My Source(s) on The Gulf Oil Crisis

Some of you may already be aware, but Lightnin has been deployed to the Gulf of Mexico to do what she can to help keep the workers performing the clean-up efforts safe from harmful exposure!

I'm proud of this for several reasons the most compelling is because she is able to at least do something to help!
I don't think I can remember a time when I have felt so frustrated at the fact that I do not have the ability or opportunity "Do" anything about a situation that will likely directly affect me in the long run. So it feels good to know that at least Lighnin has been given the opportunity to "Do" something!

I also wanted to share some photos of oil that washed up on the shores of Fort Pickens Beach, near Pensacola Beach. (These photos were provided by another source who will remain anonymous at least for now)

The pen as a reference hlps to determine the size of the globs found, I'd estimate this one to be about the size of a human hand
This bottle demonstrates how the crude will coat and adhere to just about any surface
















I'm afraid that these are merely small signs of what is to come for the Gulf Coast!

With my sources spread out: Lightnin in Louisiana, Anonymous on Pensacola Beach, and my good friend FC covering the waters around Cedar Key, I should be able to keep you all posted on what's happening where over the next few weeks.

Fourth of July Weekend 2010

This 4th of July please remember to fly your flag proudly to display our Independence. Take time to remember those that have given the ultimate sacrifice tho preserve our freedom and the American way of life. Give thought to those who are currently out there performing their duties to protect it!

Have fun, celebrate, and be safe!

God Bless America!

Oil and Nails

Well it looks like the oil has struck one of the most beautiful coasts on earth, Pensacola Beach, Florida. They now estimate the flow at 100,000 barrels (4 million gallons) a day, and since we're now at day 67 that means that 268,000,000 gallons of crude oil has spewed into the Gulf! Even if they get the flow of oil to stop the devastation is going to be irreparable. My heroic wife has volunteered for deployment to the area to try to help and I may just check with my company to see if I can work from long distance and join her in the effort.

In other wonderful news: I went to ride my bike into work this morning and lost the rear tire due to a nail! The good news is that it was just the tire; I wasn't to the interstate yet and very close to home, so now I'm waiting for the truck to come and take the bike in. It was due for the 10,000 mile check-up anyway and I was planning to get it into the shop next week, I just wasn't planning to have to pay for a new tire too! Happy Birthday to me!

Goodbye Aunt Mink!

How do you measure the worth of a life?
I don't think you can in monetary terms because so much of a life's worth is less tangible and yet much more impactful.

My Aunt Mink was married to my favorite Uncle Walt (well he is my only Uncle Walt, but he is still my favorite) and they were preparing to celebrate 60 years of marriage this coming September. She was the Mother to three of my cousins, Grandmother to 5 Grandchildren, Great Grandmother to several Great Grandchildren, and an Aunt to the rest of us cousins and our offspring.
Is this how you measure the worth of a life?
I think this is part of it!

Aunt Mink was a fun person who truly cared about all of her children which includes the entire list above. She was quick with a witty comment, a loving hug, or a stern word depending upon what the particular situation called for!
So how do you measure the worth of a life?

I think the way to measure it is by how many lives that person touched and influenced in a positive way. It is also measured by how many laughs they generated in themselves and the others around them. It is also measured in the void that remains when they leave this world for the next!

If we take all of these measures into consideration then I think that her nickname "Mink" says it all about the worth of her life; it was Rich and she will be missed deeply!

The Rest of the Trip

This was actually supposed to go out on Monday, but Blogger was not letting me uplaod photos for the past couple of days!


Saturday morning I met up with my buddy FC and had breakfast at Bill's BBQ. I know, "BBQ for Breakfast?", but they have a real breakfast with home made sausage, grits, and eggs; and it was good! After that we headed out to the property walked around a little, checked out the sink hole a ibt for depth, etc, then headed back into town so FC could get some stuff done before JR's graduation (Congratulations JR!).
We didn't see much except for this evidence that there's gonna be a pig roast comin' up soon!
















With my work completed I now had some time to hang out with the locals that will soon be our neighbors. I had heard that there was going to be a benefit ride for Cystic Fibrosis that was going to end up at a place I've visited before the "Brick Grill". They have good sandwiches, wings, burgers, and fried green beans. Anyway, I headed up there and spent some time checkin' out the bikes and listenin' to the band. It was hot, hotter than normal for Florida even (100F actual temp), but it was fun!

