Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Aircraft Accident Update




Turns out Carb heat is probably not the problem! This aircraft is a brand new Eclipse 500 , a "VLJ" (Very Light Jet), a 6 seater, and an airplane that could be the future of air travel, under the concept of "Air Taxi", where for the price of the equivalent of a 1st Class commercial airline ticket, you could fly from your local airport to anywhere you want to go.

Now not to scare anybody, but the FAA recently grounded all Eclipse 500's until an Airworthiness Directive was complied with, as this was issued related to a throttle control problem incident upon landing at Chicago's Midway airport.

I'm not going to contemplate further what could have happened, I'm not with the FAA or the NTSB, I'm only a 100 hour student pilot and a former 1000 hour US Army Aircrewman, but suffice to say, the aircraft seems intact, the pilot walked away, and all is good.
Photo courtesy of Chopper 10, NBC 10 WCAU Philadelphia.

Aircraft Accident at Brandywine Airport


Whenever you see a local news helicopter hovering perfectly 800 feet over one spot, it's usually not a good sign, especially if it's over a highway, but really super especially bad if it's over an airport.

I don't have much info, my scooter commute takes me past the Brandywine Airport every day now, and they closed the road so I couldn't see, but there were a lot of cops and firemen, but no real sense of urgency that I could tell. Much more likely than a crash on final would be that this was another case of an aborted take off that went wrong, with a pilot going for the option of putting on the breaks and rolling off the end of Runway 27, rather than struggle to get airborne and having a problem getting over 202.
I'll go past it tomorrow, this is the 2nd time this is happened this year, but with this being a 3,347 foot long runway, and with the heat in July, pilots have to remember to take into consideration air density. The heat means wings have a harder time creating lift. Then with the humidity, there is a lot of moisture in the air, so one needs to be aware of Carburetor ice, so pilots have to have the carb heat on, (but this robs power) and you've got to make sure the mixture of air and fuel is not as rich you normally would have it.
With the price of fuel being pretty high, people are not getting the stick time they should to be in proficient in these conditions. Add the fact that most people don't fly during the winter, there are a lot of rusty pilots out there. If you haven't flown in a while go up with an instructor to knock the rust off, and then be safe and enjoy flying!

Thursday, July 24, 2008

The Countdown begins....Goodbye Mosteller Garage, Hello ???


I participated in my first civic anything, which was a public discussion of the plans for the demolition of the old Mosteller Garage, to be replaced by what I assume will be called, the New Mosteller Garage. There were some cool pictures of Parking Garages built already around the country to serve as an example of what we as a town could have built, including the "award winning" Bicentennial Garage on South High Street. (Can you imagine what the award ceremony is like for the organization that recognizes great parking garages? I wonder if there is a red carpet and after parties)

Anyway, it was pretty cool, there seemed to be some confusion about the potential demand for spaces in the new garage, what with Jurors coming to serve in the courthouse going to the new Justice Center parking garage, and with the YMCA moving to Airport Road, no more people in Spandex. Seriously though, it seems like the only time I have a hard time finding a parking space is when I'm coming home from work, and there are many ghosts and pirates and princesses and their parents pushing strollers on their way to the Halloween and Christmas parades. That said, since it is my home garage, I'd like to park my car and scooter there on a Friday night, and come back to them without having the bow ties on my Chevy ripped off, or my scooter lying on it's side. (The first thing happened, the second thing hasn't happened yet, knock on wood)

It was also pretty cool to see the movers and shakers of West Chester, Jim Jones was there, of WCJim.com, as he is the Ward 6 councilperson. He introduced me to Cassandra Jones, my Ward 2 councilperson. I was very warmly greeted and asked to come back to more meetings, which I will for sure, because the longer I live in the Dub-C, the more I like it. Years ago I had always wanted to live in a hipster town ever since I visited my friends in Seattle and Portland. I kind of almost did when I lived in Salt Lake City, I took a step back to Suburbia when I lived in Denver, and Bensalem and Croyden, but I really feel like a combination of luck and more luck finds me here, and I'm not going anywhere, even if it means that we are looking at 14 months starting in April of 2009 of me being without my easy parking deal.

Update on the Great West Chester Blackout

The power came back on at 2:45 AM, so as I slept comfortably at the Microtel Inn, my Air Conditioning, lights, and TV came back on and ran all day until I got home at 7:30 PM that night. So much for saving a couple of bucks, but at least I slept well!

