West Chester Snowpacolypse 2009

Hello from under over 13 inches of snow in West Chester, Pennsylvania!


Now for those who know me, I grew up in Florida. Despite that handicap, and I do call growing up in Florida a handicap, I do know my way around snow, and I know that 13 inches in the great scheme of things, ain't a lot of snow, but allow me to make my point.

When I was 18 years old I was made qualified to push a snow blower around Ft. Devens. At the US Military Academy at West Point, I watched the snow fall on the shoulders of the bronze statue of General George S. Patton, as if he was frozen in that moment of time when his forces raced to Bastogne, Belgium to relieve the 101st Airborne at the Battle of the Bulge.

General Patton in much better weather than Belgium 1944

Then there was the infamous Thanksgiving weekend spent in a quiet farmhouse outside of Ft. Devens. (That's a story for another time, maybe I'll tell that one at the West Chester Story Slam in January!)

To continue proving my snow pedigree, I participated in an exercise with the US Army and Japanese Ground Self Defense Forces in Sapporo, Japan, in January, I've had Snow ball fights at Fort Sheridan, near Chicago, Illinois, I've skied in West Virginia, Washington State, Idaho, Colorado, Utah and Pennsylvania, and I've lived and worked in Salt Lake City and Denver for a year each.

So again, I know my way around snow. Unlike the Eskimos however, I have only one word for it. Snow.

Grounded Zero Zero

And did it ever snow in West Chester! Well, for West Chester it was a lot of snow. So much Snow that Starbucks had the nerve to close down early on Saturday. Was it a lot of snow by the standards I've seen? No. Was it enough to paralyze the borough? Thankfully no, but not because it was an underwhelming amount of snow, but of an overwhelming response by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Borough Management team.

I've got to hand it to people around here but they were on the ball. The timing to deal with the snow seemed right. Not wasting time and resources in the middle of the storm, but attacking the roads full force the moment the last snowflakes fell. Dump trucks, Front End Loaders, Pickups with snowplows, even Bobcat mini front end loaders got into the mix, clearing sidewalks, roadways, alleys, pretty much everything you might walk or drive on. Of course private individuals and business owners did their share too.

Did it help that the snowstorm came on a weekend? Man you bet your life it did. Still, the fact that it was for all intents and purposes a non event, and as such it allowed those of us without the responsibility to do anything about the piles of snow the opportunity to simply enjoy a winter wonderland. It is this fact, and I have said this countless of times before and will continue to do so, that reminds us of the quality of life we share here in West Chester.

Mr Developer, tear down this barrier!

Hey y'all. Going a month without blogging is pretty much unforgivable, but you know I want to crank out a quality product so you'll come back for more. Geeze what am I talking about, come back for more, utter nonsense, let's get to today's story.

Actually we've had a lot go on in West Chester since the last blog, there was both the Halloween parade and the Veterans Day parade of which I wrote about last year where you can read about them here, and here. (BTW, one has plenty of turn out, the other one, not so much, but hopefully we can change that.) and then there was the 1st ever, West Chester Story Slam! Now if you're thinking about a bunch of soul patched, beret wearing hipsters smoking clove cigarettes from those long plastic filters and drinking espresso while snapping their fingers in approval after every story, it wasn't like that at all. It was more of a cross between open mic night at a comedy club, and an AA meeting.

It was pretty cool, listening to people I didn't know that well if at all tell us stories under the theme of "New Beginnings". I ended up telling the story of when I first arrived in Utah, when I got "diverted" on a tour that I thought was supposed to go to Park City, that ended up first stopping by to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Mormon History Museum, and the Genealogy Library. Not my strongest story, given how I've got some "go-to" gems like the High Altitude Chamber at McDill AFB story, and others, but it was a good start that just like skydiving, you're nervous and scared as you stare out the back end of the plane, but when you're safely on the ground, the adrenalin, man you want to do that again. So I'll be getting my fix again in January. Hope to see you there!

So, it's been an interesting month as it often is here in West Chester, we didn't burn the place down when the Philly's lost the World Series, so that was kind of nice, and the weather has been kind of bi polar, with dreary rain sprinkled days that last for days, and days of CAVU, (Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited) as we aviators say. :)

With the weather so good, Lana and I even checked out Longwood Gardens, my first time if you can believe it, and it’s clear that our timing was off, because the batteries on both my Nikon Coolpix camera and my iPhone dropped dead, that and if we waited a couple of weeks, we’d get to see all the Christmas lights and decorations. So guess who is going to drop another 30 bucks on getting back in to Longwood Gardens in the next couple of weeks? Yup, me.

