Shoulda been last weekend's blogpost.

If you use blogger.com for your blogging platform, you know that there is a dashboard where you can Six Sigma to death your blog, from a metrics perspective, to see where traffic is coming from, and a bunch of other measurements I have no idea what to do with. Anyway, the one that I do understand, Top Search Queries, shows you what words or strings of words people put into Google.com in search of something where your blog might have come up in the search results, and then those that actually went on to land on your site. All of it is pretty cool, you can figure out of someone is stalking you if they use your name and West Chester and other overly specific keywords, or you can find out who's looking for some pretty freaky times in West Chester, it all depends.

One of the things that someone evidently searched for that really intrigued me was "B-25 Crash West Chester" or something to that affect. Now it was logical that my blog might have come up, seeing as how one of my very first blogs was about how an Eclipse 500 went skidding off the end of the runway at West Chester's Brandywine airport, but this was way too specific. I clicked on the link to see the returns that my mysterious fellow googler would have seen, and I saw links referencing a monument to the men who died in a B-25 plane crash near West Chester. The monument, and from what I can gather, the plane crash site itself is located at The Oaklands Cemetery, just outside the borough.

So, as you can imagine, I took the scooter out again, and gave myself a tour of the place. Now I'm not a morbid guy, or gothy in the least bit. I will admit to listening to the Cure and to a lesser extent Morrissey and The Smiths, but I'm no Azreal Abyss, Prince of Sorrow, Chris Kattan's character from the Goth Talk sketch on SNL in the late '90s.



Yet I really like cemetery's from a historical perspective, no really! I even took a girlfriend to the cemetery (during the day, during the day) in Key West, Florida because many of the sailors that had died when the USS Maine blew up in Havana Harbor were buried there and there was a cool monument built for them. (How's that for nerdy eh?)

So driving around this place, and let me tell you, the hills, the trees, it's Monterey, California Deja-vu again for me or something, because it is very serene and yet also endlessly fascinating. Some of the monuments have names that are very familiar as I make my way around town, Sharpless, Matlack, Barnard, Darlington, Everhart, Route 3, (just kidding!) so it's pretty interesting all in all. One of the many "famous" people buried there is two time Medal of Honor winner Major General Smedly Darlington Butler. He was quite a character in his time, I'll let you, the faithful reader Wiki him or Google him and have you draw your own conclusions about his place in history. My two cents, he died before he could see our efforts against fascism and totalitarianism, and if he had lived perhaps his cynicism might have dimmed somewhat, but we'll never know for sure.

Well, anyway, not far into the grounds, you can't miss it, on the left hand side of the road, is this polished granite memorial for the crew of the B-25 that crashed near by in May of 1944. I think it speaks volumes about the kind of people that live in West Chester, that the members of the community would take time and money to erect a monument to people who were not even the "local boys" who went off to war, but complete strangers, who had "slipped the surly bonds of earth..." during war time, a long time ago. (Note, I hate that it bothers me, but can anyone else see something wrong with the B-25 etched in stone that depicts what the crew that was flying that fateful night?)

I suppose it would have been more poignant to have gone last Monday on Memorial Day to pay respects, but I'm glad I went today, for I had the whole place to myself, for quiet reflection, to say a prayer of thanks, and to marvel at the fact that I live here. Such a great place I swear if you locals ever take it for granted that you live here, I'll remind you from time to time how good you've got it, ok?

Memorial Day Ride

Hey all,

Just a quick note, it was supposed to be a 3 day weekend, but I had to work somewhere in between the days off, so I tried to cram in as much as I could within the time that I did have off. One of the cool things that happened was running into fellow West Chester Blogger Dr. Zibbs from That Blue Yak at Chipolte. I think we were both craving a burrito at the same time.

So, on my agenda was to check out another airport, this time it was Pottstown Limerick Airport, not nearly as mom and pop as the Pottstown Municipal Airport, but an interesting place, especially given it's proximity to the Limerick Nuclear power plant. I don't know if there are guys standing around with Stingers defending the reactors, but I think you might want to avoid any overflight of the place.

That's a King Air F-90 heading west, the cooling towers are further away than it seems...

By the way, the drive from Pottstown, through Limerick, to Phoenixville is a nice drive.

On Monday, I got on the scooter to tool around first by kicking off the day with breakfast at Market Street Grill. In so many words, not to shabby a place for food anytime, like a diner, but just infinately better.

Now early on in my scooter ownership, I figured taking it out on the twisty, winding, and hilly roads just to the west of West Chester would be out of the question what with the 49cc engine struggling underneath a fat guy that tends to make it pretty anemic going up hill. But you know I said what the heck, let's go check out the Northbrook Canoe Company, the place John Young is always talking about, because that's only 6 miles from town, and riding to work is at least 2x as far, so hard could it be?
Well it turns out that it worked out great, precisely because of the twisty, winding, hilly roads, nobody is going terribly fast, so I didn't feel like I was holding up traffic, and so I made it down to the Canoe company, walked around, and took some photos and then found my way to the Northbrook Marketplace, another John Young recommendation, before turning my way towards home, but not before taking another video of the kinds of roads we have around here, which are pretty sweet, if you ask me.

