Sun, 03 Jun 2007

My cow-orkers.
Always the first ones to the meeting, and the last ones to leave.

posted at: 22:13 | permalink |

Ugly Betty rides again. On fresh water.
It was Darren's first time on the Betty, although he'd seen her before at the party a couple weeks ago. In the second shot, where he's looking up in awe, you can see me reflected in his sunglasses. You might need some image enhancement software, though.



We put in by the airport. That's mostly a jetski ramp, but we were able to squeeze in. There were lots of low bridges. You can see the first bridge we came to. It was too low for the Betty, so we turned off toward the Palm Beach canal. There were a couple skis coming up behind us.



We came to another bridge. This is Congress, and it's pretty high, so we had no trouble getting under. I don't know what the rusty trombone thing is. And the skis were back behind us, jumping the wake.



The next bridge was pretty low. We had to taunt Rob a lot to get him to go under it, but we made it. There was at least a foot or two of clearance. He wouldn't do the next bridge, at Military. We turned around there.



The Palm Beach canal runs by the airport, so we could see the tower from the canal on the way back. After we got back to the lake by the ramp, all the skis had fun jumping the wake.



We had a little trouble getting Betty back on the trailer and out of the water, but we got 'er done.


posted at: 22:09 | permalink |

Sun, 13 May 2007

The boat has a name now!
She's the Ugly Betty. Rob picked the name the night he bought her. He even knew the typeface he wanted. I found a guy selling 8" letters on eBay for $1.29 per letter. It took a little while, but I finally got the letters this past Thursday, and we put them on on Saturday. Rob had already painted and sanded the hull a couple times. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better. Here you can see the mockup of where the letters will go.



We were fortunate that Chris just happened to have worked at a vinyl sign shop somewhere in his past. He had a different technique than the one in the directions that came with the littering, so we did it his way. First you tape the lettering at the top. Then cut the strip of letters into individual letters. Spray down the surface behind the first letter, and peel the backing off the first letter. Now use a squeegee to work down from the tape "hinge" at the top, keeping tension on the letter. Work the squeegee side to side, going 1/4" lower each pass. When the letter is completely stuck on, peel the front paper off, using a "sheer" technique. This means to pull the paper back as close to the surface as possible, so the letter won't lift off the surface.

Here's Rob squeegeeing down the "tty" in "Ugly Betty", since the three letters were all connected.



And the finished product:


posted at: 09:43 | permalink |

Back out on the boat again last weekend, blah blah blah.
Here's the usual array of photos. The first one's a heroic pose of Rob silhouetted agains the sun, steering the boat past Peanut Island on a dead calm morning. We got out early, so the water was flat and the boat ramp was empty.



The others are pretty much the same as last time. You can see a couple condos in the second photos. Then there's a shot of the old faithful Johnson 175 engine. Random shot of the water, random shot of the shoreline. But we did have fun out there.


posted at: 09:19 | permalink |

Sun, 29 Apr 2007

Yet another successful boat trip.
This time Christy came with us. We met at Phil Foster park, and put the boat in the water without incident. It was pretty busy at the ramp today.



First we headed out the inlet and then south. There were some tricky moments on the way out that got Christy excited. We ran south to the Clarke beach, south of the Breakers. It was good, but not great. Then a detour out to some 50' water to practice free dives, and a run back up to the inlet. There was a regatta of some boats that looked like Lasers, but werent', right by the inlet. Rob successfully evaded all of them. Then we grilled out by Peanut Island.



We spent some time just sitting in the boat, and swimming around it. We put Christy out as trolling bait, but didn't catch anything.


Then we headed back to the ramp, loaded up the boat, and went home. Another good day on the boat.
posted at: 21:20 | permalink |

Tue, 24 Apr 2007

The Seven Mile Bridge was as good as always
The gun went off at 7:30 am Saturday morning, and 1500 runners set off. Plus the bandits. I ran with Bashr for most of the way. The second shot is what we saw ahead of us as we came down the span about three miles in. At mile five Bashr started skipping, and just pulled away from me. I finished in 1:08. Kevin and his sister were selling shirts back at the start.



That night me and Lisa and Holly went down to Key West. Holly and Lisa got their picture taken in front of the Hog's Breath, after their first Key Lime Shooter. Then we stopped by several other establishments on Duval, and finished up at Sloppy Joe's. The band was good, and there was a bride buying shots for the wedding party at the bar.



The next day we wandered around the island. We saw the southernmost point, and this neato geeky charter boat sign. Later we ran into Laura and her boyfriend at Schooner Wharf.



