Meanderings

Aidos Mutha 2011

2011-12-30T15:59:00.000-08:00

Just a quick rant. The AD 2011 mostly sucked and I for one am glad that the SOB is over. It started out slowly and showed promise. It is ending almost as slow as it started and is still showing promise. Trouble is, you can't take promise to the bank. Messrs Wells, Fargo and Chase want the long green not some freakin' promise.
Having said that, it looks like the old Midas touch has come back. You know, everything that I touch turns to mufflers, also a deposit came in on a nice order this week and I saw Tom Waits on Austin City Limits so I guess things are starting to finally look up.
We'll see. Anyway, keep your chin up sailors and lead with your left. It's gonna get better soon. Trust me.

NIMBY

2011-10-10T20:51:00.000-07:00

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.
I went to a meeting this evening put on by the Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Trust.

The meeting's intent was to stir up civic opposition to a proposed development project planned to be built across the street from me. I know that I am a Libertarian and despise government interference, but this project is over the top. Some asshole developer wants to tear down the Hotel complex across the street on a ten acre parcel and build a 12 story 100 room hotel with a 4,368 Sq. Ft. restaurant, plus 21,092 Sq. Ft. of non-hotel restaurant space, plus a six story 325 condominium unit, and 191,475 Sq. Ft. of retail space. Thus turning my little paradise into overbuilt hell.
Traffic around AB Marina during the week is manageable, but when they setup the Farmer's Market and Chochky Land on Sunday, I don't dare try to drive anywhere because of the traffic. This abortion will make everyday Sunday and I don't feel like climbing into a palm tree with an AK-47 and thinning out the herd to manageable levels. So, I am going to abandon, or at least modify, my Libertarian beliefs and become a liberal, anti-growth, bomb throwing anarchist. Film at eleven.
You may want to read
http://www.egretsnotregrets.com/2011/10/light-at-end-of-tunnel-appears-to-be.html

A quick rant.

2011-10-04T08:02:00.000-07:00

Another example of watch what you say on a slow news day.

The Hank Williams debacle is a prime example.

Look at what he said. Williams, unprompted, said of Obama's outing on the links with House Speaker John Boehner: "It'd be like Hitler playing golf with (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu."

Good God, it's a metaphor. Was Hank also comparing Boehner to Netanyahu?

Once again, the sky is falling.

Chef Hector

2011-09-26T17:18:00.000-07:00

On Face book today, Fazoli's asks,

Why does eating spaghetti have to be so tricky? How is a kid supposed to learn how to use a fork and spoon at the same time, while twirling extra long noodles? It can be complicated and we want to see it in action – upload your child’s Getti Your Spaghetti video at ....

Actually the kid should not be using a spoon. He should be using only a fork. How do I know?
I learned from no less an authority than Chef Hector.
When I was a lad in Cleveland, back in the late 1940s, my mom and dad and I would go to Chef Hector's Restaurant in downtown Cleveland. I remember it well. At Euclid and E 9th., you walked south half a block and then turn down this alley. Near the end of the alley, were steps covered with a round-topped canvas awning leading down to the restaurant. The front flap of the awning was lettered CHEF HECTOR's. It was like a setting in a gangster movie. Hell, we lived in a gangster movie.
I don't think that I had even started school yet when we were there one night and I was having my usual spaghetti with butter. That little concoction has gone by the wayside by now. But I digress. I was slopping my sketti all over the place when Chef Hector walked by.
He said "You don' know how to eat the spaghetti young man? I show you how." He put the spoon down and said, "You only usea the fork, no spoon." Then he said, "If you slop a bit around, who cares? That's why you tuck the napkin into the front of your shirt".
And then he left.
My dad chuckled a bit and then asked me if I know who had just showed me how to eat spaghetti properly. I said Chef Hector. He then told me that Hector's last name is Boaiardi.

Todays Rant

2011-08-01T14:04:00.000-07:00

I took the train home from LAX on Saturday. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than taking the Super Shuttle which is what I did at four in the morning on my way out of town. I didn't feel like taking public transportation through Compton at 4 AM, if it's even running at 4 AM. So I springed for the 31 bucks as, sort of, life insurance.
Taking the train back during daylight hours is fun, to me, and a mini adventure as well. I was sitting in the front of the train and being the nosy bastard that I am, I was reading the nameplate riveted to the operator's door. The train was made in Japan in 1989 by Nippon Sharyo. I remember what a fuss there was when the public realized that these trains would be made in Osaka and not Oakland. Yes, they should have not only been made in the USA, but in California.
Now if my calculator is working, 1989 would have been 22 years ago and I'm guessing that these trains have a service life of about 25 years. This means that there should be a replacement order surging down the pipeline. I hope like hell that the new trains are made in Silmar and not Shanghai.

We are supposedly trying as a nation to get our economy moving again so we had a Cash For Clunkers program. Well guess what. Shouldn't that program have been structured for American built cars? Not for cars built in Japan or Korea or even Germany? I know that a lot of so called, foreign cars are assembled here in the US and that would have been OK, if not great. But no, we couldn't even implement that little detail. Nice going you moron bureaucrats. That was a real shot in the arm for the US economy.

Lastly, there is probably much that we can do about the flood of Illegal Immigrants. We can't send them all back. It's impractical, there's just too damn many of them. But we can do a few things, and one of them is if an Illegal is stopped by the police and in fact, is truly is here illegally and is driving a foreign car. The car should be impounded and crushed. Sound a bit draconian? Not really. The least an Illegal Alien, not Undocumented worker, can do after entering our country is buy American and help keep some money, and jobs, here and not in Tokyo, Soul or Stuttgart.
I'm sorry if you don't agree with me. I hope that you do, and if you do, please pass thiss on to others either by cutting and pasting this message or the above web address.
Thanks.

Missile Tech Niel F Collins

2011-06-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

I learned today that Missile Tech 2cl. Neil Collins has passed away. Neil was not only a shipmate and a comrade in arms, he was a friend. He was also a Waddell Plankowner and appreciated being a member of an elite group of sailors called Missile Technicians. I went aboard Waddell in February of 64 as part of the pre-com crew while she was was still in Todd Shipyard in Seattle being built. Thanks to the powers that be, instead of being the Leading Missile Technician, I ended up in the Missile Guidance Radar Room as part of some ill-advised cross-training experiment. This lasted about nine months and felt more like nine years. About six months after the ship was commissioned, and a few missile shots under our belts, I finally got my shop back shortly afterward, we got jerked out of our training cycle and quickly were deployed over to Westpac, IE Viet Nam. Neil was a calming influence in our little crazy world. He was capable of keeping his head screwed on tight when all was going crazy. This picture was taken in some sailor bar in Sasibo Japan in 1965.

From left to right is a Missile Tech named Shaw, I can't remember his first name right now. The guy on the right of him is Dave Bradberry who was a great guy to have working with you. Next is me the Fearless Leader and then Neil. This was our first WestPac although Waddell was our second ship. Neil was previously on another DDG, I forget which one. Dave and I were both on carriers. Dave was on Kitty Hawk CVA-63, and I was on Constellation CVA-64. We were all glad that we came together on our DDG.

After nine months on the gun line in So. Viet Nam and up running SAR of of Hiphong, we ended up unwinding in Olongopo, Philippines. By then we were hardened combatants, but somehow Neil stayed cool as a cucumber. He's the calm looking guy on the left. My old running-mate from Southern Indiana, IE NAD CRane, Bart Hart is the guy above my head and I am the hard-ass on the right.

The last time I saw Neil was a few years back at his home outside of Orlando. Although he looked well enough, he told me he did feel like he was well enough to travel to a reunion. Too bad, I was still hoping that we all could get together for a Missile Division reunion here in Long Beach which was our home port during those magic days.

Wadda ya mean a five engined 747.

2011-06-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

In the early seventies, I had taken my sister to LAX to fly back to Cleveland. In those days, one could go along to the gate with a departing passenger, and so I did. My sister was flying on a United 474 to Chicago and then changing to a 727 to Cleveland. When it was time to board, my sister and I said our goodbyes, hugged and kissed and off she boarded. I've always loved trains, planes, cars and ships and wanted to watch the big SOB push back. When I looked out the window, I did a double take. There were three engines on the visible right wing. I wondered to myself, since when did Boeing start building six engined 747s?

When the big airplane was turned around to taxi, I did a second double take. The starboard wing only had two engines mounted on it. Now I was completely dumbfounded, so I asked the agent at the gate what was going on. He explained to me that when United needed to have major work done on an engine, the engine was sent to their Chicago maintenance facility and the only practical way to transport these huge engines was to simply attach it to the wing of a 747 and let it rack up a few Frequent-Flier miles.

I have flown a lot over the last forty years. On 747s and L1011s all over the USA and to Japan and Europe. On VC-10s to Austrailia, DC-10s to Korea, on 727s, 737s, 757s and 767s. I've been on hundreds of flights. Hell I even flew a bunch myself as a licensed pilot, but I never saw an odd number of engines on an airplane again. I started wondering if maybe I didn't dream it. It seemed so bizarre, but thanks to Google I found a few of these images to put my feeble mind at ease.

Twenty six miles across the sea.

2011-05-19T20:56:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been way to long since we've been under way. We backed the old girl into the slip around Thanksgiving Day and dressed her with Christmas lights. Christmas came and went as did New Years and my birthday and Easter. I now have to get my bottom cleaner to scrape the crap off so we can move at some sort of speed.

I hope to reverse this pathetic state of affairs real soon. June should be really busy. At Two Harbors, AKA The Isthmus, in June alone there is The Summer Wine Festival on 4 June. Opening Day June 10-12 and Sadie's favorite the Yacht Dog Show on 25 June. Later on, there is the Jimmy Walker Buffalo Chip Toss on 3 September and the Microbrew Fest 17 September.

But the mother of all of these events is the infamous Buccaneer's Day on 1 October.

Buccaneers Day, in case you have been hot-racking with Osama in Pakistan for the last twenty years, is the must-go-to shindig at the island. The formula is simple. Everyone dresses up like pirates and drink enormous quantities of beer and rum. The repartee consists mainly of one word, arrgh, my personal favorite. By nightfall the amateurs are already down for the count and the old salts are just hitting their strides.

I can't wait.

As much as I love Catalina, especially Two Harbors, let's not count out Avalon. Avalon in the summer is overly touristy. Crowded and overpriced, but in the "off season" when the crowds are gone, it's utter magic. You can also have a few Irish Coffees with George and Malinda on Tenacious. How nice is that?

Things are looking up for the last half of the year.

Bravo Zulu

2011-05-02T03:06:00.000-07:00

When I heard the news that Osama got whacked last night I was, and still am, elated. I have been asking, for years now, why the full faith and credit of the United States of America couldn't locate, hunt down and kill the son of a bitch. Well it took almost ten years now, but we did exactly that.

We finally located, hunted down and killed the son of a bitch.

I said to myself last night that the only way it could get any better is if a Navy Seal team had accomplished this glorious act. HooRah

Bravo Zulu. Well done sailors.

When the spooks finally targeted OBL, the Seals quickly finished the job.

Once again, Bravo Zulu. Go NAVY.

Postscript 5/5/2011, Cinco de Mayo.

Osama's demise is now yesterday's news, which is as it should be.

Ma'a salama you Son of a Bitch.

On the road, again.

2011-04-23T20:31:00.000-07:00

Trying to do the right thing and keep everybody happy is probably more of a goal than a possibility. The best we all can do is try to arrange a series of compromises. Compromise, that's when nobody gets everything that they want and therefore everybody is somewhat pissed about something but no-one can really bitch too loudly because they know that this is the best that can be done considering the hand that we were dealt.

With that in mind, I departed So. Cal this, Saturday, morning and flew to Cleveland to spend Easter with my little sister. My sister is eight years younger than me and is confined to a wheelchair because of MS. At least she's happy that her big brother is spending Easter with her.

Monday morning, I'll continue on to Indiana to get a job completed while the sheet-metal for another job goes back to the fabricator's for re-work. I should get back about the time the re-work is completed and get that job finished up.

This is all leading to the news that, at least for me, the recession is finally over. I am no longer working out of the back of my pickup truck and have a genuine shop to go to. I am happy to report that we weathered the storm and kept from being blown onto the rocky shoals of economic ruin. Leaner, for sure. Meaner, I certainly hope so. Wiser, I think so. Getting you and your company knocked on it's ass sure has taught us a few lessons. Lessons that I hope that we remember for a long time.

When you are going full tilt and things are going well, the if it's working, don't fix it attitude prevails. But when it's not working so well, you are forced to get creative, work both harder and smarter and fix the very things that you knew needed fixing.

As Murphy always said, it's a new day and a new deal and it looks like it's going to be a mighty fine new day.

I hope to have a chance to nosh on some regional and ethnic food that is getting harder and harder to find out West. Like the Polish and Italian food in the Cleveland area and the Amish food in both Ohio and Indiana. I honestly don't know of one decent Amish place in all of LA or Orange counties.

USN

2011-02-15T18:59:00.000-08:00

Every now and then, I reflect on my years in the Navy. I spent eight years on active duty in Uncle Sam's Canoe Club having joined up when I was seventeen while still in high school. I actually went to boot camp at Great Lakes between my Junior and Senior high school years.

The Navy was an enormous influence on who, and what, I am. After boot camp, the Navy told me that I was a smart kid and as a result of my test scores I could do anything that I wanted. I wanted to fly jets but two years of college were required back the to be an Aviation Cadet and as a high school senior,I didn't qualify. The next best thing seemed to be Guided Missile School, so off I went to GMS outside of Virginia Beach. After Basic Guidedmissileman "A" School, off I went to Terrier SAM School at the General Dynamics plant in Pomona where they were built.

Two years at the Navel Ammunition Depot in Crane Indiana where I reenlisted for six years into the Regular Navy and off I went Advanced Missile Technician "B" School at Mare Island in Vallejo.

Next I and my new bride were transfered to San Diego to serve on the USS Constellation a new supercarrier. I didn't much care for life on an aircraft carrier and fortunately after six months, I was transfered to new ship construction at Todd Shipyard on Harbor Island in Seattle. We commissioned our new Guidedmissile Destroyer the USS Waddell and charged around Puget Sound for two months shaking her down and wringing her out.

On Halloween of 64, we pulled into Long Beach which would be our homeport for the next four years. It truly was love at first sight. After Cleveland and Norfolk and Southern Indiana, I was finally home, and after forty seven years, I'm still here.

My ship has been de-comissioned, leased to the Greek navy, de-comissioned again by the Greeks and sunk by a French Exocet, but I still favor the twenty-four hour clock, using 15 February in lieu of February 15 and tend to also favor Peacoats, Kakis, and other military type garb. After two tours to Nam and six crossings of the Pacific, the lure and the lore of the Sea is too deep to deny.

I say all of this because I truly believe that the Navy and it's men are at the top of the military food-chain. The Marines are, in fact, better trained and way more Gung Ho but they tend to be not the brightest individuals that you will ever meet. I just don't get the Army but I guess somebody has to crawl through mud and get shot at. The Air Force seems to get high quality guys, but it can hardly be called a military organization. And the Coast Guard? It's not even DOD.

A Libertarian's New Year's Resolutions

2010-12-30T12:14:00.000-08:00

In case you've been sleeping this last twenty five years, whenever people start talking politics around me and ask me of my leanings, I tell them that I am a registered Libertarian. I believe that the Republicans are bad and evil and that the Democrats are even worse.

The Republicans want to preserve the Status Quo and keep all of their tax breaks and other perks. The Democrats want pretty much the same thing, but in addition they want to create an endless stream of social programs. But they want you and me to pay for their good deeds.

Do you want proof? Just stop and think.

I'll repeat, all that you have to do is stop and think.

Was George Dub bad or good for the country? Wasn't he up to January 20th. 2009 the worst president ever? One day later, look what we got. Obama, the new Worst President ever.

When campaigning Obama preached change, and we did indeed get change.

Do you want change? Real change? Positive change. Then make some changes in your own outlook. When people say why vote Libertarian and throw away your vote? I counter that if enough people "throw away their votes" that maybe some real, not superficial, change will then occur. Until then, what value is your vote if you continue to piss it away perpetuating the good ole boy, and girl, system?

Anyway, Happy New Year. Read below and then think. Really read this and then really think.

It's like the difference between hearing, and listening.

A Libertarian's New Year's Resolutions

by Harry Browne

1. I resolve to sell liberty by appealing to the self-interest of each prospect, rather than preaching to people and expecting them to suddenly adopt my ideas of right and wrong.

2. I resolve to keep from being drawn into arguments or debates. My purpose is to inspire people to want liberty -- not to prove that they're wrong.

3. I resolve to listen when people tell me of their wants and needs, so I can help them see how a free society will satisfy those needs.

4. I resolve to identify myself, when appropriate, with the social goals someone may seek -- a cleaner environment, more help for the poor, a less divisive society -- and try to show him that those goals can never be achieved by government, but will be well served in a free society.

5. I resolve to be compassionate and respectful of the beliefs and needs that lead people to seek government help. I don't have to approve of their subsidies or policies -- but if I don't acknowledge their needs, I have no hope of helping them find a better way to solve their problems.

6. No matter what the issue, I resolve to keep returning to the central point: how much better off the individual will be in a free society.

7. I resolve to acknowledge my good fortune in having been born an American. Any plan for improvement must begin with a recognition of the good things we have. To speak only of America's defects will make me a tiresome crank.

8. I resolve to focus on the ways America could be so much better with a very small government -- not to dwell on all the wrongs that exist today.

9. I resolve to cleanse myself of hate, resentment, and bitterness. Such things steal time and attention from the work that must be done.

10. I resolve to speak, dress, and act in a respectable manner. I may be the first libertarian someone has encountered, and it's important that he get a good first impression. No one will hear the message if the messenger is unattractive.

11. I resolve to remind myself that someone's "stupid" opinion may be an opinion I once held. If I can grow, why can't I help him grow?

12. I resolve not to raise my voice in any discussion. In a shouting match, no one wins, no one changes his mind, and no one will be inspired to join our quest for a free society.

13. I resolve not to adopt the tactics of Republicans and Democrats. They use character assassination, evasions, and intimidation because they have no real benefits to offer Americans. We, on the other hand, are offering to set people free -- and so we can win simply by focusing on the better life our proposals will bring.

14. I resolve to be civil to my opponents and treat them with respect. However anyone chooses to treat me, it's important that I be a better person than my enemies.

Adios 2010

2010-12-29T08:42:00.000-08:00

I don't know about anyone else but I won't be all that sad to see 2010 go away.

For me, 2010 was just an extension of 2009 and that wasn't very good.

My business took the Diamond Lane into the crapper in early 2009 and I've been living hand to mouth for the last two years. Besides the obvious, struggling to pay your bills etc., the other downside to being destitute is that you don't get any respect. When things are going well, everybody wants to be your friend. Your jokes are always funny and people listen to what you say. They hang onto your every word. When you're broke, you're just another bum and what you say, or feel, is worthless. It's also hell on your personal relationships. When the money goes out of the window, the romance goes out the door. Sorry to say, that is the way it is. But life does go on. One has to pick themselves up, brush off the dust and then climb back up on that figurative horse.

I realize that just because we tear a page off of our calendars that some controller of our collective fates somewhere doesn't fire off a cannon and announce "OK, the woes of the World Economy are over. Everybody may now resume life once more". But having said that, it does appear that things are finally improving. As a builder and seller of capitol equipment, I am one of the first people to know when things are slowing down. Business stop spending money on their machinery because things "are tight". Conversely, as a builder and seller of capitol equipment I also am one of the first to see things recovering, which it is.

So I am looking forward to 2011 to be as good as 2009 & 2010 were bad. I found a recipe for a drink called AMF, if you catch my drift, to toast away 2010. If you want a copy, let me know and I'll be only to glad to share it with you.

