Sailor's World

What In The World Is That?

2012-01-03T14:24:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Annie and I took a spur-of-the-moment drive out in the country west of Sweet Haven. We noted some changes in the scenery since we had last been out in that area (maybe 10 years ago). We noted that the little Post Office - abandoned many years, with a old rusty bed and a dead cat on the bed had been refurbished, and someone was now living there. There were a lot of changes like that - little things, something fixed up, something run down. But then as we were heading back, we saw these guys in the far distance and dead-reckoned our way over for a closer look.
We wondered over these strange structures for quite a while and couldn't think of anything that they looked like they could to. A friend who has lived in Sweet Haven for most of his life told me these were solar collectors that were supposed to boil water and run generators, and were very successful at separating the gullible investors from their money.

And finally, a little further on, two bald eagles in an old cottonwood tree. This shot has been cropped and is a little shaky, but it was fun to see them, sitting in the winter sun and watching for a rabbit for dinner.

And he shall turn the hearts of the Fathers.....

2011-12-19T23:08:00.000-07:00

Some days you make a little change, and you find out it isn't so little. Often times we remember something that we did that caused us problems or discomfort....and I guess that is how we learn not to do a host of stupid things. But sometimes the result is for the good, or is an epiphanal moment when you see things differently from that moment on.

A few days ago I was surfing the net and turned to FamilySearch.org and began looking up some of my ancestors. I didn't have to go very far back to run into Charles S, my step-grandfather and despised black sheep of the family. I have to say that I think he earned every ounce of malice that has come his way. He was a horrible man, and made my dad's early life, and that of the rest of his family a living hell. But I was curious.

All that I knew was that Grandma had married him in Kansas City - I don't think anyone even knew the year. We knew he was older, alcoholic, given to gambling, given to child beating, wife beating, and not so good at holding a job. All in all, not a great legacy. But still, I was curious and began so search a little.

I quickly ran out of information, but there was an option to search outside links, and so I clicked that link and was directed to Ancestry.com. You have to pay to use their site, but they had a 14 day free trial, so I signed up and began the search anew. And hit pay dirt.

In the 1900 US Federal Census we find the family living in Prairie, Wyandotte, Kansas.

James D. S (husband) 54 years old
Mary B. S (wife) 43 years old

Sarah F. 13 years old
Robert L. 10 years old
Charles W. 7 years old (Later to grow into the man we knew, or knew of)
Delila L. 4 years old
Le Roy (Roy) L. 2 years old.

James was from West Virginia, and he was born in January1846. Mary Bell was from Indiana. She was born in August of 1856. Don't do too much math on their ages and birth dates - I think that was fairly casual. The age difference between James and Mary varies depending on which census you are looking at. He lived to be at least 75, and she lived to be at least 63.

If this is true, or partly true then all of a sudden Charles doesn't seem so strange. His dad was a rough, redneck hill billy from West Virginia, I imagine. He probably drank and beat his family with fine regularity, although this is purely my conjecture. James was older than his wife by at least 10 years as Charles was 10 years older than Emily. I think it is likely that James dominated Mary and the children in a strict and physical way and was probably the role model for those children. This was how the man of the house ruled the roost. This was his right. And so it would be natural for Charles to grow into the type of man that he knew. Unto the third and fourth generation.

I look back on my dad's early life and am amazed that he broke through the abuse that he lived with to become a decent, God fearing man who did his best to foster all of his family from the time he was a little boy and gave his mother his sugar beet check, until he was an old and sick man who was ready to die and wanted only to be a guardian angel for his children and grand children. For this, I have to think that he used his Grandpa Starck for his model. The Starcks had their share of characters, but they were a hard working family with deep religious roots. They made mistakes, but by and large they stuck together through thick and thin, and they kept their family together.

Well, it is late, and I have rambled for quite a while. But it was a good thing for me to learn about Charles as a boy, and to have some idea of the home that he came from. It's a lot easier have a little compassion for the 7 year old boy on the census record, and who probably led a pretty tortured life. And Christmas is a good time to have a little compassion anyway.

The House We Didn't Buy (Whew, That Was a Close One......)

2011-11-23T10:50:00.001-07:00

As you leave I -215 Eastbound and turn onto I-15 Southbound and buzzing along at 60 mph or so, you think you are on the Interstate, but actually you are not. You are on sort of a pre-Interstate, and if you aren't careful you will be in the left hand lane, and find that you are exiting onto the Veteran's Memorial Highway, and will be dumped off at 7200 S.

Many highways have similar little traps - poor signs, missing signs, or maybe you just aren't paying attention at a critical moment and before you know it, you are headed down the wrong road. Mostly it isn't too hard to get back on track, but occasionally the new road will wind for miles before there is an exit, and backing up just isn't an option. It generally isn't considered wise to stop and turn around and drive against the traffic either.

Life is a little like that....you are buzzing along, and you see a sign, and you think: Hmmmm..... never been there before......that sounds like fun, and you click your signal and take the detour.

In 'The Magician's Nephew' (C.S. Lewis), Polly and Digory find themselves magically transported to another world. There is a table in front of them, and many richly dressed people frozen into statues. At the end of the table there is a little bell, and a sign on a pillar that read:

Make your choice Adventurous Stranger, strike the bell and bide the danger, or wonder till it drives you mad, what would have followed if you had.

Our neighbor's spirit is stronger than his body, and several months ago he left his home to live where he could receive more care. So now that house is empty - no neighbor wondering what we are up to and sweeping our dark yard with a five million candle power flashlight (The Cyclops - seriously - the light itself is about 10" in diameter), just a quiet, dark house. And so we wondered what would happen to the old house with the big trees and the the big garden, growing up in weeds instead of squash and tomatoes. I thought about it a good deal, and frankly coveted the garden and the water shares that came with it.

Our neighbor is an interesting guy, he has been the local refrigeration expert in Sweet Haven for quite a few years. He could fix any appliance, and even after his sight failed him, people would drive for hours (over 100 miles one-way) to take him back to their farm or ranch and fix the ailing machine. They would wield the tools, and Harding would guide them...."Follow those wires down, down, they go through a little grommet and you have to get to the other side of that.....that's right. Now check the connector.....is it in tight? Do any of the wires seem loose? Are any pinched.....ahhh, the red one. OK, now..........." and in a while the recalcitrant machine would be vanquished and they would drive him back home.

Harding served an LDS mission when he was a young man - without purse or scrip as the saying goes. He had no funds, and depended on the kindness of strangers for his bread and bed while he roamed the wilds of New England and taught the Gospel to anyone who would listen. In his youth, before WalMart and Cabela's he was a Boy Scout. Back then you had to make your own gear and he did. He made a bedroll out of canvas and blankets, and he sewed his own tent. AND then he water-proofed it. Water-proofed it with paraffin dissolved into hot gasoline and painted onto the canvas. That must have been a day. There must not have been any static electricity in the air that day, or the tent would have become a fireball.

We came near to buying the house. The family did everything they could do to make the purchase easy and affordable for us, but in the end.....just as traffic was merging and we would have taken that different road, we changed lanes and continued our journey on the road we are familiar with. We worried that it might become a rental, and that a bunch of Pit-Bull raising Hell's Angels would settle there and we would have nothing to say about it. It looks like a very nice family that we are close to is going to buy it. They have an active family, he is very handy and a good craftsman and they will make it a beautiful home full of active children. So I think what happened was a family found the home they were looking for, and possibly the home found the family that it needed to repair and maintain it.

When we travel, I usually drive, and Annie navigates. I'm grateful to her for listening to her heart and keeping us headed down the right road. It is so easy to get side-tracked.

Our Newest Lake Powell Adventure

2011-10-08T23:10:00.000-06:00

This year's Lake Powell Messabout/Kokopelli Cruise was to be a 5-7 day sailing event starting at Bullfrog marina, and ending at Hite. For a variety of reasons many of us found that we we not going to be able to spend the time to make the trip, and one by one a substantial number of potential cruisers had to bow out. We were among the whimps, and decided that in lieu of a 7 day trip, we would make a 5 or 6 day trip, arriving on Monday, and leaving on Friday. We didn't quite make it - we left Wednesday night, and ended up not seeing anyone from the Messabout group. Here is a letter that I sent to one of our Messabout friends in response to his query about our missing the party:

Hi Kellan,

Scattered Showers Forecast.....

We (Anita, her sister Janet, and brother-in-law Scott and I) were in the area, but we should have waited until Wednesday or so to launch. We got to Hite on Monday night about dusk, hurriedly launched the boat and made a full speed run down channel, trying to get to Four Mile Camp before full dark. You won't find Four Mile Camp on any map, that is just what I'm going to call it. It's the point where we made the first camp in 2009 on the way to Good Hope Bay and is a little more than four miles down channel from Hite, and East of Farley's Canyon.

But it got too dark, and we found ourselves in a little steep walled canyon about 3 miles down canyon from Hite. The moon hadn't come up yet, and it was pretty dark. We tried to set an anchor, but canyon walls were really steep, and we couldn't find the bottom. There were no beaches to speak of, and it kept getting darker and darker and fairly windy as well. Finally we found a little spit of beach and backed the boat into it and put two bow anchors back into the dirt on shore and slept on the boat, stern on the mud, and bow in the water. But it worked. The wind died down, and the anchors held and it was OK. We were all pretty tired and made a cold, simple supper of dutch ovened chicken sandwiches - a little bread and a little meat, and then some fruit. Janet also made some great little peanut butter balls with peanut butter, honey and dried milk. They were a great desert and picked us up several times when we were tired.

Four Mile Camp

Tuesday morning we went down channel and made a camp at Four Mile Camp. There was a lot of drift wood, and with the drift wood came some fine detritus that washed onto the beach. We didn't really notice until evening, but with the detritus came a LOT of flies. As night settled on us I was watching the clouds and they seemed to be not going away, but building into threatening proportions.
A related story that kept us from having good weather information: On Saturday (Sept 10) night some vandals in Salt Lake were trying to steal copper wire and cut a fiber optic cable instead. We woke up in Millard County on 9-11 with no long distance, no cell phones, and no Internet, and consequently, no real weather forecasts. Scott had checked the weather before they came down on Sunday and said that the forecast called for 'scattered showers. I always thought 'scattered showers were the same as afternoon thundershowers. That impression is not true. Scattered showers are not the same forecast as scattered thundershowers. As we cooked supper and sat around the fire, we could see the storm continue to build by the moon light, and the wind started blowing from the West. We were anchored in a little cove so that we would be sheltered from a South wind, but with the wind from the West, we were getting blown around pretty well, and the waves were hitting us broadside with no protection. Our prevailing winds are oriented North-South as you well know, but at Lake Powell, I think they can come from any direction

About 5 in the morning the rain started and the wind and waves picked some. The forecast put the wind speed at 5-10 mph, but I think that must have been a weekly average. We managed to put up a boom tent and make things fairly snug and the flies were gone as long as the wind blew.

Makeshift Boom Tent at Four Mile Camp

Really, things were not too bad, but when wind would die down the flies would come back, the girls voted that we find another spot. So we had breakfast and broke camp, loaded the boat headed out into the lake.

I had two gas cans, newly filled for our little outboard. The plastic one is the one that I used last year, and the one I had tested the motor with before we left, and the one that we had used so far. We were contemplating a run down to Good Hope Bay, and I thought I should test out the second can of gas and so made the switch. There must have been some kind of crud in the hose as the can looked clean before I filled it. After switching fuel supplies, it took about 30 seconds for the outboard to die and refuse to restart.

So as we were drifting down the lake we thought it might be a good time to try the sail that I sewed over the winter. Scott and Anita and Janet got the sail up and tweaked the attachment ties a little to try and get the wrinkles out, and we did a little bit of very low speed sailing/drifting as the wind had about quit by then.

I got out the tools and changed the spark plugs and fidldled with the fuel system trying to get the gunk out it. We drifted/sailed back up channel for quite a while until we were really close the the little canyon that we spent the first night in. Finally I got the outboard going and we put-putted our way back into the canyon.

It was about 2 pm or so by then and we found a quiet little spot in the very back part of the canyon and tied the boat up and stretched our legs a little. In this farthest back part of the canyon there was no beach at all - just rock. I put two bow lines out forward, and one stern line that tied us to the back part of the canyon. It was tied to a rock that was about as big as I could carry, and then I put more rocks on top of it, so I thought we were tied down pretty well.

We set up a little camp - there was plenty of wood, but no flies, and two little canyons that we could stretch our legs in and do a little exploring in. We didn't go too far as the clouds and wind had come back to visit and threatening to rain again. We hadn't really made camp, but we had taken the motor off of the boat so that we could get in and out a little easier.

Box Canyon Camp.

We ate a little early supper/late lunch and it started raining. Everyone scrambled to put up the little boom tent, but once we got it up, the wind came whistling down the canyon and caught the little boom tent like a sail and blew the boat to the West and towards the lake. The rock that was holding the stern into the shore was yanked off into the water like it wasn't there. The two bow ropes continued to hold, but the boat ran back and forth with the wind. The motor was still on shore, and I was worried that the bow anchors would give way and we would be blown onto rocks or some other not too great fate. We had very little control with just oar power in a narrow little canyon. Finally, when the wind turned a little favorable, I jumped off onto a little shelf of rock and grabbed to boat and held it to the shore while Anita ran ashore and gathered up stoves, dishes and everything else that we had unloaded except for the outboard. I put that on the boat, helped Anita aboard and went along the cliffs to take in the bow anchors. Scott got the outboard started and tried to keep the boat off the rocks. I got one line free and walked it back to the boat. Once I passed the line to the boat, there was only one holding it. Anita and Janet tried to keep the boat from banging into the rocks but the wind was blowing pretty strong, and Scott was trying to keep the prop off of the rock shelves that lined the back of the cove. I scurried around to pick up the other bow anchor, and the boat swung around and popped one of the canyon walls a pretty good bang. It sounded worse than it was, as the boat is mostly a big drum, but it was loud, and there was a lot of excited discussion going on due to lack of steerage.

The remaining anchor was jammed in a large crack in between two big rocks, and was holding really well. It wasn't hard to pull free, and once it was loose I pulled the boat towards me and gathered up the rope. It came by really close and I was standing up a little on the rocks and jumped on it as it came by and out of the little canyon we went.

We probably could have set course for Farley's canyon then, and we might have met up with everyone. But it was about as far to Hite as it was to Farley's. It was going to be dark by the time we got to either one. We hadn't scouted Farley's, partly due to the bad gas breakdown, and didn't know what it would be like. We had had a pretty good set of adventures and had decided that we didn't like sailing around unknown canyons in the dark. And so we headed for the barn and home.

Headed Home

I feel bad in a way that we weren't more intrepid, and missed seeing everyone. Our little adventure in the canyon was kind of sobering. Either to be on shore with the motor and no boat, or to be on the boat with no motor and not much control in the wind and dark..... and I think we were just done.

So that is the story. I think next year, if it is going to blow and rain that we will bring a smaller boat and camp on shore and just day sail. I built Picara for expedition camping and exploring and it really worked pretty well for that, but Lake Powell is an awfully big lake, and when the wind gets up and the whitecaps start to show, it might be better to be on shore with a little boat that you can actually drag up onto the beach. Maybe next year. It wasn't the trip I thought it would be, but it is a trip that I will remember.

One more bit of drama: Once we got back to Hite it was getting pretty dark. We were all tired and once we got the boat back on the trailer, we busied ourselves getting it tied down and secured. The motor was still on the boat, tilted up so that the prop wouldn't hit anything. I was reaching under the boat to fasten an eyebolt onto the boat, and for some reason, as my head was down under the motor, a little bit of gasoline dribbled out onto my eye, and some ran into my ear. Now you would expect that gasoline in the eye would not be good - but I had no idea that gasoline dribbled into an ear would generate and instant and excruciating earache. I've never had an awl jammed into my ear, but I doubt it would hurt more. A quick dip in the lake, and a good deal of head shaking worked wonders on both the eye and ear. A word to the wise.

It's Friday!! Well, Virtually Friday

2011-08-04T16:55:00.000-06:00

The work week is almost done, and in about 15 minutes the weekend will start. When the alarm rings at 5 am, I'm not always a fan of 10 hour days. But when the weekend comes, I am always glad that I only have to work 4 days.

Other than that little plug for 4-10's.....We spent last weekend, and quite a bit of this week catching up from the Denver Trip. The lawn was deep and tall, and it took quite a while to mow. The weeds were thick in the garden, and Annie pulled most of them. Her flowers are looking pretty good, and didn't dry up and blow away. The tomatoes are coming on. The peas grew knee high, and we were so busy that we hardly ate any. Last night I made rhubarb/current jam, and I think it was Saturday or Sunday I made a little batch of strawberry/rhubarb jam. The rhubarb really helps it to jell.

I'm sure that everyone that reads these posts already knows about our newest grandson, Rufio Rok. He is a cute little guy, and we are looking forward to when his mom and dad are recovered enough to have some visitors.

That is about it. Just working around the homestead and enjoying life with Annie. I'm in a lot better spirits this time of the day/week than I was this morning. 37 days until the Kokopelli cruise at Lake Powell, so I have some boat stuff to do as well. Have a good night all.

A Word From Mandy

2011-05-16T16:23:00.000-06:00

Mandy and I have had some correspondence over the last few weeks about her interview with David and Nickki Webb. She told me some stories about a 'friend' whom I can only assume was a close blood relative with a hommonymical name that sounded like a lot of tall tales to me...... but then she sent me this link. There are some scary serious people out there, and I'm not sure how Gordon Thomas lived to tell the tale. Simon Ross certainly didn't have much luck.

This is Canoeing!

2011-04-17T08:21:00.000-06:00

I ran into this clip on one of my boat building sites and thought some of you would like this (Crazy expedition bikers and hikers). I'm sure some (most everyone else) will not. I'm more of a flat water kind of guy, so I don't think I'll be doing this unless Annie just insists. Lake Powell is pretty tame in comparison.

A Transcribed Interview with David and Nickki Webb, by Mandy Bjork

2011-03-27T21:25:00.001-06:00

After watching 'The Bourne Ultimatum', I happened upon this interview of David and Nickki Webb by Mandy Bjork, sister to the famous spy and blogger. I thought you might be interested in some more in depth human interest information.

Mandy: Thank you so much for meeting with me today, and for being willing to answer questions about your lives and the books and movies that were built on them.

Mandy: David, let's start with you. Your hometown is portrayed in the story as being Nixa, Missouri. Where were you born?

David: It is true, I was born in Nixa, but I was an Army brat, and we traveled and lived in many places as I grew up. My mother's parents still live in Nixa, and in my heart, I guess that is where I picture my self as being from.

Mandy: Nickki, how about you? Tell us a little about your childhood, and where you grew up.

Nickki: I'm a mid-western girl. I grew up in Kansas, in a little farming town not far from Newton, Kansas. I grew up on a wheat farm. Growing up, I had not one idea of the turns and twists my life would take. I got a scholarship to Georgetown and studied political science.   I was recruited right out of school, and went to Langley for further training.

Mandy: How close to truth did the story line stay? How did it all start?

David: The character of Jason Bourne/David Webb is amalgam of several peoples lives. No one could live though the things that Jason & David lived through in Ludlum's and Lustbader's books and Greengrass' films. If you are asking about the films that have been made to date, I would say that there is an element of truth and a good deal of high tech elaboration in that part of the story. We are a little older than Matt Damon and Julia Stiles, so most of the story occurred in the early 1980's. Real life wasn't as high tech as shown in the story, but the basic story is true. I was an Army Ranger and the fight against terrorism was getting warmer. It seemed like Americans were easy targets for terrorist groups, organized crime - anyone who had a grudge. I heard that a Certain Intelligence Agency was recruiting men to stop just such people. I made it known that I was interested, was contacted and recruited.

