I've been pretty lax about blog entries lately. I've been thinking, I just haven't been writing. I'll get my thoughts in order and do some writing then. For now I'll post some of my other images.

Reno hot air balloon races.

Red Bull airplane racing.

Reno air races opening ceremonies.

Moubray bay, Antarctica.

Adelie penguin, Cape Adaire, Antarctica

A bald eagle in Sitka, AK.

I love digital cameras. They don't work for everything. For slow or immobile objects like Moubray bay or the hot air balloon races film can't compete but for anything moving above a moderate speed, they don't work as well because of the time it takes to scan the object. But any film images I take are scanned into a digital format. Unfortunately my digital camera seems to be on the blink.


Someone mentioned going on a trip to Davis Monthan Air Force Base in their blog. I had the great fortune to fly as part of an H-3 helicopter aircrew from Sitka, AK to the "boneyard" many years ago. We fleww down the west coast of Canada and the US to North Bend, OR then turned east and flew over Crater lake and on to Reno. From there we flew south to Las Vegas and down through Death Valley. From Death Valley we turned east again and flew down the Grand Canyon. From there we headed south to Davis Monthan to deliver the aircraft. From the wet, pine covered forests of the Northwest to the saguaro covered hills of the Southwest, it was a trip that stands out among many that I got to make. I also had the great misfortune to fly as part of an H-3 helicopter aircrew from Sitka, Ak to the "boneyard" many years ago. As the turbines spooled down at tthe the boneyard, I realized that this machine had flown in some of the most vicious weather imaginable, had (If I remember right) been part of the Prinsendam rescue, had delivered Santa to remote Alaskan villages, and had carried countless mariners to safety, and with the chocks now tucked under the wheels, it had now become scrap metal.

Some things just aren't funny

But this isn't one of those things.
So which end do you start from. I like chocolate so much that i just try to cram the whole bunny in. I wonder if which end people start eating their chocolate bunny from is regional?

Readings

I doubt that urban problems can ever be solved. Cities are just too diverse. A solution at one place will create problems for someone else. If we all thought and acted the same then the solutions would be easy. So, if only everyone would be just like me...
Sea and Survival reminds of the many times I spent flying along a beach and wondering if the people who lived in the houses right on the water had some sort of indicator that showed how foolish they were. Like the character in Snowcrash who has the words "Poor impulse control" tattooed across his forehead. You might think that they would at least ask why the place they were building on was called a barrier island, but nooooo... The wreckage of previous houses all around should be a tip off. The City as a Growth Machine was just plain silly. The "elites" are after us. Someone is going to make the decisions. Those decisions will benefit someone. Of course the decision makers are going to run things for their own benefit. I would. And so would most other people. It's not possible to please everyone, so as long as someone is going to be unhappy I want to make sure it isn't me. "It's GOOD to be the king!" I'd be a great king. "Wait for the shake!" Molotch says that there's no need to create jobs since the young people are going to move away anyway. And they will move where and do what, the skeptic asks. He suggests moving people from areas with too many students to places with not enough students, to solve both problems at the same time. Will just the students be moving or will the entire family be uprooted? I really should be the king here.

Above is an ice field in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica above Lake Vanda The small red spot near the edge of the ice field is one of the helicopters below.

And yes, I did join the swim club.

Key lime pie

1 pre-made pie shell (You CAN make it by hand but I'm lazy.)
6 egg yolks
2 14 oz. cans of sweetened condensed milk (NOT evaporated milk!)
1 cup key lime juice. Don't use Realemon brand lime juice. Key lime juice!


Preheat oven and prepare pie shell according to the package directions. Cover the edge of the pie shell with a thin strip of aluminum foil and then bake for 15 minutes. when the shell is done remove it from the oven and set it aside to cool. While the shell cools, stir the egg yolks, juice and milk together in a mixing bowl. When the shell is cool remove the foil and pour in the filling. Bake for 20 minutes. When the pie is cool, top with whipped cream and enjoy it with a cup of coffee.


There are some local foods that I'm just not able to eat. Cantelope. I like the taste of it. I'm not allergic to it. I have no cultural or moral objection to it. The problem is that we recently had to put our cat Nonesuch to sleep and cantelope was his favorite food.

