Do You Ever Feel Like You Are Swimming Upstream?

The first day of vacation was spent flying and losing 3 hours to time zone hopping leaving no time to blog. So I wrote about the first day on the second day. Now it is the third day and I need to write about the second day. It will be kind of like these fish swimming up the ladder at the Boneville Dam on the Columbia River. Tomorrow I’ll still be behind a day.I guess I’ll have to post about both days today by short changing the content of them.

Saturday we walked the mile and a half back to the airport to pick up our rental car. The Emerald Aisle was nearly bare. We had a choice of 2 Toyota Carollas, a Chevrolet Malibu and a couple Toyota Crew Cab Tundras.  We took the Chevy. Drove a loop east along the Columbia River, to Cascade Locks, OR, then across the Bridge of the Gods and back to the hotel via the Washington state side. Lunch. Afternoon nap. Walk to dinner. Took an evening ride into downtown Portland on the light rail line and back.

First Class Ride

For only the second time ever, we have flown somewhere 1st Class. The first was 40 years ago and the only reason we had the privilege then was because we were flying from Guam to Connecticut because my Mom was very sick and that was the first flight out. This time it was intentional.

And for the first time in a long time we opted to fly out of Augusta instead of Atlanta or Charlotte. This was intentional too, as the additional cost of the extra hop was a lot cheaper than the cost of gas for the drive, the 2 weeks of parking and the hotel stay near the airport at the bigger city.

The experience didn’t start out too first class though. When we scanned Donna’s boarding pass for seat 2D, the gate agent said hold on, we have to move you, that seat is broken. So we stood around for about 15 minutes while most of the rest of the passengers loaded. Finally, her seat was changed to 3C which was right behind my 2C. When we boarded, she said, “You take 3 and I’ll sit in 2.” I guess she figured, that way she wouldn’t have to sit next to some stranger. Turns out, she needn’t have worried, seat 3D was broken too. While not ideal, we both did get a little extra room to stretch out on the 1-1/2 hour flight. The 1st class pluses were both the seats and snacks were a lot nicer than coach, also your drink came in an actual glass instead of plastic. No real minuses except for the broken seat snafu.

On the Dallas to Portland leg there were no seat issues, so we did get to sit next to each other this time. Because of the longer trip and larger cities served the plane was substantially larger, so the seats were larger and nicer. Our included meal service was served in real dishes with real metal utensils. While the food wasn’t restaurant quality it was pretty good. The pre-meal snack was a serving of mixed-nuts, but not just a little foil packet of them, it was a small ceramic dish of heated ones.

The nicest thing about 1st Class experience is the boarding. It is great that you get on first, but the only having to wait for like maybe 6 other people to move before you are on the jet way heading into the terminal is the bomb.

So, all in all, was spending 1.7 times the cost of a coach ticket to get nicer boarding, snacks and seats worth it …. maybe.

25 Years Ago – Summer 1994

Rides of Joy

By Barbara Feinman

“I kind of feel sorry for you,” my neighbor said to me. Her husband was underneath my house, trying to turn off the water. We were huddled in the kitchen by the stove, trying to pretend the house wasn’t freezing. It was the middle of winter and another pipe had frozen and burst. We could hear rushing water below the floorboards.

“I mean, here you decide to move out to the country and we have the coldest winter in … well, EVER” She tried to hold back a giggle, but it was too late. I started to hum my favorite Billie Holiday song, “Everything Happens to Me.

It had seemed like a good idea back in October. Give up my apartment in Washington and move out to the country for six months or so. My siblings and I own an old captain’s house on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, along a river that feeds into the Chesapeake Bay. I’d go live in the house (nearly 200 years old) and write. That’s what writers do, I told myself; they move out to the country, and they think, and they watch the birds, and they hoe beans, and they write. You know, Walden and Henry David Thoreau and all that. I would do the zen thing. No more honking cars, only honking geese. No more sirens in the night. It sounded idyllic.

That was before the ice storms, the snow-storms, the frozen pipes, the burst pipes, the electricity (and heat) cutting off overnight, the tree blowing down, more snowstorms, the wild bird coming down the chimney and flying madly around (and then dying under my bed) … And to top it all off, my Miata wasn’t in its element, to say the least. It was the first garaged winter of its pampered four-year existence. My driveway’s slight incline made any amount of snowfall a considerable obstacle. Part of my daily January routine became trying to dig my car out, wheels spinning, snow spraying. The neighborhood kids, liberate from school by the weather, would look up when they heard me cursing. The hill in front of my house, which overlooks Blackbird Marsh, was the perfect toboggan run.

“Come on,” one of them would invariably say, abandoning his Flexible Flyer. “Let’s go push her out again.” The good news was that while my little car with its rear wheel drive didn’t fare so well in the snow, it was light enough for four medium-sized kids to rescue with relative ease. Each day I would skid around town, coming home with groceries, the news-paper and a bag of cookies for the sledders. I would invent errands — my cabin fever increasing exponentially.