Mandy: Did you know each other then?

Nickki: We had met and I suppose that we are dating in a covert kind of way. We had a connection, even if we had to be quiet about it. David was the first of the recruits, and his training/conditioning was brutal. The program consisted of varying amounts of violent physical abuse, sleep deprivation, psychoactive drugs, hypnosis and other aspects that I won't even talk about. I watched from the shadows. Since David was the first, their training/conditioning techniques were not well developed. They made a lot of mistakes on him that didn't have to be repeated on the others. My heart bled for him, but I couldn't interfere in any way, even to wipe off the blood. Working in Treadstone, I kept track, in a quiet way of what was happening to him and I was afraid that if they didn't kill him, that they would kill everything good in him that I loved.

David: I wish I had known that someone was nearby and cared whether I lived or died. Isolating and breaking down the individual was the core of the program, and if you know that even one person cares about you, it gives you strength to carry on. They couldn't let that happen of course.

Mandy: So, like the junk yard dog, you were beaten into submission and made meaner by the day?

David: Not exactly meaner. When they got done with me, I was more of a tool than a person. I wasn't especially mean, I was just kind of dead inside.

Mandy: In the 'Bourne Identity', the first movie, you fail to kill your target, and are shot and almost die for your pains. Did this really happen?

David: In the movie, I couldn't kill Wombosi, and as I tried to escape, he shot me. Real life was not as dramatic, but it followed the same general script. There was a man that I was supposed to kill that had his family nearby.   I am still not sure of all the details but I tried to escape and was nearly beaten to death for my pains. I had no weapons, and some good Samartian took me to a hospital. Between the training I had received and the beating I received from the goons, I had no idea of who I was or what to do next. I did work on a fishing boat for some time and hoped that the cobwebs would clear. Of course when a highly trained and extra-legal killing tool goes missing, there is a good deal of desperation. I was targeted to be killed, and somehow, without really knowing why, I was able to evade most and defeat others who were sent to either capture or kill me.

Mandy: You make that sound very matter-of-fact. Can you give us a better idea of how you felt?

David: It is painful to go back to those memories, and I don't like to do it. Watching the the movie (Bourne Identity) should give you a pretty good idea. Not knowing who you are or why you annoyed some one enough to almost kill you is the stuff of nightmares. It was like trying to move through a fog. Part's of one memory would come into focus, but other supporting or contextual memories would fade away, just like when you drive or walk through a fog. It was very frustrating. I didn't know who almost killed me, who I was or whom I could trust. Paranoia rises up and almost chokes you..... is this guy who is clapping me on the back a new friend, and old friend, or an old enemy? I worried that I would be led to the slaughter - my slaughter - and I would have no idea it was even coming, or why.   When you worry, you don't sleep well, and that doesn't make your mind work any better either.

Gradually, some memories started to come back. A word, or a picture would flash a picture in my mind, and I started to try and put the jig saw puzzle that was my past back together again.

Mandy: How long in real time did this story take to play out? The movies are years apart, and it seems like a good deal of time elapsed from when you went missing until you jumped into the river?

David: I really have no idea. Nickki?

Nickki: It was about five years. I won't put dates on it, but about six months of conditioning and then I lost track of you until you showed in Europe when I was posted in Berlin. After you and Marie escaped you traveled the world and hid in India for almost 3 years. After Marie was killed you were on every one's mind for another six months, until I heard that you were shot as you jumped into the East river, but they hadn't recovered your body. I did have to smile because I knew in my heart you were still alive.

David: In a way, my life started when I jumped off that building. Hitting the water was like hitting concrete and I felt so broken. For as long as I could remember - from when I woke up after the coma that Wombosi's men had beaten me into, I was either trying to fit together the pieces of my memory, or was trying to track down the men responsible for making me into what I had become. It was a life of murky recollection and vengeance. Getting the memories back and confronting my old trainers was something that I had to do, but not something to build a life on. I was done with killing, done with conflict. Matt Damon can take some amazing beatings in the movie but in real life those injuries stay with you, and a lot of them hurt every day.

I went back to Nixa and visited with my grandparents. I rented a little house down the street from them, and everyday I would go for a run and just drink in the peace. In the afternoons I would go over and visit a little with my Granddad. We played checkers, and cribbage and didn't pay much attention to who won. Grandma told me stories about my aunts and uncles. Sometimes I stayed for supper and she would fry a chicken. Granddad would pick some corn from his garden and we would have a summer time feast. It took a while, but the memories of Nickki started to come back. One day I realized that she had been helping in the background, as best she could all along, lost a good job, lost her future to help me and I had put her on a train and told her that " it gets easier" to run. It was good to have the realization that she cared for me all those long years, but I felt as bad about my self as I ever had. I started making calls and making plans to find her that very day.

So there is another chapter in the David Webb/Nickki Parsons story that still has to be told, but telling it might get some good people in trouble. You will just have to know that it took me almost another year to track her down, and extract her from an unpleasant situation.   Now we are just trying to live 'happily ever after'.

Mandy: Thank you for talking to us tonight. We all hope that you can live 'happily ever after'. Good night

The End-of-the-Month Sunday Update (February 2011)

2011-02-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

It is a quiet night in Sweet Haven. We had a short power outage - maybe 20 minutes earlier, but aside from that it has been a quiet Sunday.

Last week was Stake Conference, and our Bishop was called to be the new Stake President. So the ward is going through a little transition. We are going to miss our bishop - he is a good man and very kind. I'm sure he will lead the Stake well, but it was always kind of fun to have him in a meeting. He could bring both spirituality and wry humor to a meeting and it was a pretty good combination.

Last Monday Andrew and Caren and the kids came down and spent the day with us. We had a good visit, and I think the kids had a good time. We had tater tots, chicken nuggets, and pizza and the kids seemed to be happy with that menu. Annie and I have our normal everyday favorites but they would be boring for the kids I think. We had to think a little bit about what kids like to eat. It was not a real warm day, but they played on the swings for quite a while, and Seth got pretty good casting with an old fishing rod - no hooks. It was a good day with not a lot of schedule. We just visited and played.

Last night I finished my mainsail. All the sewing is done, both machine and hand stitching. The reef points are installed, the grommets are installed and it is ready to be bent (tied onto the gaff, boom and mast). This whole project has been in the works off and on for about four years. Two of those years were spent with me looking wide and wild eyed at all the sailcloth and then finding something else to do. Anything else to do. This stuff is hard to work with if you don't know how to handle it. You can't stick a pin in it - it is too stiff. The way the cloth is made is by rolling a very finely woven, resin covered dacron cloth between two heated rollers at about 50,000 psi. This melts and smashed the resin into the cloth fibers and pretty much eliminates a bias sag.

After a couple of years of piddling around the edges I found some video clips from Sailrite on YouTube and was able actually to see how they handled the cloth. They don't pin it together at all, they tape it together. Buying the double sticky tape, and a cheap sewing machine from WalMart kind of got the ball rolling. Then I just had to learn how to sew. Fortunately, I am married to an amazingly talented seamstress who is a pretty patient teacher as well. But a lot of things that work on quilts and clothing don't work as well on sails, and I still had somethings to learn the hard way. But such is life. Anyway, the mainsail is done, and the mizzen sail is done but for the grommets. So I should be ready for Lake Powell by September.

I guess that is about all. It has been snowy and cold, and so my hopes for getting the early garden in early have been in vain. The Spring Outage is around the corner, and that will keep me out of trouble until the first part of May. Then two concerts, a concert trip to D.C., a Messabout at Starvation Reservoir, a 90th birthday party, the Crash Up Derby, Pioneer Day, One Camping Trip, Labor Day, the Gala, the Lake Powell Messabout, trip to Mike's (maybe), Thanksgiving, Christmas Concert, Christmas, New Years, .....and it all starts again. I didn't even mention putting in a garden, finishing the fences, fixing the roof, putting up the new antenna, cleaning the shop,..... there truly is no rest for the wicked, and no time to repent.

I hope you all have a great night, sleep well and wake.

Bono Voce in the Rabbit Den

2011-02-11T09:57:00.001-07:00

Annie and I had a nice evening. The Sweet Haven High School madrigal choir (Bono Voce) has a fund raising event each February - a Valentine's Day concert with a catered dinner. It is held in the Rabbit's Den - the high school cafeteria, and it is pretty sweet.

We don't hear too much music that is made by our friends, neighbors, and family. We hear mostly professional singers whose voices have been washed and scrubbed through a million dollars worth of electronic gear. Blended, echoed, and polished it really does sound nice. In a way, a lot of this music was like music our great-grandparents might have listened to - music that was made by 'just people' that they knew personally, and before recording sound was common. From re-reading this last little bit I suppose you might think this is a criticism, but what I'm trying to say is that what you saw (or heard) is what you got. I liked it, and thought the kids pretty brave for singing in public.

While we got our salad and ate our meal, the choir kids (individually or in small groups) went up on stage and sang a variety of songs that had a variety of polish. But all of them exhibited more courage than I could ever pull together. I think I would rather take a beating than get up in front of a bunch of strangers - even friendly ones - and perform. So I appreciated their performances.

SH High School was built in the late 60's I think The cafeteria is brick walled and the ceiling is acoustic tile. Lighting is fluorescent. The floor is linoleum. There is a 7 foot tall mural of a rabbit that probably had a long history with anabolic steroids on the West wall. There are vertical window along the South wall, each in a little alcove and with a small table in it for a little privacy. It's not fancy by today's standards and to make it fancy would cost quite a bit, but it seems to work fairly well, and it that room could talk, I'm sure there are thousands of tales it could tell of a couple of generations of teens from the SH area. Even though I graduated from a high school hundreds of miles away, I'm a little nostalgic about it as all of our kids graduated from it. I don't think that our kids are very nostalgic, but in years to come they might be to some degree. Nostalgia, I think, is a measure of what you feel you have lost, and we often lose our innocence and sense of safety as life drags us along. I suppose that part of the reason that I came away so content was that the whole night took me back to when our kids were not the polished and sophisticated adults that they have become, but to when they were somewhat unsure of themselves and their futures. Their self confidence would come and go like a breeze in the summer, and seeing these kids tonight brought a lot of those memories back.

Since it was a fund raising dinner, the kids served the meals, brought the deserts and then entertained us. They were alternately polite and poised when they were serving tables, and then when they were off with their friends you could see a variegation of teen behavior from timid to teasing, from confidence to boredom. Just kids being kids.

The teen years are fairly hard on parents too, but even though I don't think I got more than an hours worth of sleep each night for 15 years or so (only a slight exaggeration) I have fond memories of working on cars for the the girls, and they would come out and tell me about the boys that they liked. It was a pretty good system as they usually had a LOT to say about the boy, and I would be under the car and wouldn't hear but about 10% of the story. It was just sweet to have them come out and talk to me. It was great to go out to DMAD with the boys (and J) and plink or fish, mostly just fool around often ending with a marshmellow or hot dog roast.

That's about it. We had a nice evening, and I don't know about Annie, but I had a nice walk down Memory Lane. I hope you all have a great Friday.

Early February Update

2011-02-07T07:18:00.001-07:00

It was a quiet week in Sweet Haven.....that is what I think I will be calling our little town in the future. After reading the headlines and watching the new, it does seem like a quiet little haven.

It has been pretty quiet here, and pretty cold too. The cold isn't so unique as I know that it is cold over most of the West and Mid-West. Well, it is February so I guess it isn't too surprising. Still, zero degree temperatures mixed with even a light but steady wind makes for a pretty cold winter camp. I was kind of getting in the mood for an early spring, and getting in an early garden, but I don't know if that will happen or not.

Annie and I have been staying indoors quite a bit. She has been sewing on quilts and I've been sewing on my mainsail. It makes for a cozy and companionable day - fire in the fireplace, book-on-tape playing and a little conversation when we have something to say. It goes well with chicken-noodle soup and whole wheat bread.

The sail is almost done. I'm just putting in the reef points now. It's very tempting to not put them in as they are little reinforced squares of fabric sewn in lines in the middle of the sail. I'll put grommets through their center, and when the wind gets too frisky, the reef points become the new bottom of the sail and are tied to the boom, effectively making the sail much smaller. It is tempting to leave them off because I'm tired of wrestling with the sail and want to have it done, but I've never seriously considered leaving them off. In fact, I'm sewing in two rows of them. I actually should start the mizzen sail. It will be much smaller, and won't have the pesky reef points.... we will see.

At work the Spring Outage is getting closer in a hurry. Usually we have four week outages, but this one will be six weeks long, and run from March 12 to April 21. It might be kind of a strange long outage as this will be the second outage in this fiscal year - everyone is worried they might go over the budget, and weirdly, that is more important than fixing things. So be it.

I'm in Week 10 of P90X - the exercise program that a few of us are doing at work. I'm getting stronger, but not lighter, at least so far. Tony Horton, the creator of the program uses 'muscle confusion' workouts - a different set of muscles each day. Which pretty much guarantees that a different part of you will hurt tomorrow. There is a lot of core body work, and flexibility work built into the routines as well. So, we will see. I'm very tired each night, and not too feisty. A friend at work has been using this program for the last three years and has not had an exercise related injury in that time. This is a pretty important feature as injuries effectively kill exercise program momentum.

************

It's Monday night, and it sounds like a big storm is blowing in. If the storm is as big as the wind, well, we will need snowshoes. I'm guessing we might get an inch or two of snow. We had a nice Saturday, making a quick trip to SLC to celebrate Thomas' 1st birthday. We had a yummy dinner that Jeff and Megan prepared and then played some fun games. Janet got home from a month in Denver about the time it was time for us to go, so we got hugs all around and made a quick stop at Becky's for a little sewing discussion, and then headed down for a quick stop at Andrew and Caren's.

It was good to see everyone, even though some of the visits were brief. Sunday wasn't a day of rest, but it was OK. Today was a quick run to the dump, running a few errands, some sewing for both of us, and a short nap for me in the afternoon. Subway for supper, and chicken soup cooking for tomorrows lunch. A quiet day, and we got to spend it together. That's the best part. Hope you all have a good week. Sleep well, and wake.

January Update

2011-01-16T22:04:00.000-07:00

Wow, time rushes on, and in my lazy winter sloth I find it very easy to just ride the current and wait for Spring... and not blog as this takes a certain amount of concentration and discipline that seems to be in short supply. Caren inspired me recently with her update, and I thought I had better get with it .

Going back to Thanksgiving....it's all kind of a blur. We had a very nice TG with Becky & Travis, and Ashley & Dan. We were both a little hammered from our six week power plant outage. Usually we have them in the Spring and are all worn out then. But it all worked out well - There was turkey and trimmings and pies (mmm..... pies) of both the pumpkin and pecan variety. Both were excellent. Annie got pretty fancy with the crust on the pecan.

In the blink of an eye, Christmas was upon us. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with Chandler & Julie, and then stopped at Andrew & Caren's on our way home. Annie had some presents to deliver (the Real Santa) and we had a nice visit there.

Now it is the middle of January already. Tithing settlement is over except for mailing out about 70% of the statements. Annie is working feverishly on two quilts that must be finished early in March. When they say that artists are driven.... it is true. I wish that I had half of her grit and determination and inspiration. Well, I get into my own brand of trouble.

A few days ago we were at the store and they were selling turkey's for 79 cents/lb. We got the biggest one that was in the cooler - about 28 lbs and it took a full 24 hours to thaw. I put it in the oven at midnight and it was done in the morning. Then the work began. We also had a bag of chicken thighs/drumsticks that I cooked and canned. In the end we got ten quarts of meat/broth and four quarts of chicken/turkey noodle soup. Like so many things that we make or grow at home, the first analysis is: How much did it cost, and how much was the time spent worth.... and how much would it cost at the store. The true answer is that you can't buy canned meat that is half as good as you can make. Is store bread ever as good as the home-made bread straight out of the oven? Are the store tomatoes ever as good as the sun warmed and ripe fruit out of your own garden? Rhetorical questions all.

Every year, if we haven't been sick more than 80 hours, we get a wellness rebate. I has some left over and the other night, walking through Walmart, my interest was captured by a pellet gun over in the sports section. I had seen this gun for a few months and it looked like a good deal, and since I had some of that money from the wellness rebate left, I just bought it. It is a one-cock mechanism where the barrel is the cocking lever. Anyway, it zips a .177 pellet at about 1200 fps - very close to .22 rimfire speed. It comes with an extra barrel that will let you shoot .22 pellets at 800 fps as well. This is seriously not a kids gun. So it is fun to be an adult, and mostly grown up. It will go through a 1" phone book and then put a serious dent in a pine backing board. So that is my new toy.

There is about 60 days until the next Outage starts. Hard for me to imagine. I'll be so glad when this one is over. Yikes! I see why several guys retired before the last one started, and several are set to retire before the next one starts.

Well that is about it. Tonight it is melting like crazy outside....so it won't be too long before we will have to get the early garden in. For sure before the outage. No rest for the wicked, no time to repent. Sleep well all, and wake.

For the Mechanics in the Audience:

2010-09-29T08:51:00.000-06:00

I know that I am easily amused, but anyone that has spent any time under a hood, or trying to get a car fixed can probably appreciate these clips.

and..........

Saturday Puttering

2010-09-25T22:06:00.000-06:00

Even though I don't really work very hard in the physical sense, and I have a good job and a good boss, great people to work with and nothing really to complain about......I still love the weekend. I don't know that it is strictly true that the worst day fishing (gardening, home improving, sewing.... insert your favorite activity) is better than the best day at work, but there is quite a bit of truth to it. I remember as a kid, waking up on Saturday just happy. No School, which made true the sister comparison that the worst day at work is better than the best day at school, and this one was strictly true. So when Saturday rolled around and I could watch cartoons for part of the morning and eat pancakes..... well, that is a great way to start the day for a kid.

I guess that not a lot has changed. I don't watch the cartoons, but do play on the computer some. Today I puttered around the kitchen after we got up. We looked at the kitchen and realized that we had let things go too far, so while Annie loaded the dishwasher and bustled around the kitchen, leaving order and cleanliness in her path, I chopped peppers, onions, tomatoes, mango and peaches and made a gallon and a half of mango-peach salsa. Ummmmm..... We chatted while we worked, and it was such a nice start to the day.

Later I did some epoxy repair on the bottom of the sailboat, and unpacked the truck from last week's trip to Lake Powell. This included setting up the tent in the back yard and making sure that none of the sand from the beach went into winter storage. All in all it was a very nice day.

That is about it. Annie went to the General Relief Society Meeting and then we watched a little of it on TV when she got back. Now it is about bedtime and a busy Day of Rest tomorrow. Well, that is fine too: Better to wear out than to rust out. Sleep well, and wake.

19th Century Bicycling - Rubber Was the Dark Secret

2010-09-23T07:40:00.000-06:00

After seeing the latest Squeakerness blog with all the bicycles, I ran across this article and really enjoyed it.

Here are a few quotes that I liked. You will probably want to read the original article. Lots of great old pictures.