Monday, July 21, 2008

Where were you during the great West Chester Blackout of 2008?




Ok, it started off like any other morning, the desire to get rid of the Diet Pepsi I drank right before I fell asleep the night before is essentially my internal alarm clock, so like every morning, I answered nature's call, came back to the futon, and turned on the TV to flip back and forth between the local channels and CNBC, to see how the market futures were looking to gauge what kind of day I could potentially have. Well, at around 6:00 AM or so, I got my answer, but not from TV. I'm sitting there, when suddenly, a deliberate sounding "Boof" (not boom) reverberated through the apartment, the TV went dark, my 100 Mbps Internet stopped, and the air conditioner, the lovely, lovely air conditioner spooled down like a Pratt and Whitney turbofan and made it's customary death gurgle as the condensed water settled into it's reservoir.
I know I paid my power bill, I'm sure I did!
I peaked my head out of my apartment, and the hallway was brightly lit. Hmmmm, a diesel motor grinding along was the only sound I heard. I went back to my dimly lit apartment as the morning sunlight filtered in giving me enough to work with in order to shower, and when I finished, dressed, and stepped out of my apartment again about 1/2 hour later, I walked around the corner of the hallway where I could peak out onto the crossroads of Gay and High Street. Sure enough, the stoplights were out, and there was already a portable stop sign on the street and people were self managing the intersection as best they could.
Oh well, not much I could do, I'll go to work, I'm sure the power will be back on when I get home from work 11 hours later, right? HA!
I got home, parked the scooter, and with it still being daylight, it was hard to determine if the power was on, but I heard that distinctive growl of that diesel generator, so that didn't bode well. As I turned the corner, through Prescott Alley onto High Street was a fleet of Peco Energy trucks, and a bunch of big men in orange hardhats looking down a hole in the sidewalk.
Damn, power's out, but at least I know I paid my bill...but this looks like it could take a while.
Then there is a note on the door to the entrance of my building. According to the note, the property manager said it's a "Very serious problem....and we just have to make the best of it."
Word on the street from my fellow Greentree denizens was that we were looking at sometime between 2 and 4 AM.

Well, screw that, I'm going to a hotel.

The idea of sitting in a dark apartment, from 8:00 PM until 7:00 AM tomorrow, with no TV, Internet and lovely, lovely air conditioning gave me a sense of absolute dread. So, as we speak, I'm sitting in an Ice Cold room at the Microtel suites on 202 and Matlack Street. I've got cable TV, (Basic cable, but still) and I've got Internet so I can post this blog!

Now I could probably go into a lengthy dissertation about crumbling infrastructure, American demand for more and more power, given that when the power cables were laid around the Greentree Building in 1929 there was no such thing as Air Conditioning, Computers, High Def TV's and etcetera etcetera, but I'll spare everyone my comments on what's obvious. Still, it's 2008, is the price of having the quality of life I have living in a cool downtown area where I can walk to the Dry Cleaner, the drug store, the Post Office, the Barber, the coffee shop and the brewpub, the occasional 24 hour power outage every couple of years?

Yea, I'll pay it...and my power bill......

Thursday, July 17, 2008

I'm so sorry Steve...get well soon!


The last thing I'd thought I'd do when I first started this Blog is that I'd comment on celebrities, but today's news really floored me. Steven Page, lead singer for the Barenaked Ladies, busted for Cocaine possession???

Let me take you back to 1992.

Ralph, in his typical fashion, had managed somehow score tickets to see John Wesley Harding at the Junkyard Blues Club in the strip mall near the house in Casselberry. He asked me if I wanted to come with him, and I passed on it since honestly I never really heard of him, and having been fired from Comair, having missed the first Gulf War, and dealing with a lot of emotions around a certain Redheaded girl that I was madly in love with but had no hope of being with, I really didn't have the desire to go. So he comes back a couple hours later, babbling excitedly as he is often inclined to do, about how great the opening act was. The image he described, 5 young guys, crammed on that tiny stage, singing funny songs, telling jokes, dancing boy band like choreographed dance moves, it was a blur. I guess I kind of regretted not going, to hear him tell me how funny they were, but I thought about it at the time that it probably wouldn't have pulled me out of my blue funk.

