I’ve often wondered what would happen if one of those mega-churches was run by a real Christian, rather that some power hungry, money hungry American Taliban types. Thanks to Hoyden-About-Town: When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross, now I know. And it looks pretty good.
Archive for July, 2006
While I was away at Oshkosh, I got two emails from users of my Waypoint Generators. The first was from a loser:
Wow,
What a disappointment. Even though I have donated before, I see that you require a donation now for the waypoint generator. I made another donation (see below) and when I am halfway though the waypoint generation process, I get redirected back to the paypal screen. I have a trip to Canada in the morning and I guess I won’t be using Copilot…
First of all, everything he says is a total lie. I have never required a donation, and I never will. There is nothing that will “redirect…back to the paypal screen” other than user stupidity. Second of all, if you think you’re going to get me scrambling to help you, neither your lies nor your generous $1.00 donation (of which Paypal takes $0.33 in fees) is really going to do it. I wrote to him back and said that I was refunding his $1.00, but only on the condition that he never use any free software or free web services ever again, because the thousands of people who provide free software and free web services don’t need his kind of abuse.
The second email I got was much more welcome. It was from a man who had a commercial product on display at Oshkosh that is using my waypoint generator’s waypoints in it. He had some small suggestions for improvements, and he also offered to provide some improved data for South Africa. He is located in South Africa, so unfortunately he wasn’t at Oshkosh himself. I got the name of the company representing him on Thursday, but I never got to their booth on Friday, which is too bad. It sure is nice to see people using and appreciating what I do.
Mark is preparing our last Oshkosh 2006 breakfast (if the propane holds
out) and then we’re going to start packing. It’s been a great Oshkosh and
the weather has been unbelievable. But last night it hit me all the things
I did in 2003 when I only had 3 full days versus this year when I had 5.
In 2003 I walked through all the ’special’ airplane parking and camping
areas like warbirds, homebuilt, vintage and amphib. I also went down to
the seaplane base. But on the other side of the coin, this year I saw full
airshows, spent more time sitting in airplanes and talking to their sales
people, and more time in the constantly changing display in Aeroshell
Square.
One of the reasons for the difference is that last time I was on the North
40, where the highly efficient shuttle bus dumps you out right at the
warbird parking. It’s easy to get sucked into walking through there taking
pictures, and then before you know it you’ve walked the entire length of
the airfield in various parking areas. By contrast the Camp Scholler
shuttle is horribly inefficient and most days we skipped it and walked in.
And the gate you get to from here is right by the vendor exhibits and
Aeroshell Square.
I’m not complaining, but i’m even more determined to fly in next time.
It’s been incredibly hot and sunny today. We both conked out pretty early
and came back to the camp. I think we’re pretty air-showed out and we’re
skipping it today.
Earlier today I grabbed the scooter and headed back into the exhibits. I
bought a Halo ultralight headset, talked to a TSA official about whether
the alien registration rule applies if you’re adding a float rating to an
existing private license (he said it doesn’t - hooray!), and went over to
kit builder’s row to sit in a murphy rebel and a glastar sportsman 2+2.
The sportsman is a tight fit but the murphy isn’t bad. I think there less
room between the seats on the sportsman than some of the LSAs we looked at
-I’m spoiled by the Lance obviously.
The headset has a 30 day moneyback guarantee so obviously I need to get out
in the lance real soon now to see if it works. I really wanted a second
anr for my passengers, but I was convinced by the demo that this will not
only be as quiet as an anr, but also so light you can forget you’re wearing
it. It irks me to pay $350 for what looks like $35 worth of stuff, but I
guess you pay for knowing how to assemble it. I hope it’s not as fragile
as it looks.
As I write this, there are a bunch of t-33s, dehavilland vampyres and
tweety birds, and they are circling over us back in the campsite, which is
unusual. I think they scared the helicopters doing rides over here,
because after what looked to us like close encounters, they suddenly
stopped flying.
The amount of walking and standing this event requires is really starting
to take its toll. I’m actually turning down a chance to have a second trip
around the museum in favour of this very comfortable chair on pioneer
terrace.
Last night’s rec.aviation part at jay and mary hoenek’s campsite was a lot
of fun. John O from pinckneyville was there, but not his new bride. Jay
is a really nice guy and so is Montblack. Montblack actually drove us back
to our campsite since the show trams stop working at 8pm and it would have
been a few mile hike. I swear i’m turning into an old geezer though - at
one point Montblack and I were trading medical horror stories.
Tonight is the seaplane pilots association corn roast. It’s a famous
event, and I really got my money’s worth last time.
After mark gets back from his helicopter ride, i’m going to try to convince
him to come ride the trams today rather than walking. I’m exhausted and
even my new oregon aero insoles can’t stop my feet and knees hurting.
The f-22 raptors arrive in a few hours. Patty wagstaff headlines today’s
airshow - i’m looking forward to that. At last night’s party several
people had patty stories, and we all agreed we liked her better as a
brunette.
After a couple of days of walking around in the hot sun, i’ve come to a few
conclusions:
- opportunities to sit down are to be seized on and treasured, and air
conditioned ones are three times as good.
- in spite of that, 45 minutes in an air conditioned shuttle bus is not
really a good trade against 5 minutes of walking.
- the tram system inside the show grounds are quick, efficient and fun, and
the shuttle bus system within the campgrounds are none of the above.
There is some really cool stuff here and it’s really hard to resist the
temptation to try to see it all at once.
I had lunch with some of the guys from the First Of Pryor piper mailing
list. Nice to see Les again and meet Bill and … Darn I spaced on the
other guy’s name. Sorry, guy.