That evening we saw the crazy French guy and his trained cats at Mallory Square. I got this artistical shot of one of the cats silhouetted against the sun and a Disney cruise ship. That night we went to Irish Kevin's for some good old fashioned singalong.


posted at: 21:21 | permalink |

And now, heeeere's Ruibin.
I wish somebody had taken a picture of me doing my first shot. Years from now Ruibin will look back on this with fond memories.



Mindy was there to act as a witness.



Ruibin's also had some trouble with keeping track of his computer equipment lately.


posted at: 21:04 | permalink |

Sun, 15 Apr 2007

We went back out on the boat yesterday.
The seas were a lot higher than last time, 2-4 feet, with 15 mph winds out of the southeast. This time we went out of the Boynton Inlet, after launching at the Boynton Inlet Boat Club Park. I hadn't been there before. It cost us $10, but it's right by the inlet, so there's no 20 minute ride like there would be if we had launched at Lantana like we usually do.

I took a couple photos on the way from the boat ramp to the inlet, but once we hit the inlet I put the camera away and held on with both hands. It was pretty rough going out, but Rob kept the boat from rolling, or taking a wave over the transom. Thankfully he ran up to the wreck of the Loftus at a slow speed. Rob's friend Patrick had joined us, and had brought his spear guns. Patrick was ready to shoot something, and so was Rob, so both of them went right over the side once we had the anchor set (that was a little exciting). Rob's last words before he went over were "if you don't go in you're going to get seasick". Great. I hadn't even thought of that until he mentioned it, but suddenly I was feeling queasy. I rocked, rolled and pitched for about 20 minutes, and finally gave in and went over the side. I watched Rob and Patrick chase fish for a while, and finally swam in and sat on the beach. Eventually I saw them get back on the boat, so I swam out and we pulled up the anchor. We all knew it was going to be a challenge getting back in the inlet, but Rob did a great job, surfing us all the way on on the backside of a wave. We recovered the boat, took it home and cleaned it up. Then I had to clean out a filthy apartment, but that's another story.

posted at: 21:31 | permalink |

Tue, 10 Apr 2007

I was out on the water with Rob last Saturday.
He found a new boat on craigslist.com. It's a 22' Wellcraft with a 175 Johnson, and a tandem trailer. GPS, sonar, VHF, live well, 100 gallon fuel tank. For only $1600. Oh, and it's really ugly. We met a Chris' house and loaded up.


It was really easy to launch. I backed the trailer up, and Rob floated the boat off. We were on the water before we knew it. The engine ran great. It was a little top-heavy when we tried putting two people up on the um steering platform in rough seas, but other than that, no handling problems.



We had to drop Linda off early, so she got these photos as we left the dock. In the very last one you can see how far forward the superstructure is. Then we headed down to the Breakers' reef for some snorkeling.


posted at: 22:11 | permalink |

Sat, 07 Apr 2007

I've got what looks like a head gasket leak, so I asked for suggestions on the
NAXJA board. I got lots of good ones.

I liked the suggestion to pressure test the cooling system. I couldn't find a pressure tester at an auto parts store this morning, so I made my own. I hacksawed a Schrader valve off an inner tube, and zip tied it into a short piece of tubing I put the tubing on the overflow connector of the radiator filler with a hose clamp. When I put a bike pump on the valve I found that the radiator cap was actually blocking the overflow hole and not letting air into the cooling system, so I used a C-clamp visegrip to push the top of the radiator cap down so it would seal and let air into the cooling system.



The pressure gauge on the bike pump is not accurate, so I used a digital tire pressure gauge to find that 25 psi on the pump meant 16 psi in the real world. The radiator cap said it holds 16 psi. I pumped the system up to 25 psi indicated and left it for 30 minutes. It didn't leak any pressure. So maybe I don't have a head gasket leak.



I also flushed the radiator because it was pretty dirty, and changed the oil and filter because it was time. I drove the car around for the rest of the day with no problems. I'm going to keep a real close eye on it, and watch for white smoke.


posted at: 17:30 | permalink |

Mon, 12 Mar 2007

Here's a picture of a Karmann Ghia with a jet engine
We saw it in Daytona Beach at Bike Week last weekend. Actually, it looks more like it's supposed to blow flames. There are three spark plugs in the nozzle. Sorry about the picture quality, but it was dark.

posted at: 21:37 | permalink |

Someone left a Walmart vest in my front yard today.
Maybe it's time for a career change. "Welcome to Walmart, how may I help you?".

posted at: 21:31 | permalink |

Thu, 29 Jun 2006

My last hash of this Atlanta trip was with the Monday night hash.
Me and Circumspector used to run with them when we lived here, so we knew lots of them when we went back on Monday. We had a little trouble spotting the pack in the parking lot of the Publix on Ponce, but finally found them. I didn't get a lot of photos, but here's a picture of a dog's butt.