Truly though it’s worth it, I’m not a plant guy by any stretch of the imagination, but I do find myself wishing I knew my botany better, if for nothing else than to be able to drive around West Chester on my scooter and say, “That’s an Elm, that’s a Maple, that’s an Eastern White Pine, that’s a Larch,(The Larch) that’s a TREEEEEEEE....as I wreck into one as I’m not paying attention...:)

Oh so I almost forgot, what’s with the title of this blog entry, right? A minor annoyance of mine is all, let me explain. You know it’s also the 20^th Anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall, which got me to thinking about freedom, which got me also thinking to Yoani Sanchez, the Cuban blogger who got beat up by the Cuban police, which made reminded me of the Veterans Parade and the freedoms we have here in West Chester to post anything we want, which led me to today’s blog. See, when the Rite Aid corporation bought out the Eckerd Drug corporation, they obviously had a redundant presence on Gay Street. So when they consolidated their West Chester operations into the one on the first floor of the Greentree building, they abandoned the storefront across from the Post Office. This lead to one of those amazing happenstances in borough life, that of FREE PARKING. With the Mostellar garage a gravel pit now, can you imagine, a place where you can park, in the center of town, FOR FREE, without fear of being towed? Now I play by the rules, and I pay for parking as part of my rent with the Greentree Building, but I was always happy for those people who could park there whether it was for them to run errands, buy a stamp at the post office, or for a night out on the town.

That's my other Blue Scooter, the '98 Chevy Lumina. Yea I parked there, want to make something of it?

That’s why it kind of upset me to see them put up Jersey Barriers around the parking spaces. It’s like the forces at work here couldn’t live with the idea of not making any money off of the 10 or so spaces, so they just denied it to everyone simply because they could. I’m not sure who’s responsible for it, but this strongly worded Blog about it should shame them into removing those barriers, tearing down those walls, right? Right.....

Happy Thanksgiving y’all, if anybody knows where I can mooch an invitation to dinner, let me know! :)

Just a good old boy....

I wish I had a better way to illustrate today's story, but because I believed that it would in my best interest to make sure I didn't inadvertently create evidence that could later be used against me, so I didn't document my activities using my iPhone. I'm hoping though that perhaps my words alone and images from pop culture can effectively put an image in your mind of what I was up to on Saturday.

Was that previous sentence overly wordy? I'm working on trying to convey things with verbal efficiency. I am open to any and all constructive criticism.

ANYway.....

So, after 10 years of faithful, unfailing service, my $200 futon, bought in Salt Lake City, moved into 3 different apartments and having spent 6 months in a storage facility in Denver, then making the trek to the east coast, and 3 more address changes before settling into West Chester, finally broke. Splintered actually. It was an inelegant demise, with loud cracking, creaking and popping noises as it gave up the ghost, embarrassingly reminding me that I'm fat, as if it could simply no longer deal with the enormous pressure of serving as my couch and bed.

So I needed a new futon.

You're probably wondering, what's a successful, handsome guy like myself still doing living in a studio apartment, sleeping on futons? Hey, did you see that Philies game? Wow!

Soooooo, I found one at IKEA, a METAL futon frame, (I saved the large foam mattress, since it has had 10 years to memorize my unique body shape, so much for memory foam) that seemed to be the perfect solution to my dilemma, and at $80 bucks, such a deal!

There was one major problem, how was I going to get this unwieldy thing home? As you know, Ikea does the whole flat packaging thing, and it sure as heck wasn't going to fit IN my car, and I didn't have those roof carriers, so I thought I was screwed, but it turns out they have a cool solution, these triangular thingies (again, a problem with vocabulary) that you put on the roof of the car, and it helps to distribute the weight of the item on the roof of your car. They even give you free twine, as much you need, you just have to, you know, do it yourself. So, guess what I did?!

I muscled this 60 pound beast on to the roof of my car in the cold, unrelenting rain mind you, and man, I tied the shiiiit out of it, ask Mike Sawyer one day about his flying bed. There was noooooo waaaaay I was going to have this thing set sail off the top of the roof of my car, because I ran all of that free twine around the top of my car, threading it through the windows of the front and back seat, up top again, pulling tighter and tighter with each successive round trip, enjoying by the way my new driver's side window that rolls both up and down, thanks to me correctly deducting that I had a bad contact on the power window switch, not some $700 window motor that the dealer wanted to charge me. Sorry, off tangent a bit, but man I'm so proud of myself that I fixed it with a simple replacement after market window switch, and not getting ripped off by the dealership.

So, back to the pouring rain, and me tying down this flat futon to the roof of my car.

I probably went 6 or 7 times through the windows of my car with this twine, tying it down to the point that there was veritably no slack at all when one plucked at the individual strands of twine. I stood back and wiped the rain off my glasses so that I could better admire my handiwork. Then it dawned on me. How am I going to get into my car? You see, in my haste, or lets say in my unbridled exuberance, I neglected to you know, think it all the way out. I should have opened the doors first, and I'm assuming you, my loyal and more intelligent than me reader, would have figured it out from the outset, right? Right....