Within a couple of weeks though, I was flipping through the channels, (this is pre-cable days for us if you can believe it) and depending on the atmospherics and time of day, my TV would pick up this low wattage independent affiliate TV station somewhere in Central Florida that would broadcast a Headline News like channel that I think was out of Chicago. At a certain point in the news hour, they went to an entertainment reporter who conducted an interview in the studio, like actually in the control room, of this band, these 5 guys from Canada. Man where they funny! Witty repartee, self effacing humor, slightly chubby, glasses, and incredibly talented! I confirmed with Ralph that this was the band that he saw that night, and my heart sank as I realized that I really missed out on having seen these guys live. As soon as the interview was over, the search was on for their first album, GORDON.

After searching through several record stores, (nobody had ever heard of them, even after they got over the shock of me asking them, "Excuse me, but do you have Barenaked Ladies?") I found the album at Peaches. (Remember Peaches?) I rushed home, and wanted to jump right to the song I had seen the video they showed on that interview program, ENID, because usually albums by musicians where I only know one song usually suck, so why not jump to the one song I already knew? For some reason though I decided to give the album a listen from the beginning. I'm so glad I did! Imagine the first song opening with HELLO CITY, a soft, jazzy opening that was somehow familiar. The singer goes on to sing about the lameness of touring towns with people who, for a lack of a better phrase, are assholes. And what's this?, grown men harmonizing? In age of Grunge? And wait, how is this song ending, with a line from the HOUSEMARTIN'S song, Happy HOUR? Oh man was I hooked! The next song, Enid, the song from the video I saw starts off with a static-y, haunting, Depeche Mode-ish voice singing, "The silence, the terror, the pain, the horror as your mom comes downstairs.." and then abruptly breaks into this completely upbeat, jazzy, poppy number that was the antithesis of anything on the radio at the time. Then the song GRADE 9 comes on, humorously talking about being the geek who gives a passing thought to joining the High School football team but knows in his heart he'd rather be watching Star Trek the Wrath of Khan and listening to Duran Duran. And as if that wasn't enough, the song no kidding goes into riffs from Tom Sawyer and The Spirt of Radio by RUSH and a quick homage to Vince Guaraldi's Linus and Lucy! I didn't stand a chance.

For the first time in my odd little life, I was actually ahead of the curve on something! I got into Elvis Costello, The Clash, and The Police long after their zeniths, but Barenaked Ladies, I latched on to them and refused to let go. I started to project on them my own values, my own point of views, telling myself that these guys were like me, or I was like them. (If only I had any discernible talent) They were nerds, they had bad haircuts, they were funny, they managed to put into words everything I ever felt about anything when it came to life or love.

As time went on, they put out more albums, and I made it a point to show up at Peaches on the given Tuesday that the new album came out. Imagine the challenge in getting details about these guys, remember this is in an era of the early days of the internet when putting in the words "Barenaked+Ladies" into Alta Vista gave you a bunch of returns for porno sites. The album liner notes had an actual physical address for joining the fan club! No www, can you imagine?

