Hello Ween

It's Halloween today. Hope to be posting pix of Maike and her friends' costumes later tonight. Allegedly they have made their own zombie costumes, and there is a lot make-up involved in this effort. I can't wait to see this....

It's been a quiet week. Two fire drills, one really bad day at work, and one short flight.

The Captain invited me to the drill on Thursday, our dept. was going to practice working with the other South Brunswick fire companies. It was a fire in a self-storage unit along the Highway-from-Hell. Very mellow and relaxed evening, since I had gotten the adrenaline rush over with for the week after we spent a morning over at the Academy with my Work Fire Dept. in the new simulator. Two guys injured at that training, it was a great day. One of the firefighters was burned on his hand, went right through his fire-gloves while he was crawling around on the floor in the flashover simulator looking for mannequins. The instructor sprained his ankle jumping off a rescue truck. Me, I just got a teensy-weensy bit scared because I got lost on the second floor, in the smoke and 375 degree heat. (Yes, former-Chief, it was scarier than the time I had my ass on fire over on Pheasant Run at the structure fire.....) The rest of us all just needed about three showers each to get most of the smoke smell out of our hair.

The self storage unit was a novelty; I am 45 years old and I don't think I have ever been inside one. Need to get out more I guess. Great setting for a horror movie: the lights were out and the third floor filled with smoke, which made it even more surreal. The lines of closed, blank, uniform doors extended out 200 feet in every direction from the top of the stairwell. Hard to see to the end of each hallway, hard to get a sense of direction once you were in it. The setting made me think of that Pixar movie Monsters, Inc, and that storehouse filled with millions of doors.

We were on FAS team, so we we assembled our gear for downed firefighter rescue in a Stokes basket and waited on the D-side of the building for an assignment. The Lt. did a great job making sure a pre-survey was done, and that we had all the tools we needed and knew our assignments, and were on the right radio channel. Trust me, it is ten times harder than it looks. Ten minutes later , the call came through as a firefighter Mayday, lost somewhere on the third floor. Air bottles on, masks fogging quickly, we picked up the Stokes, the saw, and the box lights, and trudged up the three flights. Rescue line got attached to the hand-rail, and we proceeded into the gloom. It was too easy to find him, since he had his PASS device sounding. Next evolution we had to find a civilian, and we split into two groups and fanned out. Even with the primary search group attached to the assignment we never did find the victim. Still not sure if there ever was one to begin with......

Pix to follow once the Capt. downloads them.

First REAL swim meet!

Who knew how exciting a swim meet could be?!!

Fuelled her up on an Amish cinnamon bagel with butter and a gallon of milk and we set off for the Witherspoon pool in Princeton. Not the Princeton Y pool where I accidentally drove us on Friday night (I'd rather just forget about that navigational snafu...). Once again Maike ended up with a secret code written up and down on her arm, the code that tells her when she's up to swim in an event. The 100 meter free-style event was totally cool, just like watching the Olympics but without commercials. 100 meters is 4 lengths of the pool. (This is exactly 3 lengths longer than I can swim.) The start is picture perfect technique, but the 14-year-old boy has her beat for the lead. The fact that he has a better beard than I have, has nothing to do with it I am sure. By the third lap Maike is just barely in third place, and then at the turn cranks it up, pulls ahead half-way down the pool, and finishes just in second place. This scores a point for her team as well! The best part was that she gave it her all, and shaved eight and a half seconds off her last time!

In the 100 meter back stroke she swam strongly as well, and cut five and a half seconds of her previous time!!!

Yeah, okay, I was very proud of her!!!!

The official times:

1:27.71Y F 100 Free 10/11/2008 Princeton Mock Meet
1:19.43Y F (-8.28) 100 Free 10/25/2008 Meadowlands

1:43.75Y F 100 Back 10/11/2008 Princeton Mock Meet
1:38.21Y F (-5.54) 100 Back 10/25/2008 Meadowlands

Deer me

The Delaware and Raritan Canal runs for over 30 miles across the State, ending at the Raritan River in New Brunswick, after running past Kingston/Princeton. It's a State Park now, with the last barge travelling it's waters back in 1932. There is all sorts of nature to be enjoyed along it's banks, even close to the City of New Beirut (as I sometimes refer to New Brunswick, ever since I saw all the shell casings littering the ground from shooting around the corner, and helping the cops track down a fugitive in the parking lot). Sometimes I bike this way to work, since the place I work is also along the banks of the Raritan (albeit in a smaller format 12 miles west of New Beirut). You gotta check out Maike's bike - it was custom painted in Hawaii.



We made it up to the old colonial Dutch house, maybe 5 miles up the canal, goofed around on the bridge and floating dock, and were heading back at a pretty good clip. Colors are pretty spectacular this time of year, and the wild-life too. "Papa, whoa!!" she says. "What whoa?!" I am not grasping what she is looking at. Three-point buck drinking from the canal jumps across the trail right in front of us. For the next mile we biked quietly, trying to get a good shot (with the camera, I mean), but it's hard to take pictures through the dense undergrowth. Then we realized that we are in New Jersey, where deer are just a more edible version of squirrel and probably more plentiful, so I pocketed the camera and we headed back .