Now if you know even a little about me, it's not that I'm lazy, (no really!) it's just that I, (like electricity) prefer to take the path of least resistance. There was very little chance in hell that I was going to undo the all ties in the twine that I just spent the last 20 minutes tying off in the cold October rain, so with the windows already down, (ah, that new power windows switch, sooooo nice) I figured that if Bo and Luke Duke and every NASCAR race car driver can slide into their cars through the driver's side window, so surely despite my Boss Hogg size, I could do the same. Long story short, it wasn't pretty, it wasn't graceful, but damn it, I somehow managed to get into my car feet first through the drivers window.

I sat in my car for a moment, laughing at myself and my ingenuity, before tentatively setting out of the parking lot of Ikea for the ride home. I tell you what, I started off, 25, 35, 45 miles an hour, occasionally looking up to make sure my futon was still with me, although trust me, if it had blown off, I'd have known about it right quick. But with more time and confidence I had it up to nearly 60 mph on 202. When I pulled in to the back entrance of the Greentree building, all I had to do was grab the P-38 can opener on my key chain, and one by one, cut the individual twines until the last one popped, and "Ta-Da!" I was free, I could open the door to my car and exit it in a much more dignified manner than which I had entered.

The rest of the day is of course anti-climatic, putting the thing together was a piece of cake as is all Ikea furniture, and although most of my old futon is scrap wood now, I still have the original arm rests and mattress to remind me of my humble beginnings, aaaaaaand it reminds me of my humble present.....damn I need to buy a real bed, maybe get a real place to live while I'm at it?
Since I'm wishing for things, I want a puppy....sheesh.

Is it October already?

A few things. Hello all, I'm writing to you to what amounts to my living room, (since I really don't have one in my 1 man cell, er, I mean studio apartment in the Greentree building) other wise known as the Starbucks across the street. First, welcome everyone to the fall season, here in beautiful West Chester, as if on some pre agreed upon signal, some of the leaves on some of the trees begin to wimp out on life, turn yeller, and make their suicide leap to the ground. Like lemmings I's tells ya these leaves are...

Second, my scooter crossed over the 1000 mile mark of trouble free service. I took this very clever picture at the northern gate entrance to Everhardt park as it crossed 1000, as if to give the casual viewer the idea that through fortuitous circumstance and fate that it just happened to cross 1000 ever so randomly at that particular location, but of course the truth is that I circled the park several times during the last mile, 999.0 to make sure I ended up there when the numbers rolled over. Sorry for perpetrating such a heinous fraud upon my loyal readers, but, well, whatever!

Third, as if this humble blogger cannot be given an even bigger head, I got quite the compliment from Godfather of West Chester Blogging, WCJIM, otherwise known as West Chester University professor and city councilman Dr. Jim Jones. I like to call him Dr. Jones, because it sounds so Indiana Jones-ish. Anyway, to read his post about myself and other local area bloggers, click here.

Finally, with the fall weather upon us, it can only mean one thing. ROTORFEST. Now I've always been, and will continue to be, a fixed wing man, but I do have a fond memory of flying in a Bell 47 up and down Cocoa Beach for 4th of July, 1975, and then several years later in a UH-1P as a Civil Air Patrol Cadet at McDill AFB, 1983, and most recently last year flying side by side with my brother Joe right before he went to Afghanistan in a Hughes 500. So suffice to say, it's difficult for me to imagine under what circumstances I'd miss a chance to check out ROTORFEST when it comes to town. This year it was Lana's turn to ride in a Helicopter, and surprise, surprise, she enjoyed it. She managed to get some great shots of West Chester off in the distance, and those miserable McMansions that are a sadly ubiquitous in the suburbs, no offence to my readers who are rocking the McMansion lifestyle, more power to you, no seriously, you use up a disproportionate amount of power! :)

So, with October off to a high and mighty start, I find myself looking forward to the last 3 months of the year, what with the Halloween parade, Veterans Day Parade, and Christmas Parade all on the horizon. The twitter-verse is all a twitter with talk of a Guerrilla Drive-In float in the Halloween parade, and you just know that's going to be fun! Also, the Phillies are also in the playoffs, so let's hope they make it all the way to the fall classic, but let's hope we avoid last year's celebration in the borough, what with the flipped cars and the fires and whatnot...

Charleston, South Carolina, or as I like to call it, West Chester by the Sea...(why not right?)

Hola Amigos, I know it's been a long time since I've rapped at ya....(ok, who always starts off their editorials with that opening? Anyone? Anyone?)

It's been a great summer, and I ended it by taking some time off the week before Labor Day to take the train down to Southern Pines, North Carolina, my newest favorite get away location and of course to spend time with Lana.

Lana is the blond.....on the left

With us both having the time off together, and as nice and relaxing Southern Pines and Pinehurst is, we both wanted to strike out to someplace new and to her credit, it was her idea as she had heard some good things about Charleston and wanted to road trip it out there. Now I'm not sure how it happened, but I consider myself one of those gentile Southern gentlemen who knows his way around the South from Atlanta to Birmingham to Columbia, and all points in between.