At first I told concerned friends from the city who called that I “felt like a pioneer, that it was a real adventure.” But as the days turned to weeks and fresh snow kept falling, I grew less enthralled. About that time, I began to covet every four wheel drive vehicle that drove past my house. But I couldn’t afford two cars, and I could never do the unthinkable…

‘Spring is only thirty-nine days away,’ I would tell myself; looking out at the frozen marsh. But somewhere deep within my soul I feared that Spring just wouldn’t happen, that some-how it would just bypass us this year altogether. My little blue car sat patiently in the driveway, covered with ice and snow, and I would shiver with empathy, obsessively imagining it with its top down. I would picture putting the top down, zipping around the back roads. It seemed three million light years away.

Three months later. There I sat in front of my computer, putting the finishing touches on a project which had completely consumed me for the last month. As I stood up from the desk I realized it was a Friday night and I had nothing to do. I felt like celebrating, but all my friends were seventy miles away. I didn’t want to drink alone. But I had to do something more exciting than laundry to mark the end of this thing. I looked out the window absently. Of course! I’d go for a drive, put the top down and head for the hills — exactly what I had fantasized about all winter.

Dusk was approaching. It was the kind of perfect day where the breeze is light, the sun feels sweet against your skin.

I made my way over the wooden bridge and on toward Spaniard’s Neck, a long, windy, lush two-lane road where you rarely encountered another car, much less a police cruiser with radar. My joy rides usually take the same route: Spaniard’s Neck to Conquest Farm. Conquest Farm is a private estate, with a long imposing driveway and vast rolling fields. To one side there stands a huge sort of barn-warehouse, filled with pigeons. I’ve never figured out what the pigeons are for. Sometimes I imagine they are carrier pigeons, trained in delivering mes-sages to star-crossed lovers. Probably not.

Across the road is a locked gate leading to Conquest Beach, which I’ve never had the nerve to climb over and explore. The view from the road is awesome enough – a beautiful, majestic vista of the river.

As I came around the bend and could see the farm in the distance, I noticed something ahead of me. I slowed down and realized it was two deer, sprinting across the road. I got closer and then cut off the engine. The deer looked at me and I looked back, realizing they were part of a large herd. I started to count: one, two, three, four, five … oh no, I thought, there are thirteen! I am horribly, excessively superstitious. Thirteen deer was a bad omen I started to recount. And then, from behind the trees, came ten more deer. Twenty-three, my lucky number! The day on which I was born. I sat. there in silence, watching the deer graze, feeling like I was on safari. They seemed unfazed by me, or the Miata, and they roamed around the field languidly. The breeze rolled in across the dashboard, there were crows cawing in the distance. The sun was beginning to set across the river.

I thought of Thoreau. His two years and two months at Walden Pond were filled with moments like these. Okay, so he didn’t drive around in a Miata, or approve of material things at all, but I’d like to think that if Thoreau had been there with me he wouldn’t have eschewed a spin in my little car. It had transcended its material worth for a moment; somehow it had led me there — reaping a chance meeting with twenty-three deer on a perfect spring evening.

Copyright 1994, Miata Magazine. Reprinted without permission.

 

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Tuesday night we were sitting in our usual spot, the two chairs on the screened porch facing the backyard doing the usual thing, listening to the FRS on the “radio”1 when it started to rain. This was not unexpected because the weather folks told us is was going to happen. And there is nothing better than a nice rain storm on a summer2 evening. The flashes of lightning in the distance, the muted booms of thunder, the sound of water drops crashing through the surrounding trees and, of course, the 20 degree drop in temperature.

About 9:30 there was a very bright flash that was followed almost immediately by a boom that sounded like a 155mm howitzer firing in our backyard. After nearly crushing my hand in hers because the close-by noise, Donna suggested, “Let’s go inside.” So we gathered our stuff, unplugged the small fountain, shut off the fairy light LEDs, turned the ceiling fans to low and decamped to the living room.

Twenty-five minutes later the whole house A/C shut off. Donna asked, “Why’d it do that?” I replied, “Maybe because it is down to the temperature the thermostat is set to.” “No,” she said, “it is still 2 degrees warmer in here than the thermostat setting.” Oh boy. I turned the thermostat off, then on. I lowered the temperature. I swapped the fan from Auto to On. Nothing. I grabbed a flashlight and went outside to check the breaker. It wasn’t tripped, but I cycled it anyway. Still nothing. Guess we’ll call the repair people in the morning.

We pay a fee each year to a local place so that we can get priority service appointments, free troubleshooting, a discount on parts and a free yearly check-up. I called at 8:00 AM and by 10:30 I was being told we need a new controller board. The fuse had blown, but apparently not fast enough as the heating section had failed (which also controls the blower motor.) Cost, around $500, but he’d have to check. In the meantime he had worked some jumper magic to ensure the A/C part would work.