We’ve been here 8 hours and after checking out the local grocery stores
(the famous Piggly Wiggly just outside the airport gates is no more) and
walking down to Aeroshell Square to watch people setting up displays, I am
tired, my knees are sore and my arms feel sunburnt even though I used
sunscreen.
I’d better use the trams a lot to get around.
After all that adventure, we’re finally here. We’ve got a camping spot
with no shade, but we brought a big awning some club members bought when we
came in 2003.
We’re listening to the tower frequency, and there are a surprising number
of people who either didn’t read the notam, or their instinctual need to
read back tower instructions is too strong.
It’s 91 miles to Chicago, we’ve got a full tank of gas, it’s (not) dark,
and we’re wearing sunglasses.
Hit it!
We should be at Osh in just a few hours.
It wasn’t possible to get the plane fixed without either paying ridiculous
shipping costs (4 overnight shipments from 4 different locations) or
cutting corners (re-using washers and bolts and gaskets). So here we are,
*driving* to Oshkosh.
Sigh.
Went to preflight the plane. Grabbed the exhaust stack and gave it a wiggle. IT MOVED! The damn muffler is broken.
Nobody on the field works on the weekend, nobody stocks parts. Even if we get it overnighted, it will be monday evening before it’s installed at the earliest.
Fuck!
I’m sitting in Rochester airport, half an hour after I’d planned to depart, waiting for a band of heavy rain to pass through. It hasn’t moved much, but it has gone from an angry red to a less-nasty yellow on the nexrad radar picture. Hopefully it will dissapate or at least stop showing lightning on the stormscope soon.
Text from my cell phone.
This time tomorrow I’ll be climbing out over Buffalo on the way to the greatest fly-in in the world. Woo hoo!
“Ride like you stole something”
Before I tell you about today’s stage, let me tell you about a similar stage several years ago. Back then, Landis was on Lance Armstrong’s team. Lance was already in yellow, and Landis had pulled him ahead of all his rivals at the top of the second last climb of the day. Armstrong only needed to finish with his rivals, he didn’t need to make any time on them. So he turned to Landis and said “Do you want to win the stage today?” When Landis said yes, Armstrong said “Ride like you stole something.” The idea was that Armstrong would hang back with the hopes that any approaching rivals would be content catching him and not need to catch up to Landis. Unfortunately Ullrich and Kloden caught up to Armstrong and Landis, so Landis didn’t get his stage win. (The story of how Armstrong won the stage is worth a blog entry on its own - it was a pretty amazing race.)
Today, Landis rode like he stole something. It was another brutal stage, with lots of vicious climbs and heat. He attacked on the first climb, and a few tried to stay with him but failed, and the rest just let him go. I don’t know if they were unable, of it they just thought he’d crack today like he did yesterday, but it was a big mistake. He caught and passed the 11 man break-away, and while one T-Mobile rider in the break just sat on his wheel for the next couple of climbs. He looked so calm and cool and determined all day, while his rivals looked under terrible pressure.
Because he is the team leader and on a lone break-away, he had the team car right up beside him, so every time he needed a water bottle he just gave a jaunty little wave, and up would come the car. And boy did he go through a lot of water bottles. He rode most of the time with a bottle in his hand, and every time he called up the team car he’d take one, put it in the bottle cage, take another and empty it over his head, and take another and drink most of it. He was constantly eating and drinking - he knew that the main reason he bonked yesterday was a lack of food and drink, and he wasn’t going to repeat that mistake.
At the end, he ended up 30 seconds off the lead in GC in third overall, with Periero still in yellow and Sastre in second at 12 seconds back. It’s still anybody’s game, but I think Landis has to be the overwhelming favourite based on his time trialing ability.
One of the things I find most impressive about Landis is that he’s amazingly concentrated. As an orienteer, I participated in many two or five day events. And one thing I struggled with was the fact that a bad day could throw me off for subsequent days. But look at Landis. On the prologue, he got a flat tire riding up to the start house. He ended up missing his start by 7 or 8 seconds, but it didn’t faze him and he ended up only about 9 seconds down. Then on the first individual time trial, he was told a few minutes before the start that the position he uses, the position that he’d done all his time trial training in, had been banned by the UCI. So he had to change the position with no time to take a test ride to adjust it - and then, probably because of the adjustment of his bars, he broke his handle bars early in the race, and needed a bike change. And in spite of that, he finished second to a world time trail champion, Sergei Gonchar. And now after a performance yesterday that would cause a lesser man to quit, he came storming back and is now in an amazing position.
Overall, I think one of the factors that made this race so crazy is that the riders are too used to the Armstrong era. Traditionally, the team of the rider in the yellow jersey controls the peleton, riding the tempo to bring in the gap to the break-away groups according to the strategy of the day. But twice this year, the riders have sat back expecting the yellow jersey’s team to bring in an break-away and the team was too weak to do it. First it was the 30 minute break-away that put Periero in yellow - Phonak should have chased that gap down to 10 or 15 minutes, but they were too weak. And today it was Floyd Landis breaking away, while the GC men were sitting there waiting for Caisse d’Epargne-Illes Balears to start reeling them in, but they didn’t have the power. By the time CSC and T-Mobile realized that they needed to step up, it was too late.
Tomorrow is a pretty flat transition stage. Early in the race this would be a sprinter’s stage, but I think everybody is pretty tired and Robbie McEwan is pretty secure in green. And the GC contenders aren’t going to have any opportunity to make time on each other. So look for a small break-away group, hopefully controlled by the major teams, while the favourites all rest up for the crucial time trial. That one is going to be an exciting time. Too bad I’ll be in Oshkosh.