Yet somehow, on those countless trips up and down I-95 from Orlando up to Ft Bragg to go shopping for uniform items, or those great Additional Flight Training Programs where we'd fly to Fort Rucker Alabama to hit a Barbecue shack in Enterprise, or St. Simmons Island Georgia for some low country seafood, I'd somehow never made it to Charleston. Maybe because it was out of the way, a good 50 miles off of I-95, and although come to think of it I might have briefly landed at Charleston AFB long enough to drop off some parts or something, I had not had the pleasure of checking the place out.
Here's the takeaway from today's blog entry, and that is that Charleston is a great place, and you should go there right away! (and no, just like I don't work for the West Chester BID, nor do I work for the Charleston Chamber of Commerce.

Charleston is a little bit older than West Chester, and I'd be willing to bet that they have as many historical buildings as we do here in town. Great architecture, great shopping and great restaurants, but the difference of course is that beautiful waterfront view. I just have a feeling that as great as life is here, could it hurt if from say the top of Coyote Crossings we could look out over the water and see a giant Aircraft Carrier permanently tied up to the docks serving as a museum? Colorful sailboats darting in and out of coves? Merchant ships escorted by small pilot boats in and out of our harbor? Yea, I know, nice thought right?


So, just like Charleston, West Chester is kind of off the beaten path, you have to almost go out of your way to visit here, but as I go along in life, I've learned going out of your way usually pays off in many ways, don't ya think?

Local Blogger survives second bombing attempt

As many of you recall, last year an as of yet unidentified person planted an explosive device in the Mosteller Garage, in what was no doubt an attempt to ruin my day. Recently, after a relatively quite period, a second attempt was made, using nothing short of a JDAM, or Joint Direct Attack Munition, a GPS guided bomb dropped from the thousands of feet in the air by either a B-1A or B-52G bomber that was once again directed at the Mosteller garage where I park, but this time, with devastating effects....

Ok so that didn't exactly happen.

Still, my life has been somewhat disrupted because....god forbid....I have to walk a block, A BLOCK, to another garage in town. I mean I have it all timed out, if I can make it to the garage before the the courthouse clock tower rings 8 o'clock, I'll probably make it to work on time. If you want to watch the real time progress of the destruction of the garage on a webcam, click here!

When they closed the Mosteller garage, they didn't do anything to it for the first couple of weeks, thus for a short time it became the boro's largest indoor/outdoor skate park, with town's troubled teens running roughshod all over it. However it wasn't long before the concrete chomping machines came and began to wrought their distruction. The project is progressing along just fine, sure it would have been cool if they had imploded it, and let's hope the new garage goes up quickly, because it's really one of the only visible works going on in town, what when you consider they are supposed to be building a hotel behind the old Warner theater building, and those cool looking condos on Market Street next to Coyote Crossing. Then there's that proposed Zukin hotel on the old Rite Aid site across from the Post Office, we'll see if that ever get's off the ground.

Clearly the economy is going through a transition, and by extension so is West Chester, but hopefully things like the new garage will position the town for it's next incarnation. And I'll have front row seats for it....if people would stop trying to plant bombs in my way....

Insert "Intercourse" Joke Here.

Hey, if the Amish can cash in on the name of their town, why can't I, right? I mean, who knows what kind of readers are going to find their way to my blog based on the word intercourse, but hey, traffic is traffic, right?

This weeks story...

I got it in my head, when I managed to get to Toughkenamon, you know, just beyond Kennett Square and back on the scooter, that further distances were possible, especially if you used the "walking" feature on Google maps, where you indicate you want directions to where you want to go by foot than by car, thus keeping you off the interstates and such, places where my scooter and I have no business, what with the highway speeds and all that we cannot possibly reach.

So, I found out that there was going to be this small fly in of airplanes at the Smoketown Airport, not far from Lancaster, Pa. Sure enough, there was a route of back roads I could take to get there and back, all 35 miles, so I figured why not?

So the trip starts off good enough, breakfast with my friends at Penn's Table, and then riding out of town on West Strausburg Road. The problem, if one can call it a problem, is the fact that there was a bridge out in Mortonville. This led to a very nice detour through Embreeville and Unionville before getting back on track. Thank God I had the iPhone with the Google Map and GPS feature, at one point I found myself at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere, cornfields at every side, I almost expected the devil himself to come out and make me a deal so that I could play the guitar really well or something.




There's definitely a change in the topography that takes place from where we are in the cool shade of the trees that hang over the roads and over the Brandywine river to where it begins to open up to our north and west into rolling farmland and open spaces. The other sign that things are a little bit different? Horse drawn Buggies. Men in suspenders and straw hats, women with scarves on their heads and long skirts, riding the scooter through piles of horse manure on the road, yup, the Amish.



The Scooter made it perfectly to the infamously named town of Intercourse, Pennsylvania, the gateway to where the Amish cash in. Who can blame them really, between their fresh farm grown products, the quilts, the handmade quality furniture, who can't resist the desire at some point living in the Mid Atlantic states or beyond of just packing up the car and making a little road trip out to this bucolic countryside and do some shopping or ride on a buggy?