I was recently thinking back to New Years' past, and thought back to the celebration in Times Square. It was the heralding in of the year 2000 which despite Y2K being such a big deal, it was a small deal. If you have a Bucket List, New Years at Times Square should be on it. Being crammed into a relativally small area with three and a half million drunken New Yorkers is an experience not to miss. At the time, I thought that it would be My Worst Nightmare. It was actually very nice. My then wife Nancy said that it was because all of the asshole New Yorkers were all out in LA at the time.

Let's all hope that all of our wishes and expectations for 2011 do come true.

I'm bored

2010-12-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

I'm trapped on my sailboat, three days into a ten day rainstorm, with a wet dog. Just about the time that both me and my Golden Girl get dried out, I get the Growl. The Growl is Sadie's way of telling me it's time for another walkie. So out we go and I spend five to ten minutes in the rain while she sniffs around seeking the perfect square inch to do her business. By then, were both soaked pretty good. Being a water dog, she doesn't even notice, let alone care about the simple fact that it is raining. So back in we go, I have to carry my wet load down the ladder and sternly warn to not even think of shaking half of the Pacific Low's wetness all over my and the galley. I get us both dried off and Sadie retires to the electric space heater and I to my rack. It's Sunday and there are basically four things to do.

Watch TV, but I just can't get into football being we don't even have a team here in LA. Screw that, life does go on without football.

Or I can read. I'm slogging through volume XI of The Durant's Story of Civilization but it's heavy going and I can only get through an hour, or two, at a stretch.

I can eat. I'm eating my way to the bottom of my freezer. Digging through my freezer is like an Archeological dig. I pull something out, brush off the frost and say to myself, I wonder what the hell this is.

Or I can surf the web. I've read, and re-read, my emails. I've purged my Outlook of old, never to be re-read saved emails. But then I remembered an article that I read in the LA Times years ago about what we Americans ate back in the late thirties and early forties. There are twin windows of time, for food and cars that are quite similar. The first is the late thirties and the other is the late forties. The late thirties because the Great Depression was winding down and a lot of folks could afford to get back to normal and WW2 hadn't kicked rationing in yet. The late forties, to me, was a culinary extension of the late thirties. The War, with all of it's rationing, was over and the quest for Modernism hadn't really affected most folks yet.

I started looking for something similar to that old article, I couldn't find it, but maybe I found The Mother Lode. It's called www. foodtimeline.org and I found it very interesting.

[1946] Cocktail Parties. This is the era when the hostess' attitude is a "help yourself" party she may give her fancy free reign and let her guests assume full responsibility. Alcoholic or non-alcoholic cocktails--either or both. A choice of the following suggestions: Stuffed celery, Olives, Radishes, Marinated mushrooms, Hot ripe olives, Potato chips and cheese Antipasto, Lobster spread sandwiches, Caviar and cucumber canapes, Very small hot toasted sandwiches or puff shells (mushroom, cream cheese, liversausage, oysters etc.), Codfish balls, Tiny broiled sausages with mustard cream, Chicken livers in blankets, Broiled sardine canapes, Deviled sardines, Rolled tongue or chipped beef hors d'oeuvre, Lettuce sandwiches, crab or lobster canapes, pastry snails, Shrimp surround a small hollowed cabbage filled with mayonnaise or pink sauce for shrimp, Meat pie in dough (rissoles), Pretzels and cream cheese, Pickled onions and bacon, Bacon and saltine canape, Oyster canapes, salted nuts." ---The Joy of Cooking, Irma S. Rombauer [Bobbs-Merrill:Indionapolis] 1946 (p. 800-1)

It's mostly familiar, but also different enough to not expect at your next soiree.

MAIN COURSE

Grilled kabobs, OK
Scalloped chicken supreme What the hell is that?
Beef and corn casserole Ditto.
American lasagne American cheese in it?
Tuna-potato chip casserole Who doesn't love that?
Savory meat pie Shepard's pie?
Welsh rarebit with tomato slices and little sausages
Swedish meat balls I used to love those.
Fluffy meat loaf Fluffy?
Baked ham with glaze OK, but who beside Honey Hams "glazes" anymore?
---Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, revised and enlarged, 2nd edition [McGraw-Hill:New York] 1956
Chicken a la king Do you even know what that is?
Oysters baked in the half shell Not lately.
Turkey or chicken casserole with vegetables What ever happened to the casserole?
Chicken pot pie What ever happened to the Pot Pie?
Hamburger-olive loaf Not lately.
Chicken or veal croquettes Worst of all were the (canned) salmon croquettes.
Baked fish Who bakes fish?
Souffle My mom made a spinach souffle, and I loved it.
Oh well, it looks like it's time for my mid morning repast.

I got a new military decoration the other day.

2010-12-16T16:53:00.000-08:00

A few years back, I got an email from a shipmate that we were awarded another medal. The Combat Action Medal (CAM) and we were to write to some bureaucrat in St. Louis to receive it. Now you may, or you may not, know that you can't just run down to Medals R Us and buy these things. They are, with a few exceptions, awarded and are not a commodity to be bought and sold. If you loose your medals and want to replace them, it's a fairly big bureaucratic deal. Anyway, I wrote the cival servant in St. Lou and gave him all of the pertinent information that I was instructed to convey. Name, rank and serial number. Name of ship dates of service aboard said ship and deployment dates were all dutifully noted. That was three years ago and I still haven't heard back. The medal was first created in 1969 with "retroactive presentation" to March 1961. So I guess in the grand scheme of things, three years wait isn't a sin.

The ribbon, is quite another thing however.

When you get a medal awarded to you, you get just that, the medal. You then have to go out immediately and buy the ribbon for your dress uniform for inspections, or even liberty call.

Well I was in Oceanside last week. Oceanside is just south of Camp Pendleton and is a Marine town. I was walking past a Jarhead uniform store and went in for he hell of it. I told the guy that I wanted to buy a ribbon for a Combat Action Medal and asked if he had them. The Marine Corps is, after all, part of the US Navy and we have the same decorations apart from Army or Air Force stuff. Suddenly, the guy starting calling me sir and showed me one. I also got a triple ribbon bar for my new top row. There was a chart on the wall which showed the placement of the various medals on the uniform. There is a pecking order in how the awards are placed and in what order. The Congressional Medal of Honor is on top etc. I couldn't find the CAM on the chart. I asked where the medal was on the chart as I couldn't find it. The clerk explained that it wasn't on the chart. That was because there is no medal for the Combat Action Medal. Only the ribbon and the chart was for the medals. So I bought the stinking ribbon but I probably will never wear it as I haven't worn my uniform since a 1986 Halloween party.

I started thinking about the old WW2 term SNAFU.

Vicki used to call it Frito Pie

2010-12-15T16:34:00.000-08:00

Vicki, our Office Manager back in the Good Old Days, or like the Kriegsmarine used to refer to as The Happy Days, would upon occasion woop me up some Frito Pie when she thought that I was working too hard and not eating. Boy, did I ever have her fooled. Me, working too hard, and not eating? Come on.

Frito Pie is dirt simple and one of my favorite comfort foods. Who said that comfort foods had to be like Cream Of Wheat with skim milk poured over it? Bland, bland, bland. Not me. Sometimes yes, but others lets light up the afterburner and see what chars.

I could have this very wrong, but this is what I do. I put a layer of Fritos in the bottom of a bowl. Yah, we're gonna nuke it so make it a microwave safe bowl. Not one of Grandma's heirlooms. Next add a layer of chili. The chili in the above picture is the gourmet shit. Left over from Saturday's boat parade made with Tri-tip. Leftover chili is maybe better than the "fresh" stuff. That's the beauty of chili, it's unpretentious. It knows that it's chili and therefore it goes willingly anywhere. Alone in a bowl, or atop a hot dog, it doesn't really care. Chili is like the ugly girl with the killer body, she's just so damned happy to be out and around she'll pretty much take whatever you throw at her.

Lastly, lay down some shredded cheese, any cheese will do as long as it's not cottage cheese or ricotta. Nuke it and while the cheese is changing it's state from solid to a more plastic consistency, grab a cold beer or two. ABB.

Kosher Okayu

2010-12-05T11:07:00.000-08:00

Among such notable discoveries that were made by accident such as Polycarbonate and Ivory Soap, I would like to offer for consideration Kosher Okayu.

After puking my guts out for the last two days I decided to cook myself up some Jewish penicillin. IE Matzo Ball Soup. I usually augment my soup with a bit of rice and Fettuccine. Gotta have some additional starch in the soup as if the Matzo Balls aren't enough. I ladled out a small portion to see if I could even get it down and also to see if I could keep it on. While sampling the first bit, I left the heat under the pot on down low. I left the heat on too low and discovered a pot full of what I initially termed as Rice Gruel. After checking out the word I realized that Gruel is rather thin and what I had was a Rice Porridge instead. Being that I am a big fan of Japanese food, I looked up the Japanese term for Rice Porridge, I knew that there had to be something like that in the Japanese diet, and it is called either Congee or Okayu.

As I like rice so much, I'm sure that Okayu will become a mainstay of my diet when my tummy has been KOed either by illness or gross abuse. But if I use Matzo Ball soup as a base, I can then combine two of my favorite cuisines, Japanese and Jewish. Compai and La Cheim.

Yuck, blah, oatmeal.

2010-11-23T08:13:00.000-08:00

About two and a half years ago, I went out on one of my road-trips. I drove to Florida via New Orleans and on to North Carolina. Up to Ohio then Michigan and lastly Iowa and then home via Old Route 66. On this trip, I made a few changes in how I ate. Instead of loading up on an Egg McMuffin with a deep-fried slab of "hash brown" potatoes for breakfast, I made some instant oatmeal in the microwave in my motel room.

For lunch, I tore a page out of Jerid's playbook and went to Subway and got a sub without cheese or mayo. The bottom line is, because I was on the road for over three weeks, this change in eating became a habit. In the evening, because I wasn't automatically stopping at MacD's, or Wendy's, or Burger King, I gave my choice of dinner some thought and ended up loosing thirty pounds.

Continuing the pattern after I got back, I switched to the Quick Cooking oatmeal in the cylinder for two reasons. The first was cost, those little packets are costly per serving. The other reason was my palette was tiring of the mushy Instant type.

After consuming a package of Quick Cooking Oats, I switched to the Old Fashioned variety. Same price, still cooks up quickly in the microwave. Oatmeal, as a food, is not glamorous, but it's damned good food. It's cheap per serving, it cleans out your vascular system and it has fiber. Nuf said?

I heard all of the bull about the steel cut oatmeal, so I bought some McCann Irish. It's texture was marginally better, but the stuff seems costly as hell for oats. It also, unlike the Instant, or Quick Cooking stuff needs to be cooked for "30 minutes".

Well well, it appears that Trader Joe's has Made in the USA Steel Cut Oats for a lot less mulah than the Irish stuff.

So here we are. For daily use, I now get the store brand oatmeal at Albertsons when it's on sale of course. For $2, you get 42 Oz. of oats. That's 2 pounds, 10 Oz. of oatmeal which should supply you with a warm tummy for about about two months. Every now and then, I will have a yen for the steel cut type and will take the time to nuke the TJ's. The label says "Microwaving steel cut oats is not recommended". I say bullshit, thirty minutes on 30% works fine for this old sailor.

Next week, I may stop swearing like an old sailor and stop nuking my steel-cut in favor of making it in a pan which will take another thirty minutes to clean up.

But don't bet good money on it.

For the Love of Coffee

2010-11-20T11:17:00.000-08:00

I love to ingest things, good things. I like food and beer and wine and chocolate chip cookies. But I really like coffee. When it's black it's practically sin free. When it's bad, or has been boiled, it can be really bad. I really like the stuff with International Irish Cream coffee creamer.

My friends George and Melinda like to make real Irish coffee. Thy perk real coffee, add some brown sugar and put in real Irish whiskey. Melinda whips real cream to top it with and it is real good. Me, I'm a tad bit lazier. I do grind my dark roast beans from Trader Joe's before dumping them in my coffee press. But when the coffee is done brewing, I just add the International Irish Cream coffee creamer and pour in some Irish whiskey. It's a bit less work, but very hard to tell from the real thing. In the event that I'm out of Irish whiskey, a very real likely-hood, bourbon whiskey is almost as good.

In fact I'm riding out a rain storm and having a tot o' Irish coffee right now, which warmed me right up and moved me to write my praises about it.

Happy Great American Smokeout Day, to me.

2010-11-18T17:38:00.000-08:00

Today, 18 Nov. 2010 is Great American Smkeout Day. Back in 1981, I was still selling residential income property, apartment buildings, in Long Beach and on the morning of the smokeout, I was driving to the office. Some perky bastard was on the radio touting the smokeout. How if I didn't smoke today, that would be at least one more day that I would be adding to my life. I was thinking screw you, you asshole, if I wanted to hear a sermon, I'd go to church, as I was automatically shoving a Marlboro into my piehole.

I'd been ill for some time by then. I didn't know t right then but it turned out to be Cat Scratch Fever. As a doctor pointed out to me, it couldn't be CSF because I didn't have a festering scratch wound and I didn't have a fever either. Anyway, as I was groping for my lighter while driving down Second Street in the Shore, I thought to myself that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I thought gee, if I quit smoking I'd have to feel better. So I said to myself, that's it, I quit. And I did, quit. I also knew right there and then, that I was an ex-smoker, and I started to feel better immediately. I had quit smoking a thousand times, I used to kid that every night when I went to bed, that I had temperately quit smoking, at least for eight hours. Unless, maybe if I got up to pee.

I got to the office and predictably, when I got there, one of my co-workers, who had "quit" mooched a smoke off of me. We used to kid that Dave didn't quit smoking, he had quit buying.

I tossed him my pack of cigarettes and told him to keep the pack for I had quit. Naturally, he didn't have a light either, so when he bummed my lighter, I told him to keep it also. For I really know that I was an ex-smoker. It was really weird, because I did actually know that I had quit.

So enjoy the day and remember, if you don't smoke today, that would be at least one more day that you would be adding to your life.

Is The Captain Drunk?

2010-11-12T16:12:00.001-08:00

Of course the captain is drunk, but he is not mad. A B-29 is flying low over the marina every two, or so hours. And here is photographic evidence.

I am an airplane guy. Actually I'm more of a transportation guy. Not only do I love aircraft, I took flight training for my private pilot's license a while back. I love ships, boats, cars and motorcycles. Ask my son Ed about my Norton Commandos. Want to see pictures of my turbocharged Corsa and Spyder? Have I told you about life on board a destroyer in the Navy? Get the picture?

Any way the first thing that I ever wrote about was a B-29 bomber. It was about 1947 and I was about five years old at the time. It wasn't much of a story just about how big and loud that they were. Well here it is sixty three years later and guess what. They aren't all that loud and they're not all that big to me any more. I never actually saw one in person, or in flight until now, but the thrill is as if I was still five years old and I still get a kick out of seeing the big bird.

Don't Spachcock that bird my Friend

2010-11-02T17:50:00.001-07:00

Just pass it over to me.

I don't know who devised the Spachcock technique but he must have been a Mexican and he, or she, deserves at least two pages in the Testament of Food. Spachcocking, in case you're wondering just what in the hell I'm talking about, is the way El Pollo Loco BBQs their chickens. They lay flat on the grill so they cook fairly uniformally. I bought a chicken on Sunday and ended up braising half of it with a can of mixed veggies mad a gravy with the juices and poured the gravy over come instant mashed potatoes. Good comfort food as it was somewhat chilly on Sunday. I saved the other, Spachcocked half, and today it is in the nineties. Good BBQ weather. Let's light off the Q.

Throw the bird in a container and season with Seasoned Salt, Pepper Medley and Chipotle .

Put some fresh briquettes in the Magma, light them off etc. etc. When nice and hot place the boid on the grill and toss on a few dry Mesquite chips right outta the bag. Meanwhile soak some more chips in some water.

Let's stop and digress for a moment the rule is, pork gets Hickory. Everything else, IE Beef Fish and Chicken gets Mesquite. Commit this to memory, it will never fail you. Toin da boid occasionally to cook evenly and I swear this will be that best chicken that you ever stuffed into your piehole. If you don't agree, just send the un-used portion to me for proper disposal.

Gimme another Tollhouse Cookie

2010-11-01T20:36:00.000-07:00

Call it a Toll House or a Chocolate Chip cookie. Call it whatever you want, just hand me the cookies, very slowly, and nobody gets hurt.

In all of the big, big world, the Great Blue Marble, Mother Earth is there anything that you stick in your pie-hole that can measure up to a chocolate chip cookie? Oh sure there are pizzas ans shrimp and lots of other delights that you can chomp on, but in my ever so humble opinion, the chocolate chip cookie is the culinary high water mark. With milk preferably or maybe a good hearty cup o' Joe. Chocolate chip cookies are like sex, there are probably no bad cc cookies, some are just better than others.

My ex-wife thrice removed IE wife number one made maybe the best I ever had. She was an OK cook, but good God almighty can that girl bake. I've asked for the recipe, but like my mother, she aint talking no matter how much I beg. I won't beg for sex but I will beg like a dog for that recipe.

The best in my opinion are with Pecans. Pepperidge Farm Chesapeake Dark Chocolate Pecan Cookies are, undoubtedly the best that you can get out of a bag from the supermarket. The store baked Albertsons CC cookies are a good go-to cookie when the munchies set in at 10:30.

Hard to believe because I do so love chocolate, the double-double chocolate cookies are actually to chocolaty. It's all a matter of balance you know.

The Art of Shaving

2010-10-31T20:24:00.000-07:00

While visiting my first born Ed up in Walnut Creek this last week, somehow we started talking about shaving. I mentioned how I only use a Bic disposable razor for sensitive skin with the orange handle and how I used to stock up on Yardley Lavender Lather shaving soap while in Hong Kong because you couldn't get it stateside. Ed told me how his wife Cassy bought him a very nice upscale shaving ensemble consisting of soap, razor, pre-shave conditioner and badger hair brush and how he really liked it. Cassy had bought the set at The Art of Shaving which was a short stroll from their apartment and asked if I would like to check it out. Of course I said yes as I'm always up for new and varied experiences. We went in and I was approached by a pleasant but somewhat pushy young man who started extolling the virtues of the proper shave IE with a real lather using a brush etc. etc. As I explained to him that I had been using a brush that I inherited from my Grandfather the Barber since before he was born, I was no stranger to the "art of shaving". Pure bullshit of course. My Grandfather Alfred Koch was a barber but I acquired my mug and brush in Hong Kong twenty years after his death. But I have been using the genuine mug and brush technique for over forty five years. Cest La Vie. The soap that he was trying to convince me that was indispensable to the shaving "art" was a mere $45. Forty five bucks for a cake of soap? Gee, maybe I really do look that stupid. Wink, wink, but I'm not.

Occasionally, when I stay at a upscale hotel/motel, they provide complementary soaps that are round and that fit nicely into my shaving mug. The whole stinking room is about the same price as the soap that the nice young man was trying to foist off on me. When I'm on the road, I usually just shave in the shower and rub some soap on my face and have at it.

But when I'm "spoiling myself" and want to artfully shave I do the below.

So here's the drill.

Wash your face to get the accumulated oil(s) knocked down. I actually use dishwashing liquid for this task. I know Joy or Ajax won't ex-foliate quite like the $22 60 ml. pre-shave oil, but man up and do it. Wet the brush with a lot of very hot water. Nothing moisturizes like water in my estimation. Work up a nice lather in the mug and brush it on your puss. Squeeze of the residual in the brush and smear it above your pie-hole. Let it soak in for twenty or thirty seconds and start shaving. First with the grain (down) and then if you think that you're gonna get lucky later on back up against the grain. It's like going to a girly spa for men and probably a hell of a lot cheaper.

Top off with a little after shave, I still Canoe, and your good to go.

Screw change, this is the way to get the growth off of your face.

