Life of Brian

We rode the tandem to work today and the Emperor spent the day in the air conditioned luxury of the garage at home. The ride in was great, because it is our early week we started riding at a few minutes before 5:30 AM, there was zero traffic and the temperature was 70° with a little bit of fog. The ride home wasn’t too bad, even though it was sunny and 90°.

Donna and I took our usual walks around the perimeter of the parking lot all three times today and each and every time we came to the far corner I would see that empty parking spot and for an instant wonder what happened to the car.

Looking for another quick “photo = post” again and again it needs enough explanation to make me write a post anyway. This was my workbench at AIMD at NAS Meridian (MS) around 1980. I can picture it’s location in the overall shop, but can’t for the life of me remember what piece of equipment I worked on at it. Notice the model of the Starship Enterprise NCC 1701A from the recently released Star Trek The Movie hanging from the ceiling. You can also see a black spider hanging down, so it must have been coming up on Halloween.

Less apparent are two small egg shaped airplanes hanging there as well. I haven’t thought of those in ages and now searching the internet looking for them I realize I should have held on to them because they seem impossible to find now. Called Eggocentrics, they were made by a company called IPT and they produced a whole series of them based on commercial airliners in the 70’s. I of course couldn’t leave well enough alone and modified them into military aircraft, one of which was of the EA-3B I flew in while at VQ-1. I can’t remember what the second one was, but I think it was of an A-7 from one of the attack squadrons off the Midway.

For breakfast on Sunday we ended up at our old favorite place, the New Moon Cafe. This was our planned destination, in spite of the last couple of negative experiences, so Donna had brought 4 quarters so we could read the local paper while enjoying our Cranberry Pecan Muffins. Luck was with us and we hit the place at just the right time, after the initial opening rush and before the pre-church crowd. We dined alfresco and enjoyed the people watching people. Along with the people we also got to watch a high strung Golden Retriever match power & wits with it’s owner and the dog was winning. As we usually do, to avoid carrying it back we leave the Sunday paper behind after Donna has culled out the usable coupons, including this week, one from McDonald’s for a free chicken sandwich.

Before we left I went inside to make a potty stop. When I came out of the Men’s room Donna was inside the restaurant too so she could use the facilities as well. She had obviously vacated our outside table as on the table by the door to the outside were our plastic baskets filled with the empty OJ bottle and crumpled napkins. As I waited for her to come out I glanced through the USA Weekend and noticed another McDonald’s free sandwich coupon. I tore it out and put it in my jersey pocket with the other one. About that time, Donna returned from the bathroom and simultaneously a woman came over from the main part of the café and started to sit down at the table. We apologized for having our “trash” on her table, grabbed the plastic baskets and went back the way the woman had come to dispose of them on a different empty table.

When we got to our bikes I told Donna that she had missed another free sandwich coupon in the paper, but not to worry because I had snagged it before leaving our paper behind for that woman. It was then that she informed me that she had left our paper outside with the people who took over our original table, so the paper I had gotten the coupon from must have belonged to that woman inside, I had stolen that second coupon. Donna asked if I thought I should go back and give her the coupon, but I declined, rationalizing that she didn’t look like the McDonald’s type, but knowing that it would be really awkward to try and explain the mix up. Especially with her in her Sunday going to church finery and me in my sweaty, skin tight lycra cycling attire.

When we waiting for our breakfast on Saturday I wandered the block looking for photo ops, pickings were slim. I parked my butt in the median to get a low angle shot of the line of Miatas. I was there a while trying out differing compositions trying for the just the right shot. One of the members noticed my sitting there and broke out her camera to take a picture of me taking pictures (she thought it looked like I was sulking.) Of course by the time she got out her camera I had stood up and was heading back. By now everyone else was in on the scenario and waved me back to the middle of the road, so I sat down and smiled, thereby ruining the moment. That smile reminds me of Jack Nicholson’s Joker look from the 1989 Batman movie.

I got her back by taking her picture as she took mine….

Athleticism, power, grace, joyous victory and heartbreaking defeat. No, not the Olympics, but the Most Best of MXC 2 was on Spike TV from 1 to 2 PM today. It was a lot more entertaining than Men’s Field Hockey, Women’s Handball or the Mixed Double’s Badminton from Beijing.

I knew the political conventions were coming up and a quick check of Wikipedia reveals that the Democratic Convention is next weekend from August 25 to August 27 at Pepsi Center and on August 28 at INVESCO Field at Mile High in Denver, Colorado. The Republican Convention will take place at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota from September 1 until September 4, 2008. Maybe if you just said Denver and Saint Paul, leaving off the corporate named venues, it would sound more presidential to me.

The best game the FRS have played so far in this weekend series with the Toronto Blue Jays was the game they didn’t take the field in. They were rained out on Friday. Yesterday they lost 4 to 1 and today after just 3 innings they are losing 8 to nothing. Should have banked some of those runs they scored last week against Texas.

This morning at about the halfway point of our 16 mile bike ride, we took a water break at a stop sign. While we waited for a car to go by we took a quick drink and snagged a quick kiss before taking off again. Cyclists are still a fairly odd sight on the back roads of South Carolina, so we are used to strange looks from motorists, but the one we got from this driver was really odd - his was giving us a kissy face, perhaps asking for a smooch of his own.

The MMC’s August monthly breakfast gathering was at Sweet Lou’s on Broad St. in downtown Augusta. The coffee shop normally opens around 9 AM, but our Rally Masters had convinced Lou to open up at 7 just for us. He arrived at quarter after to find a dozen or so Miata types jonesin’ for some coffee. After he opened the shop and starting making coffee, we made ourselves at home and dragged his four “outside tables” onto the sidewalk.

Pictures, with more words are in this Flickr Set.

The food was good, but on the way home Donna asked if we would ever eat there again, to which I replied, “Nope.” But I qualified my answer by saying that it was only because it would be a long drive to Augusta just for breakfast, if it was in Aiken we probably would add Sweet Lou’s to our rotation.

It may be old news to those of you who live in the big city, but to us here in small town South Carolina it is a big deal. I don’t know when Street View went live for Aiken, but the local paper noticed last night and the story was the lead, above the fold in today’s edition. It looks like the Googlemobile drove by our house sometime last winter because all the leaves are off the trees. It was on a Thursday for sure, because the trash & recycle bins are in the street. It was probably in late January, early February because all the oak and hickory leave are of the lawn (are last raking of the season usually happens on New Years Day.)

Because, for some odd reason, the streets in our neighborhood are numbered in the opposite direction from every other part of town, you have to put in the wrong street address to find our house using Google. Home Sweet Home.