“If the increase continues, the time is not very distant when not to own and ride a bicycle will be a confession that one is not able-bodied, is exceptionally awkward, or is hopelessly belated.”
—“The Bicycle Festival,” July 13, 1895 New York Times

"In “The Winged Heel” column in the San Francisco Chronicle of January 25, 1879, the writer fully grasps the possibilities:

“The bicycle ranks among those gifts of science to man, by which he is enabled to supplement his own puny powers with the exhaustic forces around him. He sits in the saddle, and all nature is but a four-footed beast to do his bidding. Why should he go a foot, while he can ride a mustang of steel, who knows his rider and never needs a lasso?.. The exhilaration of bicycling must be felt to be appreciated. With the wind singing in your ears, and the mind as well as body in a higher plane, there is an ecstasy of triumph over inertia, gravitation, and the other lazy ties that bind us. You are traveling! Not being traveled.” "

"The 1890s would be the decade of the bicycle. The seven million bicycles found worldwide in 1895 used most of the world’s rubber, a boom that would not have occurred if not for the invention of the “pneumatic rubber tyre.” Although there had been bicycles previously, they rode on solid rubber tires. These were puncture-resistant, a boom on roads where nails were frequently shed from horseshoes, but they lacked suspension, were hard to steer, and were an unpleasant ride. This changed by the late 1890s. The market was flooded with steel tubes, ball bearings, variable speed gears, and high-quality chains. Above all else, it was flooded with replaceable rubber tires and inner tubes, mass-produced in the factories of Dunlop in Birmingham, England; Michelin in Clermont-Ferrand, France; and Pirelli in Milan, Italy. The bicycle was cheap and popular. People suddenly had a means of freedom that had been unknown. "

Watch Out! Danger!

2010-09-21T14:34:00.000-06:00

Catching Up, and a Tube Leak Clip

2010-09-20T09:30:00.000-06:00

It's Monday, and we are both tired. We made a lightening trip to Lake Powell on Friday and came back late Saturday night.

We didn't take the big boat. Since our Outage was moved to October I didn't get all the comp time hours that I normally collect in an outage, and had enough to do at work that I didn't what to use extra days to fix the boat and get farther behind with outage preparations. So it was a simple trip. We took a little One Sheet Skiff that is actually about 1-1/2 sheets and I rowed around a little and did some fishing. Mostly we talked to the other boat builders and took it easy. It was pretty warm, so we swam some, and spent quite a bit of time just up to our necks in the lake while we visited. That was nice, but it is nice to be back too.

Things are fine at home. We have been making jam and salsa and eating a lot out of the garden. Fall is a time of plenty, and it is fun to see the garden produce.

September has been a really busy month. Over Labor Day, B&T came down and we had a great visit with them. T took the pre-employment test on the next Tuesday and passed with flying colors, so he is on the waiting list now. So that is happy. T & I did some plinking and the girls sewed and chatted.

The next week J and Em came for a visit. No plinking, but a lot of trips to the park for M. She is a cutie, and we had a great time visiting with J and playing with M.

I already covered the LP Trip, so I won't do it again. A & C and family are coming to visit this weekend. I think A is going to ride his bike down from Springville, so we will have to find a soft cushion for him when he is ready to sit down. Actually, it shouldn't be too hard. In 1992 A and K took off on their old bikes one morning when I wasn't ready to go yet, and covered about 48 miles before I caught up with them. No water, no food, just strong young muscles. But they were pretty tired too if I remember right.

When I got to work this morning, I found that we had a new tube leak. My boss dispatched me to go and take a look, and I made this short video clip of the leak. It is down in the bottom of the boiler. It is a little cloud mostly in the middle of the screen that isn't really to interesting. I like seeing the firey ash sliding down the slope into the water. There are some broken/worn/burned up stainless steel screens hanging down below the nose of the boiler. They look pretty good when we put them on new, but we are about 6 months late on the repair schedule, and they are about gone.

Have a good day.

Let's go plinking.....

2010-08-11T16:26:00.000-06:00

This is the ultimate .22 plinker. I couldn't afford to feed it though. Still, fun to watch.

Dramatic Escape from Russian Forest Fires

2010-08-03T13:15:00.000-06:00

Yikes!! This gives me the creeps!! Claustrophobia isn't that far away. Watch the whole thing.

The Decapitation Was Successful, and the Patient's Head Was Re-attached

2010-07-24T08:41:00.001-06:00

Yesterday was a beautiful day, as pretty as today. But today I woke up at peace, while yesterday was full of anxiety and dread. Yesterday was the scheduled surgery. It had never been done before- cutting into the smooth surface with a carbide tipped saw, and then attempting to re-attach the severed portion - like making a prostheses from an amputated limb. No directions, not diagrams or drawings, no photos.

Ok, well maybe that is a little dramatic. When we still had kids in the house and struggled to balance time and space, I found our oldest sleeping on a mattress on the floor - and not for just a night. For a lot of nights, and I felt like a terrible father. I don't remember exactly what happened to his bed...... but he was sleeping on the floor. And out of this came the 'Great Bed Building Project'. Talk about a project taking on a life of it's own. I started building beds for all of the kids. They would have six drawers under the mattress, and no springs....the mattress would lay on top of the bed. The beds would have a head board that could be removed so each child could have a night light, some books, or what ever treasures that they wanted to have and we would be able to move them from room to room. I wanted them to be strong, so we built them from 5/8" oak veneer plywood. They are strong, but they are really heavy and kind of clunky. When you get all six drawers in there, and the teen agers fill them with rocks or other equally heavy treasures, they are really hard to move.

My dad rescued me in this project as it was way too big, and I had not enough time, money or space to complete it. He built the beds for the girls, and I built the beds for the boys. He had a nice big shop, and was retired and a master carpenter. I had a little bitty shop, and little bitty budget and as my brother and dad agreed one time - they could always tell when I had worked on something as there was a nail bent over and hammered flat.

Although my skills have improved somewhat, and I didn't leave any nails bent over in these beds, you knew early on that the beds that he built were things of beauty, and mine were things of utility. But, while Dad was good, he wasn't omniscient. We built the beds too long to stand on end and pass through a standard doorway.

D3 was the first (and only so far) child to want her bed. We were tickled to take it up to her, and using the combined muscle of a couple of sons-in-laws on weekend, we wrestled it out of the basement, up the stairs and into the waiting truck. A quick run to SLC, more hired (ok, borrowed... but hired sounds cooler) muscle and we had it into the house, on end and were sliding it on the carpet towards the new "big girl bedroom" for M. But it was too tall. The door frame would clear 79-1/2", and if week took the door jam trim off, maybe 80-1/4". But we needed about six inches more than that. Hmmmmm...... tear up the door framing? Cut up the bed......

In the end, we cut up the bed - yesterday- and re-attached it. But I was really depressed at the thought of cutting into the oak veneer, cutting through all of the structural parts and then having a hope of putting it all back and making it strong. The bed sat in the garage for about 6 weeks while I stewed and fretted, and blessedly, in the rush that was June, I had kind of forgot it - not really forgot, but tried darn hard to. Then we got a call from D3 asking if we were still planning to come up on Pioneer Day weekend and work on the bed. The moment of truth was coming. Could the ham fisted wood butcher from the small obscure town really cut into the finely crafted furniture and lovingly made heirloom keepsake and come out with anything better than firewood? I hate questions like than, especially when I have to ask them and have not got a good answer.

It was kind of one of those things that you dread more than you need to, but then once you have applied the saw to the wood - well, it is done. Then there is no sense in worrying, because you can't ever go back. In the end the operation was a success, and while the patient was never living, it can go on being a bed in an animated Disney-esque kind of way, and not end up warming a room for a night in a wood stove (not exactly going out in a blaze of glory). Also SIL3 and D3 can take it apart if and when they ever move, and know that it will probably fit in any house they buy or build. So I guess the operation was a success. I'm just glad it's done. Happy Pioneer Day to one and all.

Catching Up

2010-07-17T18:49:00.000-06:00

After having so much fun with kids and grand kids I looked out my window, and what did I see? Well, not popcorn that's for sure, but mostly weeds.

Big gardens are a lot of fun to look at when a summer rain comes and we can sit outside on the glider and listen to the thunder and watch the rain and everything grow. But we haven't had much rain except for the artificial kind and the weeds are doing really well. That artificial rain works OK if your system is all 100%, but if it is only 80% or so, you are rather like a runner with a rock in his shoe and in a tight race. You can still run but you are thinking about the rock, and altering your stride and not at your best. We had a valve that for some reason, electrical or mechanical, would chatter and set up a really loud water hammer. It isn't that hard of a job to change out a valve, but it takes an hour or so, and you have to have all of the tools and parts and I didn't. So I have been watering the front system kind of by hand, off and on. Sometimes we could go through the whole sequence and not have a hammer, but not too often. But today I did get it changed. I'm still behind as I wanted to change the oil in the truck and maybe one of the cars. But I guess that will have to wait for another day.

Also, in things having to do with water, some of the plants in the garden has grown high enough and dense to enough to block all the water from the rain birds or the oscillating sprinkler. I raised these up on some cinder blocks, and wired them down tight. Hoping that everything gets a little water now.

Annie is on vacation from Choir for a month or so. The Days of '47 Pops Concert was last weekend, and it was a two night concert. Plus a dress rehearsal practice on Thursday - that is a lot of driving and she is still tired a little from that. She is not a girl to sit and watch the grass grow, or watch the paint dry. She has dived back into some quilt projects that she feels are a little behind. No rest I guess.

Today it is a little rainy. I'm trying an experiment - an adaptation of something that I saw on 'Barberque U' which I think I have watched only twice. But I should watch it more I think. In the show that I remember, they barbecued a turkey - whole. My experience with grilling and barbecuing is that chicken never gets done without getting burnt. But in the BBQ-U episode, they took a really big grill and put the coals around the edges, and the turkey in the middle with a pan underneath to catch the drips. We have a gas grill, and no matter how low I turn it down to, I end up burning it. So today I am trying charcoal grilling on the gas BBQ. I have about 20 coals, and most of them are on a little tray that I made out of a #10 food storage can. I left about a 1" lip around the bottom, and then cut some slits in the bottom with the side grinder (yes you should get one, even if you don't have a welder). I put the chicken on the top shelf, but not over the coals. It seems to be cooking very slowly, and I'm hoping it will get crisp and falling-off-the-bone done. Rather than really crispy on the outside and tough and rubbery on the inside.

Well, I had better go. Hope you are having a good day.

MidSummer Update

2010-06-28T18:44:00.001-06:00

Whew, this has the feel of a Christmas letter in that everything has gone by so fast. We have done a little traveling, and had some company and it is the middle of the summer already. I used to think that the summer when by in a blur because of the kids.... and actually, maybe they are the culprits still - whether or not they have moved out...something to ponder.

We spent the first part of June in Denver. Mutti's birthday is the 9th and we thought it would be nice to be there for that. I did some actual irrigating on her little farm - and found that while I still had the muscles to do the work my muscles have gotten very cranky and lazy, and thought it good sport to torture me. Seriously....yes a little sore, but not as bad as it should have been.... or maybe I just ache so many places on a normal day that it wasn't that different.

It's becoming more complicated when we do go to Denver as the family in that area has grown, and sadly my vacation days have not. We didn't get to see everyone.... it was just too short.

About a week after we got back home, Mike and his family made the trek our way. We got to see them for 4 days, and it was a lot of fun. If you need a mall, or a major league sports team, or a university.... then you might not have fun here. We don't have it. But we do have Oak City Canyon only about 15 minutes away, and the sand dunes are closer than that. If you like recreational shooting, the range is public, free and only about 4 miles out of town. We also have the 'Flood' - brought right to our house by the Water Master. The girls like the Flood about as well as anything, that and a night at the swimming pool. Dan and Ash came down for a quick visit, and Kollette was able to play in the flood with her cousins. It was fun to see them.

Well, that is about it. Mike and Family are back home now, and we are catching up on all the things that we hadn't gotten done. We didn't have an Outage this spring - that will wait until October, so I was able to be a lot of the early garden in on time, which is really early for me. The cool weather crops have done very well so far, but they are about done now. That is OK, because the tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, squash and garden huckleberrys are all doing well. Anita's lillies are doing especially well. The poppies popped when we were in Denver, so she didn't get to see them. But the lillies are really great. I hope you like the pictures.

So Much Trouble Awaits Me at Home Depot......

2010-05-27T21:47:00.001-06:00

You know, it isn't hard to get into trouble at Home Depot, or Losee Lumber for that matter either. You can go in there on a Saturday afternoon with the purest of intentions and you see a few sheets of plywood, or some rope or cable, some glue and fasteners..... and pretty soon something scary this way comes.

So far most of my trouble has been confined to building wooden boats, both sail and paddle. But between You Tube, the Society for Creative Anacronism, and the Lumber Yard - I don't know. Annie won't want me to leave the house without a keeper if I start to build something fun like these guys in the following clips have done.

I think they shot a pumpkin about 125 yard with this one - 375 feet.

This one blasted a pumpkin 607 feet - but then they had to use steel to do it. I kind of like the purity of wood.

A friend at work actually built a little trebuchet that could sit on a table and flip a golf ball for 50-60 feet.

Farmers catapault a Volvo

This one takes the cake!!

Untrustworthiness of Beards

2010-04-23T21:40:00.002-06:00

This is the 'Flowing Data' graphic. You can see it all plainly, and even zoom in for a better look. Sorry I didn't send you to the graphic right away. This is particularly interesting as M used to have to do interviews of prospective new hires, and since he felt that his face looked young he would often grow a goatee and mustache.... I think, which is one of the more trust inspiring combinations.

Spring is Sprung Update and the Untrustworthiness of Beards

2010-04-23T10:56:00.006-06:00

These are, of course two separate topics, but I have been remiss in posting and updating as I have been seduced by the easy reporting requirements of Facebook. I didn't think I would fall prey so quickly and easily to the one line update, or quote of the day that FB allows. I guess I could do a one line quote on the blog, but it would be kind of tiring. Annie sent me part of a poem by Alexander Pope that really wasn't meant for Facebook comparisons, but seems to fit:

Vice (Facebook) is a monster of such frightful mein,
as to be hated but needs to be seen,
yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
we first endure, then pity, then embrace.

OK, so it is a stretch. But I was disappointed when a lot of my kids started using FB and their blogs suffered for it.... and then I find that I am doing the same thing. I guess we follow the path of least resistance.

It has been a funny Spring for me. No outage - just normal living. I don't know quite what to do. I've been able to do quite a bit of early Spring gardening. I'm not done, not by a long shot, but spinach, carrots, beets, lettuce, and radishes are up, as well as asparagus. We transplanted two apricot trees, and one plum tree. I have one more apricot that I want to move, and then I will be done for a while with trees.

I've also been working to have a yard with more perenial plants in it. A couple of years ago, J gave us two raspberry bushes that she got from her sister-in-law. She was in an apartment at the time and couldn't plant them. One died , but the other flourished and now is threatening to take over the back yard. They don't call it a 'briar patch' for nothing. So I have some trimming and transplanting of the new little plants to do and then make some kind of a trellis to train them to. Yikes, they make a ferocious hedge. Also, we have been trying to get some grapes to grow, and they also need some kind of a trellis. A busy time, but nice.

I have a whole list of work to do on the yard and house this year, but mostly I can't think of anything that I would rather be doing than putting around home.

On another topic, I found this graphic on 'Flowing Data', a blog that Andrew recommended to me ages ago. They have a lot of ways of letting you visualize data, some of which are very good, a few too complex to use. The graphics that they display generally will take a complex or difficult subject and make it more understandable , so I am a fan. They also have some fun and sort of off-the-wall subjects that they visualize. This is one of those. I hope you enjoy it.

You might have to use cntrl+ to read this, or go the original blog. What kind of message does your facial hair send?

One more thing..... that internet - it can get you into trouble. I don't need anymore projects, but this looks like so much fun....

Census 2010 (Utah Version)

2010-04-06T08:52:00.001-06:00

Yeah, they have a form just for Utah. I thought I would pass it along:

INSTRUCTIONS: Along with the Federal Census requirements, the following Utah-specific questionnaire is also to be submitted.

Subject: Utah Census

Utah Census Form

1. _____________________ (Given name)

2. _____________________ (SURNAME)

3. Descendant of:

A. Brigham Young _____
B. Heber C. Kimball _____
C. Laman and Lemuel _____
D. Cain _____

4. Tribe of Israel : _____________________

5. Number of occupants residing in home in each category:
(Listed in chronological order)

A. Nursery _____
B. Junior Primary _____
C. Senior Primary _____
D. Young Women's _____
E. Young Men's _____
F. Relief Society _____
G. Elder _____
H. Dearly Departed _____
I. High Priest _____

6. Occupation [Please select all that apply.]:

A. Amway dealer _____
B. Shaklee dealer _____
C. Nonie juice dealer _____
D. NuSkin dealer _____
E. Melaleuca dealer _____

7. Automobile:

A. Station Wagon _____
B. Van _____
C. Suburban _____
D. School Bus _____
E. Double Decker _____
F. BMW (Big Mormon Wagon) ________

8. Favorite place to eat the night before Fast Sunday:

A. Chuck-A-Rama _____
B. Hometown Buffet _____
C. Sumo Sam's All You Can Eat Feeding Trough _____

9. Favorite Hero:

A. Nephi _____
B. Abinadi _____
C. Samuel the Lamanite_____
D. Steve Young _____
E. Johnny Lingo _____

10. Which of the following do you bring to church [check all that apply.]:

A. scriptures _____
B. Franklin Planner/ Daytimer _____
C. Pen/Pencil _____
D. Lifesavers/ Cheerios _____
E. Tic Tacs _____
F. Game Boy _____
G. Big Gulp _____
H. Cooler _____
I. Sony Walkman _____
J. TV Watch _____
K. All of the above _____

11. Do you prepare your church lessons:

A. A month in advance _____
B. A week in advance _____
C. While in the bathtub _____
D. While on the toilet _____
E. During Sacrament Meeting _____
F. During the closing prayer of Sacrament Meeting _____
G. During the opening prayer of the class you're teaching ___
H. Just wing it [according to the promptings of the Spirit]

12. Do you think pews should be permanently equipped with Big Gulp holders?: yes___ no ___

13. How many years has your family sat in the same place for Sacrament Meeting:

A. 10-20 years _____
B. 20-30 years _____
C. 30-40 years _____
D. Over 3 generations _____

14. How much time does it take for you to fall asleep during a high council talk:

A. 1/100,000,000th of a second _____
B. 1/999,999,999th of a second _____
C. 1/999,999,998th of a second _____

15. Which day of the month do you go home/visiting teaching:
A. 31st ______
B. 31st ______
C. 31st ______
D. 31st ______

16. How many church basketball fights were you in last year:

A. 1-10 _____
B. 10-20 _____
C. 20-30 _____
D. You'll have to ask my lawyer _____

17. Which of the following has been your most effective Family Home Evening:

A. Arguing about getting along
B. Having an opening and closing prayer with dinner
C. Gathering around the television to watch, "Dancing with the Stars?"

18. How many times a year do you make:
A. Green Jell-O salad _____
B. Funeral potatoes _____
C. Cabbage and Top Ramen salad _____
D. Turkey , cashews and grape-stuffed croissants_____

19. How many water-filled two-liter bottles do you own:
A. 1-2 thousand _____
B. 2-3 thousand _____
C. 3-4 thousand _____
D. Enough to fill the Great Salt Lake _____

20. Which of the following do you feel is the most secure facility in the nation:

A. Alcatraz
B. Fort Knox
C. Ward Libraries

21. How many structural engineers do you hire annually to insure you'll win the pinewood derby: _________

22. Keeping the Word of Wisdom in mind, how much of the following do you consume:

A. Chocolate: ___ pounds daily X 365 days annually= ____
B. Cola: ____gallons daily X 365 days annually = ____

23. If you had to choose between witnessing the Second Coming or attending a BYU/UofU football game, which would you choose?