Just to cover their bases though, because surprise surprise, not every guy likes going over quilting patterns for hours and hours, right in the middle of Intercourse is the American Military Edged Weaponry Museum. I saw this place and had to stop, I mean, a military museum? How can I not? I mean, knives and pointed sticks? I mean, I can defend myself against fresh fruit, (you know, loganberries, bananas) but a bayonet in the gut? I had to check it out. 3 bucks gets you buzzed into an old bank branch complete with vault where they have display cases of every kind of knife we have ever used in wartime. They even had several versions of the knife I used in the Army, the Aircrew Survival knife, through my skilled hands many a coconut has met it's demise when we were in Key West.

So, back on the road, and after a fill up first as the scooter refused to go an inch further without some gas, we made it through Intercourse (no sex jokes, have you noticed?) and went through Bird in Hand, (that's a town, Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania) before finally making it to Smoketown.


There regular pilot folks, with regular old general aviation airplanes, not a whole lot of warbirds, or fancy schmancy airplanes, just a few classics, getting together for spot landing contests and flour bombing contests. That's right, a contest where a pilot flies 500 feet above the runway and throws out a sack of flour to hit a target below. Something I don't see every day, that's for sure!

Beriev 103 Seaplane from Russia

It seemed like controlled chaos, but somehow it worked. Airplanes took off and landed, entered the pattern, all without the aid of an Air Traffic Control tower. This is what happens when people who have a passion for something, they can make anything possible, from the flying right down to the hot dog grill.

Planes and Trains or Amtrak and Airplanes

Before long, it was time to make the reverse trip home, and it was relatively uneventful, now that I seemed to know what I was doing. The bridge being out still forced me to take another scenic detour, but honestly, every turn it seems is a new path of discovery around here, I really hope I have a chance to try them all.

Hibernation

This was just such a good weekend to hibernate for me. This morning, 10:00 AM was as dark as 10:00 PM, with rain on and off all morning long. This led me to knocking out my laundry several hours earlier on a Sunday than normal, since all I did this weekend was take naps throughout the day. I guess I'm making up for the lousy sleep I get during the week, and yes I know they say that getting exercise will make for better and more efficient sleep, so you won't be so tired, so you can do even more exercise which will then make you sleep even better, well you see I know there is supposed to be some up cycle to it all, but I'm on the other end of the energy spectrum, the part that is too tired to exercise, which makes my sleep lousy, well, my point is made right? I need to break that cycle, any tips?

So, I alluded to laundry a moment ago right? I'll get to that in a moment, but let me tie it in by mentioning the other things going on around here at the infamous Greentree Building, West Chester's most exclusive address! (um, not really) It's been one week since I've started walking to my car that's now in the Bicentennial Garage, since they've closed the Mosteller Garage. That'll be worth of it's own headline blog, but in a nutshell, so far so good. The other thing is there's been a change in maintenance management for the better, as I'm no longer showering in ankle deep water in my bathtub, I guess all the hair I've lost over the last 4 years living here finally managed to clog the place up. (Oh wait, unlike my brothers, I've not lost my hair, so what could it be????)

Anyway, one day coming home from work I find a note slipped under my door, (you know, it's the passive aggressive way our building managers communicate with us tenets.) to tell us they are installing new washers and dryers in the building. Are you kidding? Talk about exceeding my expectations! I had checked them out, and they are pretty cool, pure white, front end loading washing machines with black tinted windows, looking all futuristic out of 2001: a Space Odyssey.


Wait, can that statement be correct? Can something look futuristic if the aesthetic is set 8 years in the past? I guess it's easy for futurists and science fiction writers to have taken what was going on in their eras, and apply a little forward looking Darwinist evolutionary thinking to propose that if they were in 1968, by 2001 we'd have space stations and moon bases, just like with the decay that was evident in 1970's New York City, that by the late 20th Century, New York would be a dystopian, maximum security prison in need of being escaped from. Ahem. Anybody else saw The Disney Company coming into Times Square? Yea right. And no, Disney cannot be considered Dystopian...

Why do I get the feeling that my prediction of the year 2020 will have me driving a 30 year old car? I don't want to know, who moved my cheese, I want to know, where is my jetpack?

Ah the heck with it, it looks like rain again, I'm going to take a nap...rawr! (That's my bear imitation, woof, woof woof, that's my other dog imitation.)
Any body who can name where that last reference is from, (other than Ralph), I'll buy them a Coke. Ya Oddball!

Oh and if this post seemed to ramble, remember, I'm only now coming out of hybernation.

Another good weekend, jealous?

Summer 2009 might go down in the history books as one of the most comfortable summers I've ever experienced. Who ever heard of July weather in the 80's? Especially under the shade of the giant trees that are in Everhart Park? (Man I wish I knew trees better, like the names of them, at this point I don't know if they are Oak, Sycamore, Maples, or what. I'm familiar with the song, "The Trees" from Rush, but despite its nerdy reference, it's never helped me understanding one from another) Well, let me just cover the highlights of the weekend.

