These things are just everywhere. 

Something Tom Douglas Needs to Know

Someone needs to tell Tom Douglas this:

There is no circumstance in which three chicken wings is worth $9. There is simply no preparation that would make chicken wings - three of them, anyway - that valuable. And these were tough and undercooked to boot.

We went to the Palace kitchen last night and I ordered the chicken wings appetizer. In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that they say $7.50 on the menu, but with tax and tip, they're $9 wings. Three came, artfully arranged, sort of mounded together like synchronized swimmers; swirling around them was a tasty sauce.

So they were tough wings (smoked, so they were cooked enough, but tough because they weren't cooked as long as any gristly piece of dark meat needs to be cooked) in a tasty sauce. But even if they were sublime...there's no three wings that come from chickens for which $9 should ever be charged.

Ever.

Douglas either laughs when people order these, knowing he's taking advantage of them, in which case he's a shyster; or he doesn't know that these are a joke, in which case he's drunk his own hubris flavored cool-aid.

That's Mt. Stuart piercing the smoke on the right: 7,800 ft. The smoke tower is over 18,000. (Click pic.)

Ahhh... the fierce beauty of Nature in full conflict. Arsonists should be shot. (Click the pic.)

Flying to Sun Valley

I flew to Sun Valley yesterday with Bill Bell.

The radios in the airplane have been giving me fits for six weeks, and I finally sent my primary GPS/nav/communication radio into the factory two weeks ago to be fixed. Reported to take a week, as of yesterday I was still without, but we went anyway. I figured I could use a hand held GPS (but being a highly trained pilot, I could use charts just as easily. Stud.) and a hand held radio.

The handheld radio presents particular issues of dexterity, but I found the radio transmits very well from 15 miles out, so it was going to do for this long overdue trip.

We left Boeing Field at 8.30 a.m., as a thick fog bank was working it's way up the south end of the runway, moving inexoribly, though rather slowly, to cover the airport. We rolled out to taxiway Bravo 5, then onto the runway in bright sunshine, and took off in the opposite direction the wind dictated, and away from the fog.

It was smooth, but the smoke got thick over the Cascades. We went to 9,500 and stayed there - we could just see the ground from Ellensburg on, and at times could just make out contours. The picture above shows the main culprit - a fire between Dryden and Chelan. There was another near Yakima; further on there were numerous fires near McCall.

I can wax poetic about flying for graphs and graphs, but it's usually not very entertaining.

We had a great time in SUV. Rod and Linda Kvamme picked us up, fed us, and we went off for a hike in the Sawtooth Recreation area. An hour and a half with Toby the dog; a little rain, the clouds keeping the heat down. We were back at their gorgeous home in Warm Springs by 6, drinking gin and waiting for foxes to cross the yard.

Today it was perfect out of SUV, though the wind was up a bit. We dealt with headwinds all the way home, making the trip 2.55, rather than the planned 2.35. But smooth and lovely the whole way, with beautiful clouds over the mountains of Idaho and Oregon, and the Boeing tower gave me a challenging landing to make up for some others' mistakes. It was a lot of fun.

I Don't Want to Hear it

If I never hear another song by Bob Seger, The Cars, or Bruce Springstein, my life will still be complete.

And I still have the f*cking Laverne and Shirley theme song in my head from Beth and Alastair's wedding. Vicious.

Teri in her element. Cap Hill on a Saturday night.  

Elvis is Still Dead

(from poopreport.com)
On August 17th, 1977, newspaper headlines across the country proclaimed the shocking news: The King is dead.

Twenty-seven years ago today Elvis passed away. Elvis Aaron Presley -- the poor, ambitious, rebellious young man from Tupelo, Mississippi, who gyrated himself to the top of the fledgling rock and roll industry in the mid 50s; who helped define and refine its essence for two more decades; and who became increasingly eccentric, isolated and unable to handle his mega-star status -- Elvis Aaron Presley had died at 42 of cardiac arrhythmia, a severely irregular heartbeat or heart attack. His millions of fans wanted immediate answers, wondering how such a thing could possibly have happened to one so previously blessed with good fortune.

http://www.poopreport.com/Intellectual/Content/Elvis/elvis.html

Joyful Buddha. And pink.  

Ominous sight as we looked for a beach... (click it)

The Night the Lights Went Out in Jetta

My continuing fetish with ‘shit that goes wrong with machines’ has been stroked repeatedly lately like a dog lickin’ a … yyyeah. Whatever. I’m bugged.

This may sound absurd to you, but my issue is with the lights on Volkswagens.

It is astounding to me, and I am certain it will be to you, that lights on Volkswagens don't last. WTF am I talking about, you are certainly mumbling, even this early into a piece of writing.

I have noticed that when I see a car with one headlight out, or one taillight out, or one brake light out, it is almost always a Volkswagen Passat, Jetta, or Beetle. I don’t mean a little more than normal. I mean at least 80% of the cars I see that are photonically impaired are VWs. There are buttloads of these failures. (Buttload, you may be interested to know, is a literal translation of the Norsk/Dansk ‘assphul’ which means, well, the same thing as buttload.)