A. Second Coming _____
B. Football game _____

AMEN

A Cool April Day Update snd the Saga of the Sail

2010-04-03T08:09:00.005-06:00

It's pretty cool here today, with a nippy North wind motivating me to stay inside and listen to General Conference. Yesterday was also cool, and I stayed in and worked on the sail that I am sewing.

It is a pretty big sail, and I have had it cut out for at least four years and just didn't know where to go. It is so big, and sail cloth is really slick and hard and not really easy to work with. It is so stiff that you can't hardly put a pin in it. That is what I tried to do initially and it didn't work so well.

Probably it was last fall that I had gone up with Annie to Choir and was wandering around WalMart and looked at the sewing machines. I was about to give up on the whole project and just buy the sails at about $600 for the big one and $250 for the little one, when I saw a cheapy 'Brother' machine for about $80. I thought "....Hmmmm......you would pay $80 for a saw or other tool that you need.....why should a sewing machine be any different." So I bought it, and it has been very helpful.

YouTube has also been helpful. I have a really good book on sail making, but it sort of wants to make you into an Old World sail maker with a small shop near the docks in Naples or Venice. They show how to make sails for guys that are going on a trans-Pacific voyage. The YouTube clips showed me that instead of pins, they use a double sticky tape to stick things together. So in a week I had my tape from Sailrite, and have been plugging away ever since.

Right now the sail panels are double-sewn together, and I have 3 out of the 4 corner reinforcing panels sewn in. Next come the edge seams and the the d-rings.

Here is a little clip from YouTube that you might like. I was looking for how-to-shoot-a-slingshot kind of clip, and never found exactly what I was looking for, but did find some interesting things. This one was a lot of fun. Rufus is 65 year old guy that grew up in a large and poor family and turned out to be an amazing slingshot shooter. I liked this story, and hope you have fun with it too. Have a nice day. I'll be sewing today I think.

A good 'road hugging' tire.....

2010-03-29T07:43:00.008-06:00

I got these from a friend.... looks like China to me with the terraces in the background.

All in a Day's Work: New Tube Leak in Bottom Ash

2010-03-03T16:53:00.005-07:00

Unit 2 has a tube leak in Bottom Ash. This is at the bottom of the furnace, underneath the 'floor'. The tubes form a sloped floor in the bottom of the furnace, and the heaviest ash falls down the walls, slides down the sloped floor and falls into a trough of water. From there it is extracted and pumped out to some decant ponds where the ash falls out of the slurry and the water is reclaimed and used to transport more ash.

This is a picture of Unit 1 Boiler furnace cavity, looking down from the 13th floor. The holes that you see on the sides of the boiler are burners, and when the boiler is operating, a jet of fire about 3 ft in diameter and 30 feet long shoot out of the burners. Our tube leak is down below the scaffolding that is being assembled in this picture.

You probably won't see a clip like this very often. It looks like fire shooting out, but it is just hot pressurized water flashing to steam, and illuminated by the fire above.

The Scale of the Universe

2010-02-24T16:46:00.002-07:00

You might need and aspirin or two after you watch this as it might explode your head.

All in a Day's Work: Unit 1 Short Outage Backpass Inspection

2010-02-06T18:07:00.003-07:00

Yeah, back in the boiler again. Just to clarify things- Annie said she couldn't hear all that I said: the noise in the background is shotguns. Operators are busy shooting clinkers out of the pendants. They typically shoot 1000 boxes of shells to remove clinkers. It makes it really noisy in the other areas of the boiler when we are doing inspections. No, we couldn't be hit by stray pellets. It is a funny place to work.

Probably a Boy Elk Calf

2010-01-18T12:46:00.002-07:00

Someone sent me the WMV and I thought it was pretty cute. But I'm thinking it might be a little boy elk. I'm sure the girls are more dainty.

Macho-Skeet

2010-01-11T17:22:00.001-07:00

Guys, somehow, this is what we have to schedule for a guy activity after Thanksgiving. Suggestions welcome.

Ancestors: Giving Thanks

2009-11-30T17:23:00.002-07:00

Today I feel especially thankful for my ancestors. For the lives they lived, the examples that they set, and for the hardships that they endured. I've tried in various posts to 'liken' some of the recorded history that I've been able to read to my life - to make it more real. I've been reading 'They Seek A Country' by David V. Wiebe (pronounced Y-ss....you get the idea I hope. ). It is a history of the Mennonites, which while not being strictly my ancestors, lived life's in close parallel to the Lutheran/Evangelicals in South Russia, and I think that they left their homelands for similar reasons and traveled along similar roads. I'm going to quote a few sections as the true experiences that are related here are so much more powerful and poignant than any imagining can be.

Anabaptist Hymn Der Ausbund, No. 31 (written in 1528 by Leonard Schiemer before his execution for his beliefs)

We wander in the forest dark
with dogs upon our track
and like the captive silent lamb
Men bring us prisoner back.
They point to us amid the throng
and with their taunts offend
And long to let the sharpened ax
On Heritics decend. (1)

I just can't imagine the memories that this must have brought to mind. It is hard to imagine this being sung in a church service. This was a long time back, and the Anabaptists during the time that this was written were in Holland. This is still before they were called Mennonites. Menno Simmons would leave the Catholic Church and join the Anabaptists and prove to be such a stabilizing influence and provide such comfort that they came to be called Mennists, and later Mennonites, in about 18 years.

The Bible salesman in 'O Brother Where Art Thou' utters a great truth as he beats Delmar and Everet with a good sized tree branch. He smacks Delmar and Everet looks up from his food and asks 'What's up Big Dan' and Big Dan says 'It's all about the money, boys' as he proceeds to beat them bloody. So often when you see people getting a beating in one way or another, it is all about the money.

So it was with the Prussian's and the Mennonites in the late 1500's and early 1600's, and then again with the Russians in the late 1700's. In Holland, the Mennonites were mostly farmers, and farmers that specialized in draining the low swampy land and turning it into productive farmland. As they move to Prussia, they moved onto lands belonging to rich land owners, and they were welcomed and made to feel at home. They were promised that they could have religious freedom, and not have to have their sons serve in the military.

The Mennonites responded by rolling up their collective sleeves and working hard for several generations. They drained large areas and put them under cultivation. They planted orchards, hedges, built homes and outbuildings. Often they were dairy farmers. In 1774 a census showed 80,000 acres in Mennonite hands.

Back to Wiebe:

"The native Prussians now became jealous of the thrifty Duch, who persisted in retaining their Low-German along with the required High-German. Both the State and the Church determined to stop the further expansion of these people. Towards the close of the eighteenth century (1700's) strict militatry and property laws were enacted. Military exemptions were withdrawn and heavy taxes imposed. Mennonites were forbidden to purchase land except from other Mennonites and they were not to propagate their faith aside from their own ranks. The Kaiser also decreed that children born out of mixed marriages could not be taken into the Mennonite ChurchFurthermore, the government collected fedes for the State Church along with other taxes from the Mennonites." (2)

About this time, Catherine the Great's (Empress of Russia) army was throwing the Ottoman Turks out of Southern Russia. Catherine was a German Princess and wanted to establish a hardworking, educated, loyal population in this area. She invited most of Germany to come and farm in the area, promising about 180 acres, 500 roubles to help estblish themselves, and 120 oak boards per family for building purposes. I don't know how much she promised actually, but that was the offer that found it's way to Prussia and tempted the Mennonites.

It wasn't that easy to leave. At first, only those with no land were allowed to go. It's always all about the money, and the land owners in Prussia didn't want their farms to empty out and go to weeds. The first contingent of emmigrants to leave Prussia for Russia consisted of 228 families. But somewhat like the handcart pioneers, these were the poorest and most unprepared of the population.

They left early in the year, before diplomatic permission had been given, without good leaders, without a doctor, and without a minister. They had bouts of disease and even starvation during their trip. Here is an old rhyme in Low-German that kind of tells the tale:

"Geprachet, gegeft un geborgt,
Genoamme un dan vada vaukofft;
So sen Foadiki, un Moutiki, entlich,
Fon Dietschlaund noam wille Russland geflocht.

Begged, given, borrowed, and taken,
Destitute, sick, hungry, and forsaken;
Thus father and mother fled from Prussia,
To the wild steppes of Southern Russia."
Free Translation (3)

Well, I've put off posting this because there is so much more to tell. But that can wait for another post. Sometime I think is would be a good idea to have our family reunion be a trek. We could walk along the old handcart pioneer trails in Wyoming, literally walking some miles in our ancestors shoes..... yeah, now you will think Lake Powell isn't so bad right?

(1) They Seek A Country' by David V. Wiebe pg. 19
(2) They Seek A Country' by David V. Wiebe pg. 20
(3) They Seek A Country' by David V. Wiebe pg. 23

A Great Excuse for a Visit

2009-11-15T22:15:00.004-07:00

We made the trek to Provo today to see our newest relative (grandson) . He is a cute little bundle, and I think that Annie will have better pictures. It was a nice trip and a fun visit. Here is a short video clip.

Back Yard Report

2009-11-14T18:14:00.003-07:00

One of my charming daughters asked to see a few pictures of the back yard, as I have been spending a lot of time there, and just finished two gate that will give us drive in access. So, here it is. I think a foot of snow would make it look a lot better.

If Only, If Only I Could Write

2009-11-09T16:51:00.002-07:00

'If Only' is the blog of a good friend who putters with poetry. I hope you enjoy his work. The latest one 'Helaman M.D' is kind of a tribute and thanks to a cadre of doctors throughout the world that watch over the missionaries wherever they are. They don't usually do the primary care, but are on hand as representatives of the Church to ensure that appropriate care is given. I had no idea, but two of his boys needed medical care on their missions, and these doctors were right there to consult with local doctors.

Early Morning Thoughts andThe Old German Bible

2009-11-09T09:38:00.003-07:00

Stumbling around this morning, getting ready for work in the dark and cool house, I had to wonder about my life and how I live, and how very easy it is. Well, when you get up at 5 in November it will always be kind of cold and dark. But I just turn on the light, turn on the stove, put the bread in the toaster and presto-changeo I have breakfast.

I've been reading a little about Mom's Mennonite forebears. They started out back in Flanders in the Netherlands in the 1500's. The book sums up their migration to Danzig area in a small paragraph. It was about a 600 mile trip, as the crow flies, and I suspect that as the ox walked it was much longer. It's possible, but we don't know, that they went by boat.

I'm sure the author didn't mean to trivialize their lives and accomplishments - he probably just didn't have much in the way of documentation. No stories, no names.... just a general history.

And so in the dark of the morning, I don't know anything either. But I wonder a lot. They probably got up before the sun, but I imagine that the dad and the boys went out in the cold and the dark to take care of the animals. The mom and the girls lit the lamps and built the fire up, heated water, made a breakfast - but they got up, there was work to do. I imagine that it was often cold and rainy and the boy's feet would be wet before they got to the barn. The wind would be bitter, and it would be with relief that they would close the door behind them and breathe in the warm smell of cows and hay.

The dad would take the lantern and hang it up on a rafter to give a feeble light that left the walls in shadows, but allowed the cows to be fed and milked. The dad would probably milk three cows and each of the boys would milk one. In less than an hour they would be back in the house, now lamp lit and starting to get warm, at least by the fire. The cats, at least were happy for the morning milking as they gathered around the milkers and waited for a squirt of warm milk into their mouths.

Breakfast would probably be oatmeal, or cooked wheat with cream, and they would all be hungry. They would ask a blessing on the food, and probably the boys and girls would tease one another. Kids will do those things. I wonder if it was good natured teasing that would bring a smile to the parents faces and a kind but unmistakable look to keep it in bounds, or if it was mean spirited and made the parents exasperated to where they would send some children out to find a switch..... Since it is morning in my world, and I'm not ready for a bunch of hate and discontent, I will make it good natured teasing, and I'll make the mother shush them a little and the father bring out the old bible.

Wait. It's in the early 1500's. It is likely that not many can read. Likely that there is no bible or any book in the house. But again, this is my morning mirage, and maybe it is the early 1600's and their bible looks a lot like the bible that Annie got at her grandma's estate sale. This one would be in Dutch probably, although if it was in Swahili it couldn't be harder to read than Annie's German bible. But they can read it, and today's story is ......yes, The Flood, in honor of the pounding rain outside.

And so a day of labor would begin. Sewing, spinning, weaving, tanning, carving, preserving, butchering, feeding, building..... the list is endless.

Well, I have spent so much time with my musings that I'm almost late to work. But little things will trigger these musings. Little touch stones in our lives. If that old bible could talk..... and it is probably about 1870 vintage rather than 1600's. Still, it serves as a reminder of the people who laid the foundations for the easy life that we lead.

It's All About Soda

2009-11-06T07:57:00.002-07:00

You are going to like this This guy is cool. He must be crushed. :)

http://www.sodapopstop.com/

Tim Hawkins Videos

2009-10-27T09:56:00.002-06:00

I haven't heard of him before today, but he is kind of funny.

Enjoy

A Sunday Night Update - Lake Powell

2009-10-18T21:07:00.007-06:00

It has been a pretty busy month. We are sitting quietly blogging and surfing with a warm fire nearby, and we are both pretty beat.

It started with a trip to Lake Powell - the Kokopelli Cruise and Messabout. This usually involves a weekend of beach camping and day sailing, then the more adventurous start up or down the channel, according to the current plan and sail, row or paddle anywhere between 5 and 10 miles, then camp and do it again. Outboards aren't prohibited, but sort of indicate your status as a polliwog, as Dad would probably say. We were pollywog's on this trip for the first day as there was basically no wind, and we cheated and used the motor for the second day too, and least for part of it as the wind was directly from the South, and that was where we were heading. So when we could sail, we did, but mostly motored as we wanted to get to the camp site in reasonable time. Monday night was our night to cook a meal for 24 people, and we didn't want it complicated by dark.

I had dutch ovened some chicken thighs and legs and then separated the meat out, and did my best to imitate Andrew and Caren's pulled pork sandwich filler with chicken. I put the meat in ziplocks and froze them solid. On Monday night, they still had a few ice crystals in them. We stopped by Green River and picked up some melons, and Annie cut them in chunks and made the melon shells into decorative bowls. The other ladies gave her the prize for presentation.

We had originally planned to stay all week and do more exploring, but we were invited to attend a special event in Salt Lake and had decided to leave on Wednesday, to make sure that we would be there on time. Then we heard that Wednesday was going to be cold with a lot of wind from the North - and we wanted to go back North to the marina. So we decided to leave on Tuesday while the wind was from the South.

When the wind is up, sailing is quite a bit of work. It is like having a strong and fairly unbroken horse on the end of a rope. By the end of the day, you can be pretty tired. We put a reef in the sail before we even raised it, and when the wind strengthened in the afternoon, we realized that we should have put one more in when we stopped for lunch. But all's well that ends well, even if it is a little too exciting in the middle. Annie might try to tell you a story of how the boat jibed and how we were thrown about like kittens in a barrel, but you know she sometimes like to dress up a otherwise boring experience with a little extra description.

This was the first real wind that we had to test the boat. How does she sail? With the wind from the side or back (downwind or on a reach) she sails like the dickens. Gaff rigged boats do that - there is a lot of sail, and away you go. Upwind, not so much. Gaff rigs aren't that great upwind (close hauled) and this boat is no exception. Plus, she has a lot of windage from the big roomy cabin and not such a skillful sailor at the helm. Handicaps abound. So I when we had to go upwind, I just kicked on the outboard, and we dropped the sail, and cheated. Maybe the new sail will be better, or maybe I will learn to trim it better. But we like the cabin, and when they found a baby rattle snake in some driftwood, Annie was glad we weren't sleeping ashore in a tent. Everything is a compromise, boat designs included. So far Annie happy with a snug, clean cabin, and doesn't seem to be overly put out that her husband is not a real red blooded sailor and has to use a motor to go upwind. So, if it doesn't bother her, and she doesn't think me too much less of a man, then it doesn't bother me.

We got the boat back on the trailer, despite the waves trying to knock it off and got home pretty late, with something to think about during the many long days to come back in the beige cubicle.

Here are a few pictures for you to enjoy. The canoeists have quite a few miles on them. I'm sure none of them will see 60 again, and most of them won't see 65, yet they paddled over 18 miles on Monday in rough water in windy conditions. I was pretty amazed.

Mike and Michelle are in their Sea Pearl. Mike is a retired software engineer, Michelle is a midwife that goes up to Alaska in the winter to deliver babies in remove villages.

This is Jim Thayer. Jim has been sailing for many years. Here he is, 76 or 77 years old, with a bad heart and an cryogenic oxygen bottle built into the boat. His son and grandson came along but Jim sails his own boat. Quite a remarkable guy.

And here are a couple of newbies. This picture is actually from last year, but we haven't changed that much, and it is the same boat.

Ancestors: Menno Simons

2009-09-24T21:40:00.001-06:00

The story of the Mennonites is an interesting one. It began with a man named Menno Simons. He is probably not really one of your ancestors, but he did start the church that took his name. Annie's ancestors, the Schroeders and the Schmidts, and some others were believers and that had a lot to do with where and how they lived. So I'm going to start with a little history of Menno, and work out from there. The story is way too big for one post.

Menno was born in 1496. He lived in the Netherlands in an area called Freisland. He became a priest in the Catholic Church in 1515 or 1516 - which would make him 19 or 20. I also have him becoming a priest in 1524. So I am guessing that he might have started his studies at 19 or so, and been ordained at 24 or so.

The Netherlands, at this time was torn by wars and lawlessness. The Hapsburgs, the Duke of Guelders, and the Duke of Saxony-Meissen were all fighting for power and control, and the people were caught in the middle. There is way too much history for this short post, but suffice it to say that war was pretty personal in those days, and that when the people were caught between the armies that they suffered greatly. No matter who eventually won the war, they always lost.

I'm going to quote from Wikipedia about Menno's exposure to the Anabaptist's, and his eventual rejection of Catholicism:

"Menno's first knowledge of the concept of "re baptism", which he said "sounded very strange to me", came in 1531. This came through the means of hearing of the beheading of Sicke FreerksSnijder at Leeuwarden for being "rebaptized". A renewed search of the scriptures left MennoSimons believing that infant baptism is not in the Bible. He discussed the issue with his pastor, searched the Church Fathers, and read the works of Martin Luther and Heinrich Bullinger. While still pondering the issue, he was transferred to Witmarsum. Here he came into direct contact with Anabaptists, preaching and practicing believer's baptism. Later, some of the Münsterite disciples came there as well. While he regarded them as misled and fanatical, he was drawn to their zeal and their view on the Bible, the Church, and discipleship. When his brother Pieter was among a group of Anabaptists killed near Bolsward in 1535, Menno experienced a spiritual and mental crisis. He said he "prayed to God with sighs and tears that He would give to me, a sorrowing sinner, the gift of His grace, create within me a clean heart, and graciously through the merits of the crimson blood of Christ, he would graciously forgive my unclean walk and unprofitable life…"^[5] "

It is hard to imagine how very different it was to live back in the 1500's - or even the 1800's. Now it is hardly a matter to raise an eyebrow if a Lutheran marries a Baptist, or if a Mennoite marries a Methodist. I guess eyebrows are still raised if one of them marries a Mormon, but that is a post for another day. When I was growing up in the early and mid 60's, there was still a lot of strong feelings about Missouri Synod Lutherans marrying an American Synod Lutheran. You still sent Christmas cards etc, but you had to watch those American Synod guys - they were pretty liberal. I say all of this not to poke fun (too much) but to try to illustrate that changing from being a Catholic Priest to being and Anabaptist was not just changing religion, it was like changing species. Yes, Bill decided to become a Romulan. Or maybe a Vulcan.... Klingon? Chimpanzee? You left your family and friends behind. It was Chava eloping with the christian Fyedka in 'Fiddler on the Roof'. It was hope and heartbreak rolled up together. Bittersweet.