A Trip to TJ's

2010-10-30T09:29:00.001-07:00

I'm not sure how or when I left the fold, but I sure did. I do know why however. I love Trader Joe's. I've been going there since it was a two liqueur store chain. I worked in Alhambra Ca and a co-worker, Al Bull III mentioned TJs in passing. When I proclaimed my ignorance of TJ's, Al gave the place a very glowing oral review. Back then TJ's was primarily a very eclectic liquor store with a few extra items. I was immediately hooked. This was in 1974. As the years went by, Joe added more items but then I moved out of the San Gabriel valley to live aboard and left TJs and In-and-Out behind me.

About 1980, TJ opened a store at Marina Pacifica in Long Beach and a few years later In-and-Out built a drive-through practically across the street from TJs. Both are less than a quarter of a mile from where I am moored. Life was, once again, complete.

I made my trips to TJ's to buy specifically the Italian pastas, the Santini Olive oil, the seeded baguettes, Palugra butter and the coffee. And let's not forget the Two Buck Chuck.

The store was small and as I hate crowds I went less and less. I couldn't seem to find an uncrowded time. It didn't matter early morning, mid-day or evening, I was always getting mowed down by a cart being pushed by some impatient portly yuppie who was perpetually in a hurry to go where, or do what else? This all resulted in my making less, and less, trips to TJs.

The other day while in Walnut Creek visiting with my son and his wife Cassy, we walked over to TJs, and I was immediately back in the fold.

The Italian pastas are now a buck, up from 69 cents. So what else hasn't gone up in price? I stocked up. No Santini olive oil so I got the TJ house brand. Seeded baguette, check. This one had anise seeds on it which seemed to overpower the taste of the bread itself. There was no Palugra butter in stock but Cassy thought that maybe it was because this was a fairly small store, even for Trader Joe's. Five bottles of Two Buck Chuck rounded out this excursion's purchases.

But the main event is the coffee. I'd been buying TJ's House Blend for years and there wasn't any to be had. Small store syndrome once again? They had decaf house blend but drinking decaf is kinda like having phone sex, why bother?

I got the Joe's Dark Coffee, $3.99 for a 13 Oz. can of beans. What a deal! I'd been buying ground coffee, in a can, from the supermarket for some time now and those days are probably over.

This morning, I dusted off my trusty Magic Bullet and ground up some beans, made a pot and am in heaven.

It looks like I'll be returning to my local TJ's, which is also within walking distance since they moved into a bigger location, real soon seeking out the elusive Palugra butter and Santini olive oil.

The Great Hope

2010-10-16T16:08:00.000-07:00

It was just about two years ago when I was sitting in my hotel room in Vallejo watching the Republican National Convention when John McCain introduced Sarah Palin to us, the citizens of the USA. I liked her at once, but shades of Jimmy Carter I knew that she would get chewed up and spit back into Alaska. But son-of-a-gun she just wont go away. She's honing her political saber to a fine point and using Mr. Obama like a piece of paper to judge just how sharp it is.

Well guess what, it's getting a very fine edge on it. I'm watching her, right now, speaking in Anaheim stirring up the crowd, and stir it up she does.

For years, my dad in his wisdom as a die-hard union Democrat would go on about how the Democrats would get us into wars and the Republicans would get us into recessions, and once again it looks like the old man was right on the money. For the last generation, the Republicans tried on a variety of new dresses to see how they would be perceived. But as an old sailor friend of mine used to say, you know what you get when you put a new dress on an old whore. You have an old whore in a new dress.

Me thinks that Sarah may just be the undoing of the GOP, that she may just be the new spirit that is so badly needed. A blast of wind from the North, The Wolf. The new age of the GOP and hopefully the country.

I listened to Gorbachov speak years ago and remarked to myself that it sounded like maybe this commie was for real and speaking the truth and it came to pass that he really was.

I get the same feeling of hope listening to Sarah this evening.

Let us all hope, pray, think positivity or what ever works for you that maybe this bleak period of US history maybe be closing.

The roots of this bleakness go way beyond Obama and even Bush.

Basically it has been a mind-set of me-to, not what can I do for my country.

Just when did the world go crazy, and when did you realize that it had?

2010-10-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

I remember my grandparents walking around bitching about how the whole world was going to hell. Yah, and I rolled my eyes back and grumbled about how the old farts didn't like the way things appeared to be going. Well, here I am and here I go.

A few weeks ago I started hearing about how some Muslims wanted in NYC wanted to build a mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero. Being that the USA is supposed to be a free country, the question is, do they have the right to build there. The answer is, yes, they do have the right. Is it the right thing to do, no, it's incredibly wrong and it is also unbelievably insensitive. It should be an insult to all Americans whether they be Christian, Jew, Wicka or even Muslim.

Next to further escalate the madness, some asshole in Florida, who calls himself a man of God, threatens to burn Korans. That's real bright. If you don't stop talking about building your mosque near Ground Zero, I'm going to start burning your holy books. If you ever spent over over five minutes on a school playground during recess, you probably know the the probability of success of that particular tactic. Once again. In our fair country does Reverend Buba have the right? In case you dozed off recently the answer is yes. This charlatan does, as an American, indeed have the right. Once again, though he has the right, it is not the right thing to do. It is also incredibility insensitive and no way to get the opposition to back down. Should there be a knock on his door at two o'clock in the morning like in Nazi Germany and have the boy "go to camp". I think maybe so.

Now we have some other hugely mis-guided folks who want to exercise their constitutional rights by displaying signs at military funerals citing that the newly deceased had it coming because of our, by their opinion, tolerance to homosexuality. IE that there are gays in the military. By now, we don't have to repeat the mantra of whether they have the right etc. etc. and whether it is the right thing to do.

I have a pragmatic solution here. It is so logical that I wonder why it hasn't been implemented by now.

Issue the Marine Honor Guard live ammo. Instead of shooting the 21 salute up in the air, yup blow those morons away. Preferably right into the fallen Soldier, or Marine, or Sailor, or Airman's grave and fill it in.

Damn, if I were King, the world would be a much better place to live.

Ya Shudda Been Here Last Week

2010-10-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

In case you don't know it, I love the heat. As a kid growing up in Cleveland I delivered the morning paper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer. In the dead of winter, I would get up at five in the morning and freeze my ass off. With the wind howling in off of Lake Erie, it was enough to make me vow to get the hell out of that out-door freezer and head for a warmer clime.

When I arrived at LAX one February evening and it was eighty degrees as I deplaned, I knew I was at my new home.

Well last week, I was working in Watertown So. Dakota, a very nice place with very nice folks. But let's face it, it aint a beach city. The weather was almost nice in SD, it rained half of the time and it was still September so the cool mornings were just that, very cool, but not freakin' cold.

Back at the marina however, it was a very different story. Last Monday the all time high temperature record was broken. Not for that particular date, but the all time record. How does 113 sound? Sounded pretty good to me.

Here it is now exactly one week later and the temp is less than half of that 113.

I know, I know, all of those Clevelanders are wondering what the hell am I bitching about, it's still thirty degrees above freezing. Well after living here in La La Land, thirty degrees above is cold.

There is one thing however to take the sting out of being so cold. Grandma Kochberg's home-made matzo ball soup.

It's about the only thing worthwhile about being cold. So here we go again. The days are getting shorter and colder, so light off the soup-kettle cookie and make us a pot. It's real complicated.

You get a box of Manischewitz Matzo Ball Mix. There's two packets in the box. For one or two hungry sailors make only one packet. Blend two eggs with two tablespoons of oil and mix in the packet of he Matzo. Put the mixture in the fridge to firm up.

Bring four cups of water up to a boil. Take one of the two boxes of the Mrs. Grass' Chicken Noodle Soup mix and pour the contents into the pot. There will be noodles, powdered chicken broth and the ever so lovely Golden Flavor Nugget swirling around the pot.

After the soup comes back to the boil, take the Matzo mix out of the fridge and roll into balls the size of golf balls and drop into the soup. You should make four. At this point, I like to throw in about a 1/4 cup of rice because I like the chicken and rice combo.

Cover the pot, turn down the heat to a simmer and take smell as the galley starts to take on the aroma.

Now be patient and wait twenty minutes because as Alton Brown likes to say, your patience will be rewarded.

ZYNC?

2010-10-03T06:34:00.000-07:00

I heard an ad on the telly this morning for an American Express Zinc card. I really couldn't believe what I heard, so I Googled it. Yup, there is a ZYNC card.

I have heard of a Platinum card, a Gold card, a Green Card and even a Silver card. But a Zinc card? Please.

Who's the freakin' marketing moron who came up with a ZYNC card? Zinc is the bottom feeder of the metals world. It is literally used as a "sacrificial metal" on ships and boats. It's the stuff that you let erode away in order to save the worthwhile stuff. Zinc is so worthless that it is the primary metal used in making American one cent coins since 1982.

I'm guessing that the marketing genius who came up with that snappy name will be standing in the unemployment line and be voting Democratic by election day. I wish that I knew his, or her, name so that I could track the meteoric arc of their carrier. Perhaps he should be retrained as a burger flipper at Mac-you-know-where.

Do you want fries with this card?

9/11

2010-09-10T08:32:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the ninth anniversary of 9/11. I'm sure that for all of us, this was a life altering event. I'm not old enough to remember Pearl Harbor and the ensuing WW2, but I'm sure that those who do remember, remember it well.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was close, but the Kennedy Assassination was my first. On November 22, 1963, I was at sea on an aircraft carrier, the USS Constellation CVA-64. I remember the announcement over the 1-MC. In no time at all, we all wanted to spool up the Phantoms. We all felt, as I still feel, that Castro was behind it all.

The truth about that little event has never, to my satisfaction, been told.

But I digress.

On 9/11/2001, I get a call from a friend back in Indiana asking me if I'm up yet and do I have the TV on. The answers to that two-part question was no and no. I put on the TV and don't really belive what I'm seeing. I thought that it was a hoax. It had to be like Orson Wells, War of the Worlds, hoax. But as we all sadly know, it wasn't.

It was the second life changing event of my life.

We must remember that over 3000 innocent people were executed on that day. Ben Laden and Al Qaeda are like playground bullies at school. They aren't necessarily the toughest kids in the yard. But they are the sociopaths who continue to beat up the kids who are not able, or willing, to defend themselves. They continue, bolder and bolder, unabated to throw their weight around until one day, the big kid, who has seen finally enough ambles over and kicks the crap out of them. It is time for us to quit pussyfooting around, afraid that we're going to piss the extremists off. Piss the extremists off? What do they have to do, kill another 30,000 Americans before we wake up and face the fact that they are already very pissed off. If the Sunnis want to kill the Shiites, and vice versa, let them kill each other. They have been doing it for thousands of years.

Kids and dogs because they don't have a well developed sense of right and wrong, will weigh the consequences of their acts before eating all of the cookies or peeing on the carpet. If they think that the reprisals for their acts are lesser than the repercussions, they will go ahead with their mischief.

If we amble over and do some big-time ass kicking, I think that they will contain their bullying to their own sandbox and stay away from us.

Burn Baby Burn

2010-09-08T07:24:00.000-07:00

It was a stupid idea in Nazi Germany, during the Watts riots and it still is.

Burning entire neighborhoods, flags and books.

What way is there to proclaim to the entire world that I was born with a head full of shit instead of brains.

Truth be told, I have always been a but leery of Arabs and Muslims and since 9/11, I just plain don't like them. They want to build a mosque near Ground Zero. Do they have the right to do it here in the good old USA? Is it right? Hell no. Now we have some asshole(s) in, where else, Florida who are making a lot of headlines by talking about a public burning of the Koran. One again, do they have the right? Again, yes. Is it just plain wrong? The burning of someone's holy book, like our King Jame's Bibles, is WRONG, and everyone should speak out.

When I was a kid, the Soviet Union had a lot of nuclear weapons. We had Air Raid drills at school and I just knew that some day there would be a big, bright flash and the world, as I knew it, would either end or really change.

Then the Red Chinese were the BIG threat.

But it also passed.

Now it's the Islamic fanatics.

You know what? Here is what is going to happen. Just like the East Germans and the Russians,

the Muslim women, sooner or later, are going to get pissed off.

Communist dominated women wanted Mercedes Benzes, TVs, refrigerators and dishwashers and Communism wouldn't support such consumerism and the whole flawed system crumbled like a Trabant.

As the world grows metaphorically smaller and flatter, I don't think that the woman in the Islamic world will take the veils, burkas and other subjugation much longer. And when the Camel dung hits the fan, that system will change as quickly as The Evil Empire did.

Flugtag

2010-08-24T18:11:00.001-07:00

Let's see, what to do this weekend. Oh yah. Red Bull is staging a flugtag here in Long Beach. In case you're not familiar with this event, allow me to explain. First of all, as you probably figured out, Flugtag is German. Flug means flt and tag, pronounced tock, means day. Got it Flying Day.

It's a joke. Those Krauts have a warped sense of humor. The whole idea is teams build flying machines out of strofoam and ripcloth and assemble them with duct tape and a glue gun. The idea is to see how far these craft will fly off of a thirty foot high platform.

Get the joke yet? There aint no way these things can fly. Fall yes, fly nope.

Any way, on Saturday I took the Golden Girl down to Rainbow Harbor, my old live aboard home and enjoyed the party with 105,000 other aviation fans. Sadie wasn't impressed, I was. It was a bucket list event for me. Vini, vidi, vichi. I came, I saw, I had a beer.

Travels With Andy, La Paz

2010-08-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

Andy and I got into La Paz Friday afternoon. It was a fun trip, but I was glad the we were finally in town. The Slice of Life II is a seventy foot Pacemaker and is about the most luxurious boat afloat. Each stateroom has it's own air-conditioner unit. After the 106 degree heat outside it made for near-perfect napping, which I did.

The Slice has a very nice hard-bottomed inflatable dingy so after my nap, I took a spin around the marinas after which, we all took advantage of the marina's pool.

To sum things up. Would I take this trip again? Yes.

In a car? I wouldn't. But I'm a pickup guy. The road is "paved" and for most of the trip, in pretty good condition. I would also carry one, or better yet two, five gallon cans of gas. There are some pretty long stretches between gas station in central Baja. A map that shows where gas stations are located is a must. The Mexican map that we bought along the way sucked. It wasn't, at all, up to date. Some of the places that showed Pemex stations located had crumpled vestiges. The AAA map is much more accurate.

Is it dangerous? It never even crossed my mind that there was a possibility of danger while we were on the road.

Did I burn out on Mexican food? Yes, but only for a day, or two.

Travels With Andy, Loreto to La Paz.

2010-08-09T16:44:00.000-07:00

I am seriously considering retiring in Baja Sur. I thought that I'd like to live in La Paz because it is big enough to have certain amenities that we Gringos feel the we can't live without. Things like electricity and running water and maybe a supermarket. But now I'm starting that La Paz is going to hell just like Cabo San Lucas already has. I didn't see a Starbucks yet, but the do have a Walmart. The Walmart is OK, but when the Starbucks opens, I think I'll move on to a quieter, saner place. One of my Plan B options is Loreto/Peurto Escondido, so when we pulled out of Loreto, we took a small side to Escondido.

Yah, this is mas pacifico, more peaceful. After driving down the coast for a half hour and enjoying the sights along Loreto Bay, MX1 veered west and inland for the next few hours. We tanked up at the Pemex in Viudad Constitucion and started to look for a cute place to eat. We ran out of town before we found anything so we just kept rolling along. A bit south of Santa Rita, I said that I was stopping at the very next place that had food and we found this charming little place along the side of the road.

There was no menu. You could have a machaca burrito or a machaca quesidilla. What else do you have we asked? Oh, you can have a machaca & egg burito or a machaca & egg quesidilla. That was about it. But the beer was cold.
We ate and once again, hit the road to La Paz.

Next episode, thoughts on Baja, Loreto, Peurto Escondido, La Paz and Mexico & Mexicans.

Travels With Andy, Baja Sur to Loreto

2010-08-08T17:30:00.001-07:00

We, Andy & I, crossed into Baja Sur about noon on Thursday. More desert, rocks and Baja highway. As we approached The Sea of Cortez you could sense that we were putting the desert behind us and the sea was looming ahead.

On our way to the sea, we crossed over this stream with palms etc. It was very scenic.

Finally we came to the Gulf and drove into Santa Rosita, a really cute little fishing town with a few stoplights and the trappings of a small city. We lunched in town and I had, what else, more grilled Yellowtail. Can't get enough of that Yellowtail.

South of Mulege, we stopped at a beach called Playa Santispac on the Bahia Concepcion. The water was the warmest that I've been in outside of a tub, it was about ninety six which isn't too surprising being the air temperature was 106. Not only was the water vary warm, but the salinity seem higher than normal so we got an eight pack of Modelo beer and floated around sipping that good Mexican beer.

The Germans set up breweries in Mexico and the Mexicans became almost as good as the Krauts at brewing beer. My two favorites are Pacifico probably because it has anchors and other nautical crap on the label and Bohemia because it's so damned good.

Conception Bay is huge, and we drove along it for over half of an hour. Each time we rounded a corner, the view was so spectacular that I wanted to pull the truck over and take yet another photo. We got into Loreto a bit early to stop for the night but we stopped for the evening anyway because we were hot and tired and, most of all thirsty for more beer. We stayed at the Oasis Hotel right on the beach and I had more grilled fish for dinner. Friday morning we got up early and when I went outside, I was befuddled for a moment. Not too difficult for me to be on any given morning.

I was looking at the Sun rising over the sea, a sight that I don't see to often living in California. I then realized that we were on the east coast of Baja and I was seeing the Sun rise over the Sea of Cortez, AKA The Golf of California. It was a very nice way to begin the day.

We next stopped at Puerto Escondido which was very nice. But that's a subject in the next exciting chapter entitled The Third Day.

Travels With Andy, Baja Norte

2010-08-08T16:13:00.000-07:00

The other day, my neighbor Andy May asked me if I wanted to help him drive down Baja to La Paz Mexico. Andy captains a seventy foot yacht which he takes down to La Paz for six months of the year and wanted some help driving his truck with a boat trailer in tow. Being I was waiting for a large check to clear at the back and was essential stranded in the marina because I only had $3 in my pocket and I considered it a trip of a lifetime, I said hell yes. Now I, and a hell of a lot of other people, have traveled extensively. I’ve hopped on airplanes and have jetted to Europe, Australia, Japan and Korea which are all basically pleasure trips. Driving down Baja was a bonfide adventure. Literally, a trip of a lifetime for me. It’s not the Baja 1000 race over dirt roads but we were pulling a trailor with a nineteen foot Boston Whaler on it down some pretty crummy and narrow pavement.

Long Beach to Ensenada through TJ was pretty routine. South of Ensenada you cross the “frontier” into the “real” Mexico. For a few hundred miles, most all of the bridges along the road were being replaced and there aint nuttin’ like a Mexican detour. The boat trailer was bouncing like hell and the Whaler was bouncing on the trailer most of the time.

We stopped for lunch the first afternoon at a little restaurant near the Mission San Vicente. I figured that as long as I am in Baja, I'd load up on fish so I had grilled Yellowtail which is the "well" fish in Baja.

We spent the first night in Catavina, a little town in the Mexican desert that appeared to be dying. The Pemex gas station had closed and there was a very nice hotel called The Desert Inn is where we stayed which had to make it’s own electricity with their own generator which quit periodically. It was a bit pricey, $85/night for two, for being in the middle of the Mexican desert, but it was truly the only game in town. No fish here, so I had Pollo con Mole. It was bueno.

Off we went the next morning at 6 AM through some of the most rugged terrain that I have ever driven through. Narrow bumpy roads with dips called vados that water washes through when it rains. When it rains along there, there is no way you could get a car, or even the pickup truck through. Along the way, I drove over a rock, imagine that rocks on a Mexican road, and punctured the left front tire. Before we could get the jack set up, an Angeles Verdes appeared and changed our tire. The Green Angels patrol the highways in Mexico to assist tourists at no charge. It was the first time I recall seeing one and there he was and we were on our way in no time.