A sunny Saturday with Ashes

I used to be allergic to bee stings. I have gotten stung once or twice in recent years, and I seem to be able to now avoid the attendant elephant-sized swelling that I enjoyed so much as a kid. But the fear of getting stung has not passed, at all.

The Chief issued his orders: "Detail, ten-hut!"

The wasps circled ominously as I stood at attention next to the Cuban, in front of the box of ashes at the side of a hole in the ground. Our flags waved in the freshening morning wind, the sun shone in our eyes. We could barely make out the gold colored cardboard box sitting all lonely next to the freshly dug hole in the cemetery. Overhead the trees were waving for attention, dropping a strange fruit to the ground as they danced. It looked like a cross between a giant cherry and miniature plum. Whatever it was, it was not a pleasant smell from the rotting fruit. I thought at first that Junior Firefighter had stepped in dog crap, and we made him examine his shoes carefully with his white dress gloves on. Negative findings, so we wrinkled our noses and resumed standing at ease trying to steel ourselves for the thirty minutes of standing-at-attention which was to follow. The funeral was for a past Chief of the Department, the father actually of the guy who keeps my car running.

I had the State flag with its yellow fields, the Cuban was trying to hold together the shreds of the Fire Company flag, and Junior managed to snag the U.S. flag again. Flanking us were two more firefighters with the 450 pound ceremonial silver axes. (Okay, I may be exaggerating a bit on the axes, but that's what they feel like after an hour.) All I could focus on was the wasp that was walking around the folds of yellow silk, coming ever closer. It wasn't fair of him, as I was constrained in my mobility at the moment. I wasn't supposed to move at all until we were ordered at-ease again, and the wasp somehow seemed to know this. When the wind picked up he'd hover near my gloves, and then randomly walk back to the yellow silk and hang out for a bit to see if I was paying attention.

Reverend John said his words of consolation, the Chief performed his part with conviction, and then we were done. So were the wasps; as if on cue, they flew off to hover around some piece of dog-poo smelling fruit. The box went into the ground, the crowd melted away, and I got to drive the engine through the cemetery back to the station. I kept having this image of wandering a couple of inches from the narrow asphalt pathway, across some one's grave, and having the wheel of the fire engine suddenly sink into the hole, atop a coffin. Thankfully the mental image remained unfulfilled.

Maike and Papa are pirates

Maike and Papa are pirates
Originally uploaded by ymaike

I've decided that I want to become a pirate now. Does anyone know of good pirating school?

Takin’ It Back With Barack, Jack!

This posting was shamelessly copied from another blog that Captain Dave sent me earlier today. It was so darn good I just had to make it my own...enjoy!

Hate to see the nation being run by a hackDig the situation that he dug in IraqHalf the population wants to give him the sackAnd now he’s lookin’ round for somebody else to attackWe need somebody great to get us back on the track
So we’re takin’ it back with Barack, Jack!
Choo Choo, Change to believe inWoo woo, we can achieve itChoo Choo, Change to believe inTakin’ it back with Barack, Jack!
Now that global warming is a matter of factThe only real question is just how to reactThe new administration needs the guts to enactDrastic legislation, leave the planet intactWe can’t be foolin’ round with some Republican Mac
So we’re takin’ it back with Barack, Jack!
Choo Choo….
He only gets his money from your regular macsDoesn’t take a penny from some whackity PAC’sFor bringin’ folk together he’s the man with the knackAnd he’ll supply the hope and inspiration we lackCause he’s the best we got and did I ….mention he’s black?
So we’re takin’ it back with Barack, Jack!

First swim meet

I was so proud of Maike! So many kids in the pool, and she finished in the top half of the field in almost every competition. She even beat some of the boys in her group! Toward the final races I could tell she was getting tired, but she never gave up.

So glad she doesn't take after me (at least in this field); I saw myself in the kid in the back finishing up a pool length later...:-). Here are some pictures:

Smokestacks

Something warm slithered down my back as my fillings seemed to shake loose from my mouth. The nuclear power plant below was breathing fire at us, reminding that the only thing between our butts and the ground 6000 feet below was a thin sheet of Kansas-crafted aluminum.

I was still feeling rather rather poorly after a day-long bout with some bug that completely knocked me back to bed. In addition to regular prayer sessions at the porcelain temple, I seemed to have pulled a muscle in my neck from laying funny in bed. I got a self-stick heat pad to applied it to my neck so I could at least drive again without looking so much like a retarded zombie. Ahhhh! Remind me to nominate the inventors of the heat pad for the Nobel Prize; I really don't think I would have gotten out of bed without it. He-who-is-much-smarter-than your-average-bear called when Maike was done her swim meet to see if I wanted to go out to Amish country to look at a GPS. I had my pilot bag in the car, the heat pad on my neck and two barf bags in the glovebox, so of course I agreed. Went to the Shoprite to buy a sandwich, and called my Dad to wish him a happy birthday while I sat on a bench at the runway waiting for my ride. Here he comes in for a landing at Princeton:

A moment later we extended our upwind leg to fly over Maike's house, made a tight 180 and set course for Lancaster, PA. Now, one of the coolest landmarks in the Northeast is a set of cooling towers over in Pottstown, PA. You can see them, on a clear day, from as far south as Maryland. My first solo cross-country flight was out here; my instructor suggested it would be a good destination because if you can't see it from central New Jersey, you probably don't deserve to be flying. As luck would have it, the towers were right along our route. I am really into navigating the old-fashioned way, ever since sailing without a GPS in shoal-filled waters of the Chesapeake, so I settled into the right seat and busied myself with looking up the radio frequencies to talk to ATC for VFR flight following and setting the VOR radios to practice cutting-edge 1940's pilotage and radio navigation. The fourth waypoint were the towers at Pottstown, which we were able to see shortly after take-off from Princeton. I was soooo proud that the whole navigation plan was going so well; we had nailed every waypoint to within mere feet it seemed, including the cooling towers of the power plant. I was busy getting a fix on the next waypoint when we saw steam at 10 o'clock at our altitude. Strange, there wasn't a cloud in the sky a moment earlier. And at 5500 feet altitude that couldn't be possibly be coming from the ground? The airplane shook as if we had been hit by a deer. We made a quick turn to the left, and bounced up and down like a frog in a blender. My heat pack's adhesive failed and the warm, now sweaty pad slid down my back to lodge in the small of my back as I tried to figure out if we were getting out of the way of the steam. A quick look down, and I expected to see the nuclear fires beckoning to us from the power plant below. We were clear of the updraft seconds later, but the moment seemed to last much, much longer. We had gotten so close to our nav-fix that we had actually flown over the thermal column exapnding upwards from the 3000 foot column of steam.

"That's going to end up in your damned blog, isn't it?"

"I guarantee it!"

So here it is.

The rest of the flight was uneventful. I would like to publicly acknowledge the good humor of the control tower at Lancaster, for being so accomodating in switching our landing clearance from 31 right to 31 left after someone (that would be me) had some last minute distance estimating issues. We'll leave it at that.

Group shot from the Chesapeake.

Sailing on the Chesapeake

l. Sister ship Nimbus bound for St. Michael on the Chesapeake
r.Darwin Too is very blue. We learned it's importtant to stow all lines to prevent the spaghetti syndrome.


l.Underway from Oyster Creek to the Miles River
r.This was after we fuelled and pumped out the (yech) holding tank, on Oyster Creek

A fine day of sailing with mishaps and crab for dessert

Darwin Too groaned to an abrupt stop, causing all aboard to collectively express something that is often abbreviated "WTF?" these days. The alarm on the depth meter had made its presence known a split second earlier; a quick glance confirmed the worst. We were stuck in the mud in water that was but 5 feet deep, and it would appear that we were at least 100 yards from the channel we were supposed to be following. Engine went to full reverse as per our training, and the yacht slowly extricated herself from her folly. As we were unsure of the path we had taken to reach this peaceful corner of hell, we made our best guess, and motored slowly for all of 100 feet before being slammed to a stop on another shoal. The crew was getting unhappy after a fine day of sailing. The helpful voice on the radio told us to go back and pass to the port side of the red nun on the other bank. 10 feet of water - hurray! And then the alarm beeped yet again, less than 7 feet now. With a mounting headache we slowly chugged over to Nimbus, and followed her lead in dropping anchor and rafting up. The anchor bit on the second try; I now understand why it worth spending more on an electric windlass to retrieve the anchor chain; pulling up 120 feet of rode by hand is a bit strenous and not very dry, although it is sort of fun to be pulling a 12,000 pound boat through the water by sheer muscle power.

(Check out the beautiful spot where we anchored, on Hunting Creek)

And then it was time for a drink and to haul out the crab lines while DELICIOUS lasagna was heated in the oven. The cliches were only too accurate: fine food, great company, a remote part of Maryland accesible only by boat: does it get any better than this?

Got crabs?

Gawd that was a big crab! And tasty too!

I pulled him out of Hunting Creek, where the flotilla had rafted up in maybe 13 feet of water. A nice piece of prime rib was the bait. I set up the lines as I had been counseled by those with Crab Experience, and stood on the transom of our boat watching the sun set over the Chesapeake, enjoying a nice glass of Cabernet, while the smell of that killer spinach lasagna arose from the galley of the Darwin Too. I gave the line a little tug, and it felt heavier than when I dropped the (graciously donated leftovers) meat overboard. Slowly slowly slowly I pulled it up, while my crabbing net magically appeared on my left, at the ready. As he became visible near the surface I gently positioned the net underneath him, and pulled him free of the tea-colored waters. A cheer broke out from the stern of all four boats. Aw shucks! Someone got the big tongs, and we put him on ice to admire. I don't know anything about crabs; the blue coloring was amazingly brilliant, I had no idea! With the help of an expert from another vessel, the crab was iced for a while while unsuccessfully attempted to add a few more crabs to the haul. The ice seemed to stun him ( and we knew it was not a "she" from the graphic anatomy lessons offered up by the Expert!), so I doused him with Old Bay, and tossed him into a borrowed large pot, and dinner was ready! Dinner doesn't get any fresher!