Leaving the Catholic Church was leaving the mother ship. It was leaving not only the predominant faith, but the Church that stood behind kings, the Church who had many Popes that were in reality powerful kings in their own right. You were leaving a church that didn't like quitters, and might well ask pointed questions, and pull off your arms if they didn't like the answer. Leaving the Catholic Church pretty much consigned you to hell on earth in many ways, if not hell eternally. So it wasn't something that was done on a whim, or without thought.

Annie's family belonged the the Alexanderwohl congregation of the Mennonite Church. This congregation is remarkable in that it's roots can be traced back to the mid 1550's. It started in Flanders, in the Netherlands and moved many times. Each time a move was made care was taken that none were left behind. When the different branches of my family moved, first from Germany to Russia, and then from Russia to America, they moved as family units. When the families in the Alexanderwohl Church moved, they all moved, or all that wanted to go.

Well it is late now, and I'm about ready for bed. A lot of the early history of the Church is kind of sketchy. Most early histories are a little sparse with the details. That very lack of detail seems to call to me, whether the story is in the Scriptures, or in an old family history. So very much of the story can be lost by not having the details, and not taking the time to try to imagine what really was happening. Let me quote briefly from 'The Story of Alesanderwohl' by David C. Wedel:

"The origin of the Alesanderwohl congregation takes us to Flanders, a province in the Netherlands in the sixteenth century. During the years 1556 to 1565 hundreds of these Flemish people fled the northern provinces of the Netherlands because of the severe persecution and settled with many others around Amsterdam. During the first half of the seventeenth centurey, 1600 to 1650, and even before, many of these people migrated to West Prussia. They settled in the Danzig area, between the Vistual and the Nogat rivers.

.... They were promised religious freedom and were welcomed because of their farming abilities. They built beautiful farms, planted orchards , established roads and water canals and their Holland windmills beautified the countryside."

There now, wasn't that easy. in just a few paragraphs we have them easily leaving the faith of their fathers, pulling up stakes and moving to Amsterdam, then West Prussia - this is several hundred miles, and all by wagon. They we have them building houses, farms, road, and canals, and planting orchards, and having beautiful farms. There is nothing wrong with recording all this, but I hope that you will take a little time and think what it takes to plant a garden, yet alone an orchard. How much work is it to spade a garden, how much work to 'establish a canal'. Yikes. They were a hard working, faithful, pious people. I'm sure they had their faults and foibles, but people you can look to for an example of how to live, and what can be accomplished by persistence, consistency, and working together for a common end. People you can be proud to have in your family tree.

Scripture Guys - Pioneers

2009-09-20T21:46:00.002-06:00

Sometimes when I am reading the scriptures, I find myself so relaxed.....that I wake up with an embarrassed start. But sometimes, and not often, they seem to open up, and I can almost drop into a scene. Today Brother Alstrom caught me coming up for air, and called on me. I had heard him speaking, asking a question and when he called on me, all that I could do is to answer with a stupid 'what?'. For me there is no quick thinking at such a time. I told him that I had been reading ahead, and he had me read some more, which was kind. I suppose he could have had me write on the board or stay after class or something.

What got my attention was in D&C 136, where the Saints are being instructed about going west.

They were going to be organized in companies of 100, 50, and 10 with captains of each, and under the direction of the Twelve. So far so good, but think about that for a few minutes. As I looked around our class, I thought, and I apologize for this mean spirited and spiteful thought, but I thought Yikes! I don't know if there are very many that I would want to follow on a camp out, yet alone a trek across the Continent. Yes, I know I am a sinful, faithless judger, but what I'm trying to say here is that many of them must have had the same kind of feelings, but they had a great amount of faith, and went forward with it.
Verse 7:" ......then choose out a sufficient number of able-bodied and expert men, to take teams, seeds, and farming utensils, to go as pioneers to prepare for putting in spring crops." No Walmarts, no Safeway.... no nothing. Send out some able guys and have them build instant farms and get a crop in so that there is something to eat. Also, if you are one of the able guys - yikes! Not only do you have to go clear across the country with a wagon, but as soon as you get there, start clearing land and plowing up the sage and greasewood ASAP and get that wheat in the ground. And while you are at it, start digging ditches and diverting water to water those crops. Everything ultimately depends on the Lord, but as one of the 'able-bodied men', I would think that a lot would rest on them as well. Also, these guys came from a place there it rained all the time. Irrigation would have to be pretty new to them. An amazing story tucked into a verse.
Verse 8: "Let each company ^abear an equal proportion, according to the dividend of their property, in taking the poor, the ^bwidows, the ^cfatherless, and the families of those who have gone into the army, that the cries of the widow and the ^dfatherless come not up into the ears of the Lord against this people." Don't forget that most of the able bodied men had gone into the Army, and were marching to Mexico. Quite few more were being sent on ahead to clear, dig, plant and prepare. And still they made sure that the widows and fatherless had someone looking out for them. Home teaching on steroids

Well, there is a lot more there. Section 136 is so condensed - it's like an outline that could be fleshed out to make a book. It was a hard time to be alive, and I think this might have been hard doctrine, and hard council to accept. But they did, most of them anyway. And they crossed the prairies, and the mountains and made the desert bloom like a rose.

The Fundemental View on Health Care

2009-09-13T21:19:00.006-06:00

I follow a lot of blogs whose main topic is economics. A new comer to my Google Reader is 'The Fundamental View'. Written by a Canadian, I have found this blog gives a different view than we get from our national news sources, and is often the provider of interesting information. I wanted to share this posting with you all, not on my other blogs, but just on the old vanilla blog.

You might want to read this article. It has a bias that I find a lot more believable the the bias that I hear on our news. Health care is a complicated and tricky business and is like an elephant - you need to know if you are talking about the ear, or the tail, or the trunk, or the leg.... elephants have a lot of parts, and you have to know what part you are talking about. It is way too much for me to go into - it might be too much for my poor old brain even to comprehend. But this I believe: An willing heart will find a way, and an unwilling heart will find an excuse.

That is what I hear mostly, excuses. Excuses as to why it is too expensive to provide health care to the people of this country. Excuses as to how crucial it is/was to bail out the banks and then compensate the bankers obscenely. Excuses as to why we went to war in Iraq. (which has cost more than 3 Trillion Dollars (Joseph Stiglitz)), but we have thousands of kids that can't get their teeth fixed because that would be too expensive.

I'm sorry, but as they say in the South, 'That dog won't hunt.' As Big Dan Teage said as he smacked Delmar in the face, 'It's all about the money, boys'. It's not the care that is so expensive, it is how we deliver it. People have become powerful and rich using this health care model, and they don't want to change it. Read the article. I thought there was some food for thought in it.

Flood!

2009-08-31T20:44:00.009-06:00

Another great day. We had the flood and it was really welcome. Annie made
bread, and I made jam and we had a great meal and a great day. Tomorrow I have to buckle down and count the budget beans in the scrubber project.

A Saturday Night Update

2009-08-29T20:10:00.003-06:00

A great day! It has been a very nice day, just working around the house with Annie. My favorite kind of day. At night you are tired, but can look back on the day with some satisfaction knowing that quite a bit was accomplished.

So here is my list:

picked huckleberries with Annie this morning. We hadn't picked them for almost a week, and the bushes were loaded. They are funny little berries - they hide behind every leaf and shadow. So you pick all that you see, and then stand up and stretch a little, and there is a whole new batch. We have enough for maybe a case of jelly jars. The plants are still blooming, and there is a lot of green fruit, so the harvest isn't over.
mowed the lawn - nothing special about that.
did some weeding in the garden. The zucchini and spaghetti squash are doing really well. Annie got a great recipe for zucchini that we really like.
helped Annie spade out a section of lawn for a new iris bed. We took out the grass and mixed in 3 bags of compost. Annie did all the planting.
sanded, repaired, and painted the little yellow boat. It is a little one, kind of like Andrew's Aflac, but with a pram bow. I painted her a bright yellow.... and came to the conclusion that we are just not yellow boat people. The light blue looks a lot better. I think that this little boat will be a tender when we are anchored, or if someone wants to do a little fishing without breaking camp. It is light enough to be the roof over the slot top as well.

That is about it. Nothing very earth shaking. We are both pretty tired, and will be heading for bed fairly soon. Church is at 9, so we can't sleep in too late. Monday is another day off, and we will be getting the flood. So, that will be fun.

Towards the end of the month we will be heading for Lake Powell , and the Kokopelli cruise. First one. We have been going to the messabout for about 5 years, but it has always been a one or two day affair. That is a long way to drive for one day! But this year I have saved enough vacation, and there don't seem to be any emergencies, and so we will go on the cruise. We will start at Hite - there is enough water this year to launch there, and then head down the channel to Good Hope Bay. Hopefully we will catch a few bass while we are at it.

So, with that in mind, I will be trying to get the boat and trailer in good condition. New plugs in the outboard, and a wrench and extra plugs in the tool kit. The prudent explorer.

Sleep well, and wake.

Come On In, Boy

2009-08-22T13:14:00.002-06:00

For you that have daughters of any age, but especially if you can see the teen years on the horizon, I would like to dedicate the first song on my play list.

Those years are past for me, and I am forever grateful and thankful that my girls ended up with boys (now men) that love them, respect them and try to give them good lives.

The play list is at the bottom of the page. First song. :)

Hubble Ultra Deep Field Clip

2009-08-16T17:13:00.002-06:00

So, when you get to thinking (like the establishment did when Galileo had the audacity to suggest that the earth rotated about the sun) that the world revolves around your world (and we all do), take another look at this clip. It is pretty mind boggling

Just a Day Off

2009-07-20T22:06:00.004-06:00

Tomorrow is Monday.... well, for me it is. My schedule flipped and I am working Tues-Friday until October. But that is fine with me. I don't mind at all going to be on Sunday, and knowing that it will be a day out of the cube.

Delta is such a little town. Or maybe it is just the right size. Or maybe we have adapted to it's size. We slept in a little and had to run a couple of errands, so we hopped on our trusty and robust old econo-mountain bikes and rode two blocks to the hardware store to pick up some bug powder. When we wheeled into the back of Ace, who should me meet- leaving on a mountain bike, but our good friend Nathan. Meeting Nathan is always a bright spot in the day, and we had a nice little talk about children, life, bikes, and Delta. Nathan used to be in our ward, and our last boy was the same age as their first boy. But then they moved across the event horizon of the space-time continuum - into the other Stake, and we don't see them more than once or twice a year. I know - in DELTA!

Then a quick run to the drug store for some HPBP medicine, then back home to irrigate. Yes, it is flood day every other Monday. The water was late today, so I went over to Harding's and pulled weeds for a while with Ernie and his friend. They work for Harding doing odd jobs so when he came outside, I quit working and leaned on my hoe and visited a little. Actually, I listened more than visited as Harding is 88 and has a lot of memories. His eyes are about gone now, and that is a great frustration to him, but his mind is clear, and his mind's eye is 20/20.

Today he told me about when he was a young man and in the National Guard at the U of U. We were talking about horses, and he said that he had riding pants as part of his uniform, and that they would also harness up the teams and pull the cassions around as part of their drills. He told me about when he lived on Redwood Road, and it was dirt. How it was a big day if a car went by, and that they were way out in the country. He has a lot of stories, and I find them pretty interesting. I have heard quite a few of them more than several times, but you keep listening and every now an then a new wrinkle, a new story pops up and it gives you a whole new perspective on how the world was. The scary part is when I find myself starting a story with: "This happened... let's see....40, now I was pretty little yet - maybe 50 years ago....." Scary, scary, scary.

The water was late, and it finally came. I made my excuses and came home to clear the little twig jams, and re-dig the ditches where they had filled up when I hoed the row. We got a lot of water, and the back yard is just soaked. Tonight we had chard, broccoli, and zucchini from the garden, and grilled some pork chops. A great dinner.

After the flood, and before dinner, I decided that I had better cut some wood. I had two really big limb sections that were both about 7 feet long, and about 3 feet in diameter. So I fired up the chain saw, and cut them into sections about 12-14 inches long. Yes that was lot of cuts, and a lot of work. Our stove doesn't like big chunks, or long chunks, so I have to cut it up fairly small. The good thing about that is that you have to cut it up fairly small. The temptation is to cut them into fireplace sized chunks 18 inches or so. The cutting is easier, but the splitting is horrible. All of these limbs had the beginning of two or three major branches in them, and they will be hard enough to split even when short. But long... that would be hard.

Well, it is time for bed. No great insights tonight. No pictures, no videos. This is just a short summation of a day at home. These are my best days. My Best Friend is home, and we work together, or work apart and come together to admire the progress or to give each other a drink or a treat. Life is so good with Annie.

Sleep well, and wake.

A Perceivers Garden

2009-07-03T08:26:00.013-06:00

Most of you know that I have been interested for some time in personality typing a la Briggs-Myers. Being able to understand that we might be sitting next to each other, but seeing a very different world has made me a lot more patient and hopefully understanding. I think it has helped me to be a little more understanding.

After you have studied this system a little, you sometimes have a little flash of understanding as to why you do or don't 'connect' with someone that you work with, are related to, attend church with etc. For me, those little flashes are just great. They can be for preferences that you have in common, or preferences that you have that are different.

For example, Annie connects with Feelers. Their warmth and gentleness are attractive and comforting to her, and the usually 'click'. I can get into great conversation's with INtuitives as we will often find abstract and arcane topics to talk about. I don't do as well with Sensors - OK - but I don't have much to say when the topic turns to sports, and it often does.

Yesterday we had a little flash of understanding about being Perceivers. Perceivers are better at starting projects than they are finishing them. They are not the greatest planners, but they are very adaptable. Those of you that know us can probably see in your mind's eye the many project that we have 'in progress'. Some of you Judges might be in danger of a meltdown if you lived in our world, but it suits us just fine.

We have been working on cleaning up the chaos of taking out a large poplar tree. It has been all day-every day kind of work and we haven't given much else a minute's notice. But yesterday Annie looked that her cucumber plants and saw that the ball bugs had eaten the stems at ground level, and they were dead. On our way back from taking leaves and small branches to the dump, we decided to go to Hinckley and see if the green house there still had any plants. We were in luck - they were going to get rid of the last of the plants that day. We bought 64 plants for $4 and came home. While she planted in the available space in the existing grow boxes, I built a new bed from some of the spare block we had and filled with with garden dirt, peat moss, compost and manure. The plants are a little crowded, but they should climb over the block and spread all over the patio. We bought watermelon, cantaloupe, another melon - lemon something- and some spaghetti squash. That is when we had the flash. We are so well matched. We just dropped the huge project we had going for a few hours and started in another direction. It is still here today, and I have to get busy in a minute or two, but I thought that I would sent out a couple of pictures of our garden and yard. Hope you like them.

The Big Tree Bites the Dust

2009-06-27T08:31:00.005-06:00

Yesterday was kind of a sad day. A friend came over with a big bucket truck and took down our 100+ year old poplar. He brought along three or four sharp little chainsaws, and all the branches were down in about 4 hours. The main trunk still stands, surrounded by piles of small branches with big branch logs laying on top of them in a jumbled, tangled heap.

Annie and I are tree lovers. We live in the desert, and have tried to nurture every little twig that might want to grow. So we were kind of sad yesterday.

You say, 'hey, quit whining, you are the ones that ordered the hit'. That is true. We asked Paul to come out and execute our tree. And if I had to do it over again, I would. Make no mistake, as they say in 'You've Got Mail' this is business, not personal. You have to go the the 'mattresses' The reason that I would do it again is that it had to be done sometime. I have been watching the roots for several - many, actually- years and have never had a good feeling about the mushrooms that grow at the base of the tree. To me, this says 'rot' and when you have such a big and heavy tree so near your house, rot is not what you want at the base of the tree.

A lot of memories have been made in and under this tree. When Daniel was about 5 or so, I built a treehouse in it. The younger kids would sleep in it, and I think the older kids brought their special friends home to have a little privicy and probably smooch a little, far away from Dad and Mom's watchful eye. Very tricky.

You can see in the picture above, what one of the stumps did to our porch roof. It was the stump that had all the carving on it.

It just barely brushed against the porch, and WHAM, it was smashed pretty flat. I probably should include some pictures of the rot around the roots, but it is late and I am tired.

We live in a world where we mostly rule the forces that surround us. We are the kings and queens of climate, transportation, and sustanence. Our power largely derives from the abundant use of fossil fuels. In a few generations we have forgotten fear or even respect for the environment around us, and the forces that it can wield.

For instance, we think concrete is hard, even durable. I thought an open part of our back porch roof was solid and strong. This is not true. That might be strong and well adhered compared to my puny muscle, but let me tell you, not to the force of a falling tree. When Paul would drop a log from the top, it would hit on a nest of smaller branches, but it still struck the ground with great enough force that Annie and I felt the shock wave standing on the concrete patio. The porch? Broke to flinders is a heartbeat by one of the logs just clipping it. Wham.

So the tree had to come down. I'm still kind of sad to see it go, even though the miserable thing sent suckers up in our yard for years, and shaded our garden so that it's production was greatly reduced.

Poem on Parents

2009-06-21T07:05:00.001-06:00

I found it! There you go.

Parents

By Shirley Howard

Shirley Howard, “Parents,” Ensign, July 1974, inside front cover

My father was a carpenter
and stood on sawdust carpets
as he fashioned wood.
He taught us lines
must measure true,
to use three nails
instead of two,
and he had a special rule:
we read before
we started school.

My mother,
on the other hand,
was always-ever in demand,
planning programs,
making floats,
rearranging words and notes,
and she gathered
stars and flowers
to adorn us in our brighter hours.

They were different,
yet the same,
for one designed the picture,
as the other made the frame.

Built to Last - Al's Way

2009-06-20T19:48:00.008-06:00

When I was about 7 or 8 - Grandpa built a camping table. He laminated a couple of pieces of 5/8" plywood together for the top, and constructed an ingenious set of folding legs that would allow the table to be folded flat and put in the back of a station wagon.

We used it on a few campouts, and so it might not have served exactly the purpose that he built if for, but it was used a lot. Made before outdoor furniture became common and easy to buy, it held the food for our family and friends as I grew up. Memories are sometimes more of a comfort than an actual historical record, but in my memory I seem to remember eating a summer meal out in our 'breezeway' in the house on 32nd on Wheatridge. Grandpa had roofed the open space between the house and the garage, and walled and screened it in so that it was a cool, pleasant place to eat in the heat of the summer. It was summer and we were all around the table and Grandma was bringing the fried chicken in to serve it. Now, if you have ever had Grandma's fried chicken, you know that the house, the table, the utensils - everything - was transformed to a little higher plane. I've been trying to make chicken as good as hers for more than 30 years and have failed every time.

This old table, that has so many memories was something that they couldn't take with them when they moved from the farm. So it found a home here with us. It had been out in Grandpa's shop and served as a workbench of sorts, so it was pretty much at home under our porch.

