Last night we slept in a Kansas cow pasture on the Oklahoma border. We're still swatting flies. The skies were lovely at night with the belt of Orion out at 4AM. We pulled out with the pink rim of dawn on the eastern horizon.

I like Florida. This is a great time of year for diving and early morning tennis. I was getting bored with the open road anyway, although looking forward to spending time with our friends in Mountain Home and grandkids in North Carolina. It'll be good to see Mom again. Maybe I'll paint her house again this summer.