I did get a couple shots of the assembled pack. Sanitary Not eventually showed up and took charge of the group. Soon we were off, heading west out of the Publix parking lot.

The trail was interesting. The hares (sorry, forgot your names) were concerned about the threatening rain washing away their marks, so they used chalk instead of flour. They made these odd asterisk-like marks to simulate the flour plops. And they didn't want the pack to get lost, so they only put in one Count Back, and no checks. So what we had here, was pretty much a 3.5 mile run. It was near the Carter Center, so we had lots of nice rolling hills to run through.

Eventually we pulled up in front of Manuel's Tavern. I had never been there before. They tucked us away in a back room, where we could drink beer and make noise to our heart's content. So we did. I think there were 20 pitchers of beer for the assembled hashers. The circle was good, the food was good, and then me and Circumspector did the long (three blocks) walk back to the car. See you all next time!

posted at: 08:16 | permalink |

Mon, 26 Jun 2006

Circumspector and I sampled the SOB hash yesterday.
I had wanted to do the Black Sheep, but after extended negotiations with Circumspector we decided to do SOB. We went straight to the hash from a Cub Scout camping trip, and there wasn't much difference. When we got there it was still a nice day. The crowd was gathering, and MC was directing things. And I got a rare of photo of an ambulatory Dr. Crotchrot (insert foreshadowing music here).

We were happy to see SleazePuppy, and Circumspector demonstrated to her just how big things really are at our house.

Then the pack was away. It had started raining again, so it was tough finding trail, but we managed. MC had done a good job of putting out enough flour to withstand the rain. The trail ran through some fields, and then through lots of kudzu. Lots and lots of kudzu. It was really wet. Finally the inevitable happened, and trail led down a steep clay bank. I managed it with the grace of a ballet dancer, but other hashers weren't so lucky. Circumspector squashed her phone, and Dr. Crotchrot twisted her ankle.

There was a strange ritual display of slaughtered stuffed animals on top of one of the coolers. We were still able to get the beers out of the cooler, though. We watched the dancing dogs while the rain got harder and harder. Dr. Crotchrot determined that her ankle might be broken, so she and her support crew headed off to the hospital. The rest of us stared at the rain, sighed, and headed out for the rest of trail.

Circumspector and I were the last ones to leave the beer stop, so we were on our own. We were doing fine until we wandered into a well-fenced retention pond. We floundered around in the thorns for a while, and finally escaped by crawling under the fence in a drainage channel into the apartment complex next door. The tenants over there looked at us like they had never seen two scratched and muddy people crawl under their fence before.

We got to the end, which was indoors, and began snacking on orange food and cold beverages. Circumspector asked me to take this picture of her changing clothes. Then she talked with Foreign Lession for a while, and then MC ran a superb circle. The usual small-world-hash thing happened when the virgin announced that a family friend named "Don [deleted]" had told him about the hash years ago, and he (the virgin) was finally attending a hash after wanting to do it for years. Circumspector and I have of course hashed with Don [deleted] (Hat Trick) many times in south Florida. The usual shuttling ensued, followed by Mexican food nearby, followed by us making our escape to go see Circumspector's sister in Lawrenceville.

posted at: 21:39 | permalink |

Fri, 23 Jun 2006

Me and Bruce watched 420 sweep onward to victory last night.
Well, they won their first game, anyway. It was tight, but they pulled it out. Here's a shot of the game. You know, it's really hard to get a decent shot of the field, especially when you're using a camera phone, and you're too lazy to get out of your chair.

Here's proof that Jenny Lee is smaller than a 7 oz Miller light. I figured that if I was drinking her beer I should at least put her in the picture. Note the use of the official AFDC can cooler that she gave me last week.

Here's the team pumping themselves up before their second game. It didn't work. Well, they were pumped up, but they still lost. I hope I wasn't too obnoxious, drinking beer on the sidelines and yelling "Let me call the subs!". Unfortunately the other team just scored more points.

