Nashville Flooding

Politics

 

In the aftermath of the Nashville flooding, there have been some startling revelations about this tragedy stemming from the media coverage and the public in general. Specifically, there are no calls to text to a number to donate money, there are no Facebook buttons with links to help or donate, very late mention on WhiteHouse.gov for donations, and not much of a word has been whispered by the news media. This all lies in stark contrast to the coverage and outpouring of concern over hurricane Katrina that devastated the Gulf coast (notably New Orleans) and the earthquake that basically destroyed Haiti.

I wonder aloud and publicly about why this is. Do you? Is it because there aren’t self made victims seen from helicopters holding signs that ask the govt. for help? With not much of a peep from the media, is it because “people helping people” works better [Nashville] than “government helping people” [New Orleans] and that doesn’t fit the script?
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Atlanta to Vancouver

Aviation

On the same trip that I lost my iPod and Bose noise canceling headsets, I got to fly from Atlanta to Vancouver. I had never flown this route before, and though I had flown in and out of ATL many times in the past, I’d never flown the queen of the skies, the 747, in or out of Georgia’s capital. The captain and I had an early wake-up call, at 04:10, but when getting to the aircraft, there was a last minute maintenance issue that caused a three hour delay. We both wished we could have slept for three more hours that morning.

During the delay, the sun was coming up so I went on my own little “walkabout” with my Canon S90. All airline pilots do an exterior inspection prior to each flight, known as a walk around. To me, it sounds a little like the Australian version of an adventure, called a walkabout. Walk arounds are much more dull than walkabouts unless some major technical problem is found. Even so, I use the time to admire the amazing aircraft I fly, the 747-400. As eloquent a description of the 747 as I’ve ever read, Barry Lopez compares the aircraft to a gothic cathedral, describing it with, “Standing on the main deck, where ‘nave’ meets ‘transept,’ and looking up toward the pilots’ ‘chancel’ . . . The machine was magnificent, beautiful, complex as an insoluble murmur of quadratic equations.” Amazing. I love this machine and she truly is the “Queen of the skies.”
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I’m a “Bose-o”

Financial

Have you ever had one of those ideas that was supposed to be so helpful but ends up causing way more trouble than it was worth? I had one of those on Saturday night. I was assigned a short trip for work, just two days, so I elected not to take my large LuggageWorks rolling bag, and just take a small backpack.

It turns out that not having my regular bag threw me out of my normal rhythm of placing my Bose QC 15 noise canceling headsets BACK into my bag from the seat back pocket where I keep them for landing. I arrived in Atlanta after a nice ride with my headsets. Unfortunately, I didn’t leave the airport with them, or my iPod that was inside the headset case.

Some lucky soul found a very expensive early Christmas present, either on my seat or in the seat-back pocket. I realized my mistake just after exiting security so I headed over to lost and found. Delta amazes me: the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport is the busiest airport in the world, measured by both passenger volume and aircraft handled. As large as it is, Delta has only one person who works the “Lost and Found” counter. I waited at this counter for 90 minutes for someone to show up, not knowing when the employee would return.
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One down, one to go

Financial

This past month, Laura and I came one step closer to our goal of being completely debt free. So far, we’ve followed the financial roadmap that we talked about a few days ago, and are debt free except for the house. If or when it comes time to buy another house, we plan on either paying cash for it, or at the most, getting a 15 year fixed rate mortgage. As for now, we are still paying off the mortgage we do have.
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New Bushes

Family

Yesterday, Laura and I planted some more bushes around the house. We’ve been meaning to for several seasons, but we could never really decide what we wanted to plant, and then it would be out of season or nothing would be on sale. We finally decided that we would go with Hostas, KnockOut roses, Mediterranean pink heather, and some variegated versions of our boxwood bushes.

After getting some water in our basement, it was necessary to build up a slope to the house with dirt. To make that look nice, we covered it with mulch and planned on planting some bushes. It looked lonely out there for a long time, like an empty canvas waiting for something to happen. Well, this week it happened.
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New Garden

Family

Laura is going to be planting a new garden in our backyard. We’ve always thought it would be nice to eat fresh veggies like tomatoes and jalapenos peppers with our dinner. I went to Home Depot and bought two 2×10’s that were 12 feet long and had them cut the two in half. It is nice when they will do that for us at the store because it saves me the hassle of doing it at home, is done at a better quality than I could do it because I lack the nice power tool saws, and they fit better in the small car for the ride home. I connected them together with some metal joints and filled it with dirt.

In the coming weeks, we’ll show the results here to see how it goes. Gardens can’t take freezes, so we’ll be planting things later this month, so stay tuned!

TobyLaura.com

Sweet Cargo

Aviation

A few days ago, I pulled up to the aircraft in JFK to fly to Anchorage.  The 747 was dwarfing this little red machine sitting on the ramp next to it.  That little red machine was cargo destined for Hong Kong and pretty sweet machine it was. A Ferrari F40! The other crew members and I couldn’t tell what year it was made, but the production years were from 1987-1992. When new, these hot little things sold for just under a half million bucks.

When driving around town, I often see these stupid, jazzed up Honda Civics that have a fat exhaust pipe and spoiler (in case the rear end wants to lift up at high speeds — whatever!) This Ferrari actually needs the spoiler, when ground speeds easily exceed 200 mph (321 kph). This was a racing version of the car, which came with a spartan interior, racing seats, no air conditioning or glove box, and racing dials for engine gauges.
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