About noon, we stopped for coffee in Gerraro Negro which is where the Twenty Eighth Parallel is. The 28^th is the official dividing line between Baja California Norte (North) and the state of Baja California Sur (South). Every fifty, or so, miles there is a military checkpoint where some uniformed, and armed, Mexican solder asks you where you’re coming from and where you are going. Most don’t speak a word of English and talk very fast but after awhile, you just automatically say Long Beach California after the first burst of Spanish and then say La Paz after the second burst. They all seem to be nice and friendly and a few want to chat a bit to try out their limited English. I’m not sure what is really going on, but I’m guessing that the Mexicans are trying to discourage the drug traffic and also to try and show that everyone is relatively safe from the gangstas.

Next Baja Sur to Mulege.

Dog Day Afternoon

2010-07-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

These pictures were taken with my phone camera, so they're not the best.

We had an exiting afternoon here in the marina. I heard some noise and saw about 20 cops running around with guns drawn and pointing at the water. Plus two LBPD boats, two LB Lifeguard boats and a LBPD helicopter. The cops were hollering "come on out Scott, we know who you are and we know that your here in the water and were not leaving until we get you. Scott apparently had a different plan so he remained in the water.

As I understand it, the suspect AKA Scott, tried to make an unauthorized withdrawal from the First National Back of Best Buy Electronics. Some techno-geek contacted the coppers and the race was on. Out of the gate was Scott leading by a few lengths. Right behind our leader was a LB Motor cop chasing him through the Marina Pacifica Shopping Center parking lot. At this point, the race turned into a steeplechase when Scott vaulted a wall into the Albertson's parking lot. A new set of hounds in a LBPD B&W now took up the number two position. Scotty now added jaywalking to his rad sheet when he tore across Second Street against the light and ran into the marina parking lot. He ended up running down gangway 33, my and Sadie's home turf as it were, and jettisoned his gatt into the briny deep. The steeplechase now turned into water-sport as he did a one and a half gainer into the Pacific. Cops everywhere. LBPD cops. Marine Patrol cops. Some "plain clothes" cops with shaved heads and white Izod type shirts that had some stinking badges on lanyards around their necks.

It turned out that Mr. Scott was hiding out under a dock. The coppers searched about 45 minutes for him with no success. Enter Sgt. Kaynine with his trusty companion Fido. Fido had something the other cops didn't have. A nose. Apparently our armed robber first tried to hide out in the Duffy in the slip next to me. Fido was sniffing and barking his ass off. Sgt. K9 let Fido loose on the Duffy but our purp was already somewhere else. Fido figured there where in no time at all as he tried to chew his way through the dock. The moron then tried to swim for it. With half of the LBPD standing over him two feet away. Sgt. K then hollered to the purp, give it up or the dog goes in after you. The moron didn't listen, the dog did his best Ester Williams and shark fins started to appear as Mr. P lost a pint, or so. All of this is happening off of the bow of my boat.

Anyway alls well etc. As the story closed it was cops 1, purp 0.

Cupcake

2010-07-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

Just a quickie. By now, you should know how much I like quickies.

Last evening, I went up to the park in Signal Hill to listen to the concert. I've been attending many free concerts this summer. The LB Municipal Band, Bellflower, Cerritos, The Peninsula etc, but my favorite is Signal Hill. They have really good musical groups and being it's a hill, as in Signal Hill, the hill forms sort of a natural amphitheater. There is a eclectic mix of people there and it's dog friendly. Hey, they're free. Cheap is good, free is better.

Last evening was a Beatles tribute band. I'm not big on tribute performers. Most aren't very good and a few are plain outright bad. These guys were The Silver Beatles, and they were fairly good.

There are a few food vender's up on the hill and I'm told that I should try the cheeseburger that is grilled over charcoal on site. A saw a few people walk by me with a cupcake and all of a sudden, I found myself Jonesing for a cupcake. I have lost thirty pounds in the last three years and keeping the pounds off is almost as big a struggle as losing them. Rarely does my tongue touch ice cream anymore. Ditto for pies, cakes and doughnuts. Trail mix is just about my only sweet indulgence anymore and the occasional dark chocolate bar to share. If you catch my drift. Wink, wink.

Anyway occasionally I feel that one must slip off of the wagon or a big fall will be imminent. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. With a large guilt like when my dog swipes food that she knows doesn't belong to her, I slither up to the cupcake line knowing that this is so wrong on so many levels when I spy the bill of fare. Cupcakes $3.50. Three fifty for a freakin' cupcake??? I can't think of a cupcake on this Earth that's worth $3.50.

I'm saved.

All is not lost, I know I'll be back for the cheeseburger next week.

My Day

2010-07-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

I originally was going to call this post My Day, but my day swiftly morphed into That Was The Week That Was.

Back in the Stone Age, you know in the days before Kennedy was President, back in Ohio, in the Cleveland Press was a column written by Elenore Roosevelt called My Day. I never read it because when I was real young, I didn't know who Elenore Roosevelt was. Later on, when I knew who she was, I didn't care at all about her day. But I liked the title. Old Elenore sure was ugly, but she may have actually been the first, modern day, blogger.

If you are over forty, you may know what TWTWTW is. It was a weekly British television show with David Frost that looked at the weeks news in a humorous vein.

Mine was a doosey.

On Friday, I realized that my registration had expired on my BRT, Big Red Truck. I called the AAA and got a recording saying that they were open on Saturday from 9 to 2 PM. I headed over the next morning only to find a notice Scotch Taped to the window advising that they, AAA, were closed on that holiday weekend Saturday. Of course they were also closed on Monday to commemorate the Fourth of July.

Tuesday I returned with all pertinent paperwork in hand to surrender my hard-earned cash to The State. My membership had expired for non-payment. OK, I knew that. Go stand in the casher's line to surrender more cash to the AAA. After patiently waiting in line, the afore mentioned cashier informed me I first had to go see some other paper-pusher. After waiting to see Paper-Pusher 2, I coughed up $65+. Line three was to effect the actual registration renewal process. After hemorrhaging $300+ I was told that the BRT needed a new smog check at a test only facility. I now dutifily drove to the smog tester and shelled out another $67 for the check. Guess what, it failed. Bad O2 sensor. Off to AutoZone to buy a new O2 sensor. Which one asked the guy behind the counter. Some vehicles can have up to ten. The BRT only has two and we figured out that I needed the post catalytic converter sensor. $65. Of course you need a special $25 socket to change it. AutoZone will actually loan you the special socket. Just leave a $25 deposit. Return it intact and you get your 25 bucks back. Changing the sensor was relativity easy, almost too easy. This is not a good sign. Started up the motor, oh crap the Check Engine is still lighted. Think, think hard. Maybe the on-board computer needs to be reset. How the hell does some guy from Cleveland with limited resources do that? Try removing the positive battery cable, IE unplugging the freaking thing. Go take a tinkle in the head and by then, it should have dumped whatever the hell it had on it's evil little mind. Aha!!! It looks like that actually worked. I drive back to Smog R Us for my free retest. Mr. Smog asks me if I had driven the BRT for "a few miles". I did. He hooks up the umbilical cord and advises that I probably haven't driven it enough yet because all of the codes haven't reset it yet. I need to put on at least seventy five miles. Hither and Yon I drive. Instead of taking the shortest possible route, I take the long way.

Wednesday I go back to Bellflower Smog #3 to get the damned truck a clean bill of health. First the computer won't speak to the BRT's On Board Diagnostic (OBD2) computer. Then their computer lock up and everybody at BS#3 starts swearing and bitching about getting a tech in to fix things.

Thursday I call BS#3. Tech been in yet? No? When?

Friday, no tech yet. I'm getting pissed. I got a truck with expired registration and if the computer at BS#3 won't talk, I want to take it to BS#1 or #2. After bit of double talk and excuse making they finally agree. I go to the Cyprus facility and Mason the courteous and obliging tech there plugs the BRT into his computer. It won't sync up. Now I'm really screwed. What the hell do I do now? My OBD2 isn't talking to the outside world. About that time, some guy from Jiffy Lube comes in on other business. Mason explains that we're having communication problems and that he doesn't know what to do now. Mr. Jiffy Lube offers his little hand-held diagnostic reader to see what that tells us. We trek over to JL and the handheld not only communicates, but it also tells us that there are no fault codes being displayed. Hmm, maybe all is not lost yet. I head for the marina and as I approach Seal Beach, I get an idea. I stop at the smog test shop located in the ARCO station and talk to some guy named Al.

I tell Al all about my problem and ask him if he will hook up his machine and see if it will talk to the BRT's OBD2. If it will, I will gladly pay for a second smog test just to get this nightmare over. He agrees. It talks, but he can't do the test today. But he can tomorrow and they open at eight AM. I'll be there at 7:59.

Spatchcocking

2010-06-22T07:58:00.000-07:00

No, you filthy wankers, it's not what you think.

Today is the first full day of Summer and maybe when you fire up the BarBee, you might try another Chicken grilling technique besides the old beloved BeerCan method. Don't get me wrong. I think that the BeerCan method is the best thing that has happened to mankind since canned beer, but after all, variety is the spice of life.

Simply, Spatchcocking is the method used by El Pollo Loco to get a whole bird to lie flat on the grill and therefore grill more uniformly. It aint as easy as it seems, so I did a little homework and this is the short version.

Spatchcock Chicken (with adobo rub)

1 large oven-roaster chicken (about 3-4 lbs)
5-6 tbsp adobo seasoning/rub (this can either be store bought adobo – Goya brand – or you can make your own (see below)
2 tbsp olive oil

Adobo Rub
3 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp black pepper
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp lemon pepper
Combine dry spices in a bowl or make double/triple quantities and store in an airtight jar for later.

*Please note that adobo doesn’t necessarily have a set recipe. It has commonly recurring ingredients, but like many recetas de abuela each one is slightly different.

How to “spatch” the cock:(follow the illustrated step-by-step below)

Take a pair of good, strong scissors or kitchen shears. Pat your chicken dry with some kitchen paper/towels and place it breast side down on a cutting board.
With your scissors cut along one side of the backbone – breaking through the ribs with a satisfying “snick” – all the way through to the other end. Turn the chicken around and cut along other side of the backbone, so you’re left with the intact backbone in one hand, the scissors in the other, and a chicken with long gap in its back.
Now press down on the sides (ribs) of the chicken either side of the breastbone until you hear another little crunch. Feel free to slice open the membrane surrounding the breast bone and remove that too, but it’s kind of a pain and I nearly always end up savaging the breast meat by being clumsy. Anyway, what you get is a chicken that’s now mostly flat.
Take your scissors again and trim off the wing tips at the first joint. These tend to burn when cooked.
Next, make two small incisions into the flaps of skin below the breast (at the leg end) and poke the legs through these holes. This will help keep your bird flat. Be careful not to rip these holes as you do this, as you want your first spatchcock to look as good as it tastes, right?
Then, you’re almost ready. (see how simple this is?) Rub your bird very lightly with olive oil – do not drench it or the spices will all just slide off. Then sprinkle very liberally all over with the adobo rub, patting it on to make sure it sticks. It might look like you’ve used a lot of rub here, and you have, but some will fall off during cooking, and you’re not flavoring the chicken with anything else, so you can afford to be generous. Let your chicken sit with the rub on it, at room temperature for at least fifteen minutes before cooking.
Now, you need to prepare your grill. And this must be done on a grill. Okay, it can be done in the oven and turn out well, but with spring approaching you just can’t beat the al fresco cooking experience.
Before igniting anything, make sure your grill is clean. Remove the grate and fire up the grill – charcoal or gas, is fine. You want the grill at around 350F. If you’re using charcoal make sure you can rearrange the coals once they’re ready. And if you’re using gas, make sure you can control which burners are on or off – this is crucial to success here because the perfect spatchcock chicken is cooked using indirect heat.
When grill is up to temperature, rearrange charcoal (or turn burners on or off) so that you can fit a 10-inch aluminum baking pan containing about an inch of water in the middle of the grill so that it is not directly over the heat source. Replace your grate and brush with oil. Close lid of grill and allow to return to 350F – about five minutes. If you’re using gas you might have to fiddle with the temperature a little because you’ll almost certainly have to turn off at least one of the burners.
Anyway, when the thermometer reads 350F place your chicken breast-side up on the grill directly over the baking pan and let it cook for at least 25 minutes. All the while making sure the temperature remains at least 350F. Do not peak at the chicken. It’s doing fine by itself. Every time you even crack the lid a little you add five minutes to the cooking time!
Then after 25 minutes, turn your chicken over and cook for another 25 minutes. Depending on your grill you might want to power it up a bit here. You’ll know how it’s doing by how well colored the skin has become. If it’s still looking a bit pale it might either need longer at 350F or a bit more heat. We typically crank it up to a shade over 400F for the last fifteen minutes to make sure the skin gets crispy, which, apart from moist flesh, is the principal requirement of any roasted/grilled poultry.
When your chicken is looking golden brown or perhaps a shade or two darker, take it off the grill and tent it lightly in foil for around fifteen minutes. We rarely use our meat thermometer because it’s not accurate, but if you have one you trust, now would be a good time to give it blast. Remember, always check the bit between the breast and the thigh. Generally speaking though, if the juices in the leg are running clear at this point, you’re in a good shape.

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A Boy and His Dog

2010-06-14T20:58:00.000-07:00

There are two kinds of people on this planet. One kind walks right by me and my dog and don't give her a second look. The other kind will invariably look at the dog and smile. I am of the second kind and I don't really care for the first kind.

Yes, I am a dog person. I like animals Cats, Horses, Birds, anything that serves as a pet, but dogs, to me, are a cut above.

The best dog that you ever had is the one that you have now.

This is my girl, Sadie. Actually Sadie Marie. Sadie is a pure bred Golden Retriever and I'll be the first admit that I'm partial to these dogs, but Goldens are really special to me. Most of them don't have a mean bone in their body and all they want to do is please their person. Sadie will sit quietly for hours and hours as long as she can see me. That's about all she wants out of life is to be with me.

She is the first girl dog that I ever had to care for. Hell she is the first girl period tha I ever had to care for. I've had two sons, two Dachshunds, two German Shepards and two Rottweillers. All macho males, boys.

The Dachunds were great, fearless little guys. Bred to go down a hole and drag out a wounded Badger. Dead or alive. A badger is nothing to trifle with. Especially a wounded one.

The Shepards, Rommel and Lancer, were magnificent creatures. Big, bold, smart and alert. Bred to protect their flock.

The Rottweillers were black death. Bred by the Romans to guard the Legion's property, they are very territorial. When they were on the job, nobody, including myself was going near their charge. They meant business, strictly business.

This Golden is a whole new experience. She is loving and sweet and I love her to death, but she sure knows how to manipulate. She knows what she wants and she knows how to get it and if you play your cards just right, she'll actually chase a rubber duck.

Your last meal

2010-06-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

Attention, attention asteroid XR-7 is hurtling towards us and will crash into Earth in one hour. What are you going to make for your last meal? It's simple, a no-brainer, Fettuccine or Linguine with Italian Sausage and Red Sauce. That was easy now remember that this is a time critical project.

First run out to Safeway, or if you're in So. Cal., it's either Von's or Pavilion's. Get a one pound chub of the Italian Sausage. Grab a can, or jar of Spaghetti Sauce. The brand doesn't really matter as long as it's red, and get a package of pasta. I prefer Fettuccine or Linguine. The question does beg, why would anyone get Spagetti when a same-sized package of Fettuccine or Linguine costs the same amount.

First brown the sausage in a pan. This stuff is so lean there is no need to pour off whatever fat does render out.

When the sausage is browned, the tricky part comes. You must actually open the sauce container before pouring it into the pan.

Then, as Alton Brown says, step away. Just step away, you are done.

Except, obviously, you must cook the pasta.

Your patience will be rewarded. When that nasty old asteroid crashes, you will surly die with a smile on your face. Yum.

This is very reminiscent of what Marge, my mother-in-law, called Slumgollian but with an Italian bent.

What do mean that the satellite story was just some oldies radio station's promotional jive. Oh well. It was well worth the scare.

We all scream for Ice Cream

2010-06-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

I'll own up to it. I have a sweet tooth.

Cookies, my favorites are chocolate chip and Pecan Sandies.

Cakes German Chocolate stands way out.

Pies, Pecan and Black Bottom.

And then there is Ice Cream. I have to steer way clear of any ice cream place.

Thrifty and Save-On Drugstores here in So. Cal. were the best deals around. Sadly, Save-On is gone and Thrifty is now Rite-Aid but they still have ice cream cones. Basken & Robbins is another good place to wreck your waistline.

On the road, there are a few places that I can't avoid. They are, in no particular order;

Braum's is mainly in Oklahoma and "parts of Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri".

Culver's frozen Custard is all over the northern Mid-West. Ohio west to Minnesota. Forget the burger, get a Turtle Sunday.

Honey Hut is in the Cleveland area. Again, get a Turtle Sunday.

Handel's in the Akron area. They have "over fifty flavors". If you can possibly pair your choices down to four, which will be a real challenge. Get one of these four scoop samplers pictured here below. Four scoops is like the foot long burrito, it's just about the right amount.

Ritters in Indiana.

Mary Coyle one outlet in Akron. They are an old Italian family and have great spaghetti as well as world-class ice cream.

Chili today, hot tamali.

2010-06-07T06:33:00.000-07:00

It is now Summertime which is a good time to fire up the Chili pot.

It would be understatement to say that I like my chili. Down through the years, I have made hundreds of batches and have cooked in four major cook-offs.
Chili is an entree, a side-dish and a condiment. If you should ever want to master the art of Chili making, a good way to start is to buy a Carol Shelby's Chili Kit. Not only does it have all of the basic ingredients right in the bag, it has printed instructions enclosed. Once you make the first batch, you should be on your way to Chili Nirvana.

Some of the things that should be learned are,

1. There is a packet of Chili Powder enclosed and contrary to conventional thinking, you really can't use too much Chili Powder. The only limitation is the salt content in the powder.

2. Shelby advises using a cheap cut of beef such as Chuck or Round and hand cutting the meat into pieces that are "the size of your little toe". You should also trim off some of the fat, some because the fat provides flavor and keeps the meat from turning into Chili flavored Jerky.

3. As you should know by now, plain old GP flour is used to thicken gravy. To thicken the Chili, Shelby provides a packet of Masa Harina in the kit. Masa Harina is the flour that is used to make

corn tortillas and imparts a better Tex/Mex flavor then GP wheat flour.
4. There is also a small packet of Cayenne Pepper enclosed in the kit. I find the whole packet to be too much Cayenne so I found, through trial & error, that half a packet is about right for this Cleveland boy. You should now be ready to castoff your chili training wheels and go where the bold cooks go and become a citizen of the Chili Nation.
One last thing, chili should be hot and spicy. Spicy, by all means, yes. Hot, yes, but not too hot. After shoveling a spoonful into your face the stuff should be hot and spicy enough to make a swig of cold beer your next thought. But not so hot that fire blows out of your ears.

Cornbread

I think that a really good accompaniment for Chili is cornbread. The best cornbread that I have made, so far, is made from a box of Jiffy Corn Muffin mix. I follow the directions on the box with the following exceptions.
1. I don't use any liquid, at all. Instead, I use a can of cream-style corn. Add most of the corn and mix it in. Don't put the whole can in at first, you don't want the batter too soupy. You may well use it all but the liquid varies from can to can and brand to brand.
2. I add half of a small can of Diced Green Chilies. A whole can could work, but start with a half can for starters.

Oh yah. Don't forget the beer. Good beer. Mexican is apropos. Budweiser is not.
ABB.