Then in 1996, it finally happened. I got to see them live. My life at the point had improved to the point that I could actually afford a plane ticket to Portland Oregon to see the Redheaded girl (pointless effort in reality) and see my good buddy from DLI, Chris Carson. And the reason for it all? Barenaked Ladies was hitting this venue called "La Luna", and I was taking my friends with me to see a band they had never heard of. 3 hours later, Kate and Chris and I cannot wipe the smiles off our collective faces after having seen the one of kind show that is BNL live. That year, I came as close to a Deadhead as I'll ever get because I saw them again in Atlanta, and finally in August of '96, the House of Blues in New Orleans with Ralph, the night after the drunken sioree that was Cheryl's and Paul's wedding. We fly a new Airline at Orlando International Airport, Southwest, that for some reason has really cheap flights. The only flight was in the morning, so we got in and because of our budget, WALKED from the New Orleans Airport until we found a major road that we could catch a bus into the French Quarter. The street cleaners hadn't quite gotten around to cleaning up the quarter from the night before so we walked in what seemed like ankle deep plastic cups and plastic beads until we could find our first destination on our list, Cafe du Monde, where we enjoyed some coffee and beignets. As we sat in the crowded dining area, (why is it this crowded, this early in the morning?) Ralph and I imagined that this was surely the kind of place that the guys from the band would hang out in if they were in town to play a show. "Wouldn't it be cool to run into them here?" we asked each other, smiling at each other as powdered sugar fell like snowflakes on the front of our t-shirts. Upon finishing what is the equivalent of French crack, (so addicting) we then set out to find the House of Blues, to get our tickets at the will call window. Our plan was to literally stay awake for 24 hours, and we had 10 hours to kill before the show even started. As we wondered in what we thought was the general direction of the House of Blues, we were beginning to think we were lost, and that asking directions might not be a bad idea. Across the street from us, at what looked like an used musical instrument store, stood a guy alone, smoking a cigarette, who looked kind of familiar. Could it be? By himself? Here? "Ralph, I think that's Steven Page over there!" Ralph, in his inevitable style, shouts out across the street, "Hey Steve!" I cringe in a bit of embarrassment. But damn it if the guy doesn't turn around, and it's STEVEN PAGE! Now in about a second I go from being a bit mortified to being a bit terrified. I'm absolutely star struck. I don't know what to say, I really don't have anything in common with him, or at least I don't think I do, I'm not a musician, so I can't talk technical talk with the guy, and of course as a man I can't talk to this stranger about how his music makes me feel, how it speaks to my heart, that his music pulled me out of depression and self loathing, that's just something we men don't talk about right? Fortunately, the crutch we talk about is computers. Barenaked Ladies' live album ROCK SPECTACLE was cutting edge for the time by being an "Enhanced CD" with all sorts of goodies like Quicktime videos, a surfable GUI interface to play little games and the like. I don't know how many CD-ROM Drives Ralph and I went through trying to upgrade our computer enough to make the stupid thing play all the content on that CD. He could not have been more pleasant, given we really had him cornered, and can you believe we asked him where the House of Blues was, since we were there after all to see him play, and he all too calmly points back across the street to where we were standing, 10 feet away from the entrance to the House of Blues. (God, we're dorks) Before we knew it, a giant maroon striped tour bus pulled up in front of the place, and Steve, (to this day I have no idea what he was doing loitering in front of the House of Blues, at least 30 minutes before the rest of the band showed up) had to go on the bus to get some rest before the show, still, a good 8 hours from that point. Here we were, Ralph and I with Steven Page, our musical idol and self imposed sensitive nerd fellow traveler, without a pen for autographs, without a camera to take photos. Steve, of all people, actually recommended that there was a corner shop just down the block that might sell that stuff. (I guess he must have investigated that in his wait for the tour bus, before Ralph and I clobbered him with our adulation.) We said we'd go check it out, and be right back, and he said "ok" and as we walked briskly down the street, I kept thinking to myself, "If I was him, I'd jump on that tour bus so fast and lock the door as quick as I could." Unbelievably, less than 5 minutes later, he's actually waiting for us at the door of the bus, for him to autograph the back of our tickets, and to pose for photos. We thanked him again, and he actually said to us, since we had told him we were exhausted and thinking about getting a hotel room to take a nap since our "stay awake 24 hours plan" was seeming like a bad idea with every passing minute, he actually said to us, "Don't oversleep and miss the show, I hope you come back and check us out..." or it was something like that, I was in shock. Was this guy so nice, so normal, so unassuming that he actually was selling the band like a kid reminding his friends to check out his garage bands first gig playing the Sadie Hawkins dance? Dude, we bought tickets, we flew here at 6 in the morning, we were tired and a bit hungover, we were going to the show, don't worry!

What a great meeting, my brush with greatness, it's a memory I carry with me to this day. Me and BNL had a temporary falling out with 2003's Everything for Everyone. You could really tell the album had been crafted during the run up to the invasion of Iraq, and it had that anti-war, anti-unilateralism vibe to it, which at that point I finally realized that these guys aren't like me, they don't think like me. Honestly I'd have been more shocked if they had put out a pro-war album, that would have been ludicrous, but still it dawned on me that I cannot project myself on somebody else, even if I happen to interpret lyrics and melodies as those of someone who would otherwise be my emotional doppelganger. So I forgave them, not that they needed my absolution, as if I could even grant it, as if they were even in need of forgiveness for God forbid having their own point of view, and I moved on with them. I showed up on the first Tuesday for Barenaked for the Holidays, and for 2007's Barenaked Ladies are Me. The last time I saw them was last year in Orlando with Mike, Mike, Mike's cool coworker chick, and of course Ralph.