I drove by on the scooter past a bunch of bikers who had rolled into town to support the troops as is our West Chester protest/counter protestor Saturday Morning and I video taped them as I went by. I'm thinking one of those helmet mounted cams might not be a bad way to go, seeing as how I had visions of losing control and careening into the parked bikes and knocking them over like dominoes. "I say we kill him!", "I say we let him go!" "NO!!!"



Then I did a run out to Downingtown just so I could work my way back into town via Valley Stream Road (think behind the Wegmans). Man that's such a nice little ride.



Then, I studied for my FAA Written Exam at the Starbucks, man if I don't get this ball rolling and finish the pilot's license, I'll never live it down.

It's just a jump, to the left....

THEN, as if Saturday wasn't fulfilling enough, I checked out the Rocky Horror Picture Show in Phoenixville. That was fun, last time I saw RHPS it was at the Dream Theater in Monterey California. Both the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville as well as the Dream Theater, what great old restored venues. Man, West Chester needs a theater. Couldn't we convince the guy who's supposed to build a hotel on the site of West Chester's old Warner theater to rebuild or at least have some of it restored as a boutique venue for cool foreign films with subtitles and crazy animation festivals?

Sunday, was much more relaxed, but again it was as simple as sitting under the shade trees and listening to the music and hanging out with John Young of Guerrilla Drive In fame and watching people drop 5 bucks a pop on air brush tattoos of his own designs.

I mean on the one hand, for all intents and purpose the Turk's Head Music Festival is simply another First Thursday or Super Sunday event in town, you know, funnel cake and tie dye skirts for sale along with spinal cord alignment and Bath Fitters set ups under portable tents, only with you know, more music. On the other hand, it's a great way to just enjoy some great music, from local acts, and it's not like they were doing cover band work either, but a lot of original music, and you've got to respect a band that can be able to great total strangers out there to dance to a song they've never heard of before....

I'm pretty tired though, I didn't take my normal 3 or 4 naps throughout the day, so I'm feeling good and tired now, but hey, I earned it, how many people did as much as I did in the last 48 hours? Oh yea, a lot of people did, man I'm out of shape.... :)

I'm in the middle of a big bike race!

One of my favorite sketches from the seminal Canadian comedy Troupe Kids in the Hall is the one with Bruce McColluch, playing a young boy character named Gavin. I could tell you the gist of the story, but why do that when I can show you


Ok, so now we're on the same page, and you get my humor right? Ok, so here in town, another summer weekend, another something or other going on in town. This Saturday, Iron Hill Twilight Criterion. A bunch of 1% bodyfat people in spandex speeding around on bicycles more expensive than my car as fast as they possibly can around the streets of West Chester.

Sounds fun, right? Short answer, yes, yes it is. Fun to watch anyway, fun to people watch, simply just another example of the extremly high quality of life we routinely experience here in West Chester. (You'd think I was on the payroll of the Business Improvement District, but I'm not.)

It's simple enough, the day starts with them having to clear the streets around 1:00 PM, as demonstrated here.

It boggles the mind that this person didn't know what was going on in town, what with the electronic signs, the text messages from the borough sent straight to your cell phone, and you know, the old fashioned paper signs taped to the lightpoles and meters, but hey, I'm not driving around in a super nice car, so what do I know...

The race breaks things up between the women's races and the men's races with a kid's race, you know the kind of race were everyone's a winner!!! (Shesh, but still kinda cute)

But that wasn't the only game in town. Market Street was closed down for a street chalk art contest, some food, and a band of nice old gentlemen playing...."Classic RAWWWK".

And over on Church street, just north of Gay, during the summer months is a big "troubled teen" hangout in West Chester. The term is mine of course, I'm sure the kids are alright, (Who?)it's just that I'm old and they scare me. Why is it that at least twice now in my life I'm scared of teenagers? Heck come to think of it, at every stage of my life I've been afraid of teenagers, even when I was a teenager. But I digress, these kids, during the middle of the race had there own thing going, having set up an obstacle jumping contest right in the middle of the street. Say what you will about whiny Emo kids, they know how to have a good time.

It took a lot of photos, and I have to tell you it's about speed, and my little Nikon Coolpix camera doesn't quite cut it for capturing all the extreme sports action especially at dusk and at night, so thank goodness for the video feature to get the sense of speed and motion. Note the hair on the one girl, these guys are reallymoving and you could feel it all the way up on the 4th floor balcony of my apartment.



Acording to the people running the event, 20,000 people crowded into West Chester to enjoy the festivities. It seemed like it. It amazes me to because people have so many choices as to how to spend the weekend what with Blobfest in Phoenixville, another bike race in Philly, and the draw of the Jersey shore always present during the summer, it's nice to see so many people chose to hang out with me in my little town.

What the 4th is about Part 2 of 2

Quick turnaround eh?