Bye bye Merc

2010-06-03T07:44:00.000-07:00

I heard on the radio yesterday that Ford is discontinuing the Mercury line of cars. This got me to thinking about all of the various auto manufacturers that have folded in my lifetime. Edsel, Nash, Hudson Kaiser, Fraser, Henry J, Studebaker, Packard, AMC, Crossly, Muntz, Plymouth, DeSoto, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Saturn, Hummer and Checker come quickly to mind. I'm sure that I have forgotten a few.
Now if you are under forty, you probably don't recognize hardly any of these names as car brands. Some of these such as Studebaker and Packard were very good cars and some others are frankly best left on the dust heap of history.
Edsel for instance, like Mercury, was nothing more than a re-badged Ford. No better and no worse than any other contemporary Ford that was made at that time.
Nash and Hudson were OK car lines that merged into American Motors Corp. The AMC cars were about the same as their Nash and Hudson predecessors.
Crossly was unique. It was a very compact car built in the late forties and early fifty's. Besides being compact, Crossly's had four cylinder engines with overhead cams and disk brakes. These features were, at least, fifteen years ahead of their time. They were built, along with Crossly's line of home appliances, in Cincinnati.
Checker automobiles were built in Kenosha Wisconsin, and as their name implies, for the taxicab industry. They were big, very roomy inside and were tough. They could take the abuse of a Cuban middleweight.
Why are they all gone? That's a good question. It was said that the cost of American labor closed down the smaller builders and moved some of the big guys off-shore to Mexico and beyond. I say that's bullshit. Mercedes. BMW and Volvo now build some cars in the USA. As do Honda, Toyota and Nissan. Even Hyundai and the lowly KIA are built here. What gives?

Whiting Brothers

2010-05-18T20:20:00.000-07:00

In 1961, after I graduated from the US Navy's Terrier Guided Missile School at the General Dynamics/Convair plant in Pomona California, I and Tom, another schoolmate drove back East in his brand new Corvair. It was a real adventure and truly a trip of a lifetime. This was right before the Interstate Highway System opened and so we basically drove back on Route 66. There was an interesting phenomenon, for lack of a better term, and it was the Whiting Brothers chain of gas stations.

The Whiting Brothers had a gas station every 200, or so, miles along the old road. They were placed so that whenever you saw a station, you knew that it was probably time for another fill-up.

As you can see in the picture above, not only was there a filling station, there was a motel and a small grocery, or convenience, store. These are pictures of one such abandoned station that I took last week on our road trip.

You may not believe this if you are under 45, but a uniformed attendant would come out to your car and not only pump your gas, they would also check the oil and "water" and even the tire pressures, if you asked. This was all done without any additional charge. There wasn't any two tiered pricing back then for full and self service. When you got hungry, you would stop at Bubba's Burger Barn, or Molly's cafe, or Lefty's diner. You didn't normally order a #5 with fries. Some of it was real good, some not so good, but most of it had character and individuality.

Alas that's all changed now. When you cruise down the interstate now, you are never really sure if you are in Montana or New Hampshire. It all looks pretty much the same now. All graded nicely with long sweeping turns. Sure, you can make a bit better time now, but at the price of loosing a lot of the character of this big beautiful country of ours. Few people these days have actually driven across the country. We all fly across it in the time it takes to listen to the safety announcement, drink a few beers along with a bag of pretzels, make a trip to the lav and then buckle up and put your traytable up for the landing. If you don't drive it, you don't realize that it takes five days to drive it, not five hours like it is to fly it.

There used to be regional differences around the country. Different accents, food styles, attitudes and paces of life. Thanks to McDonald's and Wendy's and NBC and Interstate 10, it's pretty much gone. There are a few pockets of regional individuality here and there, but you really have to get away from the Interstates and the chain restaurants. Good luck.

Home again

2010-05-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

Although Sadie and I have been back since Tuesday, we both still seem to be adjusting. My body clock seems to now be on Mountain Time and Sadie isn't crazy about walking more than a quarter of a mile. Not that she ever was a marathoner.

I love snuggling up in my own bunk. Sadie also like climbing up with me. I was planning on going walkies today to get us both limbered up somewhat, but so far this morning is been classic a So. Cal. gray May morning. The Sunday morning news is on and the blond weather bimbo just said that at 63, it's warmer at Big Bear then at the beaches. Just what I needed, a reason to lolly-gag in my bunk today. Maybe I'll read some more of Atlas Shrugged or Jim Murry.

TWS Cinci, Indiana & the Long Road Back

2010-05-14T06:33:00.001-07:00

On Friday 7 May, the 17 day on the road, we left Cincinnati and headed back to John R's. John, Sadie and I went to a great restaurant/bar, Bushman's Brewhouse

http://bushmanbrewhouse.com/default.html.

The place used to be the local Nashville Indiana Country Club. They had a great band and being it was Friday, we ate a creel full of of fish. Large Red Stripe beer was the special so we also drank our weight in Jamaican beer. All went reasonably well except I guess that in my diminished state, I, maybe, committed a social faux pas with Virgil, a local "character". Virgil is a semi-recluse who has a collection of Indian Motorcycles in his barn. I happened to have on a Triumph Motorcycle tee shirt on and Virg made a remark about the alleged sexuality of people who ride English motorcycles. When I pointed out that Indians, for the last 10-12 of their history, were made in the UK, and therefore he must also like to dress like Richard Simmonds, he hit the roof. Fortunately for me, I had walked out to the side porch to check on Sadie when Mount Virge erupted. Apparently, John was the only target of opportunity at the time, so Virg unloaded on John. By the time I returned, John was saucer-eyed, Virge had slinked off into the woods, so I finished my Red Stripe in peace. John and I laughed our asses off all of the way back to the red barn.

Saturday, we loaded up the BRT and headed west. We drove through the rest of Indiana and then all of Illinois. Before dark, we crossed the Mississippi River at St. Louis and drove through Missouri. The Oklahoma Turnpike is to be avoided if you ever plan to drive that way. The road's surface is crappy, food and fuel services are almost non-existent and they charge yoy a toll for this. Typical for government provided services. Somewhere in Western Oklahoma, I pulled over to catch a nap. Being I was chomping at the bit to get home, I couldn't sleep, so we continued on. As we were driving through the Panhandle of Texas, just west of Amarillo, I spotted a small group of people walking through a field and wondered where the hell they were going. Then I spotted them, the up-tilted cars. It was the Stonehenge of Texas, The Cadillac Ranch. I did a quick U-turn and headed back. I couldn't miss this cultural icon.

Miss Sadie, always the art critic had to sniff the work. She was intrigued my the work.

But, was it art?

We'll let you decide. I managed to drive to Holbrook Arizona by Sunday evening and I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, so we hove to at the local dog friendly Motel 6. Monday morning, we got under way towards California and with a few Route 66 stops made it to Carl and Freda's that evening. Carl handed me a cold Mexican beer, flopped a few New York steaks on the barbie and we ate. Freda happened to have a few Jeopardies recorded on the DVR and put them on. Not conducive to a good social climate. I kicked their asses on the first one. I then really kicked ass on the second. By the third, Carl wasn't a good loser. That's good. Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser. He put on his jamies signaling that it was bed time so we all crashed.

TWS, Day 10 Tennessee & Indiana

2010-05-13T05:41:00.000-07:00

Scott and I went fishing in the Chattahoochee River in the morning while Sadie played water dog, sort of. The fish were literally jumping out of the water but neither Scott or myself didn't even get a single bite, let alone a creel full of fish. About mid-day, I reluctantly loaded the truck and set out for Indiana.

In some remote corner of Tennessee, I pulled into a BP truckstop to walk Sadie. After said walk, the truck wouldn't start. I have had this problem before. The first time was with my beloved Chevy pickup in California. When I stopped at the customer's, the truck was running fine. When I came out, it wouldn't start. It had a bad in-tank fuel pump. The second time, I was in Springfield Mass. I was driving my Jeep Cherokee and the same thing happened. One minute it was running fine and after I parked it, it wouldn't start. So when it happened with this Dodge pickup, I was pretty sure what it was. There was a truck mechanic on duty and he was able to get a replacement pump at nine o'clock. He said he would be back at eight Saturday morning to swap out the pumps so Sadie and I, having no other options, settled down in the truck for a long night. There was no motel to hole up in and it not only rained like hell with the wind howling and lots of thunder and lightening. The next morning, eight came and went and no mechanics. Nine also elapsed. Finally the two good ole boys showed and when they finally got to the task, they really knocked it out. It was still stormy as hell and I without any real "road testing" of the repairs, we hit the road. Without incident I will gladly add.

Saturday evening we arrived at John Runberg's barn in Nashville Indiana. John is a QC manager at the IU cyclotron. He lives in a hundred year old red wooden barn on a real working farm. Lots of cows, pigs and chickens.

There is a pond across the lane with ducks. Sadie loved chasing the ducks. The ducks weren't as enthusiastic. But all parties survived. After the Tennessee breakdown, this was a good place to settle in for awhile.

But all good things must come to an end, so Sunday evening we set off for Cincinnati.

Homeward bound

2010-05-12T14:44:00.000-07:00

At 1513 yesterday, the BRT steamed into the marina parking lot and moored.

Ching ching, the bridge rang up ALL STOP and then SECURE ENGINES.

The Special Sea and Anchor Detail was secured and the Officer of the Deck shifted his watch from the bridge to the quarterdeck.

Liberty Call was piped and Sadie went ashore to pee & poop.

Holiday Routine was declared and I was designated a Late Sleeper.

We were, at long last, in our home port.

Film and more at eleven.

AWK

2010-05-10T05:04:00.000-07:00

Forever, I've listened to hundreds of old farts blow tons of hot air about their grandchildren. I've politely listened while fantasizing in my mind about hoisting my gollywobbler while they endlessly yak on and on about their little houseapes.

Well here I go. Now it's my turn. I'm going to start cornering all of those SOBs whenever I make a visual contact and tell them about a real, live grandkid. Mine. While I was in Atlanta last week, Amy had the little guy. Seven Lbs. ten Ozs. I am told not only is he cute, and darling just like his gramps, see below

he is really smart. He is already, at 12 days old playing easy fugues on his toy piano and composing basic haikus with his finger tip in his soiled Pampers. He has also, already, turned down a job offer with the State Department. He wants to finish his education first. AWK, by the way, is the anagram for Alexander Wolf Koch.

Travels With Sadie, Days 13, 14 & 15. Cincinnati, Fort Wayne and back.

2010-05-05T17:29:00.000-07:00

As you may, or may not, know; my aircard took a dump in Arizona two weeks ago. This means that I have to find the WiFi hot spots if I want internet access. It appears that McDonalds now has access at most of their locations now. It hardly matters however because I've been places lately that not only didn't have cellphone service, they didn't have a McDonalds.

Sadie and I left John Runberg's red barn Sunday night and arrived in Cincinnati early the next morning. The machine I was supposed to start-up needed a transformer, so we headed for Indiana for two days. We stayed at a Motel 6 in Fort Wayne for two nights. I stay at Motel Sixes at lot not because I am a cheapskate, which I am, but actually they are dog friendly, chain-wide. Motel Sixes are not know for their amenities, and true to form this one didn't have a WiFi. They did have a McDonalds across the street, but I couldn't get a usable signal. Being it was raining, lightening and thundering like hell, I didn't spend a lot of time in the McDonalds parking lot surfing the web. So needless to say, I mainly tried to catch up on my much missed sleep.

I inspected four machines in the area and will write up a quotation on refurbishing them. Today, Wednesday, we were, as Willy sang, back on the road again. For the next two nights, we will be staying at dog friendly Motel 6 in Cinci.

On the way, I saw the sign. Culver's, next offramp, 2 miles. After two miles, I pulled off and found the Culver's. One of the reasons, I am sure, why people in the Heartland are so heavy is Culver's Frozen Custard & ButterBurgers. If there was one of these near Long Beach, I would make a daily trip for a Turtle Sundae. A ButterBurger? I don't even want to know. I don't want to move to the Midwest.

One could say that there are four kinds of people in the world. One, there are people who have never heard of Cincinnati Chili. Two, there are people like me who have heard of it and never tasted it. The third class are people like DIL Amy, who knows about it and like it. And lastly, the fourth class are those who know it, but think it's not all that good. I, being a class two, thought that it was high time that that I matriculated to a higher class. So tonight I went over to Skyline Chili and bought a small 2-way. A two way is spaghetti topped with chili. A three way adds cheddar cheese, a four way adds diced onions or red beans and a five way adds onions and red beans. So there you have it, the complete knowledge base on Cincinnati Chili. I started out with a two way, to go. Back to Motel 6. To eat in my skivvies, with a cold beer. And the beer I had in mind was a Leinenkugel's. Next to the Skyline Chili place was a Kroger's Supermarket where I knew Leinenkugel's were lurking in the cooler. As I was reaching for the Leinie's out of the corner of my left eye I spotted it. A fifteen pack of Stroh's. If you live more than 200 miles away from Detroit, you probably never even heard of Stroh's Beer. It is the cult beer of the Eastern Great Lakes region. I figured, what the hell, I'm here in Ohio having Cincinnati Chili, what could be more appropriate than a Stroh's.

Conclusion, I have now been elevated to class three and a half. I have tried it but neither go nuts over it, nor do I dislike it. Basically, just another tick on my bucket list. It's cinco de mayo in Cincinnati, maybe I should have gotten a burrito supreme at the Taco Bell at the corner next to the KFC? Nah.

Travels With Sadie, Day Eight Denny & Alex

2010-04-28T15:04:00.000-07:00

I know that this is a bit out of sequence but today has been one hell of a day so far.

I am in Cumming GA with old and dear friends Scott and Deb Douglas who I've known for over thirty years. Deb's mother Irene is also here. Irene is one of the nicest people that I've ever met and one hell of a cook to boot.

I started out the day by finding out that my friend of forty years Denny Moore has died. The whys and wherefores I still don't know because everyone back in California is at his funeral.

Before that could really sink in, my son Dave called to tell me that he is at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach and that they are inducing labor on Amy. My soon to be new grandson, Alex, is a week overdue and poor little Amy just can't lug the big galoot around any more.

So it is a classic example, for me, of one door closing and another door opening.

The circle of life.

Stay tuned. Film at eleven.

Literally.

Travels With Sadie, Day Seven Lanta

2010-04-28T15:02:00.000-07:00

We got up early Tuesday morning and set out for Cumming Georgia which is a bit northeast of Atlanta. Alabama and Georgia is some pretty nice country, but it is also non-eventful so after eight and a half hours on the road, we arrived at Scott and Debs. They have two Golden Labs Chelsey the mom and Sugarbear, one of her pups. I was at the Douglas home exactly eight years ago when Celsey had her litter. Chelsey is this sweet female, I really hate to use the term bitch and Sugarbear is a big handsome dog who lives to chase things thrown into the brush and return with them in his mouth.

When I throw a stick or throw toy for Sadie, I end up as often as not, being the retriever and fetching the damned thing.

We hiked through the woods to the Chattahoochee with the three dogs and had a great time.

Travels With Sadie, Day Six. Moss Point MS

2010-04-28T15:01:00.001-07:00

Kenny had Monday off so He and I and his wife Janice and his brother Tommy launched a 24' powerboat and set off through the bayous with a twelve pack of Bud to find us some alligators.

Tommy has been cruising the backwaters and bayous for over thirty years and guaranteed that we would see us some gaters. We didn't, but we had a hell of a good time putting around the bayous and swilling down the cold Buds.

We stopped at Huck's Cove Marina Bar & Grill but being it was Monday, it was closed. I guess I'm going to have to come back to Moss Point again, but not on a Monday, because the place looked like a real good place to hang.

I really liked the Gulf Coast along Mississippi and fully intend to be back when I can spend more time here.

Travels With Sadie, Day Five. Moss Point MS

2010-04-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

We got out of Houma, LA about 0645 Sunday and drove on to Mosspoint, MS. On our way out of Houma, I stopped off to pick up a beignet and a coffee. I want to Mr. Ron's doughnuts, which I was advised as having the very best beignets in town. It was as if Mr. Ron had never even heard of a beignet. As I was about to leave empty handed, I happened to glance down and spy piece of fried pastry the intrigued me. I was told that it was an éclair covered with a chocolate-praline topping. Beignet? Gimme one of those éclairs, and a coffee. And off we roared. We drove highway 90 instead of geting on the Interstate. The highway is much more scenic than the Interstate. Especially east of New Orleans and into Mississippi.

I want to go back to Louisiana again when I can spend more time taking in the sights and to be able to eat more of the Cajun food.

Along the Gulf Shore in Western Mississippi, I looked up and thought for a moment that I had, maybe, taken a wrong turn when I found myself back in Long Beach.

Of course it's Long Beach Mississippi, but it has salt water and sand and it's warm & sunny. Not too bad. Coastal Mississippi has been a real pleasant surprise.

I made it to Kenny & Janice Schmidt's in Moss Point, MS and settled in. Kenny used to be a liveaboard neighbor in Alamitos Bay Marina back in Long Beach California. He and his wife had their boat trucked to Galveston about six years ago and then motored east along the Inland Waterway through Texas and Louisiana to Mississippi. Of course before they could even reach Moss Point they got pounded by hurricane Ivan. Luckily for them, some shrimpers showed them how to weather the storm and keep from getting killed. They then made it to Moss Point only to meet up with Katrina. Which they also survived. They have a beautiful Golden-Lab mix named Boggs so now Sadie has a new boyfriend. They make a really cute pair.

Tschuss.

Travels With Sadie, Day Four. Louisiana

2010-04-24T19:44:00.000-07:00

I worked like a dog all day. Sadie worked like a Golden Retriever, IE she napped. She also found a thicket of prickly balls to roll in. She has hundreds embedded in her thick golden fur coat. They won't brush out and have to be clipped. I have been hankering for Cajun food, so for lunch we went to Big Al's Seafood. Big Al's sounds like a great way to plunge in. We ordered Crayfish, by the pound.

My customer ordered five pounds, which sounded like too much so I ordered one pound. He upped it to two pounds and told the waitress that he would polish off what I didn't. Two pounds was just about right for this two hundred pounder. We had some corn cobbettes and boiled potatoes for sides. My hands still smell of mudbugs from shelling the little critters. After driving for three straight days and then working all day, all I wanted to do was take something back to my room and eat it with a cold beer, shower and fall into bed. My customer, Joe Fox, recommended The New Orleans Hamburger and Seafood Company, which is where I went. I took home the thin sliced fried Catfish, which he also recommended with Jumbo Shrimp, New Orleans style coleslaw, garlic fries and hush-puppies. A sixteen oz. cold beer and I was ready for sleep.

Today, as I head for Moss Point Mississippi, I am stopping to get a Beignet and coffee for the road. I'll also try to grab a Muffuletta or Po' Boy.

Travels With Sadie, Days Two & Three. Texas

2010-04-23T17:35:00.000-07:00

Once again we got a late start. We really didn't get under way until ten AM. In western New Mexico, we crossed into the Mountain Time Zone and then went over the Continental Divide. To paraphrase Dorthy, You know Sadie we're not in Long Beach anymore. We are no longer in the West, and we're heading farther east. I'm sure you know that if you drop some water in a stream west of the Continental Divide the water will eventually end up in the Pacific Ocean. East of the CD and it will end up in the Atlantic. Between South Bend and Elkhart Indiana, there is a North-South Continental Divide. I'm not too sure exactly what that means. South of this CD and water ends up in the Gulf of Mexico before eventually ending up in the Atlantic? And north of this CD and it ends up n Cleveland? We eventually made it to Texas. There is one word that describes Texas, big! It is huge. I saw a billboard in El Paso advertising Furr's Cafeteria. There used to be a Furr's in Paramount CA but it is now gone. I knew that Furr's was a Texas chain, but I just assumed that the whole chain had folded. I guess not. I liked the place but it was, pretty much, an all you can eat place, and faced with that prospect, I can eat a lot. Not good for me or my waistline. To see what is available, have a look. http://www.furrs.net/menus_daily.cfm?var=Saturday&state=TX&city=6&location=11925%20Gateway%20Blvd.%20West&menuType=1

My thoughts on food were focused on the Cajun variety like Etouffee and Muffulettas so gallantly, I forged ahead. The speed limit in West Texas is 80 MPH, but in order to keep my fuel consumption under control, I kept it to slightly under 70 and Texas kept droning on and on. It was getting late and we were still in Central Texas and the weather started to worsen. The wind was blowing the semis all over the road and it was thundering and lighting was striking everywhere so we pulled into a rest stop.