I doubt that I could get a chunk of cantelope around the lump in my throat.

Mmmm....rat droppings!

Here are the FDA standards.


Today I was watching someone eating sushi in class while we discussed eating locally and I realized that if the diner had just gone to Petsmart and bought several dozen goldfish, she could have eaten locally and fresh! And as a bonus, there would have been no need to purchase some sweetened drink, since the fish are sold in a bag of water and you know that the water is clean enough for things to live in.


These two boys in Reykjavik, Iceland saw me with a camera and insisted that I take their picture. As soon as the shutter clicked, they went off down the street arm in arm.

Dazed and confused

Well, this is embarrassing. I seem to have mixed up that kid’s story somehow. I’ve been told that the story was about Pinocchio, not Pistachio. And it was his nose that grew when he told a lie. I even get holidays confused. I used to think that if I saw my shadow on St. Paddy’s day that I was going to spend another six weeks drunk.
I liked The Song of the Dodo. I had a vague idea of what the Wallace line is but Song made it pretty clear what it is and why it is important. Wallace’s problems finding animals in the rain forest mirrors the experiences of the Roosevelt party in The River of Doubt. They had taken rifles on the expedition to supplement their food supply and nearly starved to death. Quammen draws some unusual analogies. “India rumbled off like a runaway beer truck…Madagascar stayed parked.” There’s a geological description even a frat boy could understand and his irreverence made the reading fun. Describing Wallace (seen from his companion’s point of view) as a “nutcake” was funny. I know where he’s coming from. It’s hard not think that someone who wants to fly a hundred miles to collect some penguin dropping might be a little strange.
The other readings, which will be discussed in class tomorrow, bring to mind the term ‘paranoia’. ("In the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. Moneybags and his newly re-energized global monopolies and financiers...")

The remnants of a whaling boat at Cape Hallett, Antarctica. Now it serves as a shelter for Adelie penguins.

Still going.

I’ve been, um, indisposed for a few days so I guess I owe some writing. I wasn’t thrilled with having to write a blog. I’m not a writer. I’m a reader. Will Rogers said “Someone has to sit on the curb and clap as the parade goes by.” I’m quite content on the curb but since I had been dragged into the parade, I had intended to make blog entries several times a week, just because I need to practice writing. Anyway…

I liked Parson’s A Geographer Looks at the San Joaquin Valley. I like to learn unexpected (and usually unimportant) things when I read. “there are more Azoreans in California than the Azores.” (pg. 378) which raises the wquestion “why?” or the role the Iranian crisis played in the San Jo valley pistachio industry. Everything else I knew about pistachios came from the kid’s story Pistachio. You know, the story about the little boy whose nuts grew whenever he told a lie.

I just finished The River of Doubt a book about Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 trip down an unexplored branch of Brazil’s Amazon river by that name. Aside from the conditions the party endured, no modern medicines, no Gore-Tex, and no chance of rescue is things went wrong, it was surprising to learn that Roosevelt recorded distances in his diary using the metric system. Unexpected and unimportant facts. It also mentions that TR’s son Kermit had malaria. Kermit had spent quite a bit of time in South America as an engineer designing and building bridges but he had contracted malaria as a child in Washington D. C. That suggests that either malaria hasn’t always been confined to third world countries or that Washington D. C. was once a third world country.

I’ve started Coming Home to Eat and I’m going into it with a bias. I don’t know whether my pre-dislike for the book is because food is such a personal thing and I don’t like anyone trying to “improve” my diet or whether my knee-jerk reaction is because I just don’t like being told what is good for me.

This is a view of Northern Nevada from Amtrak. Last semester my wife and I rode the train up to Winnemucca. We just wanted to get out of the house for a few days. We had never been to Winnemucca and she had never traveled by train so we went up there, spent the night in a motel, had dinner, and did a little gambling. We could have done all that here but we both just wanted to go. Somewhere. Anywhere. We’ve lived from Alaska to Miami and sometimes the scenery out window just needs to be changed. It was a nice trip. It cost about $60 each for train fare. (Not very expensive) Another real nice trip is Amtrak over the Sierras in the winter. The people traveling by train aren’t like other travelers. The relative or friend riding in a car with are familiar. The business traveler on an airplane has someplace to go but the passenger on a train is traveling.