Ok, so, I'm on the R1, pulling into Terminal 2 when my phone rang. Now I don't get a whole lot of phone calls these days, unless it's phone spam....(wait, was there a name for when people called us at dinner with unsolicited sales pitches, what was that called when they did it, we all had to sign up on some federal list....TELE-MARKETING! That's it, although why I wrote and had you follow my thought process in trying to remember that, well, that's part of the fun right?) but for some reason I picked it up and what do you know, it was actually US Airways calling to tell me that my flight was delayed. Just a real person courtesy call, and that they had already took steps to book me on the next flight just in case I missed my connection in Charlotte (CLT).

Well, not much I can do about it, and hanging out in PHL is not exactly fun, but I manage to entertain myself with the already obsolete iPhone. Apparently the weather in Boston has delayed my Embraer Emb-190. This will be a first for me, to fly in Brazil's first official "full size" jetliner, and when I finally enter the cabin when it arrives an hour late, impressed is what I am. This is no stretched out ERJ-145, (what's that, right? It's Embraer's first commuter jet, let's just say they've come a long way baby since the EMB-110 Banderante! a 13 passenger twin turbo prop commuter airplane that I used to throw luggage onto back in the late 80's.)

Would I rather be flying in a Boeing 737 or 717? Sure, I'd like to say, "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going!" but airlines got to make money somehow, and these foreign government subsidized airliners like Bombardier, Embraer and Airbus make it all but impossible for Boeing to compete except in the higher profit margin aircraft like the 747, 777 and the 787. Although to be honest, I would so like to fly in the Boeing design assisted Sukhoi 100 "Super Jet", a 75-95 seat commuter jet. How often do you get to say you flew in a Russian built aircraft?

Gosh all this writing and I've not even gotten to the point of the second part of my 4th of July blog.

So, I'm flying down to Fayetteville to be with Lana, for the 4th of July and the 5th of July, a soon to be known and widely celebrated holiday known as "Svetlana's Birthday", day. I was packing a Garmin GPS as a gift, knowing that as the good boyfriend I couldn't show up empty handed. Turns out she loves the GPS, it has it's quirks, but to expect it to be 100% accurate in a backwater burg like Pinehurst/Southern Pines would be asking a lot, but it does the job.

No, not the French Riviera, but uh, Norfolk, Virginia? Really?

We had a wonderful time, but we never really nailed down where we were going to celebrate the 4th of July until the last minute. The thought occurred to me, "you know, Joe is only a few hundred miles away, in Norfolk, Virginia, and he's being visited by his girlfriend Sheyla, so why not call and see if he's cool to have some visitors for the fireworks? At first he seemed nonplussed to the idea, taking several minutes between text messages, and an allusion to having a very uncomfortable couch fold away bed, as soon as I mentioned that I could bring some "Fat Tire Ale" to the party, (a Colorado Microbrew that has only now made it east of the Mississippi, and is for all intents and purpose, the best beer I've ever had,) I felt like we had the greenlight to go!

Long story short, (that's another cliche I hate, because it never is either one, you know?) Lana and I make the GPS drive up to Norfolk, meet up with the bro and the French Canadian GF, (it was fun by the way to hear all the accents being spoken) got a tour of Langley AFB and got lucky to watch a flight of five F-22's take off in succession. Of course we got downtown to eat some Cuban "fusion" food, and a pretty high quality 4th of July celebration and fireworks show right on the water on the harbor. The events even attracted some tall ships from the navies of Brasil and Uruguay. Remember the Bicentennial? All those tall ships in New York Harbor? It seems no 4th of July is complete without those magnificent ships as guests to our ports now, right?

Next morning is July 5th, Lana's birthday, and after spending the night at one of the more sketchy Ramada's I've ever stayed at, which was not far from the Hampton Coliseum, (See "Hampton Comes Alive", a very good live PHISH album, by the way) we went back over to Joseph's places for Scrambled Eggs, Fresh Fruit, Crepes and Chocolate Nutella.

Yum.

Like all good times, they must come to an end, and the time to come home came way to quickly. Not that the last day went exactly smoothly, but hey, no matter what, the weekend can definitely be categorized as a huge success, and let's leave it at that.

Now in case you forgot, I promise you I didn't which is to tie it all in as to what the 4th is all about, and it is this, which is how I just loved how a Russian, a Canadian, and two nerdy dudes that could have very easily been born in Cuba if Fidel had only been a better baseball player, ended up celebrating the birth of the United States of America together.

When they say things like "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", I don't know how better to demonstrate it than to be with the people you love, eating, drinking, watching things getting blowed up, and doing things that you love to do. Whether that's paying homage to brave Helicopter Pilots, contemplating the future of global aircraft manufacturing, standing by a fence and watching F-22's take off for who knows where, enjoying the services of the 24 GPS satellites in orbit above us, or having crepes with Nutella, I can only hope that everyone had as nice a 4th of July holiday as I did, and that you took a moment to remember what it's all about!