We have had a few meals on it, but the paint and the wood on the top was not in the best shape, and it was hard to get clean. Plywood suffers from checking when it is in the sun. The dense parts of the wood expands and contracts at a different rate than the softer parts of the wood, and so after a while it pulls apart, and pulls the paint apart too. You can sand it and repaint it all that you want to, and you won't fix it. Boat bottoms do this as well, especially if they are stored bottom up to the sun, and then water gets in at the checks and soaks the plywood and the boat slowly rots.

The cure for this is to sand everything down as smooth as you can get it, then paint the surface with a thinned epoxy or polyester resin, then apply a piece of fiberglass cloth to the surface, then more epoxy or polyester resin. The glass cloth hold everything together, and that is the end of the checking problem. Andrew's boat, Aflac had this problem, and that is how I fixed it. Now all my boats get a coat of fiberglass, and they don't leak.

Sooo.... that is what I did last week to the table. It took a little work with the belt sander to get it back to sound wood. One knot hole had to be repaired, but the cloth went on smoothly and a nice smooth surface is the result. Today I painted it, at least one coat. We painted it the same color as the house, so that we can store it against the wall.

If Grandpa built this table when I was 7, then it has lasted for 50 years, and is still in good shape. I'm sure that he never had a thought that his table would still be in good shape, and serviceable in 50 years, but that is just the way he built things. There was the wrong way, and the Al way. And that was the right way. As I was crawling under the table today, doing the touch up paint, I could see that it was put together mostly with screws. 'Glued and screwed'...... that was the way it was.

I've been looking for a Fathers Day poem that I heard once. Only one line sticks in my mind. But that was about being taught to 'use three nails, instead of two'. I guess it sticks there because it was so much the way that Grandpa did things. That kind of thoroughness had it's downside - I've never knowm anybody that broke as many bolts as Grandpa did, getting it really tight. And I am sure that I'm not the only one that tried to open up one of his wire fence gates and then not be able to get it closed again because Grandpa had used a fence stretcher and a come-along to get it tight enough to close. Grrrrrrrrrr.........

But it is a good example, and a good way to live your life. He told me once that it didn't matter too much what I did for an occupation, but to be the best I could be at what I was doing. It's good advice, and he set a good example for all of us that follow. So look down the road 50 years, and use both glue and screws. Build it to last. That's Al's way.

Facebook Quiz Answers

2009-06-20T09:12:00.002-06:00

Since there have been several comments that my quiz was hard I thought I would give you the answers and a short explanation. I really didn't try to be tricky.

1. What country?

Russia- very interested, but don't speak Russian and think it is messed up politically and economically.

Argentina - also very interested. It has great promise, could be a wonderful place to live. Maybe I could learn Spanish

Canada - well, there you have it. Beautiful, prosperous, fairly squared away politically and economically. Lots of area and not too many people.

Australia - just too far away.

New Zealand - ditto. If you take out the whole of having family, friends or history, NZ is probably #2.

2. James Garner. Rockford Files. Maverick. Maverick 1 - which you don't even remember. Support Your Local Sheriff/Gunfighter. OK, maybe lame, but he makes me laugh.

3. 13. Friends going to movies, meeting friends of the opposite sex - surprise - at the movie. What a coincidence! That's what I tried to tell Grandma anyway. She didn't buy it.

4. Baseball. Yeah, I know it's lame. Football would be a close 2nd. Basketball and root canal's are close for me, but I like the drugs, so maybe root canals 3rd.

5. Green. Then blue. Yeah, I know I'm not supposed to be able to see green so well, but mostly I'm thinking of the real green that you see in plants, grass and trees.

6. Taiwan 2007, Austria in 2006, Mexico 1993, Germany 1992, Germany 1984, Canada 1958.

7. Alan. Ok, so I was trying to be tricky here a little. Not such a good job. You all knew.

8. Crowds, then the crowds in the airplanes and knowing how maintenance decisions are made, Heights and close places, sometimes. Skyclimbers, yes. But crowds always. I'm not smart enough to know if the FR is doing the right thing or not. I suspect that their policies are designed to take from the poor and give to the rich, but this is a time honored pass time, and as Scarlet O'Hara commented once, 'It's a darn site safer than the other way around'. Rhett laughed.

9. I'm glad none of you missed this. Annie.

10. Scientist. Possibly when I was about 6 I thought of football or being a pilot.

11. Denver. Wheatridge was pretty little then. I don't think they had a hospital.

12. Oreo/grasshopper.

13. Hiding. Sometimes disguised as being helpful. Kitchens are great places to hide as generally there is work there and many people find a reason not to go there.

14. 11:00. Earlier is better and the goal, but I generally don't make it.

15. Gardening. I sort of had to work back on this. It answers the question of what do I spend the most time doing? I do like to build and sail boats, but I don't do much of it.

Day is Done

2009-05-20T21:22:00.005-06:00

Wednesday night. Daily Dose - teaching English as a 2nd language - is done until Sunday. Annie is trying to sew but having a little trouble with her serger. While I have fair mechanical skills, sewing machines totally baffle me. I hope she gets it solved.

We had a ''Fun Run' today at work. We have a gym at work with a lot of weight and exercise machines and are encouraged to use them. We have a occupational therapist..... I guess you could call him. Brian is very good at helping keep an aging workforce patched up and headed back to work. He also has a lot of programs like the 'Fun Run' that get people out and help to keep them fit.

The 'Fun Run' is an annual program where we go and take a 2-1/2 mile walk around the lake that stores the river water we use for cooling tower makeup. I got a t-shirt (navy), some chap stick, some sun block, a new pedometer, and had a good time on a warm spring day. All in all, it was a nice interlude. Craig and I mostly walked, but also got in a few MBI's.

Maximum Bursts of Intensity (MBI) is our name for interval training. We used to walk and jog a few miles each day, but felt that we really weren't getting the benefit out of the exercise that we needed. One day , to our horror, we found that we literally couldn't run. Our hearts and lungs could hold up OK, but our legs just wouldn't move faster than a jog. YIKES!!!! What a discovery!!! Not a happy day. We tried to run 25 yards, but couldn't manage more than a shuffle. How extremely embarrassing, So we started doing 25-50 yard MBI's each day in our walk/run. We also started climbing the stairs at work. 'Doing the Unit' is a climb of about 300 vertical feet which works out to be the equivalent of 30 ten foot floors. We only have 20 floors, so we have some long stair ways.

So we are getting better, but we know we'll never be 30 again... or 40, or even 50. But that is OK. "Time hurries on, and the leaves that were green turn to brown". You don't train today to be ten years younger tomorrow, as that just won't happen. You train so that in ten years you have good strength to have an active healthy life.

Craig has been studying lately a lot about fitness and nutrition. One of the things that he has brought up that I think is true is that you tend to lose about 1/2 to 1 lb of muscle mass per year after you are about 40. I think the age is somewhat variable, but the concept is true. Sometime along in the 40's and 50's the muscle starts going away. As it does, your body looses part of the 'furnace' that burns up the food that still tastes so good.... and so, you don't end up as an emaciated skeleton- the lost muscle is replaced by fat.

As you lose muscle and gain fat percentage, it becomes harder and harder to exercise. Knees, hips and feet have lost supporting muscle and now bear a heavier load, so naturally it is easier not to exercise. Let's face it - it is ALWAYS easier not to exercise. But we don't put on our weight like a coat - all at once, and so it doesn't go away all at once either. Just one 'Fun Run' at a time.

It is also getting towards the end of the budget year at work. My scrubber project is going along fairly well, and while we might not be spending money as fast as the Government, we are spending it plenty fast for me. So I have been counting beans and seeing how many are left in the pile.

After counting a little over a million beans that had been spent and figuring that we still have about 3/4 million left in the pile, I got a page to call the scrubber control room. NOW.

So I called, and Max the Superintendent of the Contractor Company was on the phone and told me that he would come and pick me up, and that I should bring my ball bat.

This didn't bode well, but there were no ambulances or Fire Brigade guys scrambling, so I hoped things wouldn't be too bad. The last time I got a summons like that, one of the scaffolding contractor guys had not tied off and had fallen and was hurt..... that was about 5 years ago, but that was enough.

This time it was a tagging violation. We have a system of tags that are placed on valves, switches, breakers, and even computer screens that function as locks. If there is a Do Not Operate (DNO) tag on something, you had darn well better keep your hot hands off of it, or you will have time off without pay to reconsider your actions. Sometimes quite a bit of time off. We take this really seriously because people's lives depend on it.

We (Max's guys) are working in 'C' module and the plant guys were working in 'B' module, and they are side by side. The plant guys got done with the work in 'B' module and were putting it back into service when an operator pulled a wrong tag and opened a valve sending about 20,000 gallons of water into 'C' module. Fortunately, the contractors were on break and were just coming back when the cascade started. But it still caused quite a stir. I was happy that I would not be part of the disciplinary proceedings, and glad that no one had even gotten wet and no equipment was damaged. Still, it is kind of stressful as the everybody know that while this time it was just a lot of water, the next time it could be a lot more serious - live steam, high voltage, rotating equipment starting ....

I just gathered some facts and tried not to get anything more stirred up than it was. I don't know what happened to the operator. At the very least I imagine that he got a letter in his file, but often they give them from one to five days off. He is a good operator, and the mistake that he made would be easy to make as the valves for 'B' and 'C' modules are on adjacent pipes.

That is about it. It is time for bed. Tomorrow Annie and I will travel to Provo to see a cute granddaughter graduate from kindergarten. I am looking forward to it. Sleep well, and wake.

All Quiet on the Desert Front

2009-04-29T17:01:00.003-06:00

The Outage has been over for almost a week, but I am so far behind with all of the other projects that it doesn't feel like things have slowed down at all.

Since D2 and her kids left the house has been pretty quiet. Annie went to choir last night and I went to spend an hour at and Eagle Scout Project. Tonight we have 'Daily Dose' and will be teaching English as a 2nd language. Tomorrow will be our day without any appointments that I know about, and then the weekend.

There is plenty of work around the yard. I still have wood to pick up and stack, and branches to snap and chop into kindling - before I mow the back yard. I have four short rows of peas in and also that much spinach, and all eight rows are up and growing. But that is just a bare start. There is a lot of garden left to plant and it hasn't even been plowed yet.

But I am content. Possibly that contentment springs from exhaustion, but mostly I think it is from Spring. It's a new year, it is full of promise. Our friends the hummingbirds are back, zooming in and out of the yard like CIA spy drones.... or maybe like animated jewels. Both descriptions fit. I call them 'friends' but it is more of a mutual parasitic relationship. We give them colored sugar water on a regular basis and they entertain us with their awesome acrobatics. They seem content with the deal as they keep coming back.

I guess that is about all for today. Daily Dose was OK. We talked about computers. This is the 1st half of the Intermediate section, and things are getting fairly hard. It is kind of funny. You speak English all the time and don't think anything about it.... then you start to teach it, and you realise that the way we speak is not very clear, consistent, or actually correct. You can start to hear the Latin base words in English and the make more sense than some of the ones that we use a lot. Sometimes the Spanish word just has a different connotation than the English word. For instance: damned in English always had a connotation of rebellious and hate filled spirits closely aligned with Satan. In Spanish the word is perdido, or lost. It reminds me of Robert Jordan's 'Wheel of Time' series where the powerful evil guys were refered to as 'The Forsaken' by normal people, but they called themselves 'The Chosen'.

Enough rambling. Sleep well and wake.

Sinister Sigma Phase

2009-03-26T03:43:00.006-06:00

It's almost 4 am, Unit 2 is down with another tube leak, and I just got back from the 14th floor, looking at which tubes need to be cut and repaired, and which can be muscled back into line.

Boiler tubes are tough. They have to endure and perform in horrendous conditions. These particular tubes have the hottest steam in them, and are in one of the hottest places in the boiler. The steam they carry is around 1100 deg F, and so I think that on the outer skin, it must be at least 50 degrees hotter, and maybe more. Recently we had a huge clinker in this boiler, and it acted like a funnel to direct the gas along the sides of the boiler. It also insulated a lot of tube area, causing other areas to have to accept more heat. This tube failed in one of the hottest areas. It is a stainless steel tube, and they are really good in heat. But if the temperature is up around 1200-1400 deg F, and it might well be on the tube surface, sigma phase degradation starts to form. It is actually a type of intergranular corrosion. In steel with less than 18% chrome the grains move around and you get little voids and the steel is said to have 'creep'.

Stainless steels don't creep in the same way, but chromium carbide does form in between the grain bounderies causing a weakened area. In time the carbides get bigger, and the strength is degraded, and then finally it fails and a bunch of guys spend several days and nights fixing it.

Down the River They Went

2009-03-16T11:59:00.007-06:00

Playing with Google Earth can open up a world of possibilities....pardon the pun. I traced out the path that the Walls, and maybe some of the other German families took to reach Southern Russia. It is about 1700 miles as the boat drifts, and so it is a longer trip than I had realized.

Here is a post that I did some time ago that has a little more history, and a link to the boats that they floated in.

Also, I think I found Alexanderdorf (Starcks), Hoffnungstal (Walls) and two possibilities for Norka (Hahns). Hoffnungstall is probably where it was originally. I'm not so sure of Norka, Norka 2 (Nork, Armenia) or Alexanderdorf. I used German geneology sites to locate Norka 1 and Alexanderdorf, but Dad always told stories about the Germans and the Turks.... and Norka 2 is pretty close to Turkey.

I'll do more investigation later, but I thought some of you would be interested in the length and scale of the float trip that so many of them went on. Andrew and I did a little float down the Sevier River a few years ago and it about killed us. Pansies that we are.

Well, there you have it. I don't know how interested anyone is in seeing the route that they took, but it sort of gives you a little idea of the trip.

Unit 2 Short Outage - Ride to The Sky, Sailor Can't Escape

2009-03-11T22:50:00.004-06:00

There isn't a lot to add. Unit 2 is down for a short , one week outage. I got to ride the sky sled, or rather couldn't avoid riding. I might have a little more tonight to send.

Get Thicker Skin.....Armor

2009-03-08T13:26:00.002-06:00

I just thought this was so cool... which probably shows my low 'cool' quotient. But I still thought is was cool. When we went to Germany in 1984, we stopped by an amazing military arms museum. Having played at being a armature, apprentice, beginning, self-taught blacksmith, I was just in awe of what these old smiths could make with a hammer and a fire. Still am. I hope you like this, it's not too long.

Looking Back at Trying Times

2009-03-05T20:59:00.002-07:00

We had a very nice Stake Conference last Sunday. The messages centered around Temple work, genealogy, and optimism.

I couldn't help, with these messages to think back on some of the family stories that I have been told, and have grown up with. My dad in particular was a story teller, and passed down stories to me in the great tradition of oral historians: He told them to me so many times that I know them almost by heart. And bless his heart for each one of them too.

When I look out at the imploding economy that we have, and the future that is unsure, but sure to be different than our recent, comfortable past, it is kind of comforting to revisit some of the stories of the circumstances that our ancestors lived through.

Looking back in history it is easy to romanticize it. The problems that our grandparents faced seem like smaller and cozier problems, the stories might have a scary part, but they have happy endings. And so we tuck our selves into bed and wish we had been born 100 years ago. At least these are my tendencies. You probably have more sense.

Dad told me a lot of stories about the Great Depression, and what it was like to grow up in those days. He almost always would tell me how poor they were, but that they didn't know it because everyone was about in the same boat. He was the oldest son of the oldest daughter of a family of 15 children. His father abandoned them, and Grandma had to live with her parents and brothers and sisters. Her parents had immigrated from Russia in the early 1900's, I think about 1905 or 1907. Grandma was a little girl when they got to America. They had to sell everything to come to America, and they were still trying to establish themselves economically when the Great Depression came along.

Dad was six when the market crashed, and while the only stock they had was live stock, the Depression reached throughout the country and made itself felt. I'm sure that G-Grandpa worried a lot about how he would feed all of those mouths. His solution was to raise almost everything that they ate in the garden, and then contract to take care of 80-120 acres of sugar beets for their cash income.

Some time I'll do a post on sugar beet cultivation practices before tractors and herbicides. Tonight I'll quickly run through the steps quickly just so you know how many times they had to go up and down the rows. I think that the farmer generally plowed, disked, harrowed, planted and marked the rows. G-Grandpa's brood/army would go to the fields after first irrigation and block, irrigate, thin and hoe, irrigate, hoe, irrigate, hoe, then the team would come through and lift the beets (October now) and then they would top and load them into wagons. Dad spent his time in the fields from May through October for most of his childhood years. It was unending, back breaking work.

They tried to live close to the farm, so they would move at least once each year. Dad said that a lot of the houses had dirt floors. Now think about that a minute. My shop has a concrete floor, but I doubt that any of us would consider living there for a night, yet alone on a permanent basis.

One of my favorite stories, and I think one of his as well, was the story of the 'Second Light Bulb'. You see, they moved to a house that had electricity in it, and they had a light bulb - just one, for some time. They would take it from room to room like you would a candle or a kerosene lamp. Then, wonder of wonders, they got a second bulb, and didn't have to move the first one so much. But, again, wonder of wonders, one of the bulbs was much brighter then the other. They couldn't figure this out. One bulb had a 40 on it.... and the brighter bulb had a 60 on it. Humble, humble beginnings.

Getting back to Stake Conference and the theme of having optimism in our lives. I don't think that means that we have to be blind to the troubles around us. Here is a quote that I like:

``Optimism of the soul, pessimism of the intellect,'' Antonio Gramsci

I would amend it to read: Optimism of the soul, realism of the intellect.

When there is so much bad news around us, and it sometimes seems that we are being overwhelmed I think it is important to look back to the things that our ancestors went through and to take courage from their lives, and then to go forward with optimism, knowing that we came from people who didn't always have things handed to them. These were people that wondered where life was going to take them, but people found courage in their religion and in their families. They are people that lived the stories.

It's STAR TREK, Baby (As Joey Might Say)

2009-02-15T20:36:00.004-07:00

Well, this is so cool that it almost eclipses the global economic meltdown, and I am sure will be a lot more fun. May 9, 2009, better than the Superbowl.

Watching the Tank on Saturday

2009-02-14T14:23:00.005-07:00

It's Saturday - Valentine's Day, but I'm at work watching contractors coat a tank. That is actually a stretch as they know what they are doing, and don't need me to direct work. I'm here in case they need some help, as their interface to our company.

Mostly I have been trying to get a schedule going so that when the scrubber project starts next week, that everyone is on the same page. It is kind of a complicated project, and the Superintendent of the general contracting company has kind of been handed a black box. That's unfortunate, but not surprising. I have come to believe that most managers like to keep information much like the medieval guild's used to do. Knowledge is power, and over time they learn to keep what they know to themselves. It it is safer for them if their bosses don't know too much, and if their subordinates don't know too much..... and that isn't to cast stones, it is just what I have observed. So Max, the Superintendent came down here pretty blind and I walked him around and fed him information at high speed. Everyone probably remembers drinking from the hose as a kid and having a sibling or friend wait until the hose was in their mouth, and then turning it on full blast...... well, it was kind of the same thing.

I have been eating and drinking and planning this project for a year or more, and I gave him a lot of information in one afternoon. We will have another meeting on Thursday with all of the subcontractors there too, and hopefully, we will be on the same page going forward.

Here are a couple of pictures of the tank, and the coating process. In the middle is the mixer. This is a slurry tank, and so you have to keep it agitated. On the sides of the tanks are baffles, and they keep the slurry from spinning around the tank at one constant speed. The contractors are spreading and epoxy/sand mixture to prevent abrasion on the underlying coating. The walls are the original coating.