Here's a few of the bikes I saw:
Those are gator skin seats!
A customized "Rocker"
Custom chopper















After that I headed out to Cedar Key to get some of Tony's now world famous clam chowder. It was awesome, as usual, and I ordered some of it to ship back home; it should be here Wednesday, yumm!
I had selfish reasons for ordering it to ship though because the disaster still swelling in the Gulf is headed that way! I heard that they are going to open scallop season early just so they can get one last harvest in before they get wiped out! After hearing this I found myself just sitting at the end of the pier of Coconuts staring out at the water and the islands and thinking how absolutely beautiful this area is and how tragic this loss is going to be!

Here's just a few things that will likely be missing the next time I come down:

Oyster beds

Mangroves


Oyster beds around the islands; the clam beds are submerged by the tide here, but they'll be gone too! The wading birds, herons etc. (not pictured here) will be gone and the list goes on and on! It makes my stomach turn every time I think about it!


From there I headed east to Jacksonville to meet up with my good friend Jesse, who I met while we were both living in China. He showed me around town and we stopped in as his favorite Irish pub, Lynch's Pub. Good food and good beer, plus some unexpected entertainment. I can't really describe the interesting thing that happened, but it was as if a tornado blew past us in the form of a tiny, phsyco-evil little blonde. Jesse summed it up best as a DBV (Drive By Verbal). Now she wasn't angry or evil at us, she just for some reason thought Jesse and I needed to hear what she had to say and it was strange, angry, intimidating, racist, and wrong on so many levels and yet strangely entertaining because it came out of nowhere!


Here's one of the bridges on the way to the beach

Believe it or not this is one oak tree

This is the Jesse Ball DuPont Treaty Oak, and it's huge and amazing! The branches bent down and went into the ground and sprouted new branches from there. JBD was one the first actual tree hugging environmentalist because she bought this land that is now a park just to preserve this tree when Jacksonville was becoming urbanized!

It was a little dark so I also tried a couple with the night vision, but they came out a little blurred
















After that it was back to the hotel so I could at least get a couple of hours sleep before I caught the 5:45am "red-eye" back here this morning.

I'm not sure when I'll be headed back there next, but I'll be running down and back a few more times while the house is getting built!

Success at Last, but With a Twist of Course!

I'm down at the new homestead this weekend and had a successful meeting with the builder and the title office to get things rolling, FINALLY!!!!!

Of course for some reason we still have to pay for the sins of our ancestors because there's just one last trial to surmount before we can actually get the build started, a sink hole on the property. Can you guess where it is? Yep, close enough to where we wanted to set the house that we now need to get a geological survey to see if we're OK there or if we need to move to another spot on the property!

Well just like every other trial we have come across in this life of ours, and there's been a few, we shall endeavor to persevere!

Here's a few shot of the property sans unwanted water oaks, poplar oaks, and assorted scrub brush(of course the jungle is trying to reclaim the land since last year):

This is looking back down the drive to the road from the clearing

As you enter the clearing this is a view to the left

That's our builder walking out in front of me (chasing the snakes my way to be funny) Check out the size of the live oak next to him! These babies are estimated to be over 300 years old!

The tall green stuff is Dog Fennel and it's over 6 ft tall! (Dad- You remember this stuff?)

One of our 14+ palms

As we were leaving we saw this juvenile barred owl testing out his wings

Momma owl was watching us like a hawk!

And the classic sunset shot from my hotel balcony (come on you knew I had to take this one!) ;-)











Well that's about it. Oh the sink hole, no I didn't forget.


Just for reference that is a size 14 boot there so you can figure out the circumference of the hole!








I bent down and yelled Nihao down into it and about 2 minutes later I heard a familiar Beijing voice yell back: "Hey Nihao, is that you Dave!" ;-)
Possible litigation, you bet! How about "Failure to Disclose"!!!!!


The heat, humidity, adrenaline rush and then decline have taken their toll so I'm about done for tonight. More to come tomorrow!

More Views From The Road

I planned to post these last night, but we got hit with a vicious thunder storm! Don't get me wrong our nick names come with good reason, we love storms with both L&T, but this thing shook the house, washed the vehicles under the carport, and then left us without power from 7pm to 1am so basically Mother Nature said: "No blogging allowed!"

So here's where we left off:

The long road ahead

Field of dreams, well ok dreams of crops

Someone with horse power got bored

The cockpit

Hang on, it's a little curvy
















That's about it for this segment of Lightnin's helmet-cam, but there's plenty of summer left!

Memorial Weekend Riding

The weather here was hot but dry for the entire weekend, so we decided to put some miles on the bike and tour around the area a little bit. We ended up logging close to 300 miles!

Here's shot of a barge heading up the Ohio River as seen from the Sunset Grill on the way to Rabbit Hash, Kentucky. It's just past the 1/2 way mark and a good place to stop for lunch.





