Archive for the ‘Nonclassified Nonsense’ Category

He called me when he finally made it back to JFK last week, 5 minutes into his day off, to see if by some miracle the Jet Blue flight hadn’t left yet. I checked, and by some miracle it hadn’t even arrived in JFK! I told him the gate, and he hurried across the airport, getting to there right as they were letting everyone off. He got home at 5:30 Monday morning.

This was his one break with three days off in a row this month, so I took Tuesday off and planned our day. We drove up to Woodland Park, gassing up along the way, then headed north up 67. This is a wonderful driving road with twists and turns and few places to pass. If you’re stuck behind a group of slow-moving Harleys on the weekend, it can be miserable. But on a Tuesday morning, it was utterly empty.

At Deckers, we veered west on 126 to 285 and up through Evergreen on 73, then took back roads that Street Atlas promised would take us to Squaw Mountain Pass. It did eventually after turning to dirt and getting more and more narrow. We took Squaw Mountain Pass to Mount Evans, which is a 14er overlooking Denver.

At some point, Denver decided it needed its own highway up a 14er, since Colorado Springs already had one, so it built the Mount Evans Highway. While the Pikes Peak Highway is owned by the city of Colorado Springs and has a pretty high price tag, $35 a car, though they usually just charge us $10 a person (and if we take two Miatas, for one car), the Mount Evans Highway is a US Highway and is free, but you have to pay a recreation fee if you want to stop. They have a ranger at the entrance gate to try to talk you into paying the fee. “Well, you’ve got to keep in mind that it’s 45 minutes up and 45 minutes back. No stopping, no using the toilets, no taking photos. There are mountain goats and big horn sheep.” We told him we figured we could handle it.

The Mount Evans Highway is a beautiful drive. It isn’t nearly as steep as the Pikes Peak Highway, and it hugs the side of the mountain’s broad shoulders going up instead of switchbacking. This is useful for passing people who are driving slowly. The road is also paved all the way up. We found out why this isn’t such a good idea when we got to a high lake that was slowly draining down the mountain. The road had buckled to such an extent that the road resembled a series of monster high speed bumps. I decided the permafrost melting had to do with it. Fortunately, it didn’t last for too long before flattening out again.

The road doesn’t go all the way to the summit, like it does on Pikes Peak, so those who actually want to stand at the tippy top were snaking their way up a sidewalk to the peak. We couldn’t stop, so we just circled around the parking lot and headed back down again. We were in our t-shirts with the top down and didn’t get cold, even at 14 thousand feet, with the sun shining on us. Berck’s head was bothering him. He’s lost his acclimation to living at 6500 feet and is used to sea level now.

After descending back down, we took the other half of Squaw Mountain Pass into Idaho Springs. The diner I wanted to eat at was closed for a private party, but I had a back up plan. Berck got a delicious roast beef sandwich and I had a yummy breakfast wrap at Two Brothers Deli. Then we headed back out on the road and up the Central City Parkway to join 119. This is a beautiful but short drive up a canyon. Then we headed north on 119 up the Peak to Peak Highway. Unfortunately, there were doing some construction along there, we got stuck in a long line of cars behind a very slow cement truck doing about 20 mph. So we turned around and took a short cut up a dirt road that took us up over the ridge to the Golden Gate Canyon Road, which is another gorgeous drive. Berck was having all sorts of fun burning up my brakes.

We took 6 down to 470 and exited at 85, then veered off back on to 67 again. We’d never been on this part of 67, and I was looking forward to it. What I didn’t know is that 67 is dirt from just a ways away from Denver to just outside Deckers. About now our beautiful day had turned to Colorado afternoon rain, and we were going too slow around tight dirt mountain curves to keep the water off us! Fortunately, we were out of it soon, and it had taken the dust off the road. Much to Berck’s amazement, I think, the road finally did go somewhere, and we were back on pavement the rest of the way home.

My plan had been to drive up the Peak to Peak and through Rocky Mountain National Park, but we didn’t even make it that far. I’ll have to plan on taking some faster roads, I think, if we’re going to make it up there next time we try.

What are they upset about now? That both presidential candidates are meeting at a mega-church. Seriously.

Andy Tanenbaum at electoral-vote.com says it well:

Key evangelical leaders are worried sick. Former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, and The Call leader Lou Engle are holding events Friday to counter a joint appearance by John McCain and Barack Obama at pastor Rick Warren’s megachurch in Orange County the same day. They are very concerned because Warren is a hugely influential religious leader and best-selling author who is more concerned with what Christians should do rather than what they shouldn’t do. He feels they have an obligation to fight poverty, disease, and ignorance rather than working full time to ban abortion and bash gays. It is understandable that people who have devoted their lives to using religion as a cover for their political views would find someone like Warren extremely threatening. If McCain continues to be less than enthusiastic about their issues and they oppose all Democrats on principle, they have no horse in this race and that’s rather disconcerting, hence the attempt to drum up attention and try to force McCain to the right. But it is unlikely he will give them anything more than lip service since he needs the votes from independents to win.

Fortunately, it looks like the population is finally tired of being told by a bunch of religious fanatics what they can’t do. I figure things can only get better from here.

It looks like I’m back on reserve next bid period. It seems that 5 folks senior to me transferred into JFK from other bases. This stinks.

I’m seriously considering going to ORD in order to hold a line. There are 73 lines there, and I’d be 54. But, to do so, I’d have to go through training again. No idea how much training, how long it would take, or how long I’d have to wait around for it. While a free place to stay in JFK is great, commuting to sit reserve bites. The big reason I picked JFK is that I wouldn’t have to sit reserve, but that didn’t really pan out.

Someone know of a room off the blue line in Chicago for cheap?

Mesa Air Group press release.

This likely means that my days flying out of JFK are numbered.

Berck got me a hummingbird feeder and hung it for me outside the study window. There it sat, very lonely, for a couple of months. If hummingbirds don’t know where a feeder is already, they have to discover it.

Finally, I heard the unmistakable jingling of a male hummer. I didn’t look up at first because I’m so used to hearing them at work. Michele has three hummingbird feeders and has to refill them daily. He tasted my aged brew that had been there since I put the thing up and flew away. Berck laughed at me, “He said, ‘Ugh! This is some nasty stuff!’ You got to change the food if you want them to eat it.”

I bought some bright red petunias thinking that might attract some hungry hummers. I got a couple of lonely customers here and there in the weeks following, but they just seemed to be passing through. More likely the house finches would perch on one side of the feeder, letting their weight pull the fluid down to fill up the hole so they could drink up the tasty sugar water. Berck wasn’t too thrilled with the house finches. He claimed it just gave them a place to perch and scream at him.

Yesterday, though, a female hummer came by a couple times in a row. I took the fan out of the window to give her a fresh batch of sugar water. This afternoon she’s been coming by every five minutes! And she announces her presence each time, cheering commenting on the quality of the nectar inside her special flower. I noticed that my freshly filled feeder had some floaters in it already, so I took it away and heated up some super solution.

When I brought it back to the window, she was waiting for me! She didn’t even wait for me to hang the feeder up before she approached it. When I did hang it, she took a deep drink (with me standing right there) and then hovered a little higher and examined the metal hook that attaches the feeder to the chain that hangs from the roof overhang. I had to try pretty hard to keep from laughing out loud. I just stood there with the screen in my hand while she drank and drank the hot liquid, looking up to comment about it in her trilling voice. Finally, I put the screen up, and she thought she should get out of the way.