So today's news, about an arrest, about drugs, it just blew my mind. One of the things I projected on these guys was the no drugs thing. As a nerdy kid growing up, I wasn't even cool enough to be offered pot. In an era of Shawn Cassidy feathered mullets, with my military style haircut that my father dutifully drug me to the barbershop every month, I was perceived as a straight arrow right out of Joe Friday's Dragnet. With lyrics from the song GRADE 9 about being called names by the kids in school, I had assumed that we had the same high school experience. Of course by the time I was 17 I had enlisted, gotten a Top Secret clearance and had sworn an oath to support and defend the constitution, and that included not doing drugs. I took that seriously. Heck we even flew counter narcotic missions there for a while. Yea, I know, I've always felt like I'm a Don Quixote like character, tilting at windmills, be they Russian commies, Colombian drug lords, whatever. By the time I was 30, and had left the military, I felt it awfully stupid to go ahead and try it now, since everyone else I knew that actually had a normal upbringing had already tried it and looked back on the experience with varying degrees of regret, except the ones that were still doing drug of course. They seemed to not have that regret and in fact seemed pretty happy all the time....wait, that explains it now!

Steven Page, where ever you are, get better. Innocent or not, please take care of yourself, you've spent the last 18 years writing the lyrics to the soundtrack of my life, and I don't know about you, but I've got a lot more life ahead of me, and I need some music to laugh with, to think with, to love with, ok?
Thanks for reading this extraordinarily long post, a lot came pouring out, but that's what happens when you give some time and thought to a subject that means so much to me. Next time I'll share a much shorter story about my other star struck moment, talking to Ben Folds mom. :)

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

My new two wheeled fish carrying conveyence


Ok, before you ask, "Why?" Let me tell you the answer, "Why not?" No, I cannot claim that some sort of ecological altruism was at work when I thought seriously about buying a scooter that gets 117 mpg, (that's not a typo folks, ONE HUNDRED and SEVENTEEN MILES TO THE FREAKING GALLON!) nor was it an issue of being economically squeezed to the point of desperation, since my 1998 Chevy Lumina gets absolutely acceptable gas mileage since a) my commute is all of 10 miles each way (thank you Kerry for dumping me!) and b) I'm a hermit perched over the intersection of Gay and High Street in beautiful downtown West Chester and rarely go anywhere other than work or the airport to fly home. I just figured, where can I "refocus" some of my cash flow? Perhaps towards an actual savings account? So since I refuse to give up a couple of things like air conditioning and digital cable with High Speed Internet, Gasoline had to go!

Now, a few issues of economics are at work since I laid out about 2 Grand for the thing, and since I'm a bit paranoid about somebody just picking up and walking a way with it I got insurance that covers theft for about 400 bucks a year, but if gas prices stay where they are or go higher, (what are the odds of that happening?) the difference of dropping 120 bucks a month on fill ups for the Lumina versus 16 bucks a month, I'll make my money back in less than 2 years! (Take that all you smug Prius drivers!)

So, there you go, I've made the commute back and forth a few times already, along beautiful back roads that only add about 5 more minutes to my normal trip. This is at a balls to the wall eye watering speed of 35 mph. My biggest fear is that I'm holding up a line of fellow commuters along Paoli Pike, and that I'm likely to just be run over by someone who is more preoccupied with trying to drink his or her Latte while adjusting his or her Bluetooth.

What kind of scooter is it exactly that I'm now buzzing around the Dub-C? It's a Yamaha C3 , or in Europe the Yamaha Giggle, or in Japan, the Yamaha VOX. I so wish the US version was the VOX, because under the brand decal for the VOX it has this: ..._/_ _ _/_.._ which of course as an old U.S. Army 05-Hog, I find irresistible. Other than the mpg and the mph, (it pegs out at 40, and it will do it too....downhill.....with a tailwind....) it's a pretty straight forward, 49cc scooter with the volume capacity under the seat for a 12 pack of your favorite beverages. NOTE: arod138, his affiliates, sponsors, and drinking buddies in no way endorse or encourage drinking and driving. Just thought I'd throw that out there. The ride is comfortable, quick, (except up hill) but all in all a pleasure. Why didn't I get a bigger engined Scooter? Anything bigger than 49cc's requires a motorcycle license, and even though I have an endorsement from the state of Delaware after having (barely) successfully completing the Motorcycle Safety Class taken through Mike's Famous Harley Davidson, I haven't gotten around to getting it transferred to my driver's license. I know, I'm a loser...plus I'm really attached to my driver's license photo from 8 years ago, I didn't look like a chipmunk who was having an allergic reaction to bee stings like I look now days.

So, if you see a big guy riding around on an Igloo cooler with wheels around West Chester, wave hello and try not to laugh at such a ridiculous sight. Hey, I'm saving the planet, what did you do today for our beloved Mother Earth? :)