Location, Location, Location

One of the best things about living in West Chester, and I may have mentioned this before, is the ability to get out of town easily, and that in a relatively short amount of time you can be somewhere else that's pretty cool too. Whether it's someplace obvious like Philadelphia, (although I don't know why people venture into Philadelphia, since we have everything you could want right here in the Dub-C.) or more interestingly Washington DC or New York City.

I've made a couple of trips down to D.C. in the last couple of weekends, and I've had a lot of fun.

First off, since the new Administration took over, DC doesn't feel any different, it's still the center of power of the free world, and that's reassuring. Second, there's always something going on an any random weekend there, so you really can't go wrong when you show up, unless it's in the absolutely oppressive heat and humidity of August.

So on the one weekend I went down to DC with Lana, we stumbled upon the preparations for Earth Day celebrations on the National Mall. There were tents set up everywhere showing off all this Green technology stuff, at least highlighting what the feds are proud of as progress along those lines. There were some electric vehicles, including an Electric Scooter. And not the Hover-round scooter either, but an actual like motorcycle like Scooter. But can something be called "Zero Emission" though any more? Yes there is no pollution coming out of the tailpipe, but electricity comes from somewhere, and somewhere there is a smoke stack converting something that was something else into electricity, right?

The most recent trip to DC involved meeting my brother Joe who came up from Langley AFB for the long anticipated visit with the newest member of the family, little Judah. Now of course it turns out there was an open house airshow at Andrews AFB, so Joe and I couldn't miss that. How many times have we seen the same types of airplanes over and over again over our lifetimes? Too many times to tell, but that's hardly the point is it? There is no unique fact about any of these machines that we can impart on the other brother without them already knowing that fact, yet we go anyway just for the shear joy of being in our comfort zone. This particular trip was unique though, in so much as Joe actually was in Air Force ROTC with one of the 6 pilots from the USAF Thunderbirds Aerial Demonstration Team. Major Sean Gustafson, a super good looking, er, I mean "good" guy. (whoa where did that come from?) Seriously, those Thunderbird pilots look sharp, both in their Flight Suits and in formation.

Now back to the reason of our trip to DC, first some familial background.

In the Rodriguez-Carbonell family bloodline that arrived here from Cuba, there were 4 individuals that ended up comprising "The First Generation" of kids being born in the USA. I was the first in 1967, followed by Ralph and Joe, and our cousin Lauren was the last, arriving in 1977. Now despite our obvious manliness, my brothers and I have yet to procreate, (that we know of) so it ended up that Lauren taking on the burden of bringing in the first of the "second wave" of our family to be born here.

So looking and holding little Judah, you realize you're not looking at another baby for the umpteenth time, the babies of your friends, neighbors and coworkers, but you're holding a relative. Now I'm no judge of baby character, but knowing his parents as well as I do, I think the "second wave" is off to a great start. In fact, he's going to be a hard act to follow. God I hope there will be more to follow, the world deserves more little Andys, (and Ralphies and Jo-Jo's too), they may be the planet's only hope! :)

I hope this kid will like going to Airshows......like he'll have a choice.... :)

I got my scooter back, scooter back, scooter back, ribs...(sorry)

So yesterday I got my scooter back from the shop where it had a recall notice taken care of an it's 700 mile checkup done. Of course I drove it all over town, you know, to break it in, and check out what's new in town.

Obviously this sweet photo is from the roof of the Mosteller Garage, soon to be demolished, in what, maybe June, July? I'm not going to worry about it until I need to worry about it. Did you notice the decal on the front above the headlight? That's the US Army Senior Aircrew Wings the kind I earned in the Army. It should make the scooter go that much faster, that's how it works right?

One of the things I did was stop by the West Chester Farmer's Market, where a man stopped me to ask about the scooter. He was a man in his late 50's early 60's perhaps, and mentioned that he hadn't ridden a scooter since his youth in England. So that put him riding around about the same time as the whole "Mod" scene back in the early to mid 60's. I told him I was going to put a whole bunch of rear view mirrors, an RAF rondel, and wear Italian suits while riding around town, and he laughed.

That's Sting, from the movie Quadrophenia, you know?

If the weather holds up, I'll start riding it to work this week. Sure the summer of nearly 5 dollar gasoline seems to have passed, so any sort of calculations I've done on the scooter paying for itself have gone out the window, but still, it's fun to ride, so what other excuse do I need?

Living the Dream in West Chester...

If Twitter is supposed to be the answer to the question (that honestly, nobody asked), "What are you doing now?" Then a blog can be more about what did you do tonight, today, this month, on your summer vacation, this year, and use as many words as you like. So here's what I did today.