What the 4th is about Part 1 of 2

Hey everybody,

This is not going to be some long drawn out dissertation on patriotism on the nations birthday and that's why it needs to be a two parter, but simply I wanted to get something out since it had been a while since my last post, and I'm waiting for the photos from the entire weekend that are on another SD card.

So, my weekend starts with a ride to the the train station in Media, with a buddy of mine I used to work with. It's amazing how quite it is around West Chester at a few minutes after 6 in the morning, it's an hour I don't want to get used to seeing routinely anytime soon, but who knows maybe I should. We get into the city, my intent ultimately to catch the R1 Train to get to the airport to catch my flight to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Now part of the appeal of going as early as I did was of course the free ride to and from the Airport, (Thanks Jeff! I'll get you back!) but the chance to grab a real breakfast at the great Reading Terminal Market. Sure enough, I arrived just as they opened and I saddled up for some blueberry pancakes at the Amish diner they've got there.

Here's the cool part of the whole thing, not long after sitting down, a distinguished looking man, (as distinguished as one gets in a T-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes and a black stetson hat with the crossed swords symbol of the Cavalry) his wife and daughter sat down next down me. Now of course immediately, we all know who comes to mind when one sees someone wearing a black stetson, Colonel Kilgore, right? Well, although the character is a long way off from the reality of your typical Battalion Commander of an Air Cav unit, there certainly were no shortage of characters that make up the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, of which this man was a member, and here in Philadelphia attending the 26th anniversary reunion.

We talked Army aviation, helicopters, and Vietnam, while I filled him in as much as I could on what I know about the Amish, and life here in Philadelphia. All in all it was a great way to kick off my trip, with one of America's heroes. We talked about Chickenhawk, a book by Robert Mason, if you want to really understand the humor and the horror that was the helicopter pilot's experience in Vietnam, you needn't start anywhere else. Even his college age daughter had read it, I'm sure in an effort to know her father better, and she had mentioned that it's now required reading at Fort Rucker, America's training post for all future Army aviators.

My blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs were ice cold by the time we parted company, but it was an honor to meet him. I mean I'm no stranger to Vietnam era Army Aviators, what with me having spent my 20's being chauffeured around by them in the back of an RU-21A, but still I just enjoyed the chance meeting. Welcome home Kevin.

He had mentioned that there was tractor trailer parked out in front of the Marriott I should check out, which I promptly did when I settled my bill.

I don't know what else to say upon beholding this seemingly innocuous trailer, except for....cooooool.....a bar on wheels! A sanctuary where a Helicopter pilot can tell lies to his friends without contradiction, a place where one can toast those who came before and didn't come back.

The logic is pretty simple in justifying having a mobile tractor trailer bar on wheels, hey, beers at the bars at the hotels these days are pushing 5 bucks a bottle, and you can't smoke indoors anymore, so what the heck? The inside walls are covered with memorabilia from the glory days, pieces of helicopters hang from the ceiling, it is the perfect refuge. Sure it reeks of spilled beer and cigarettes, but it sure beats setting up a GP-Large every time happy hour rolls around.

Before long it was back to Suburban Station, to catch the R1 to the airport, and begin a pretty fun weekend, of which I'll share with you soon!

Another weekend, Another adventure

I have yet to ride my scooter to work, mainly because I've used the excuse of rain and springtime pollen and it's associated allergies to keep driving the car, but that may come to an end soon. I took the C-3 out as far as I've ever taken it before, about 15 miles, from downtown West Chester to the New Garden Airport, just west of Kennett Square. Speaking of Kennett Square, it was nice, a wanna be West Chester, but with more Mexicans. Must be all the Mushroom harvesting houses, I guess they are they absolute opposite of a green houses huh?, and the area smells like, well, how else do you think they raise mushrooms?











What was my inspiration to make it out to New Garden Airport? Yes, another airshow, of course. This one is a small airport, so it's a small airshow, but I've noticed more people at this airshow than at the helicopter airshow we have at Brandywine Airport here in West Chester. I wonder if that might change, as I heard that there might be a wings and wheels airshow in September, which might bring out the people, so vamos a ver.


You know this being an airshow like the last airshow I attended, what stands out in my mind was the non airshow related stuff, like how nice the ride out was. More farmland, more shady lanes, more twisty roads, I took Google's "walking" advice as opposed to driving advice to come up with a map there, so I would end up on these back roads on purpose so I didn't feel like I was backing up any traffic. I passed this really cool set of ruins on the way there, and then when I arrived there, I got to park among the motorcycles and antique cars that were on display there. I felt like a VIP and I got some looks.

The other cool thing was stumbling upon someone's "hanger". I guess he opened it up for the airshow, and with the exception of a beat up glider hanging from the ceiling, this was really one man's collection of antique motorcycles. Nortons, BSA's, Vincents, Triumphs, and old Indians and Harley Davidsons. There's no law that says you have to keep airplanes in an airplane hanger, heck late in Steve McQueen's life he practically lived in his hanger with his airplane and motorcycles.

Now that sounds like the good life to me...