Three AM, I woke up and we got rolling again. Eight hundred and eighty stinking miles later, we finally got out of Texas at 1224. We are now in Houma LA and the whole area is under a tornado watch. I was so beat when we got here that we just fell into bed and still havent had even a Po' Boy.

Tschuss.

Travels With Sadie, Day One. California & Arizona.

2010-04-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

Well we finally got out of town. It was a late start so we didn't really get on the freeway until 11:30. I stopped in Banning to get a Big Carl. I have been pretty good with the burgers and red meat lately, but being I'm setting out for, some, part unknown; I thought that I could go weeks without a Big Carl and better have one while I can. That's my story and I'm stickin' with it. Across the street from Carls Jr. is the old horseradish store. The place looks like maybe it's had it's run and appeared to be permanently closed so I thought that I'd better get a picture of it while it's still standing. Occasionally, when I mention that there is a store in Banning that only sells horseradish, I do get these strange looks. So here is pictorial proof you doubters!

The rest of the drive to Palm Springs was pretty routine. I don't drive to Palm Springs often, but often enough to consider the drive routine. Once you get east of "The Springs", you are actually on the road. We crossed the Colorado River into Arizona at Blythe at 1515 and gassed up in Arizona where the cost of gasoline is a bit less.

We bypassed Phoenix around Gila Bend and made it to Willcox by 2130.

We probably could have made a bit better time, but I tried to stop about once an hour to allow Sadie to stretch her legs and romp around the desert. I guess she has now outgrown the romping phase of her life. She ran around a bit but mainly stayed close to pop.

Sadie was all enthused about "going for a ride" when we left, but by the time we got to Gila Bend I think she was done. She just sat in the front seat and stared out the side window with her face pressed against the glass.

In Willcox she did romp around a bit and peed and pooped and peed and pooped a second time, just in case.

It's now 0920 and I think I'll go shit, shine, shower, shave & shampoo and then we'll gas up and be on our way.

Tschuss

Travels With Sadie

2010-04-18T22:27:00.000-07:00

It is Tuesday evening and Sadie and I are due to hit the road in the morning. It rained today and now it has cleared up but it's still blowing like stink outside.

There are Small Craft Advisories posted. The lines are creaking and it reminds you why you live aboard. We'll be taking the BRT. Big Red Truck.

I'm "packing". The boat is a mess. What a dump. There was a time when I would shove whatever clean clothes and underwear & socks into a bag and be on my merry way. Now I'm beginning to think that I am starting to pack like a girl. You know, for three weeks. Six pair of jeans, three for work. Two for going out in public and the newest pair for "formal" wear. Maybe eight tee shirts three pull-over "golf" shirts and maybe two dressy shirts. Work shoes, deck shoes, that's about it. Well, maybe not so girlie after all.

Sadie's the smart one here. She just snoozes while I get ready to stow her food and dishes. Her bed and squeaky bunnies, and her Duck. In case you slept through the course, and don't speak Golden Retriever, a Duck is this red rubber throw toy that you toss into the water for her to retrieve. Ha ha ha. Sorry, it's just a little private joke.

I have my list, and I'm checking it twice. It's a pretty big list.

I did learn one travel tip from Carl that I'm willing to share. According to Carl, you pack all of your old crap. The stuff that you should have thrown away by now. After you have worn it, and got it dirty or torn, you toss it. This way you'll have less crap to tote around and maybe a bit of room to bring new crap back. Eh???

Anyway, we're off in the morning and I intend to make it to New Mexico on Day One.

Tschuss

On the road again, there's more.

2010-04-14T21:23:00.000-07:00

It looks pretty official. Sadie and I will be on the road for a few weeks.

This is one of my very favorite pictures of her. She'll be perfect company on the trip.

You know if you talk to yourself, and people see or hear you, you're labeled as a crackpot. But if you talk to your dog, most folks won't even give it a second thought. Not that I really care, mind you.

We'll be off to Houma, Louisana and then on to Cumming GA. After that Cincinnati.

It also looks like Brown County Indiana is on the agenda. I spent a year and a half in southern Indiana as a young sailor a very long time ago. I was weird for us, mostly, city boys to be in such a rural setting. I always try to go back through there when I get a chance to see how things have changed, and also how they haven't changed.
Then next, we'll be off to see my sister in Cuyahoga Falls Ohio.
After a little family visit, it will be on to southern Michigan and northern Indiana.
Cammanche Iowa will probably be the end of the "official" trip and then
Old Route 66, as much as practicable, will be the long way home. Maybe not, maybe we'll take the Northern Route and stop to see my old Navy buddy Bart in Wyoming.
It's been three years since I've made an extended road trip and the road is beckoning to me.
Can you hear it?
I can. So can Sadie.

More beer talk.

2010-04-08T17:10:00.000-07:00

Arrgh. All of a sudden this afternoon. I started thursten for a cold Leinenkugel or Pig's Eye beer. In case you don't know of these two, allow me to elaborate.

Leinenkugel would be my first choice of suds for no other reason then the name. Hell, with a name like that, Leinenkugel just has to be good. And it really is. They brew about a dozen different varieties.

Of course let's not overlook Sam Adams. The genius behind the beer is none other than Jim Koch. With a name like Jim Koch, this guy has to be the top beer gun.

Now if you want to have a really good beer, you have to buy a ticket on Luftansa and fly to the Old Country. To say that German beer is the best in the world is simply the understatement of all time. Every little town in Germany has at least one brewery and the local brew is all that most gasthauses serve. On the beer mug will be the crest for the brewery and under the crest it will say SIET and a year. SEIT, in German, means since and most of these places say seit 1600, or thereabouts. They have been making the same beer for 400+ years. Ya think they got it down by now?

I did have a hell of a beer in Amsterdam. I asked the beertender what kind it was and he said Heineken. It was so good that I didn't believe him. He insisted that I come around behind the bar and have a look at the label on the keg and sure enough it said Heieken.

There was a few brews that we drank overseas.

The first was Primo.

Ah Primo. That's the stuff we used to swill when we got to Pearl. Sort of pinapplie tasting. It wasn't all that great but after a week at sea, who the hell cared as long as it was cold.

Then there was good old San Miguel. Quaff of choice in Olongapo. Only one Phillipene peso a bottle when a Yankee Doller whould exchange for seven Pesos and a stick of gum. They also made it in Hong Kong. Great stuff.

Mostly these days, I'll have a nice ale or settle for a Coors when I just want to wet my whistle.

Well after all of this beer talk, gotta go get me a cold one.

Dave

2010-03-28T07:40:00.000-07:00

As Sadie and I walked down the gangway this evening, I noticed that there were six slips in a row that all were vacant. This meant that our dock neighbor Dave has left for the Marquesses on his 38 foot cutter. Now Dave and I were never all that close. Hell I don't even know what his last name is but as they say, there goes the neighborhood. First Kenny Schmidt moved back to the Golf of Mexico in Mississippi. Then Barb and Hugh moved to gangway 13. Rich and Nancy came back from their Baja cruise and then bought a house and moved on the hard in Temecula. George and Melinda then took off to Baja and upon their return, gave up their slip and moved to live full-time on a mooring in Avalon. Mark is buying a condo and moving on the hard with his girlfriend. Hell, it's getting downright quiet down here. Who knows, maybe soon, I'll be heading south and the two Andys will be bitching about my leaving.

Don't lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools

2010-03-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

In the blog, http://wcvarones.blogspot.com/2010/03/think-youll-get-revenge-in-november.html

Varones who bills themself as a radical libertarian Jeffersonian vegan militant bicyclist populist capitalist pig in San Diego, says

Think You'll Get Revenge in November? Think Again.

"Think again. I think we're watching "Checkmate" in action. Why? Word is that Immigration "Reform" is the Obama Administration's next goal,and that they intend on granting Amnesty to the illegals living here now. Estimates put that number at about 15-30 million people. Assuming 90% of them would instantly become life-long loyal Democrat voters (And why wouldn't they? They've just been given US citizenship and US Health Care by a Democrat), any massive "backlash" against the Democrats that appears to be developing right now will really only end up likely being more than countered by the massive increase in the total number of loyal Democrat voters that Amnesty will provide."

Checkmate indeed. Me thinks that Obama is sitting in the catbird seat. Did he blunder into it? Or is he that crafty?

What if he does champion immigration reform? And what if his handlers advise him to not back the illegals? If they tell him that he is veering way too far to the left and if he wants to get re-elected, ya think?, he needs to get back closer to the middle of the road.

If he flip/flops, he still wins. In one fell swoop, he gets the undying gratitude of all of those good loyal middle of the road Americans who, quite rationally, are opposed to millions of illegals pouring across our borders.

This could get real interesting. And as the old Chinese curse says, "may you live in interesting times".

It's my party.

2010-03-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

Well, today is my birthday and I've decided to play hooky and take the day off. Every year I say that I'm going to goof off and every year something happens to screw up that noble plan. So far, it looks like all birthday plans are still Go. I have the TV on and am desperately trying to ignore the John & Elizabeth soap opera. Also the Sandra Bullock/Jessy James tragedy, oh dear. What is this world coming to? Some earthquake maven is predicting another large temblor in So Cal. Really? That's newsworthy.

Being bored with the so-called news this morning, I tried looking up my horoscope on the web. I found several. One said that I was going to hit the Super Lotto today. Another said I would get lucky this evening. A third said that I might get a sex change operation.

I suppose that it could happen.

Get a pizza stone.

2010-03-10T16:20:00.000-08:00

If you want to be a sage, a highly respected person who imparts the wisdom of the ages, remember this. When anyone asks you about the meaning of life, just give a warm smile and tell the asker, get a pizza stone. That's right, that is the best advice that you can ever give anyone.

I got home a bit early today and being that I hadn't had a thing to eat today, I was ready to eat the south end off of a north bound skunk. I had a tube of Pillsbury pizza dough so I sprinkled some cornmeal on my pizza peel.

A pizza peel is the wooden shovel-like paddle that has a handle shaped on it. It's that thing that you insert and retract your pizza in and out of the oven. It doesn't hurt to get one of those either if you want to make good pizza. I unrolled the dough and let it rise for a bit. You stingily spread some sauce on the dough and then I made a pizza version of the Italian flag. The green was a little pesto in the middle, the white was some Alfredo sauce and the right hand side was plain sauce with some motz naturally. The trick here is the stone. Mine in my little sailboat gally oven is 13" X 15" rectangular. I guess the round ones are OK, but I'll bet once you get into this you will be getting a square/rectangular one. I leave it my oven and never take it out. While the dough is rising a bit, turn the oven up to full tilt and let everything get very hot. Sprinkle a bit more cornmeal on the stone, pop it in and break into a chorus, or two, of Oh Solo Mio. The stone is so great that you can, if your feeling particularly lazy, come on I know I'm not the only person who gets a bit lazy now and then, pop a cheap-ass supermarket frozen pizza in and, guess what? It's not too bad. All because of the stone. Alton Brown, don't ask who the hell is Alton Brown, if you don't know who Alton Brown is, go open a box of Kraft mac & cheese. Alton Brown says to just go to the local Home Cheepo and get a large 16" unglazed terra cotta garden tile. It could work.

Tsunami

2010-03-09T11:43:00.000-08:00

What if they threw a Tsunami and it didn't show up?

Last week there was an earthquake in Chile. Maybe you heard about it? It was on the news.

There were warnings that we were under a Tsunami watch. Everyone was to stay away from the beaches and marinas. Being I live in a marina, it was a bit hard to stay away. About five years ago, there was another warning. It was the first time that I could remember such a warning. I got a text message from my older son Ed saying that a Tsunami warning was in effect. It was twilight and we, my then wife and neighbors, stood around the dock wondering what to do. Should we literally head for the hills, or just stick around and take our chances. Nosy bastard that I am, I elected to stick it out and see what happens. Nothing happened.

Fast forward to last week. The news mavens were predicting the big one to hit Newport Beach at 11:47. Long Beach at 11:54 and LA Harbor at 12:10.

At high noon, beer in hand, I causally strolled down to the end of the gangway to watch. There was another boat owner standing there looking around. We both were waiting to see the big event. After the last warning, I did a little homework. I read that being there was a realitivally shallow (300-500 foot) shelf extending out 10 miles from Long Beach before the bottom falls off, any very large wave energy will dissipate before pounding the crap out of LB. Very good news if you live in Long Beach. No so good news if you want to take a tsunami right on the chin. But hey, who doesn't?

Anyway, I thought maybe we would see a one or two foot wave, as predicted, roll past the LB Yacht Club.

Once again, nothing. Nada. Zilch. Null.

Probably if we ever get another warning and I say that I've been there, I'll end up going from LB to West Covina in six seconds.

Epilog.

I talked to an old friend Steve Murphy this afternoon. Steve had flown to Maui for his birthday last Saturday and the island was under a Tsunami alert when they landed. Everyone was to seek higher ground. Not only did nothing happen, but horror of horrors, when did finally get to his hotel, he couldn't occupy his room for another day and a half because all of the housekeepers were sitting the Tsunami out up on the Pali.

Zen and the Art of Mercedes Maintenance

2010-03-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

The other day my younger son Dave called me to ask how much a charge on his car's air conditioner should cost. I thought that the widow should be $30 to $50 tops. He said that the dealer wanted $135 just to "diagnose" the system. I told him that if he were to come over on Saturday, I would put my freon gauge on his system and see how it looks.

Yesterday he came over and we had a look. Neither of my sons is particularly mechanically inclined and I suppose that maybe I am to blame. When I was a grade school boy, my dad had me under his old Studebaker that he drove to work. He told me it had a "knocking rod". He told me how to drain the oil and then remove the crankcase pan. I then had to figure out how to pull he end cap off of the rod and change the bearing's insert and put it all back together. It wasn't that my dad was a dedicated teacher. I it was that he just figured that kids were around to do the light lifting and he wasn't crazy about crawling under a dirty car. I, of course, was more than happy to do it. I loved all things mechanical. I still do. Being that the times have changed, I didn't make my kids crawl under my Porsche or Mustang. Besides, unlike my Dad's old Studebaker, they didn't need crawling under.

I showed Dave where the AC compressor was located and how it wasn't turning because the magnetic clutch wasn't pulled in. We first checked the fuse(s) and found a blown one. But it wasn't the one for the AC. I then put a gauge on the AC and explained that there was no pressure at all and that there was a low freon pressure switch to disable and therefore protect the airconditioner compressor when the freon leaks out. Off we went to Auto Zone and bought a $9.95 can of R134 freon. We hooked up the freon can to the filler and gave it a shot. We soon had pressure and the compressor started to turn. There was a charge but it was a bit low.

It was a good father & son day for me and Dave probably saved himself about $250 by doing it yourself.

I'll have Dave check the freon pressure in a few weeks to see if it is holding. If it is holding, I'll see if he wants to do the charge himself. Much cleaner for him than crawling under under a '41 Studebaker.

When it comes to tools, it's like WallMart. If dad doesn't have it, you probably don't need it.

I still hate cilantro

2010-02-28T12:18:00.000-08:00

I hadn't gone to the I HATE CILANTRO web site for a while and now it seems to be gone.

What is going on? Is freedom of speech being squashed everywhere?

I did find http://ihatecilantro.blogspot.com/ where I did comment;

You are not alone in your true hatred of cilantro, my brother. I believe that it is a communist plot inspired by Nancy Polosi to silence the opposition to the dreaded, vile green growth that is harvested from the private parts of slimy infected insects.

I believe that every peace loving true American should stand tall and help stamp out this alien menace to our palettes. Fight the fight, dream the dream.

Remember, if you tell the waiter at a Mexican restaurant that you don't like the stuff they will just ignore you. Yuck, yuck, please gag me, yuck. If you tell the server that you have violent allergic reactions to the stuff, they will omit it.

Remember, the truth will set you free.

I have a dream. A dream that cilantro will be eradicated from the face of the Earth in my life time.

The Greatest thing since sliced bread, or canned beer.

2010-02-26T17:07:00.000-08:00

I hear people use the expression that something is the greatest thing since sliced bread, or canned beer. I personally opt for canned beer.

A few minutes ago, I ripped open a twelve pack of Coors and popped a top on a cold one. I got to thinking about the old adage about canned beer and happened to glance at the carton as I was shredding it up for kindling. I happened to glance and came to the realization that a can of beer has undergone about the same amount of technological advancement as the super computer.

When I was a snot nosed kid, we needed to pack a "church key" around. Usually it dangled from our belt or key-chain. This was, you may forget, the era when a cool dude rolled his pack of unfiltered Camels up in the sleeve of his tee-shirt.

Now anybody can pop a cold one without the aid of an appliance. But I'm sure you all knew that.

What is maybe not so apparent, is the other transformations that the humble beer can has experienced.

The label of a Coors' can is now printed with a liquid crystal type ink that makes the mountains on the label turn from silver to blue when the can is nice and cool. How cool is that? There is also a "vented wide mouth" to keep your brew from getting to "wild" or foamy while being decanted from it's can. And lest we forget the "frost brew liner" to keep your swill from tasting like the aluminum siding of some cracker box palace in Levitown.

Aint technology wonderful?

Catch 23

2010-02-23T22:26:00.000-08:00

After commenting on Catcher In The Rye the other day and commenting that Catch 22 is one of my favorite books, the brain got to churning again. I ordered up Catch 22, the movie, from Netflix. I hadn't watched the movie since it was in first run back in the early seventies. It, the movie, had a really great cast. Among others Alan Arkin, Jon Voight, Buck Henry, Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentis in a nude shot. Hell, Orson Wells was even in it. But I had remembered it as being so-so at best.

Well the DVD arrived in the mail and I watched it the very day that it came.

It was as dull as I had remembered it. The story line seemed too fragmented. I am not a real fan of abstract. I like my art real. When I look at a nude descending a staircase, I would actually like to see a naked woman descending an actual staircase. In the movie Pulp Fiction, the story was disjointed and jumped around but you could follow it. I don't like to ask another person who is watching "what the hell is going on"?

The airplane scenes were very good however, but all in all. It didn't improve with age.

What's in a name.

2010-02-22T17:04:00.000-08:00

My son David and I had lunch together at a Persian restaurant yesterday. His wife Amy is expecting a boy in April and we were talking about names. They have pretty much decided on Alexander Wolfgang. That name will get him beat up in the school yard until he learns to keep his left up. I have been campaigning half-heartedly for little Donald. I have been advised to cool it on the little Donald as I'm sure that the kids are getting enough pressure as it is and told Dave so.

That got us talking about family names. I was explaining that all of the women in my family had the same middle name. My Mother's mother was Ella Marie. My Mother was Louella Marie. Her father was Louis and, if you have been paying attention you know her name was Ella. My sister is Marlene Marie and my dog is Sadie Marie. Marie, a good solid family name.

He asked about his big brother's name. When Ed was born in 1967, my father's name was Arthur. My wife's father was Arther. We had a boy child so I expected that we would name the little swab Art. We could honor both grand pops in one shot. But was I ever wrong. The Maternal Art's name was actually Edward Arthur so mums wanted to name the little house ape Edward. After her father. But, I explained, he hates the name. He doesn't even use it. He goes by Arthur. Hardly anyone outside of the family knows that Art is actually his middle name. As usual, I was outvoted by a landslide of one to one and Edward it was. Edward Grant wasn't so bad. Not my first choice, but we all have to, as Rodney King said, learn to get along.

But wait, there's more. Since then, Ed has changed his name to Edward Arthur. So guess what, the family middle name is Arthur. I'm Donald Arthur. Dave is Davis Arthur and we have Edward Arthur.

Maybe I should cool it on the little Donald campaign and turn up the Alexander Arthur pressure another notch.