Here's a few shots courtesy of Lightnin's manual helmet-cam.


If you notice this one is actually facing behind us, pretty clever work!

The Mayor of Rabbit Hash was not available, but the Sheriff was, and yes both elected officials are actually dogs!







The sun is sinking down and my eyes are getting droopy so I'll try to post some more of Lightnin's helmet-cam shots in another post.

Really, 1 Comment That's It? Come On!

OK this is to all of you readers and sometime commenter's to this blog:

I have heard from several of you that you enjoy my posts and that I need to write more often, keep you updated on what's going on. What you may not know is that with my current professional responsibilities, my additional job of building our dream home, my responsibilities around our current home, and my need for rest/relaxation/recreation, it takes effort to squeeze in time to post updates on any or all of those portions of my life listed above!

I sort of enjoy doing this and seldom complain, but I mean come on with a title starting off with "Breast Fest...." I would have figured some witty comments would be generated; Certainly more than just 1 comment overall! (Thanks RBP you are of course excluded from the group that I am addressing!)

So here's what I would like: how about if a few more of you meet me half way? Here's how:
Comment a few more times, hell I don't even care if it is to critique the content, point out spelling errors, dispute any data that I include, make fun of my photography, anything, but at least give me a response so I know that you're actually interesting in reading this stuff and what I'm doing is actually worth the effort!

Rantingly yours,
Thunder

The Breast Fest and the Annual Bike Blessing

Yesterday 2 major bike run/charity events took place and we decided to try to participate in both. The Breast Fest raises money for breast cancer research and the bike blessing raises money for underprivileged children. Lightnin and I rode the Harley and our friend, turned biker babe, Alice followed us in the little car. Alice is originally from Paris, France living in Brussels, Belgium, and now temporarily working in the US; Of course we met and were neighbors while living in China!
It really is a small world!

Several hundred motorcycles turned out for both events and we did our part through the donation of cash at each. There's nothing quite like the rumble of several hundred Harley's firing up and heading out on a run. Check it out for yourself, and as they say on NASCAR: "CRANK IT UP!"

Pat Metheny is a Musical Genius!

Lightnin and I went to see Pat Metheny Orchestrion live last night and it was absolutely incredible. I've been a fan of his for years, being exposed to him by my brother-in-law who is a guitar legend on his own, but this goes way over the top!

For years Pat's music has been on the cutting edge of jazz and fusion blending in Latin style with synthesized guitar, but now he has actually created a virtual orchestra that he ques from his guitar.

If you've seen him in concert than you'll likely agree that he is a modern day combination of Beethoven and Mozart with a little bit of Sergio Mendez thrown in to spice things up!

Check him out on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/PatMethenyMedia

Not bad for someone that grew up in the suburb of Kansas City known as Lee's Summit, Missouri!

2010 Hops Report #4

We went out and grabbed a couple of pictures of the lovely plants last evening in between rain showers.


















These plants are now about 6 weeks old and as you can see they are already taller than I am and will soon be taking over the back of the house, just in time to shade us from the heat of summer!

2010 Hops Report #3

These photos (actually digital images) are from a week ago, it was raining this weekend so I didn't get the latest growth yet.















We're currently experiencing perfect weather for these plants with 1 or 2 days of rain followed by clear sun filled days in between, and cooler than average temperatures! They're peaking in growth rate at around 3" to 4" per day!

2010 Hops Report #2

One week later and these lovely plants are going to town, or are they trying to reach the moon?

I tried to add some scale (not to the width, but to the height of the vines!) by letting Lightnin take this shot.











Soon we'll be reaping the benefits of hop flowers and shade!

2010 Hops Report #1

Yes folks the hops report is back by popular demand!
Well OK that populous included myself and Lightnin, but at any rate it's back!

We had what has been reported as one of the worst winters in the past 60 years here in our part of the world, but you wouldn't know that by looking at these beauties. They sprouted out of the ground a couple of weeks ago and are now just over 2ft tall. That's a growth rate of about 2" per day! Believe it or not they aren't at their peak yet and will soon be speeding up to about 3-4" per day growth rate!





















I haven't harvested them for the past 2 years(one I was in China 2 yrs ago and 2nd I was becoming reacquainted with America last year) but I'm thinking I might try to pay more attention to them this year.

By Request....the family!

I was able to visit Mom, Pops, Brother Tracy, Sister-in-Law Pat, Niece Sarah and my little sister while on this trip also. We had a wonderful lunch at a little place called Abigail's in Rocheport, MO. If you're ever in the area, stop by!





We also enjoyed a visit with our middle son, Daughter-in-law and Grandson this past weekend. There wasn't much time for taking pictures since we had such a short visit.