Well, it is about time to go. Fortunately there is enough sunlight left to let me do a little yard work. You might have seen Annie's post that told about my adventure with the tree limb and the ladder..... there is that still to clean up, and three apricot trees and a half a dozen plum trees to transplant.... and more garden work....block to lay.... a wheelbarrow tire to change.....no rest for the wicked and not time to repent. I hope you all have a very nice day.

A Little More Fun

2009-02-05T20:31:00.003-07:00

It was a wildly busy day with two sets of contractors and a lot of 't's' to cross and 'i's' to dot and I am tired tonight. It was good to come home and visit with Annie and have a nice meal and watch some funny TV. Later on we migrated to the computers and I went to reading the news and financials and pretty much didn't have the will to continue. So if you have had a little too much winter, or too much news, or just want to look on the light side, here are a few more videos that I found that made me laugh or smile. Honestly, I don't have the ummph to tackle the serious stuff today. Sleep well and wake.

A Couple of Country Videos- Brad Paisley

2009-01-23T16:46:00.010-07:00

Not a single dog, train, prison or cheatin' heart in the bunch. I hope you like them.

Car Talk

2009-01-17T08:48:00.001-07:00

If you are a Linux or Apple fan, you will like this.

Ice Harvest

2008-12-11T09:37:00.002-07:00

Back in the Olden Days - no refrigeration!! You bought ice, and kept things cool with and 'ice box'. How did you get the ice? When your grand parents were kids, you had to harvest it from a lake, or buy it from someone that did.

Harvesting Ice - Traditional: (You might want to turn down the sound. They sing 'Winter Wonderland' as background, which has got to be one of the most obnoxious songs ever written.)

The Ice Saw:

Harvesting Ice Modern:

Working with Horses

2008-12-11T07:03:00.005-07:00

After looking at some of the PT clips, I was thinking about some of the other things that played a big part in the lives of all of your grandparents. I tried to find some clips showing sugar beet cultivation and harvest by hand, but I think those days are truly gone. I did find some clips that showed early sugar beet tractor harvesting, which I suppose looks crude and primitive compared with today's harvesting equipment. Still, even the most elementary of the tractor powered machines would have been beyond imagination to Grandpa. They did it all by hand and by horse, at least for many years. They started in the spring and plowed, disked, harrowed, planted, blocked, thinned, weeded, irrigated, lifted, topped and loaded the beets into a wagon, all without engines.

I did find a few clips on doing farm work with horses. In our minds, we know that our forefathers powered their farms with horses, and think of the horses working quietly along. There aren't any run-aways in these clips, but as you watch them, you might imagine the excitement that could show up in an instant if the horse spooked, or was stung by a wasp or bee, or even a horse fly. Some of the little buggy seats are actually in front of the machine. I think that in the old days, most of seats were mounted so that they were in back of the load, and the driver could jump off to safety if the horses took off.

It was a whole different world, and a different way of looking at things in those days. If you haven't farmed with tractors, you probably won't be struck by the quiet that remains undisturbed when you farm with horses. It's very tranquil, and probably was lonely at times too. It makes you think of Matthew Cuthbert from Anne (with an 'e') of Green Gables. He was well cast, and you can imagine him working in the silent fields for seasons on end.

A plowing 'match':

Disking with a double team:

Binding:

Binding Corn:

A Day in the Hayfields (1904): This was pretty good, and showed the mowing, raking, and loading on the wagon, then the transfer to the haystack of the loose hay.

Logging and Moving Wood:

Harnessing and Hitching:

Old Tractor-powered hay baler:

A Few More PT Boat Clips

2008-12-10T21:13:00.002-07:00

After reading Jerry's biography of Dave Levy, a PT Captain, this clip shows it's Hollywood/propaganda roots. It is still kind of cool, but Dave Levy said that they just putted quietly about in the dark. The hotshots that ran their boats at speed to either attack or retreat became very visible from the white wake, and the Japanese picked them off at their leisure. This fits in pretty well with what Dad used to say. I remember Dad telling about how they used to land spies in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Italy, and that they would sit quietly for hours. The boat's speed allowed it to get to and from it's base in a reasonable amount of time.

As a boatbuilder, I found these clips to be really interesting. They were really well made - light and strong and had a lot of precision laminations in them.

PT Boats - Giant Killers Part 1

PT Boats - Giant Killers Part 2

PT Boats - Giant Killers Part 3

I guess that is enough for one post. Good night all.

The Restoration of PT 658

2008-12-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

I think you will like this.

Sammuel on the Wall

2008-11-11T14:53:00.003-07:00

I thought some of you might get a smile from this. Especially if you are LDS and live in California.

Sailor escapes a ride to the top of the boiler (mostly)

2008-10-12T16:59:00.006-06:00

Another day, another dollar, another tube leak. I got the day shift this time, which was nice, but thought I was going to have to ride the xxxxxxxxxx (note: x's replacing a brandname ) up to the leak to take pictures, and acess the situation and to put in my two cents as to what would be the best way to repair the boiler.

The xxxxxxxxxx is a platform with an air motor on each end that climbs a steel cable. Two guys ride it, one running each motor. Mostly, I don't mind heights, but this thing gives me the willies. Not only are you up high, but the whole thing swings back and forth some. If the operators aren't watching, one motor will run a little faster the the other one, and one end will rise or fall faster than the other. It is noisy in the boiler, and hard to communicate, and if you walk towards the middle to yell at each other, it wobbles all around. When they got it ready, Jake the Welder and I went into the boiler, down at the bottom with safety harness' on. We climbed onto the platform and started up for a test run.

As you start up, the platform bangs against the sloped bottom of the boiler, throwing you off balance. The platform begins to climb the slope, and we each stick a foot out between the handrails to brace us back to vertical. My motor didn't seem to be working as well as Jake's motor, and when we got to the top of the slope, up the the side wall we stopped to assess the situation. Jake wanted to look at my motor, but the handrails are really narrow, and neither Jake or I am very wispy. So Jake climbed up onto the handrails, and I crawled between his legs and went to the other side, amid a lot of rocking and wobbling. We determined that my motor just wasn't up to the trip and we went down again. It was quitting time, and I went home before the motor was replaced. Whew.

A Snug Night

2008-10-10T21:19:00.002-06:00

Tonight the house was empty, and I wandered around for a while, looking for Annie. There was a chicken in the oven, baking, and that was pretty inviting. Finally I found her in the back yard, hauling the houseplants towards the porch. We haven't been watching the news too closely, and it is supposed to blow/rain/snow for the next few days. We dragged all of the plants in the house, then fighting a biting wind, got the tomatoes covered with plastic and old blankets, ready for the storm.

Now we are having a nice evening. We are both tired, fed, warm and snug in the house. Bed time is just around the corner, and even the fact that I have to work on a tube leak tomorrow doesn't dispel the cheer.

I think I will wish you all a good night, add a little wood to the fire, and maybe top off the wood pile in the house and head for bed. Sleep well, and wake. :)

Alabama Music Videos

2008-10-02T22:43:00.002-06:00

These songs have been favorites of mine for a long time, and I found the MTV video clips tonight. I hope you like them too. They are a little dated, but then so am I.

A Little Bit of Fun

2008-09-27T08:40:00.002-06:00

You have to look down at the bottom of the page to find it, but I have installed an audio player gadget and you can listen to some of my red neck, de classe favorites if your taste in music runs not so much to the soul thrilling and character building as it does to the foot tapping and ye-hah brand. I probably should choose a new template, but am a little afraid that will goof up previous posts.

Anyway, Annie helped me get it set up last night. (Thanks Annie). Like most things,it isn't that hard, but I would have floundered for a long time before figuring it out. I hope you like some of them.

Today is Emily's blessing, so we are headed up North this morning. We have 450# of hard red wheat with us to distribute, and Annie found a place where we can pick grapes.... so, it should be fun.

Up in the Night

2008-09-26T02:03:00.006-06:00

Again I am up in the night. We are putting the finishing touches on another tube repair, and I am just finishing up my shift. I have a couple of pictures to post from our recent Lake Powell Messabout.

We went down with a friend I will call JetSki. He wanted to make one more LP trip this year, and we were headed down for the Messabout, so it worked out well. JS is a dyed-in-the-wool power boater/rock crawler and jet-skiier.
So we wondered how he would react to the gentle art of boat building and quiet sailing. It all worked out pretty well. The boat builders are way out on the edge of individualism, and JS fit in just fine. A very interesting bunch. Annie already blogged on this, and did a great job on it, so I am not going to go into much detail. It was just a lot of fun. My favorite lake, and really favorite place.

This last picture was of the Viking funeral boat that carried the ashes of one of the group that died this last year. It was a little bit different, burying his ashes 'at sea' but kind of fitting too.

Anyway, that is about all for this blog right now. It has been a good summer, and I have neglected to blog about it. I could claim being busy, and could even defend the position, but I was probably somewhere the other side of lazy. I hope this finds you all well.

Good Clean Fun

2008-08-25T18:14:00.003-06:00

Today we had an irrigation flood in our back yard coupled with the fortuitous visit of M & J and their girls, and J and her little one. The Bigger Little Girls had a very good time. The rest of us had a good time watching them have a good time.

Just a Thought

2008-08-13T05:18:00.001-06:00

All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

C.S. Lewis

Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

2008-08-04T00:40:00.006-06:00

With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore (code),
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my office door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my office door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

OK, well, there is only so much I can do with this poem, but it is a midnight dreary, and I am fairly weak and weary. We have a tube leak in Unit 1, and that doesn't rhyme with anything that I can think of at this hour.

Yesterday we went to a wonderful wedding in Salt Lake City. The son of some dear friends was getting married. He is S1's age, and the oldest of their children, and the last to marry. So it was a happy day. She is Russian, and a really cute girl. She is an only child, and her mom is a single mom.... so that is kind of a hard thing. They had a great turnout, and they invited a lot of people from the LDS Russian Branch in SLC. A great time was had by all.

We got to see S1 for quite a bit of the day as he was the best man. After the reception, we took him over to D1's home to stay the night and visit. D1 and SIL have only been in this house since Wednesday night, but they are pretty much unpacked, have changed bathroom door knobs, hung a new cabinet, mounted a flat screen TV and wired up the sound system..... not too shabby.
When we got home, it was bout 2:30. I saw that the answering machine had a message, but since they are almost always for Annie, and since I almost always bungle the message, and since it was 2:30 am and I would be sure to screw it up, I just let it go. But it was my boss calling to tell me that we had a leak. Annie checked it in the morning, and so I am covering Sunday night.

That's OK. It is about 1:00 am right now. The tube has been replaced, but they had to cut out a beam to get room to fix the tube. So now one guy is rewelding the beam, and another guy is fixing dings, thin spots and the webbing between the tubes. These tubes are 2-1/2" in diameter with a wall thickness of about 0.270 inches - they are pretty stout. Something fell down onto these tubes and bent about 6 of them by about 2-1/2". And they are welded together too. I can't quite imagine it. It had to be a piece of slag falling from about 200' that was as hard as a rock and had abou the same energy as a truck at 30 mph. Not exactly an asteroid that will make us all extinct, but a pretty good wallop.

The actual failure was due to ash erosion of the tube wall. You can see the big flap that opened up.

On the lower picture you can see that the tubes were bent about 2-1/2" from straight.

Randy Pausch - How to Achive Your Childhood Dreams

2008-07-28T14:13:00.002-06:00

This is a fairly long clip, but worth the watching. Enjoy.

Fishing at Lake Powell

2008-06-13T14:34:00.008-06:00

Last week I went to Lake Powell with a friend and his two sons. We left on Monday and were planning on staying until Friday and coming back fairly late if the weather held. But the weather didn't hold.

We got in some good fishing on Monday night. They were catching and releasing striped bass. Between them they probably caught and released 40 fish. So, it was a good start.

Tuesday was also a good fishing day. In the morning catch they probably released 60 fish, and in the evening catch probably almost as many - maybe 50. I was watching their technique mostly and was really, really tired (coming down cold turkey off of my Mt. Dew habit.) They didn't have a trolling motor, so we would turn off the engine and sort of drift over the rocks where the fish liked to hide. I grabbed the paddle, and if the wind wasn't blowing, I could point the boat or move it somewhat so that they could stay on station a little bit longer before we had to start it up and avoid a collision. I think I caught a couple of stripers and a catfish on Tuesday afternoon. Kind of fun for a change to not get skunked.

Wednesday was a great day as I think I caught about 5 stripers, and a very nice large mouth bass. If I would have know that the weather was going to get bad, I would have kept that fish. We think it weighed about 3-1/2 lbs. Very thick and deep in the body.

When the fish weren't biting we towed the boys around on the wakeboard. Much like waterskiing but with the shape of a snowboard. The water was really pretty cold and they weren't as enthusiastic as they probably would be in late July.

And I thought I would link up a little clip that I found on filleting fish - stripers in particular, but I think it could be adapted to just about any fish. You can find this the original of this clip at http://www.wayneswords.com

When the Steam Doesn't Stay in the Tube: Day 3

2008-05-26T05:23:00.009-06:00

It is a little after 5 am and I am at work. Checked in and almost ready to get into the boiler. The night shift has just gone home. They welded in 6 tubes (12 welds) which is very good. It always buoys everyones spirits a little when we stop cutting things apart and start putting them back together.

Annie wondered in her comment on the Day 2 pictures what caused this in the first place. It might take a minute, but I think we have the answer.
Coal is a dirty fuel.... compared to refined oil products, or natural gas. It is a solid fuel, and has dirt in it, basically. To keep all the tubes clean we have air driven lances that blow the ash off the tubes at regular intervals with hot, dry steam. Well, it should be hot and dry, but it takes a bit to warm up the lance and all the connecting piping, so when it gets to the sootblower, some of it has cooled and condensed and when it blows into the tube bundle there is water that mixes with the ash, and steam. This mixture, and to a lesser extent dry steam is like a fine sandblasting mixture, and over time it erodes the tube wall.

In the early days of operation the sootblowers were set to run at about 300# of steam. So some areas got a lot of erosion. This particular sootblower hole is short, and the lance is close to the top tubes. Erosion is always worst above, rather than below the blower. So these tubes took a beating. If nothing is done, pretty soon there isn't any metal between the steam and the metal, and you have a leak. There are thee things that can be done to keep the steam in the tubes:

1. Pad weld the tube. Put more metal on the thin places with lots of weld beads. This can work pretty well, but in this area you have to do a lot of out-of-position welding and the tubes are always somewhat dirty. These two things contribute to POROSITY. Yikes!

2. Put a stainless steel shield around the bottom of the tube. This also works well, and during the last outage we pad welded and shielded hundreds of tubes. More than the usual amount, but we do a lot each year.

3. Put in a dutchman. This is a short segment of new pipe. This is by far the best solution, but the most expensive, the most labor intensive and the slowest. But that is what we are doing now in the boiler in the section that was damaged.

Back to POROSITY. If your tube is dirty or your arc gets long the molten metal get impurities dissolved into it, and they form little gas bubbles. When the metal freezes, they are trapped. You never get rid of it.... well, you can grind it all out and start over, but it is amazing how hard it is to grind it all out. So, for practical purposes, you can't really get rid of it.

All those little bubbles can line up and form a crack, or a passage for the steam to follow to get out of the tube. Once a little steam can get through, it isn't long before the hole is bigger, and you have a leak. Because the tubes are so close together, it isn't long before you have worn a hole in a tube nearby, which send a jet of erosive steam over to another tube, and pretty soon there are holes all over and it looks like there was a Mafia gun battle that went on. You pull all the poor dead bodies out and line them up and look for what could have caused the problem to begin with. This is a picture of the tube that started it all. It was thin, the welder blew through the thin tube wall and a pocket of porosity formed, the welder tried to get rid of it, but it remained, and a crack formed.Then a leak formed and this tube started to leak up at about a 45 degree angle, blasting one of the tubes in yesterday's post that opened up.

That tube failed, and blasted right across. Both tubes opened up at about the same time, blasting each other sideways and getting everyone's attention.

Here are some new tubes, with the end's prepped, cut to length and ready to be welded in.

Home Sweet Home.

Making chill rings.

Chill rings are little devices that help to align and space the tubes so that they are welded just right. Those of higher ideals and purer hearts prefer the more elegant TIG root. This is where you use a tungsten arc with inert shielding gas to weld in the first pass between the tubes. There is normally a 1/8" gap between the tubes, and you delicately fill this with a thin film of molten metal. If conditions are good, then you get the very best weld. But if they are not so good, you just think you get the best weld. These little guys help fix that. You just put them in both tubes and use a normal stick weld. For all intents and purposes, these are the root weld. The ones that you buy commercially are kind of thick and clunky, but we make our own out of the same tube material, and they work very well.

When the Steam Doesn't Stay in the Tube: Day 2

2008-05-25T07:19:00.009-06:00

Here are a few more pictures.

As of last night they had removed 16 tubes. Two tubes were blown out, and three had some holes worn in them, the other 11 tubes were cut out just to get access to the tubes in the bundle.

Here you can see the two blown tubes, one bent to the right, one to the left. We are still trying to determine what was the original cause of the failure.

And a close up of the two blow tubes after they have been cut from the bundle.

The tubes in this section of the boiler are 2.0" dia. and have a wall thickness of about 0.203". And they are all bound together. So, to have them open up like this, and get bent as badly as they did shows the tremendous force involved in life steam.

When the Steam Doesn't Stay in the Tube: Day 1

2008-05-24T08:04:00.002-06:00

We have a tube leak in Unit 2, in the primary superheat section of the boiler. This is an area where the tube bundles are very close together, and the tubes are very close together. And there is a lot of pressure (~2500 psi) so when a tube fails it starts to cut it's friends nearby, and they cut their friends and it is a mess. To fix it you have to cut out a lot of tubes to get to in to the ones that have failed, and then weld your way back out again. We are looking at a minimum of 12 tubes that will need to be removed and replaced, and possibly as many as 20. So there goes the weekend.

The Starvation Messabout

2008-05-18T17:31:00.003-06:00

If you filtered out all of the people who have much interest in -ball sports, then filtered out everyone who if interested in the rest of the competitive sports that are left, and then filtered for people who like to experiment, and make things with their hands, you would be left with a pretty small group of people. Then you have to filter out anyone who is influenced much by trends, fads, or conspicuous consumption. Among the people you would have left are the boat builders.

This isn't to say that boat builders are especially virtuous or anything, just that they are fairly rare. So when you get a bunch of them together, they are pretty interesting. And if you, like me, don't fit into the the world of competitive sports or conspicuous consumption, you sometimes wonder just how weird you are. So it is a lot of fun to go a 'messabout' and just kind of hang out and enjoy the sun and the water. I didn't bring along a boat (too cheap to drag Picara over for a day, and I have given away all my other boats) so I brought my dutch ovens and did some visiting. I even got a little sunburn. But it was fun, and the people are nice.

I particularly wanted to visit with Jim Thayer a little. Jim is in his 70's someplace, and has been sailing and building boats for years and years. He owns Grand Mesa Boatworks, and sells fiberglass hulls that they make. His heart isn't so good, and so he is on oxygen, but he is a trooper, and still goes on extended expeditions on Lake Powell. He has a special box on the front of his boat (Nina) that he keeps his oxygen in.

Anyway, here are a few clips of my afternoon there. I didn't get all the boats. There was an amazing rowing boat that I really wished that I had a shot of.