Ma Duce

2010-02-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

I got an email yesterday about the 50 caliber sniper rifle used in Iraq & Afghanistan. It got me to reflect on my Navy days once again.

In Nam, on the ship, we had a Ma Duce on either side of the missile house.

Ma Duce is the pet name for these bad boys.

When we weren't trying to zap MIGs, we were manning the 50s.

This is a twin mount, it's real big and bad.

We only had single mounts.

You just know that you're a bad ass when you're firing one of those LOUD monsters.

Notice that the modern sailor on top is wearing Mickey Mouse ears.

I never did, it's probably why I can't hear very well these days.

Maybe if we had twin 50s, I'd woose out and don the ear protection also.

The original 50 cal. Browning Machine Gun that we used were WW2 vintage.

Still in cosmoline and stunk like hell until we got them cleaned up.

Still cherry. Never fired. Never been to the big dance.

Same round as the snipers use, I believe, only we spit them out at 500/minute.

The mix was two ball ammunition, an armor piercer and then a tracer.

Then it repeated all over again and again.

We would saw junks in half like a band saw in about 5 to 10 seconds.

What didn't sink, burned like hell.

It wasn't fair and it wasn't honorable.

A big bad US Navy destroyer taking on a junk or WBLC.

WBLC, that's Navyspeak for Water Borne Logistic Craft.

Better known as a sampan.

But it was exciting. Up close but not too personnel.

I still miss it occasionally, but I'm glad that it's in my past.

Catcher in the Wry.

2010-01-28T21:04:00.000-08:00

I heard the news last night oh boy, that J D Salinger had died. Although the news was rather sad, I never was a big fan of Catcher. But I got to thinking once again. I enrolled at LB City College seven years after graduating from high school. It was the summer of love, 1967. When I went into the Navy, I never had any plans of attending college. It just wasn't part of the game plan. Fast forward seven years. I was nearing my eight year Navy stint and had attended Guided Missile A School, Terrier BT3 surface-to-air missile C School and Missile Technician advanced B School. Add in two tours over to Viet Nam and I was a very different hombre from the hopeless kid who left Cleveland. I figured that if I could pass College English, I could probably get through college. I not only passed, I got an A. The instructor, he never taught or actually instructed, would have us write for an hour at every "class". Near the end of the term, we were to write a term paper on a literary work subject to his approval. I wanted to do Catch Twenty Two. He would have no part of it. It wasn't worthy enough and didn't have enough source material available. What bullshit. He assigned me Catcher In The Rye. So write I did, on Catcher. Because of that incident, I've always have borne an ill-logical resentment to both Catcher and JD. Well now he's gone so I guess that I'll just have to get over it.

In reading about JD, how he only wrote one work of fiction and was a recluse for most of his life, I got to wondering if JD wasn't the model for Sean Connery's role in Finding Forrester. The movie is one of my favorites and I think it is very well written.

Come to think of it, Joseph Heller the writer of Catch 22 didn't crank out all that much verbiage either and I don't recall seeing his picture on the cover of People Magazine.

Donny shrugged.

2010-01-25T06:48:00.000-08:00

I get a lot of emails these days whining about NWO and other conspiracies making references to Atlas Shrugged. I read the book about fifty years ago and thought that maybe it was time for a re-read so I looked on Amazon and Ebay for a used copy. I found an Ebook on Ebay for only $1.99 and thought, what the hay, maybe I should try residing in the twenty first century. So I bought a copy. It was cheap, and so am I. And I was able to download the 8 Meg .pdf file within five minutes of paying for it on Paypal. So far, so good. Also, I am up to my armpits in books and eating up 8 Megs of hard disk is a nice way to keep a library when physical space in very limited. That's the good news. The bad? Reading an ebook, for me, is a pain in the ass. I may have to retrain myself to read a "book" on a laptop screen instead of having a real book in my hand. OK, but how do you bookmark the thing? The book is 900 pages long. I have never read 900 pages at one sitting and probably never will. I haven't figured out yet how to stick a business card, toothpick or toenail clipping where I leave off so I can get right back.

Sigh.

Epilogue

Since I wrote the first part of this, I went to the used bookstore and bought a paperback copy for $3.95. I found about 450 places to stick an impromptu bookmark. For now, I think I'll stick with Gutenberg.

OK, I'm done.

2010-01-21T11:47:00.000-08:00

It's been raining, more or less, steadily since Sunday. OK, I know that it's mid-January and here I am in So. Cal. and I'm bitching about some rain. I could be freezing my ass off in Cleveland or riding on a can in Avalon Harbor like George and Malinda. But here I am in Alamitos Bay Marina with a fire going in my fireplace and I'm nicely hooked up to shore power and I'm whining.

I do have to go outside and pump out the Whaler now and then and we did have a waterspout come ashore about a mile south in Sunset Beach on Tuesday and tear a few roofs off and flip an Explorer.

Flip around some dingies at Peter's Landing.

And pickup a few catamarans 100' in the air and toss them across the channel at

Huntington Harbor.

No Oaky trailer park stuff, but still a wakeup call.

We got five inches of rain yesterday here in Long Beach and the mayer is asking all of the residents to not do any un-essential travel. The underpasses by and on the freeways are flooded and clogged with flotsam consisting mainly of Toyotas, Mazdas and Fiats. It's a good time to have a BRT. A Big Red full-size Dodge pickup Truck.

I have a bit of water running down the mast, what else is new, and an annoying drip from the hatch over the galley. That's about it. But I'm starting to get a bit of cabin fever.

The storm is so big that the kids were surfing off of the peninsula in LB, inside of the breakwater which I never heard of before. Check it out for yourself.

http://welovelb.org/2010/01/video-we-love-long-beach-surf-january-19th-2010/ .

It's still blowing like hell out there and the rain is slanting in, but as far as I know we haven't lost any boats, ships or oil platforms.

Yet.

A tribute to the Arts.

2010-01-04T14:29:00.000-08:00

The two biggest influences in my life were both named Art.

My dad was named Art and so was my first wife's father.

I never met anyone who didn't like my dad. When people would learn that I was Art Koch's son, I invariably got a big smile from the other person and an almost automatic reaction of what a great guy he is, was. I could go on and on about my dad.

Art Havens, my first wife's father, was also like my dad in as much as he was also much liked and admired. In addition, Art Havens was a successful businessman. Art owned a refractory, firebrick, business. Art and his company sold and constructed boiler settings and industrial furnaces. In Cleveland, in the 1950s, that was pretty big business with all of the steel mills and foundry s etc. Art was born in Canada of American parents so in 1939 went off into the RCAF. In 1942 when the USA got into Roosevelt's War, he was transfered into the US Army Air Corps as a gunner in a B17. He was stationed in England and came back as one major Anglophile. Art loved everything English. It seems he also loved a lot of English girls while on his tour in the UK.

The reason I bring this up is last night I prepared a traditional Christmas feast for my two sons and their wives. It consisted of a prime rib roasted in a Weber barbecue with lots of Mesquite smoke. We also had creamed spinach, glazed carrots, and lots of gravy to pour over the Yorkshire pudding. Art introduced me to Yorkshire or batter puddin'. He showed me how it was made in Merry Old England, and as he explained he would don his Cockney accent. It was a riot. To this day, I can't make batter puddin and not hear Art's voice in the back of my head. Whisking away and talking up a storm.

Last night, as I was raising my Claret to my lips, I was silently toasting the two Arts. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you both. They are probably both together in some old guy's club in Heaven checking out the action. Hoorah!!!

A New Day and a New Deal

2010-01-02T16:38:00.000-08:00

Today has a palindromic date. Think of it 01022010.

Read it backwards, and it becomes 01022010. Simply amazing.

Well hopefully we all survived 2009, the second crappiest year from my vantage point.

Maybe I should make some New Year's resolutions. That's always fun to see how long that they last. Should the time base be in months? Naw. Weeks? Nyet. Days? That would be pushing the envelope. Let's get real and think in hours or milliseconds.

OK.

In 2010 I resolve to be a better person. OK, that's nice and vague.

I won't drink any more. But I will also will not drink any less. Whew.

Seriously I would like to get under 200 pounds. Depending on which scale I wish to believe, that can be only five pounds. So far, so good. I would also like to resume my music practice. Just about the time I was starting to get comfortable once again with the treble clef, I got lazy once again.

Did someone say sailing? Gee. I'd like to do more of that. I put that brand new Yanmar diesel engine in about a year ago and I still don't have 100 hours on it yet. Let's see. Kids are coming for Dad's belated Christmas feast tomorrow. Prime Rib with Yorkshire puddin. Lots of Dad's gravy to ladle over the beef and pudding. Creamed spinach and lots of Claret to warsh it all down with. A simple desert and ta da, I will have done it once again. But I digress.

I took the Christmas lights down off the boat today and the decks are literally cleared for action. Next Sunday, at noon, we'll get under way. Head out towards the oil platforms and once we clear the shelf, they will be a waitin'. The whales, they be right out thar. The California Grays. Migrating down to Baja for some whale sex under Del Sol, that nice warm Mexican sun.

Perhaps DOD should endeavor to get some sex himself under that same warm sun.

Now all I have to do is replenish my bank account and the rest should take care of itself.

2009, AMF

2009-12-27T07:20:00.000-08:00

I don't know anyone who will miss 2009. It hasn't been the best of years. Most people claim that they are not superstitious. But in the same breath, they will own up to saying that a year has been bad. Think of it. A segment of time a line is unlucky? That's pure superstition. But being an old sailor, I can be as superstitious as I care to be. We sailors are, after all, a superstitious lot.

For me, 1981 was way worse. My father died that year. I was diagnosed with cancer. It was a false alarm, but needless to say it scared the crap out of me. My second marriage did die. I was trying to sell real estate and the prime rate rose to 23%. Try selling that. My 1979 diesel Cadillac turned into a rolling time bomb, literally. But I did quit smoking and I moved aboard my boat, so it wasn't all bad.

But I digress. Now, all we have to do is muddle through the next five days and by magic, it will all be over. The sun will come out from behind the clouds. People will start spending money again. Businesses will start hiring again. And then plastic forming machines will start selling again.

It could happen.

The British are coming.

2009-12-01T16:50:00.000-08:00

In 1963, we heard about the Beatles, and later the Rolling Stones. To use the terms English and Rock & Roll in the same sentence seemed to be an oxymoron. The Brits were so, reserved. Guess again! The Beatles and the Stones and The Who were really good as were the other groups. But I stuck to my Jazz guns. I was living a half hour away from San Francisco and some of the best Jazz clubs on the planet were in North Beach. I went to town as often as I could considering I was carrying a extremely heavy academic load as a student at the Navy's Missile Technician's B School. It was an Electrical Engineering curriculum without the humanities crammed into nine months of 40 hour a week classroom time. Five years later, when I did get to go to college, a 14 hour week was a walk in the park. About November of 63, the Beatles and right behind them came the British Invasion. I was stationed on an aircraft carrier in San Diego, the USS Constellation, and spent a lot of time at sea. Still listening to Jazz.

Six months later in February of 64, I was sent up to new construction at Todd Shipyard in Seattle and found more Jazz clubs up there in Washington state. By November we were back down in Long Beach and life in So. Cal. kicked the pace yet up another notch. We found a lot of good Jazz clubs around.

From Pomona to Indiana

2009-12-01T08:18:00.000-08:00

As I was saying, the Ed Sullivan Sixties retrospective took me back to that era which was unlike nothing before, or since. Music for me and probably most other folks is the definer of the various periods of our lives. Music up to about 1956 consisted of either old Swing Era stuff, Pop and Hill Billy Country with a little Western. There was some really good black R&B and Jazz around, but for the average white boy from Cleveland, it was hard to access. Although Allen Freed, the Moondog, was in Cleveland and started playing R&R in 1951, a term which he coined, he was long gone by 1956. Having moved on to New York.

All of a sudden, here was Elvis & Chuck Berry & Little Richard & Fats Domino & Buddy Holly and Bill Haily with his Comets. As quick as they came, they seemed to fade away. Elvis was drafted in 1958. Buddy Holly along with Richy Valens and The Big Bopper died in that plane crash in 1959 and things seemed to fade. Ray Charles started doing Country & Western and other things that lost my attention.

So I got hooked on Jazz. the Jazz of the late fifties and the early sixties is the best, in my humble but expert opinion. The names are to numerous to list right here. Maybe I will in another blog, but right now, I don't want my train of thought derailed.

After three months in Pomona Calif., the Navy stationed me at NAD Crane Indiana. One hundred and ten square miles of explosives in underground magazines situated in southern Indiana. Smack in the geographic center of nowhere. We were too far to get decent radio reception from Indianapolis or Louisville and the local stations aired more pork belly futures than music. It wasn't all that bad because when we were out and near a station, the radio sucked anyway. So when I was near a city, I stocked up on more Jazz LPs.

What the hell was that?

2009-11-30T08:52:00.000-08:00

I was watching the local PBS TV station last night and they had on this Ed Sullivan 60's music retrospective. Do you remember the Sixties? As Nancy my third wife used to say, if you do remember the Sixties, you weren't really there. I was there. I graduated from Garfield Heights High School which is a suburb of Cleveland in June of 1960 and one month later, I was on a Pennsylvania RR train to Philadelphia. It was like being shot out of a canon. Cleveland was, and is, a fairly big city. But Philly was the big time. Maybe not the Big Apple, but maybe the big kumquat. It had a subway train running right down Broad Street to the Naval Station where I was billeted awaiting my trip to Virginia Beach and Guided Missile School. I rode down to Virginia Beach with this black sailor from Chicago in a Greyhound bus. He and I talked about what our new lives were going to be like in the Navy. He was off to Naval Air Station Oceana which was real close to Dam Neck where my school was located.

Dam Neck was located on the northern edge of The Great Dismal Swamp. What a wonderfully descriptive name, The Great Dismal Swamp. Those old Southerners didn't believe in sugar coating things. I particularly liked the big poisonous Cottonmouth Water Moccasins that swam around the waterways on the base. The guns were also nice. Dam Neck was also home to the FADTC, the Fleet Air Defense Training Center. About a quarter of a mile from the school was the gunline on the beach. While we were trying to learn the basics of guided missilery, there were about 25 five inch naval guns banging away at some poor unsuspecting remote control drone. What a din that was. Just down the beach from Dam Neck was the town of Virginia Beach. It was wonderful. Lots of girls strutting around in their bikinis and other grand sights, but the day after Labor Day, the place turned into a ghost town. Everybody went home, wherever that was. I also experienced my first hurricane, Donna, while there. It was the worst in fifty years and it let me know that I wasn't in Cleveland anymore.

After seven months in Virginia Beach, life speedshifted to the next gear, California.

Heretofore, I had never been on an airplane and in one day I got a full indoctrination. A DC-3 propeller plane took us from Norfolk to Norfolk airport. After taking off and getting slammed around for a half hour we returned back to where we started. We then got into another Capitol Airlines plane, this time a turboprop Viscount that got us to National airport in DC. The next leg was on another prop plane a DC-7 which took us all of the way from DC to Baltimore. A fifteen minute flight. We now were big-time and boarded a United DC-8 jet.

A few brief hours later we landed in LA. It was February and it was cold when we boarded the plane in Baltimore. Back in the Stone Age of flight we had to walk outside across the, so called, tarmac and go up the boarding ladder. When we landed in LA, I bundled up. I had on my dress blue uniform with wool sweater underneath and over everything was my peacoat. I walked out the front door of the airplane and was hit in the face with 78 degree weather at ten PM, in February. I was from that minute on, a card carrying Californian. Off we went to learn about actual missiles, the Terrier/Tartars in my case.

But that's another part of my story, to be continued.

VETERAN'S DAY

2009-11-03T11:31:00.000-08:00

Next week, Nov. 11th., is Veteran's Day. If you think about it between now and then, try to do something nice to show your gratitude for their service. I know when I got back from Nam in the late sixties, the reception was less than warm. Not that I really cared, I was as much against the war as most of the Hippies and other Peaceniks.

If the subject vet was Navy, why not buy the old sailor a beer or two, and then take him home and show him a good time.

If he was Army, maybe a hot meal is still a treat to an old soldier.

A can of Brasso will always get any ex-Marine excited.

And if he was Air Force, milkshakes are always proper.

CRANBERRY CHUTNEY

2009-11-03T08:31:00.000-08:00

It's nearly Thanksgiving time once again. Most of us Americans look forward to the turkey with stuffing and all of the sides and pies. Cranberry sauce however seems to be like fruitcake. You either love it or hate it. If you want a cranberry change of life, try this.

It's CRANBERRY & RAISIN CHUTNEY

I got it out of a Bob Apatite magazine a zillion years ago.

Bring 2 cups of water to boil in a sauce pan and throw in a cup of raisins.

Remove from the heat and let stand 15 minutes. This will plump the little SOBs up.

Drain and reserve 1/2 cup of the raisin water and pour it back into the pan.

Add 2 cups sugar and 2 TBS white wine vinegar over medium heat until sugar dissolves. Up the heat and boil without stirring until syrup turns golden brown and delicious, GBD.

Remove from heat and add 1 cup orange juice 2 TBS orange zest and 2 TBS chopped fresh ginger.

Add two 12 Ounce bags of cranberries and cook until they begin to pop.

I like to pop some of the berries against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon, but that's just me.

Add the raisins back in and cook another minute.

Cover and let cool.

I'll bet you get requests for more next year.

OK kids, here's dad's recipe.

Esse gute.

But is is Satay?

2009-11-02T08:25:00.000-08:00

A long, long time ago; when I actually had to work for a living, I flew a lot. By a lot I mean at least once a week. All over the place from LA to Mexico City and Tokyo and Sidney and Seoul and all over the USA. My favorite domestic airlines to fly on then were Continental & American, my least favorites were North West, Eastern and United. It wasn't that United was so bad. But I always liked to travel and traveling should be an adventure. Especially when you fly. Back in the dark ages, the nineteen seventies, flying was still fun on the aforementioned airlines. On the last three mentioned, it was more like taking a big bus. The airline food was usually best on American. The food on most of the others was normally not worth remembering. I was n a United flight one time however and it was time to slop the passengers. The flight attendant came by and asked what I wanted. The choices consisted of the usual like beef tips and noodles etc or maybe the Malay Peanut Chicken. "The what?" I asked. Something new and different on a airplane? They don't normally poison the paying passengers on the major airlines so I figured, why not. I ate, I enjoyed and I wanted more. After the dinner service, I went back to the galley on the airplane. I cranked up the charm setting to ten, smiled and asked "can you tell me who in your organization I would need to contact to get the recipe for that Malay chicken?" She smiled back at me, I thought I was really hitting pay dirt, and reached over my shoulder, pulled out a large printed card and said that so many people had asked for it, that the airline had it printed up.
So here it is. It is my oldest son's favorite food for me to make him.
I have deviated from the printed recipe some.
I cut up a whole chicken into breast, thigh, wing and leg pieces.
First season with some soy sauce.
Dust with flour, and saute. Keep the heat on. Add a teaspoon, or so, of dehydrated onions and 1/4 cup of white wine. Add a Tbs of soy sauce a can of chicken broth a 1/2 tsp of ground ginger and Turmeric and let simmer for 1/2 Hr. Lastly add a 1/2 cup of half & half adjust salt & pepper, if needed and serve over rice.
Yummers.

Veal Cordon Bleu

2009-10-13T16:16:00.000-07:00

As I said in the last blog, we saw Julie & Julia and really enjoyed it. So much so that I went e-shopping for Julia Child's MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING. I ended up getting a PDF version on line which is great with me.

I have way more books as it is then I have room for.

I thought that the first thing that I would try would be Veal Cordon Bleu. It's very French you know. Guess what, it's not in Julia's book. I have been making Veal Cordon Donnie for some time now. Over thirty years. I actually broke up with this girl from No. Carolina because of Cordon Bleu. I made these wonderful Veal Cordon Bleus on a two burner electric hot plate on my little 28 foot sailboat that I lived aboard in Redondo Beach in the mid-seventies. They were accompanied by these thin little potato pancakes topped with apple sauce and dusted with cinnamon. It's all about presentation you know.