In the last 4 years, every time they have done the check-up they they tell us that we should think of changing our unit out for something newer because it is getting close to the top of its average lifespan range and it would be more energy efficient. In those 4 years we have had to have two motor capacitors replaced, another controller board go bad and a gas fitting replaced on the furnace side of things. Maybe it is time to replace. We are getting ready to go on another west coast vacation soon, so with the A/C working, we told them to hold off on ordering the board, we’d worry about it all when we got back.

Trumpifier

If you’re like me, you just can’t enough listening/reading/seeing our current President speak. Well, today is your lucky day because I have found just the right browser extension for you, the Trump Alternative Reality Extension. Below is a copy of a paragraph from a Slate article entitled Hell Is High Water on New Orleans and the Mississippi River:

Crawford, the pilot, told me that taking a big ship down the Mississippi at high water around Algiers Point is like driving a truck down a road of ice. Taking it up the river might take twice as long as it did this time last year, when the river was 8 feet lower. Right now, everyday river operations are tense. One deckhand likened the situation to a five-alarm fire. There are no barges resting on the riverbanks, because there’s not much levee left above the waterline. Anchors won’t hold in the river bottom. On Wednesday morning, a barge hit the shore in Algiers, knocking over a utility pole and causing a power outage for 5,000 people. Then again, at least things are still moving here: Further north, the Arkansas and Illinois rivers have been closed to commercial traffic entirely due to high water, choking off shipments of corn and soybeans.

Now what it looks like using the Trumifier:

We’re doing very well on trade, we’re doing very well – our companies are very strong. Don’t forget, we’re still up from when I came in, 38 percent or something. I’m not playing by the same rules as Obama. Obama had zero interest to worry about; we’re paying interest, a lot of interest. He wasn’t paying down – we’re talking about $50 billion lots of different times, paying down and knocking out liquidity. Well, Obama didn’t do that. And just so you understand, I’m playing a normalization economy, whereas he’s playing a free economy. Wacky Omarosa You know, normally I could do other things tonight. I like you. I love this state. I figured, hey, it’s a Monday. Who the hell wants to sit around doing nothing on Monday night? Right? We fell in love. We are securing our Borders, making great new Trade Deals, and bringing our Troops Back Home.

Presidential Decorum

Not him, me as President of the MMC. Yesterday the Masters Miata Club participated in the Ridge Peach Festival Parade. This is a copy of my write up about the event for the Club’s web page. I wanted to get up on my soapbox and whine about the small participation, but thought it would be better to do that here, so I’ve included it at the end of the quoted post.

We had 7 cars parked out front of the Airport Grill for breakfast. The 12 of us did as usual and made ourselves at home by rearranging the furniture to line up about 4 tables in a row to eat at. Our orders were taken in the semi-random order of our arrival and the food was delivered in a different semi-random order which was in no relation to when the orders were placed. But, as always, this is not a problem for the Club because the conversation and flowing coffee kept us entertained. The inexpensive and delicious food, plus the capability of the folks there to put up with us, places the Airport Grill at the top of the Masters Miata Club’s Mom & Pop Breakfast spots. Glen and the Garners had other commitments, so they did not join us after breakfast for the drive or the parade.

Stacey had plotted out a different loop for this year’s pre-parade drive and at first it seemed like we were just heading straight to the parade start, only to pass right through the cute little town of Trenton and head east and who knows what other direction to zip around among the local peach orchards. Even though I’m familiar to a lot of roads in the area there were at least a few times I though we turned the wrong way. The Vandermaases probably knew where there were the whole time because at one point we drove right by their house. He ended our drive at the usual Ebenezer Church so we could find out our place in the parade line up. At this point, Sarah parted ways with us to head back home.

Even though Stacey was in communication with the organizers, when he asked our line up number we weren’t on the list. It was determined that they would just add us to the end of the parade. They did have mercy on us though as they vowed to put us at least in front of the horses… Even though we caught a break with the weather, it was only in the 80’s as opposed to the typical 90’s, Donna and I ran our A/C along the 9/10 of a mile route. For all you statistic junkies out there it took us just less than an hour to drive the parade, so our average speed was pretty close 1.0 MPH. During the trip we never left 1st gear, I depressed the clutch pedal roughly 3.8 millions times and we tossed 8 pounds of candy to an adoring crowd.

Afterwards we all found a place to park and headed into the fray of people, port-a-potties, speakers, bands, food vendors and craft booths.

I have discussed this before with the Club and have tried mightily to get across the fact that anything less than 6 cars is not a parade entry, but nothing more than a couple people with the same car randomly happening to be driving together. I’ve had little success. This year we had 4 cars out of 31, or 13% of the Club, line up for the parade participation.

Because they were a few “floats” ahead of us, I know the roughly 50 member Augusta Corvette Club Pride Riders had practically 40% of their club show up because I counted 20 ‘Vettes when they eased by. Also, even though I didn’t see them because we were so far back in the line-up, I would be willing to bet the Shadetree A’s had a better turnout with their 90-year old cars than we did.

Next year if the MMC commits to be in the parade, Donna and I will join them for breakfast and for the drive, but we are bringing lawn chairs and will watch the parade go by from a shady spot.