The game of the week (GOTW) was scheduled after the second game finished. It featured a team dressed as cowboys (I don't know if Daisy Duke is a cowboy, but she looked good) and a team made up as indians. The second photo is a picture of the indian team. I was too lazy to get up and walk over to the indian team, and I was definitely too lazy to walk across the field and get a photo of the cowboys. I bet it was a good game, but I wouldn't know, as we went to Piedmont Park to see Breakfast at Tiffany's, with Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard. I love it when a plan comes together!

posted at: 15:33 | permalink |

Thu, 22 Jun 2006

Bruce made his escape this morning.
Actually, he left something in the car, and didn't want to walk around to pick it up, so he climbed over the fence. I was waiting for him to take a dive, but he got over and down without suffering any injury.

posted at: 23:21 | permalink |

Here's my temporary officemate.
Ray's pretty cool. He gets things done.

posted at: 09:57 | permalink |

Tue, 20 Jun 2006

Okay, what the heck is this?
We were in traffic on 14th St in Atlanta yesterday, and I notice that the car ahead of us has a license plate that says "911 CIA". Now that's a little weird, but what made it really strange was the fact that it was a European plate. I've seen European plates (you know, much wider and shorter than a standard US plate) on cars before, but always in the front, like a souvenir, with a US plate in the back. To be specific, it was a Swedish plate. We could tell because it had the Swedish flag on it. At least that part made sense, because the car was a Volvo, which as we all know, is made in Sweden. There was also on Emory sticker, which didn't make any sense. Finally, the car was being driven by an attractive African-American woman, who was probably not from Sweden. I couldn't make head nor tail out of it, so I took a picture. Does anyone have an explanation?

posted at: 06:01 | permalink |

Mon, 19 Jun 2006

I got to play some competitive ultimate last week.
Okay, it wasn't real competitive, but at least it was for points. I was at Grant field, to watch Lisa and Holly's summer league play. The team is called 420. I threw with Lisa some, to warm her up, and then took my seat in the folding chair. And then it happened: Jen, the team captain walked over and said, "We're one person short -- can you play?". Could I play? It was just like that time at Joe Robbie Stadium when Dan Marino got hurt and they made that announcement saying, "Will Dave Wilson please report to the locker room?", and I had to suit up and go in.

Anyway, I played the first four points, and the guy I was covering never touched the disc. I followed my usual rule of "cover the guy with the most hair". The first player had a red afro like Napoleon Dynamite, and just floated around the disc looking for a pass, *which he never got*. They second guy had a ponytail and beard, and might as well have been wearing sandals. I shut him down, while wearing boat shoes. And then more 420 players arrived, and it was time to go sit down and drink beer and cheer. Which was fun, too.

So 420 won both of their games, which lifted them above .500 for the season. Then we went to see Ferris Bueller's Day Off, at Screen on the Green, with 6000 of our closest (and I do mean closest) friends.

posted at: 21:52 | permalink |

Sun, 18 Jun 2006

Now I can say I've been to a Bear Creek hash.
Yesterday at the Atlanta hash, some (Surly Little Bastard?) was saying, "You simply must go to the Bear Creek hash tomorrow". So we did. Me and HIV, I mean. And really, what better reason is there to drive 55 miles (each way) than to run around in a swamp?

We got there just at hare away time, but luckily so did three other cars, so we had time to fill up the Hydrapaks, smear on the sunscreen, and make our final preparations. I'm a little unclear on the hare's name, but I think it was Poppa Bear. The hare gave a quick chalk talk, warned us to hydrate, and was on his way.

There were about 12 people there. I remember Rat's Ass, and Drain Bamage. And some others. The start of trail ran on pavement for a mile or two, and then ducked into a swamp. Now when I say "swamp", I mean it was stinky, muddy, rotting, decaying, and well, swampy. I kept my shoes dry for the first couple crossings, and then the inevitable happened, and I plunged into mud up to my butt. I finally extricated myself, and caught up to the pack at the first of three (3) hare snares. The hare had already gone by the time I got there, so we amused ourselves by taking pictures. That's me in the second photo.

Those were the last pictures I took on trail, because I was too busy keeping my head above the swamp to take any more. There was a water stop, and two more hare snares. I scared the crap out of a doe, who went bounding off through the woods. HIV and the back of the pack finally caught up with us at the last hare snare. The hashers with him reported that he did fine up until he realized that he really was in the middle of a swamp, whereupon "he got really quiet". But he recovered and had a fine muddy time.

The on-in was at the hare's house, and a fine on-in it was. There was good beer, orange food, a hose to wash away the mud, and rubbing alcohol to really make those cuts and scratches sting. The ladies got to use an outdoor shower. Down-downs went well. Two Crabs drank multiple times for the hare snares and for successful intimidation of his daughter's date. There were lots of other down-downs, mostly by guys in skirts (kilts?). And there was even a naming. I forget her civilian name, but whatever it was, she will now be known as "Horse Fluffer", thanks to her dressage.

Then we shuttled back, and me and HIV drove the 55 miles home, where non-hasher Julie kept saying, "You were in a swamp?".
posted at: 22:25 | permalink |