The Lighter Side

2008-05-18T16:22:00.004-06:00

Here are a couple of videos that you might enjoy. The Man with the Mask is fun. Shooting sports are very relaxing if you have a Class 3 permit. Judge not, that ye be not judged..... More shooting sports.... well not really sports... Rube Goldberg has way too much time on his hands. So does Red Green. Then there is an example of enforced cell phone etiquette.

Well, nothing very profound here. Hope you have a good one and a maybe a laugh or two.

Scripture Guys: King Benjamins Words Reported Live

2008-05-05T22:22:00.005-06:00

Gospel Doctrine was interesting this last Sunday. We have a great teacher, and he always leads us to the point of the lesson. But rather like a goat that wanders hither the thither, when I read the key text, I somehow see things other than the point of the lesson.

We were reading about King Benjamin's Sermon in Mosiah 4: 1

1 And now, it came to pass that when king Benjamin had made an end of speaking the words which had been delivered unto him by the angel of the Lord, that he cast his eyes round about on the multitude, and behold they had fallen to the earth, for the fear of the Lord had come upon them.

So everyone is keying in on their on the spiritual aspect of this scene, and I am thinking 'Holy Cow' what did this really look like! So we are at conference, and maybe you had to go to the restroom or something - you miss some of President Monson's talk and come back to find twenty or thirty thousand people senseless on the ground. The news guys are there from Channel X and they are equally puzzled "This is an incredible scene Marsha, you would have to be here to believe it. People are dazed, laying on the ground as you can see. Many are moaning or sobbing and none of them have the strength to even sit up. It is like a bomb went off in here. We missed the call to repentance that was given by President Monson, as we were stuck in traffic, and only saw the aftermath of his talk. Back to you Rolland".

My purpose isn't to make lite of this scene, but to look at it a little closer, and maybe from the lens of the news reports we hear today. We read so much in the scriptures and I think that sometimes the enormity of what we read, the incredible scenes that are recounted with almost no elaboration zip right by us. I guess I like to stop sometimes and try to feel what it might have been like in some small way.

Anyway, that is all for tonight. Read your scriptures and what ever story or event you are reading about, slow down, and try to put yourself there. It is surprising what pops out sometimes.

All in a Day's Work: Bottom Ash, Hotwell, DA Storage, Condenser

2008-04-19T11:05:00.006-06:00

This is the bottom of the boiler.

This is where the water collects after it condenses after it goes over the turbine.

This is where the cooling water condenses the steam after it goes over the turbine blades.

All in a Day's Work: Furnace Scaffolding

2008-04-18T22:30:00.002-06:00

I hope you like this. Possibly I will make more of these little clips.

All in a Day's Work: The Boiler Drum

2008-04-07T18:33:00.007-06:00

Ahhhhh.... my least favorite place - anywhere. The drum collects the mixture of steam and water that comes frothing up from the waterwall tubes. The steam goes on to a circuit of tubes that gradually heats the steam until it is dry and has a lot of energy in it (1050 deg F) It then goes down to the turbine. We talked about this in the post on the penthouse.

The drum is about 85 feet long and about 3 feet in diameter inside. Regrettably, it isn't all free space. The top 1/2 or maybe even 2/3 is occupied by steel 'cans' that do the actual separating. So you have the bottom 40% or so to crawl through, but it isn't the real bottom of
the drum, but a shell and so you have less and less space to wiggle through. The drum is about 7" thick and has a small hole on each end to wriggle in and out of. Not only does this construction favor skinny people, it favors short skinny people the most. Enough said. You all know I am neither skinny or short.

I used to think I would like to build a submarine, but a couple of trips through the drum on my stomach changed my mind. Here are a few pictures. Enjoy.

All in a Day's Work: Scaffold

2008-04-05T13:07:00.013-06:00

Every other outage (4 years) we scaffold the boiler cavity in one of the units. This allows us to walk around the edge of the boiler and then they build a big 'dance floor' at the top, right under the platen pendants. Then we put some more scaffolding up around them so that we can inspect and repair them. There isn't a lot more to say. The pictures say most of it.
Looking Across

Looking Down

Looking Up

All in a Day's Work: The Penthouse

2008-04-03T18:30:00.007-06:00

Spending time in the Penthouse sounds a lot more appealing than it is, although as boiler spaces go, it is fairly comfortable.

Boilers are built so that water and steam circulate from the hottest spots, to where the work needs to be done. Forced circulation boilers have big circulating pumps that move the boiler water around. These are common in supercritical plants. Supercritical plants are not plants that are just really grouch, and always complaining about something. They are plants that operate at such high pressures that steam never forms - the water turns to something that isn't water and isn't steam. Then at a pressure drop over a valve, this fluid will flash to steam and drive a turbine.
We have a natural circulation boiler. There is a big fireball area in the cavity of the boiler. It is surrounded by water filled tubes- the water walls. Which is different than the walls of water that you put around your tomato plants. The water boils in the tubes, and the steam that is formed rises, carrying a lot of water upwards with it. The water and steam flows to the steam drum and is separated there. The water falls back down to the cool bottom of the boiler in large pipes called 'downcomers', and the steam starts a path through a series of tubing loops where it becomes progressively hotter and dryer. At each stage there is a really big pipe or 'header' that has all the looping tubes welded to it. The pressure and temperature of each small tube sort of equalizes out in the header, and then the steam is redirected to another set of tubes where it gets hotter yet, until finally it comes out of the secondary superheat header, into the main steam line and goes down from the 19th floor to the 2nd floor where the turbine is.

The place above the boiler roof where all these headers are, and where all these connections are made is called the penthouse. Why I don't know. But there is a lot of stuff going on there. Lots of tubes, lots of pipes. It is really surrealistic to look at, and it takes some time to figure out where everything goes. I think that is enough of a lesson tonight. Here are a few pictures of some of the headers. I end up crawling around in the insulation dust quite a bit, so it is a bit itchy. Still, interesting. I didn't think I would be doing this when I was a little boy.

All in a Day's Work: Backpass Inspection

2008-03-29T21:55:00.005-06:00

The dreaded outage has begun. Unit 2 came off line last night about midnight and things cooled down enough for us to get in and do a backpass inspection this afternoon. I have a few more pictures for you too look at. The backpass in Unit 2 is the same as in Unit 1, so there really isn't a lot new here.

This is a roomy and comfortable hole know as the 'economizer'. After the steam has gone over the turbine and condensed back to water, that water is pumped back into the boiler to be used again, as it is very pure. But is is also very cold compared to the boiler and would cause problems if it were pumped directly back into it. So it goes through a series of feedwater heaters (more on these later) that use waste and low quality steam to preheat the water. The last heater is actually in the coolest part of the gas path and the water picks up quite a bit of heat that would otherwise be wasted. Walking around in the Economizer is tricky, and the pipe is covered with slippery ash, kind of the consistency of flour. So you can appreciate the care that is taken by each of us as we walk around on these tubes.

Here is a little hole to let us go from the top parts, to the lower parts. Beneath this is a pipe called a sootblower lance. Periodically the soot blower shoots steam out of the end of this pipe as it rotates it slowly, and pushes it into the space. The steam knocks ash of the tubes and that lets them transfer heat more efficiently.

One thing that we didn't do last time, on the short outage, was to wash the boiler cavity and remove all the clinkers and ash so that work can begin down below without worry of a boulder sized clinker falling 18 floors and smashing you flat. We have tried several different methods to remove these clinkers, and this time we are washing them out with a water cannon. This is a fancy nozzle that you can hook two 2-1/2" fire hoses to.

Well, that is about it. More adventures tomorrow. We are both tired at the start. It might be a really long month.

Food Fight!!

2008-03-26T16:16:00.001-06:00

Someone has way too much time on their hands. But it is kind of fun anyway.

Stupid Things I Could Have Done

2008-03-26T16:14:00.002-06:00

You all know me well enough to realize that I could have easily been the person who thought this "sounded like a good idea at the time".....

..(Names have been removed to protect the stupid!)
Actual Letter from someone who writes, and farms
__________________________________
I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall,
feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it.
The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that,
since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have
much fear of me!
When we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at
the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away),
it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over
its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.
I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope.
The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back.
They were not having any of it.
After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up -- 3 of them. I
picked out.....a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the
feeder, and threw.. ..my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me.
I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a
good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could
tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation.
I took a step towards it...it took a step away. I put a little tension on!
The rope and then received an education.
The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just
stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to
action when you start pulling on that rope.
That deer EXPLODED.
The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT
stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I
could fight down with a rope and with some dignity.
A deer-- no chance.
That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no
controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off
my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me
that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had
originally imagined.
The only up side is that they do not have as much stamina as many other
animals.
A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk
me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few
minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing
out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for
corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end
of that rope.
I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it
would likely die slow and painfully somewhere.
At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that
moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling
was mutual.
Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had
cleverly arrested the deer's momentum by bracing my head against
various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still
think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I
shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in,
so I didn't want the deer to have to suffer a slow death, so I managed
to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little
trap I had set before hand...kind of like a squeeze chute.
I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope
back.
Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would
have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very
surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed
hold of my wrist.
Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where
they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head
--almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.
The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and
draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was
ineffective.
It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but
it was lik ely only several seconds.
I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim
by now) tricked it.
While I kept it busy tearing the tendons out of my right arm, I reached
up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose. That was when I got my
final lesson in deer behavior for the day.
Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on
their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and
their hooves are surprisingly sharp.
I learned a long time ago that, when an animal -- like a horse--strikes
at you with their hooves and you can't get away easily, the best thing
to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards
the animal.
This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.
This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would
not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy.
I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run.
The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a
horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit
you in the back of the head.
Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice
as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run , it
hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.
Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not
immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has
passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on
you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering
your head.
I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.
So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a
scope to sort of even the odds.

All in a Day's Work

2008-03-09T12:50:00.007-06:00

Spring has sprung, sort of, and thoughts of outages come unbidden to young and old men's minds. Mostly the come because we dread it so much and there is so much to get ready for. This weekend we had a short outage on Unit 1 to fix a few things that we could run with now, but probably would get worse and force and outage later.

Yesterday afternoon we did our back pass inspection. The boiler consists of two sections. The boiler cavity is where the fire is. The mills grind the coal to a flour like fineness and big fans blow it through specially designed burners into the cavity of the boiler.

It is a pretty big structure, and mostly you can't see anything but a huge, blinding ball of fire when it is on line. A lot of heat is created here, and a lot of it is absorbed into the boiler walls which are made of steel tubing and filled with boiler water. The water boils in these tubes and rises to where it is guided into the drum. The drum separates the water from the steam. The water falls back down some large pipes called downcomers and is recycled back into the wall tubes. The steam is cool - for steam, and needs to get more heat energy before it goes to the turbine. So, in the gas path there are hundreds of more tubes that absorb more of the heat from the gas, and as they do, they heat up the steam that travels through them.
Here are a couple of pictures of the back pass. The whole steam/gas path interaction is complex but can be summed up in the coolest steam is warmed by the coolest gas in the path, and as the steam travels up and forward it moves against the gas path and is in contact with increasingly warmer gas.

In a backpass inspection, you crawl through on the tubes and look for broken soot blowers (horizontal pipe in lefthand picture), or places where the soot blower has eroded the tubing and it needs to be shielded or pad welded.

One last picture. These are the platen pendants and they hang over the fireball and pick up a lot of heat. They aren't the last stage in steam warming, but pretty close. Just a little part of what it takes to keep the lights on.

Ancestors: Long Ago, On a Continent Far, Far Away

2008-02-16T19:47:00.003-07:00

In one of the books that belong to either Grandma H. or Grandma H. there is a introductory chapter that I can't find. Or I would quote it verbatim. But the idea that was presented was that these were simple, humble people. God fearing, hard working, and not sophisticated or worldly.

The author, whom I will refer to as him rather than him/her or it, then had a long list of things that our ancestors knew nothing about when they heard about Catherine the Great's immigration offer. We know that they didn't know about them, because they hadn't happened yet. I won't pad the list with the obvious things we have today but try to recreate the spirit, if not the letter of what hadn't happened yet.

In July 1763, Catherine issued her 2nd manifesto inviting the people of Germany to come and live in the Volga region of Russia

1764 Mozart (age eight) writes his first symphony.
1770 Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer, born
1776 Steam Engine: James Watt
1777 Circular Saw
1778 Beethoven (now eight) is presented by his father as six year old prodigy
1783 Beethoven's first works printed
1783 Hot air balloon: Montgolfier Brothers
1784 Bifocals: Ben Franklin
1786 Mozart: " The Marraige of Figaro," Vienna
1790 Sammuel Hahnemann rages against medical bloodletting.
1793 Cotton gin: Eli Whitney
1808 Band Saw: William Newberry
1810 Frederic Chopin, Polish composer, born
1810 Robert Schumann, German composer, born
1813 Richard Wagner, German composer, born
1814 J.N. Maelzel invents metronome in Vienna
1814 Schubert's great lied production begins(till 1828 c. 700 songs)
1814 Steam Locomotive: George Stephenson
1816 Bicycle:
1818 First successful blood transfusion
1847 Ignaz Semmelweis discovers cause of 'childbed fever'. Passed to women by doctors who didn't wash.
1867 Lister publishes 'Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery'.
1870 Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch establish the role of germs in disease.

Well, you get the idea. Life was pretty simple, fairly hard, and sometimes very short. Our ancestor's lives centered around family and church. Boys went to school for a few years. Girls, not as much. If a boy had a 6th grade education, he had done well. It was a simpler, quieter time.

This little prologue opened the doors of my mind in the story of the Neumans. They are the branch of the family that sold all they had, and found out on the boat that they were going to SOUTH America.... When I was younger I thought is was amusing..... and maybe they laughed a little too, when they stopped crying. But looking back on their eduction, their isolation, and their trusting lives, it isn't too hard to see how a mistake like that could easily be made. They made the best of things, even setbacks. They built a home and farmed the land and didn't quit until they could sell the farm and move to North America.

Anyway, I thought I would pass that along. They were good people, and they went through some hard times in Germany, then in Russia, and finally in America. They didn't give up, didn't quit. They stuck together through thick and thin and are great examples to those of us that came later. Without meaning to, they set the standard for us to live up to in our lives.

A Tame Ox

2008-01-04T20:01:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite authors is Ben Green. Ben grew up in Texas. He was probably born some time around 1910 or so. He lived in a town that was just too little to keep him occupied and started out buying cattle when he was in his early teens.

This was a fairly serious undertaking for a young man because trucks were not common at all in that area in the early 20's and all the cattle moving was done with a horse. I think most soccer moms would faint dead away, and maybe need some medication at the thought of their 13-14 year old son unplugging himself from the X-box, saddling up a couple of horses and going off 30 or 40 miles away to buy cattle cheap that were too wild for regular cowboys to catch in big pastures filled with mesquite, rocks and snakes. Truth be told, I think I might need and extra slug of Mt. Dew if I thought I was going to have to do that.

Ben didn't give it a thought. He had a gentle, well broke mare named Beauty that he rode for many miles. He learned a good deal about people, cattle, weather, and horses. He eventually became a veterinarian and practiced in the South West, and down into Mexico.

He is a good story teller, and lets you have enough detail with some explanation so that you know where the story is going.

In one adventure he has bought some cows for range delivery. Cows and steers sold like this sell pretty cheap because it is so hard and hazardous to get them back to civilization, and there were no trailers and big rig 4x4 s that could go into the back country. If you roped a steer and got the rope around a big old gentle tree, as he liked to say, you still had to get him back to town, and the odds were that he would get away, or hurt you or your horse before you managed it, unless you were clever.

He had bought about 20 cows and calves, and there were two big wild steers that would stand guard when the rest of the cows were grazing. If anyone approached, they would go bawling and scatter the herd into the brush. Ben tried for days to cut out one or the other, but they were big, horned, aggressive, and smart. Finally he had an idea. He and another cowboy cut one of the steers away from the group, and roped his head and heels and stretched him out. Ben took a curved needled from his shirt pocket and got a strong hair from his horse's tail and sewed the steers eyelids together. The next day they caught the other one and repeated the procedure. That left the two trouble makers pretty much blind and they fell in with the tamer cattle and Ben and his friend herded them back to the ranch. When they were safe in the corral, he cut the hair and let them open their eyes.

He had a lot of little tricks. One of them that I have thought a lot about was when he would yoke a wild steer or heifer to a steady tame ox. An ox is just a steer that has been tamed and trained to take commands and pull loads. Generally they become very gentle, but because they are kept for years they tend to be very large 1500# +. Ben would take a few of these big, gentle cattle and feed them in a corral for a week or two that was near the pasture with the wild cattle. Once they got used to the corral, they became attached to it too, and it was home. Ben would then rope one of the wild ones and tie it to a tree or large rock. When it was secure, he would go and get one of the oxen and make a harness our of rope, and tie the two of the together. The ox knew where he wanted to go, and even if the wild steer would pull him off course for a bit, the ox would eventually put his head down and step by step work his way to the corral, and the hay and grain that awaited him.

Sometimes I think that we take turns in our lives being the steady ox, and the wild cow. I am sure that when the ox was pulling toward the corral that it was very annoying to the wild one. That lack of approval didn't bother the ox at all. He just kept going where he knew he should go. Families are a little like this, or should be I think. We take turns in life being the lost one, and being the steady one. None of us have enough sense to come back home all the time. We need the bonds of family love to tug us back to where we should be. Steady pulling gets the job done.

And everthing in it's place.......

2007-11-17T20:28:00.000-07:00

One of Grandpa's favorite sayings, and one that he was fond of remembering when I couldn't find a tool was 'A place for everything, and everything in it's place. This was usually offered with an innocent expression of earnest helpfulness. But it was never received that way, at least by me. There was something just a little too innocent in the eyes and the quiet smile that was really thinking - gottcha. Checkmate.

And so as the evil and rebellious son I ever have been, I would just resolve that much harder to continue on the way I was, if not King of Chaos, at least and Apprentice Princeling. Truth be told, I had tried many times to organize my live, and many times have pretty much rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic. Grandpa's files were always logical and complete, and he could pretty much find what he wanted to find in a matter of minutes. I file by pile. I am now on the shady side of 50, and I don't think that it will ever really change. But I peck away at it from time to time.

This last year I started to build a lean-to shed in the back of my little shop building. Tonight it is mostly done. It was built with intention of supplying a place to stack wood, store the rototiller and lawnmower, ladders, and garden tools. I put the last of the shingles on tonight, and finished the roof and floor this weekend, and found to my very great disbelief that it is almost full already!!! I had such great plans.

Well, it is a start. When Guitar Boy painted the shed/shop this summer he hauled out every piece of wood, iron and junk that I have ever put back there, and quite a few that were there from the previous owners. A lot of it was pretty soft and I cut it up for firewood, now stored in the new shed... :) Some of it was still usable, and although not very pretty, I stacked it up like Grandpa would have and now have a little bone yard. I think that this week Annie and I will be ordering some fencing material, and will fence the north and east sides of the yard, and ask the neighbors on the east for all the old fencing..... and another project is born.

I was able to use old wood from the hay wagon and that we had to construct the lean-to, so my only cost was several sheets of chip board, tar paper, and some shingles. And cement and gravel for the floor.

Anyway. One small battle in the fight against Chaos. I think it helps if you are actually making places for things. This indicates that you actually realize that they are homeless, and cluttery. This might not seem like much of a realization to my judgy kids and kids-in-law, but it is quite a surprise to me, when I actually come to that realization. Anyway, that is my news here. We should be up tomorrow to eat some cheesecake, and celebrate SIL2's birthday. Looking forward to that.