At first I thought, “faulty supplier. They’ll get it figured out shortly.” But the thing has gone on so long now (it’s been bothering me for a couple of years I guess), that I’m rather certain that it’s a profit-oriented maneuver.

Volkswagen charges a lot of money for headlights. And for tail lights. If you go to the autoparts store, you can replace them yourself for somewhat less money. But VW must have done studies and found that when their customers have a light failure, they take it back to the dealership. And the gouging begins.

The drivers of bugs are predominantly female; they are either young, say 16 – 30, or old, say 55 – 85 (“that crazy mom of mine went out and bought a Bug! You’d think she was sixteen to thirty!”) And I dare say that any men who drive Bugs aren’t going to be dirtying their hands under the hood.

And of course they’re all new cars. And people will take their new cars back to the dealership to get stuff fixed.

I have a lot more to say on this. Unfortunately. But I'm just going to hang onto it. I simply wanted to foment indignation, or at least foment awareness.

I’m telling you. Something’s going on. You watch the roads – you’ll see…

Takeoff is optional. Landing is mandatory. (click it)

The Easy Start 1-2-3

It’s called the Easy Start. “It’s as easy as 1-2-3! Push the red bulb three times, pull the cord, and mow!”

Catchy little snippets that put my worries to rest. The manufacturers of lawn mowers clearly understand that the thing people hate most in life is the reluctance of most lawn mowers to start.

It was indeed easy to start. The first four or five times, it was really easy. My brother-in-law borrowed it and he called me after mowing my sister’s lawn. “It’s so easy to start!” he said.

That first summer it was pretty much a good tool to use. You put gas in it, it started, you mowed.

It was the following spring when it became the Not So Easy to Start. I topped off the gas tank, then pulled the cord ten or twenty times. I pushed the red bulb three times for a few pulls of the cord, then five, then seven. I found that with ten pumps the machine would start, run for a screaming two seconds, then die.

Then I found if I did the ten pumps, pulled the cord, then fell to my knees and pumped the red bulb like a pulsing heart, I could keep the machine running. It was like CPR without the mouth part. And just like successful CPR, after doing this for a little while I could stop pumping, and the machine would continue to run on its own for a while. Weakly, but enough to mow a short lawn.

My brother-in-law borrowed it again. He called me. “What happened to the mower?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s still hibernating.”

He called the Lawn Ranger to take care of his wife’s lawn, and told me I could come pick up the mower.

I took it back to Home Depot to have them look at it. “You guys should rename this the Easy Start for One Season.”

Their sense of humor was... absent. Though they had a good excuse for this in the lineup of just-out-of-the-garage mowers facing them.

I called them a few days later. “We rebuilt the carburetor.”

“Why? It’s not even a year old.”

“ ” was their response. They didn’t care to discuss it. The silence inferred that it ran now, and I should just come get it. And they did let me pick it up - without even a discussion about charging me. Maybe this should have been a big ol’ red flag, but I was just glad to get my mower back.

It was never the same mower. It was sometimes the Kinda Easy to Start, but by July it was the Impossibly Strenuous and Aggravating to Start. I decided to adjust some screws on the side of the engine. How much worse could it be?

In fact, I got it to run again. I was terribly proud. I’m very handy, but lawnmowers are notoriously humbling to work on. But I got it to the point of a seven pump start, ten to fifteen seconds of CPR on my knees, followed by a fairly strong run.

This lasted two mows.

I decided that Home Depot, free or not, was the wrong solution. I’d pay to have it fixed, and that way I’d have some accountability. I went to the Lawn Mower Guy in West Seattle. His shop has been out here for longer than I have, which is to say at least ten years. He was a wise crotchety C. Everett Koop looking character who always tried to sell me up to a Snapper mower whenever I took my old mower in. He fixed my ancient Toro for a flat fee of $75 “good toward the Snapper of your choice if you trade up within 30 days!”

So I went by his shop today. It’s empty. There’s a peeling ‘For Lease’ sign in the window.

I thought to myself, “How on earth could he go out of business?” Then it occurred to me that he didn’t go out of business. He left after making $75 twenty thousand times. He’s on Maui now. You don’t have to mow lava.

All I know is that he better have passed his secret knowledge on to someone. Because they keep making Easy Starts.

Table 1-12 Period of Useful Consciousness in High Altitude Bailout
Bailout altitude (feet)	(Time in seconds)
	Useful consciousness	Free fall to 14,000 (feet)	28- to 30-foot chute to 14,000 feet
75,000	12	150	1,680, (28 minutes).
55,000	12	120	1,200 (20 minutes).
40,000	18	90	About 900 (15 minutes).
30,000	75	60	600 (10 minutes).

The Red Dog in the Cone of Shame. Do Not Lick Your Stitches. Because it leads to embarrassing plastic appliances being strapped to your head.