I have had another interesting week transitioning into my new gig at work. Well honestly it wasn't that bad, but I'm the kind of guy who likes to jump in and figure out how to swim along the way, as opposed to over study something and then somehow be an expert swimmer the moment my toes hit the water. Learn by doing, on the job training, that's the kind of retention skills I have, as opposed to theoretical, abstract learning. I guess that's why Geometry and Statistics were such fun classes for me than the other types of mathematics classes I took in school, they seemed instantly applicable to real world scenarios. But I digress, I can assure you I did no math today. I mention all of this because after a week like this, plus with the GF visiting again, and a day that was forecast to have no sunshine in it, I was looking forward to about 24 hours of sleep, but alas, none was to be had because much had to be done.
What I did do, is rent a U-Haul van, so that I might transport my little Yamaha C3 Scooter to Martin Motorsports for it's 700 mile tune up and get a part recall taken care of, just in time for the spring riding season. I'm obviously going to jump into riding it early now and ride later into the year as to recoup any advantage that comes from the 117 MILES PER GALLON (that's right, 117 MPG) that the scooter gets, before it becomes too cold and therefore too impractical to ride a scooter 11 miles through the back roads of West Chester, East and West Goshen, Malvern and Paoli to get to work. Not to mention the idea of riding around in the darkness a scooter that can barely keep up with 35 mph traffic.

I got my scooter from the garage of a friend of mine who was so gracious as to store it there for the winter with the only requirement that he get to ride it around every once in a while, and then I made the trek up to Boyertown, Pennsylvania where I bought the scooter originally from Martin Motorsports. It's a great place, as they sell Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, and Triumph. Oh man, and check this out, you know me I'm all about an aesthetic, about a vibe, over any sort of practicality, although often times the two overlap. When I went the showroom to look around at the new motorcycles that I can't afford and probably from a skill perspective have no business trying to ride, (even though I did pass the Harley Davidson Learn to Ride Course....barely), I saw this little beauty, the 2009 Suzuki TU-250X. (I'm pretty sure the TU is not from the Tupolev Design Bureau that designs such fine aircraft as the TU-95 NATO Code Name "Bear" and the TU-144 "Concordski".

Seriously though, isn't this bike cool? With it's 1970's retro look, yet 21st century reliability? I hope they keep this in production long enough for me to put some scratch together, I think it might be the way to go as badly as I would love to get my hands on Royal Enfield Military, I'm afraid I'm not quite the mechanic it would take to own an R.E., but hey one of the things I get to look forward to as I get older is becoming more reclusive and crotchety as I spend hours away from family and friends in a garage, (or maybe please God a hanger) working on inanimate objects in my own greasy jumpsuit like some sort of fat and dirty Doctor Thaddeus Venture. That would be the life.

So after the bike thing, I drove my empty van back towards the U-Haul place but not before consulting with my new iPhone to see how far out of my way would it be to check out Pottstown Municipal Airport. As it turned out of course, not far!

I love small town airports, as every time you walk into the shack where the staff works it's like walking into someones living room who's obsessed (like I am) about airplanes. Model Airplanes hang from the ceiling, pictures of airplanes line the walls, old men with baseball caps that have airplanes on them argue with each other over various aspects of aviation regulations and flying techniques, younger to middle age guys living the dream of flight show up to meet their often much younger flight instructor for their 1 hour session of turning 100 dollar bills into smoke.

Good times, good times.

The best part of a hometown airport, is the security system. In this post 9/11 world, with the monster of a bureaucracy that the Transportation Security Administration is becoming, the TSA should back off worrying about these small town airports as a potential threat to national security, especially if they all employ the guard cats that they do at Pottstown Municipal. Because as we all know, the thing that terrorists fear above anything else, is a little pussy.

The fine folks at TNT Air at Pottstown Municipal asked me to pass along to anyone who might be interested, they want the world to know they have two prides of joy there, (and who knows how many cats, that might be an operational security secret, ok TSA?) one of them is N22904, a Cessna 172 SP with the Garmin G1000 "Glass Cockpit" and almost all LCD display cockpit with GPS navigation and engine management hardware built right into the displays. The word "cool", doesn't begin to cover it's innate coolness.

The other thing that they are proud of is their Full Motion Simulator, which can be programmed to be almost any type of aircraft, flying from anywhere in the world, under any weather conditions! Suffice to say, it's pretty neat-o. Tie a few of those things in on a network and make them Mustangs and Messerschmitts, (a whole mess of Messerschmits! as Buggs Bunny would say on mthose now banned to due to politically incorrect WWII stereotypes) and I might be there every weekend.

Of course a consequence of such a pursued lifestyle as mentioned above would be that I would soon forget the touch of a woman, and having had gaps in my life where that happened, I don't think I'm going to risk it, so like with everything else moderation is the key word here, but generally speaking I'm thinking my 40's will be a pretty fun decade to live through.