Miss North Carolina proceeded to dump catchup all over my gastronomic creation thus ending the doomed relationship on the spot. In and Out squeeze bag catchup no less. It wasn't even Heinz.

When you make something for so long sometimes you stray further and further from the recipe.

Oh well, I have a copy of Le Cordon Blue, Complete Cook, home Collection. Left behind by one of the ex-wives.

You guessed it, aint there either. Hell, I have Google. I'll search it out.

Ah, here we are. First hit. Cooks.com, they'll know all right.

What have we here? First ingredient

1 can "Cedar Lake - Chops"

What in the hell is a can O "Cedar Lake - Chops"?

Cut halfway through, leave a flap-like a clam shell.

FILLING:

1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened - softened cream cheese?

What gives, is this a blintz?

1/2 c. grated Monterey Jack cheese.

Monterey Jack, maybe I stumbled onto a taco recipe.
1/2 c. grated mozzarella cheese.

Motz? Motz goes with anything, almost.
1 tbsp. Baco chips

Baco chips? That's it, I quit. I'm going back to Veal Cordon Donnie
1/4 c. diced green onions or scallions
1/4 tsp. fine herbs

Fill each chop and chill 2 to 3 hours or overnight.

To finish: Beat 2 eggs in small bowl. Place 1 1/2 cups Contadina seasoned bread crumbs in bowl. Bread each chop in egg then roll in bread crumbs. Place in frying pan (use Puritan oil) and brown on each side. Turn ONLY once. May be kept warm in oven until ready to serve. Serve hot.

This recipe must have been written by Mr. North Carolina.

Too bad he left the opossum and grits out.

The search goes on.

Julie & Julia

2009-10-10T13:42:00.000-07:00

We went to the moving pictures yesterday and saw Julie & Julia. If you're a foodie as I am, and you used to watch Julia Child on PBS, as I did, before being a "foodie" was hip, you're going to really like this movie.

Why all of a sudden do I feel like Rex Reed, or Gene Shalit without the silly mustache?

I've never been a big fan of Meryl Streep, even though I know she's truly is a great actor. I think it is because when I saw Kramer verses Kramer I was going through my own private divorce hell, and to me, she was the bad guy. But moving right along, I gotta say. She nailed Julia.

Jamie Fox nailed Ray Charles in Ray and Meryl got Julia.

I've always liked to eat and one of the best ways that I found to get food to be just the way you like it is to prepare it yourself. So I took to cooking. I wasn't worried about being thought of as a sissy or anything. I had no issues with my masculinity. There were a few good cooking shows on back in the sixties. The two that I remember the best were Graham Kerr and Julia Child. Julia was hands down, my favorite, She was as real as they come. Back in the sixties, after the era of live TV, on air talent stood in front of a camera and let it rip. Not much editing back then. If Julia dropped a chicken on the floor she would just pick it up, brush it off and put it back on the serving platter and explain that these thing happen in the real world. If she burnt something, she'd show how to rescue it if at all passable.

Pre-Julia, I always thought of the French and their cooking as being way over pretentious. I still think of the French as being over pretentious snobs, but at least Julia made their food a lot more accessible. Every now and then, I try to make something from my Le Cordon Blue Complete Cook, Home Collection, but it is a reach for me. So now, I just bought an E-edition of Mastering The Art of French Cooking and I'll try a few things Julia fashion. But not them all, I still like my BBQ, Italian sausage & peppers and Linguine with white clam sauce.Esse gut.

It's thirty years this month.

2009-09-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

In Sept of 1979 I bought a sailboat.

A schooner, Merrymaid, Downeaster hull #1.

Me and this boat have been through a lot together. I've lived on her, full time, for twenty seven years. She and I have been through three wives, three cats, three diesel engines, two kids, a Golden Retriever and several long term significant others.

Thirty years, that's a long time.

Here's hoping that the next thirty is as much fun as the last thirty.

It's 9/11, again.

2009-09-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

This gets personal for me. Maybe not as personal as someone who was in NYC eight years ago today. But it still pisses me off.

In 2001, I was married to Nancy (wife #3) who was a TWA flight attendant.
Her brother lives in Clinton, NJ and she had her vacation to visit him planned nine months in advance.
We flew back to Newark NJ on about 9/15, one of the first days that the airplanes started flying again.
After three days in NJ, I said that I couldn't be this close to an event of this magnitude and not go to see it.
And so we did. We spent the day in Manhattan. Down where the WTC was, it was horrible. It was still burning at the site. I expected to smell rotting human flesh. After all, over three thousand American souls were strewn all over the place only a few days before. It smelled like an electrical motor that had overheated and burned up. Every time that a fire truck went by, which was often, everybody stopped and applauded them as they went by. It brought tears to my eyes. It still does, even now, just thinking about that very emotional event. Everywhere that you went, there were flyers posted on walls and telephone poles. On every surface available there were all of these pleas with pictures on them asking whether you had seen so-n-so in a hospital or wherever. It was really hard to cope with. Almost as hard as being in Viet Nam.
All I really want to know is, after eight years, why in the hell is Osama's ass not tacked up on some Seal Team's shithouse wall yet?

Pyrocumulus

2009-09-10T07:36:00.000-07:00

A new word to me, but easy enough to figure out. Most of the last two weeks, although most of us couldn't see the fire area, we So. Californians have been seeing these large white clouds over the fire area. You can see the inversion layer below and the updraft from the flames as they poke this gigantic cloud 20,000 feet up through the layer.

We damn near lost the Mt. Wilson observatory which I've always wanted to go see but just never seemed to have the time to. You can bet when things settle down, I'm saddling up the motorcycle and taking a jaunt up there very soon.

That's a DC-10 dumping PhosCheck on the fire,

a real exciting thing to be seen.

Watching Skycranes suck up a few tons of water out of the local creek

is also a thrill.

The LA bason as seen from space.

The island in the bottom of the picture is Catalina.

Long Beach is at about one o:clock of the island

at the top of the crook in the land.

All too soon, fire season will be over

and earthquake season will arrive once again.

Close Encounter of the Third Ton, I'm Mister Blue

2009-09-02T13:16:00.000-07:00

On 9 August, when we were sailing back from Catalina, we happened to come upon a whale basking on the surface. I have been sailing these waters now for over 37 years and seeing whales is not a too uncommon event. In fact, I have even gone to whale watching school at the Cabrillo Marine Museum in San Pedro, twice, in order to act as a docent on the local whale watch boats. This was no common garden variety California Gray Whale. It was way bigger and it had a "moat" around it's blowholes. Now I have seen Blue Whales out here but only at a distance of maybe a half mile at best. They usually sound, or dive, as you approach. We were under sail and as such, we were silent running. I don't know, maybe this big boy was snoozing on the surface but Heber, our trusty autopilot, stayed on course and we ended up on a collision course with this big boy. I eventually turned to port to avoid hitting him.

He looked like a Blue to me.

CPA was probably less than 20 feet. Damn, where the hell did I put my harpoon?

Something's happening here

2009-09-01T07:51:00.000-07:00

I certainly wouldn't call myself a linguist, but in addition to my passable English, I can converse in German and Spanish. And I can get around in Japanese. So, here we are. We've been soaking the many wonderful sights in Big Sur and have developed major appetites. There aren't a whole lot of places to stop and dine along Big Sur. You have your choice of really over priced high-end restaurants or tourist oriented burger huts. Niether of which interests us. Calif. highway #1 turns east from the coast at Morro Bay and heads towards San Louis Obispo and as we drive through SLO we find a sushi joint. It looks OK from the outside.OK we get out of the car and are greeted by two nice looking Oriental gentlemen. I give them an ohio guzamus, I speak it, I don't spell it, and we all bow in greeting. Very nice. We are seated and I order two Japanese beers, nichi Kurin beeru koo da sai. So far so good. We order food. Cyn gets a combo plate with tempura and sashimi. I get a katsu don. The guy gives me a blank look. Donburri is a Japanese rice bowl and a katsu donburri is with pork. When done right, it is wonderful. A breaded pork cutlet on top. Next grilled onions and usually some egg. The juices from the above all seep down to the rice on the bottom. Yum. Nobody, but nobody in Japan calls it a katsu donburri. It is a katsu don. Even on the menus. On thier menu however, it is listed as a donburri. OK, I try again. This time I say katsu donburri koo da sai. Hai hai, yes yes, katsu donburri. OK, what's up here. We drink some beer and wait for the food and I ask the waiter, doja deska binjo. Where is the restroom? I get this blank look. I repeat. Doja, where, deska, is, the ka attached to des makes it a question. Binjo? Still nothing. In English, I ask where is the restroom. This he understands. It isn't like the guy was born and raised in Cleveland, he has an authentic oriental accent. He is the younger of the two Oriental gentlemen who greeted us and as I go to the head to jettison some Kurin beer, he scurries off to the kitchen. When I come back, he is back. I ask "did somebody change the Japanese language on me? I didn't get the memo." He says hai, it now is called toire. As we leave, I stop and chat with the older gent. He asks how I come to speak Japanese. I guess most round eyes don't. I tell him I spent eight years in the Navy and I also worked, for a while, in Kobe at Kawasaki Steel. I ask where he is from and he tells me he's from Korea. Ah so. Japanese isn't either of our first tongues. That explains why the confusion.

Post script. Just for the halibut, I Googled Where is the toilet in Japanese. It came back on a site called japaneselifestyle.com, Toire wa doko desu ka?

Son of a bitch. They must have changed the language because when I searched binjo on the site, it came back, Your search - binjo - did not match any documents.

I wonder why I didn't get the memo?

Road trip

2009-08-30T11:56:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things is to get in my truck or car, or get on my motorcycle or boat and take a trip and be gone for a few days, or weeks. We made a trek to No Cal this last week. I worked in Benicia for a few days and Cyn worked in So. San Fran. By Friday, both of us were done, so we did a bit of touring. I've been driving through and around San Jose for the last forty years now and have often wondered about the Winchester House.

The Winchester House, in case you don't know about it was built and rebuilt continuously over and over by Winchester, the gun maker's widow. she was a class A, world class nutcase. Apparently some psychic told her to never stop working on the house or bad things will happen to her. I believe in live and let live, but please keep the psychic advisers and other Voodoo practitioners away from me. I'm a firm believer of religious freedom. Freedom of religion and freedom from religion, but I do think that most paranaturals are charlatans. And, having said that, should be shot on sight.

Anyway, after all of these years, I finally went to see it. Yup. It's bizarre. Yup. It's pretty big. OK, I've been there and done that. I also took lots of picture to bore the crap out of unsuspecting friends. Thanks to the digital camera, I now take way more pictures than I ever used to. I spent six weeks in Europe and only took maybe 20-25 pictures. The usual stuff, pictures from the Eiffel Tower, gondolas in Venice castles on the Rhine. I do know the secret of professional photographers. Take lots of shots. It's part of the If you throw enough shit on a wall, some of it's bound to stick theory. With the digital camera, you can just shoot away, my chip holds about 800 pictures. Review them when you have a chance, and then erase the crap. It works for me.

Afterwards, we drove up to the Lick Observatory late in the day. Too late actually do it justice. Gotta go back when I can devote at least half a day, if not a full day.

Now let's head on down the road to Big Sur.

The best road trip in America, if not the world.

Every year, or two, I have to do it. I like to do it best alone. In a very fast sports car that can really handle the road. Alone because I don't get distracted by passengers screaming and pleading for me to spare their lives. Fast is good. It is also almost as good to be a passenger to a driver who values their own life and drives sanely enough to allow you to view the spectacular scenery.

Huell Howser & Marsha Yockey

2009-08-21T15:59:00.000-07:00

I just watched, once again, one of my favorite TV people last night. I am speaking of Huell Howser right now. More on Marsha Yockey later.

Huell, in case you don't know about him, is this Tennesse gomer who produces and hosts various TV shows like California's Gold and Visiting with Huell Howser on KCET, the local LA educational channel. He's like some Mayberry RFD throwback. Full of golly gees, aw shucks and howdys. He goes around California with a microphone in his hand followed by a cameraman and visits various famous, infamous and some of the more obscure places around our vast state. Last night, he did a half hour on the Transamerica Building in San Fran. Or as us So. Calers like to call the place, Frisco. As usual, lots of history about what was there and when it was built. And by whom. But the best part is ole Heull gee wizzed his way clear to the top with his cameraman. Above the top floor, the fourty eighth, is another 125, or so, feet of open ladder/staircase leading to the very top 800 and some feet above the street. Very cool.

Oh by the way, those big ugly rectangles sticking out of the sides near the top of the TA building in SF house the elevator shafts. In 1972, they couldn't build an elevator that wasn't vertical. Maybe they still can't make 'em tilt.

And who the hell is Marsha Yockey you're still mumbling to yourself?

When I was in the Navy in the sixties, and the bastards stationed me in Southern Indiana. Yeah Indiana. Yeah Southern. Those bastards.

In Evansville, on the evening news was the most unpretentious TV personality you will ever see. She's probably dead by now. Often, she would do the weather segment in a stuffed armchair with one of her legs dangling over the arm and a big coon hound sitting in her lap.

No airhead back-combed blonde was she.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdLrRqg1VPw

Jack Parr and Dorthy Fultheim were two other great TV icons,

but sadly they are both gone to the big studio in the sky.

Oil Island White. Gettin' to like the place.

2009-08-17T17:29:00.000-07:00

We've been there a lot lately. Either as a jumping off point for Catalina, or just to hank on the hook and enjoy life. And this last weekend was no exception. We did a nice overnighter Saturday & Sunday. It's almost like a fifteen minute trip to Catalina. We motor out to The Oil Island and drop the hook in front of "The Waterfall". We call it that because it is a waterfall. A fake waterfall on a fake island with fake condos on it, of course. The condos are actually oil derricks which move around because they are on rails. Most locals don't even realize that they actually move. If you take a picture of The Oil island from the bluffs on a Monday and come back on Wednesday and compare. You will see that somebody moved the condo. How perfect. It's the essence of Southern California living. But do you know what? I'll take it. They actually turn The Waterfall on and off. It's usually on between 1900 and 2300. And it's lit up for our viewing enjoyment. How swell is that?

White's Cove, Santa Catalina

2009-08-12T11:33:00.000-07:00

Well, we did it again. Two trips to "the island" in two weeks. Just like the good old days. Maybe these really are the good old days. We left the marina Friday morning, but being there were reports of bad weather over at the island, we went and anchored at Oil Island White in LB Harbor once again. Yah, yah, I know. What us wusses in So. Cal. call "bad weather" most people call Tee shirt weather. So be it. Even so, it did blow like hell in LB. So I'm glad we stayed there. Anyway, Saturday we got under way early and motored over to the island.

We anchored in 65 feet of water just east of White's Cove up against the cliffs, and there we stayed. It was very nice. Peaceful and quiet. Sunday morning we sailed back. About 8 miles out of Alimitos Jetty, we came up on a very huge whale that we recon was a Fin Whale. Huge thing and very close. About 40 feet. He, or she, was not at all intimidated by us. We were under sail and as we drew very close I did alter course to the left to keep a bit of respectable distance. I'm ready to go back any time now.

Avalon

2009-08-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Well we finally made it to Catalina Island this weekend. Thanks to a confluence of a few unhappy events, it had been a long, long time since I was there on Merrymaid. But bad times don't last and we got on with things, like sailing. We went to Oil Island White and anchored Friday evening and did basically, nothing. Saturday morning we were up at first light, hoisted the Japanese spinnaker, weighed anchor and were off on a course of 180 to Long Point. The Japanese spinnaker, in case you don't speak sailor, is the Yanmar diesel engine. A real little beauty. It's relatively small, 3 cylinders, and light. It sips fuel and is environmentally compliant even in pinko areas like Sweden and France. It is less than a year old and only has 55, or so, hours on it so far. It starts as quickly as a Chevy six and is a real joy after it's Ferryman and Volvo predecessors. Anyway, we motored all the way to Long Point and did a little coastal cruise up to Avalon. We tried to get a mooring in either Descanso Bay or Hamilton Cove but being it was a Saturday morning in late July, of course that was out of the question. So we anchored in 110 ft. of water between Descanso and Hamilton. We got to visit with our friends George and Melinda who are working in Avalon and living on a mooring and have decided to live there year round. We had a nice dinner at the Lobster Trap a new place, to me at least, in Avalon and took a stroll around town. Melinda is currently driving a tour bus around the island and when someone would point out some house, building or other point of interest, she would go into tour guide mode and spout out the pertinent facts. It was a lot of fun. Being we were anchored out, I was antsy about being ashore so we went back to the boat a bit early, and bounce about most of the night every time a shoreboat would pass by. Carl and his friend Freda were supposed to take the cattleboat from Long Beach over to Avalon for the sail back, but we got a text message that they were whimping out. Too bad for them. The sail back was a Nantucket sleigh ride. Lots of good reaching wind, lots of sun. We had a blast.

We're planning on going back Thursday morning and staying until Sunday. The plan, such as it is, is for G&M to return with us.

Elvis had it all

2009-07-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to Elvis while banging away at this f*%#ing computer. I actually forgot how good he was, and still is. I'm sure he's working behind some 7-11 counter in Encino with an Abdul nametag pinned to his polyester shirt flipping off the paparazzi when they come in for coffee.

That SOB sure could sing and gyrate.

Hell, he invented gyrating.

And he had the looks.

That bad boy look, with the sneer.

Every girl between 14 and 54 likes bad boys. I know a lot of girls won't admit it, but deep down inside, where they do their secret craving, they want a bad boy. Not too bad, mind you. No sense in getting raped, or arrested, or beat up. But bad enough to get on the back of a motorcycle or in a hot rod or sports car, and be seen with Elvis. Or one of his millions of wanna-bes.

I was an Elvis wanna-be, who the hell wasn't.

Dark slicked back hair, collar up in the back. Levis. No cheap shit imitations. You had to wear honest to goodness Levis. No rolled up farmer cuffs.

Life was easy back in the fiftys. You either looked like Elvis, or you were a homo. How do I dare say that? Easy. Straight guys wanted girls and girls wanted Elvis. Ergo, you became an Elvis clone. The guys who didn't care about getting a girl? They wore chinos with the stupid belt in the back and pastels.

Maybe the King of Pop is dead, but the King of Rock and Roll just keeps rolling along.

And a good portmanteau to you too sir.

2009-07-20T17:43:00.000-07:00

Portmantau and chiasmus are two words worth knowing. Especially, if you're like me and pride yourself on a vast knowledge of totally useless information. Obviously, I'm not going to just figuratively pull down my pants and show you what the hell I'm talking about. If you hate running DFL in the one-upsmanship derby, you will probably quit reading right here and go look them both up.

Go ahead, we'll wait.

Ah, now that you're back, we'll resume.

I hope by now that it is not the size of the dog in the fight,

but the size of the fight in the dog.

That should tweek your jetavators.

Sorry, no pictures.

Well maybe this old one

Orange juice

2009-07-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

I have lived in California most of my life by now.

Being I was in the Navy for over eight years, I moved around like some sort of Gypsy. But since I first moved here in 1961, I have considered this place home. I still feel, however, like an astronaut visiting a strange planet. At heart, I suppose, I am still this guy from Cleveland. Let me define Cleveland. Cleveland, like I explained to my kids, is everyplace between New York and Chicago. In Cleveland, you don't see forty year old cars whizzing down Pacific Coast Highway with surfboards on the roofs. Nor do you see 57 year old grandmothers with killer bodies and boob jobs in shorts and halter tops. And you don't see trees that have oranges growing on them. I can, and do, walk out of my girlfriend's house in the morning and pick three oranges from one of the trees and squeeze what has to be the freshest juice I have ever tasted. OK. I have had my morning rant. I'll get on with my morning chores. Like skimming the pool etc.