Category: Fun (Page 3 of 5)

Back in the eighties I went thru my flyboy period. I took sailplane lessons for awhile in an old Schweitzer WW2 trainer in Waynesville Ohio. There are a few sailplane places around Waynesville with pretty modern planes, but this was the best they had. Not to complain, it wouldn’t stay up all day but it was cool. Ken was my flight instructor, and I think he only did this so he could afford to go up all day.

Sailplanes are cool. As they kept reminding me, they didn’t burn when they crashed, as there was no engine. That was reassuring. They would get this old guy with a piper cub to drag you up a couple a thousand feet and let you go. (I can’t remember the old guy’s name, but when he was younger, his big thing was to fly low over a crowd, and crawl out of the backseat of his piper cub and shimmy up the wing root and climb into the front seat. This was neat as he was the only guy on board. What a guy!)

After he let you go, you looked around for some big fluffy clouds, for they marked the thermals. These were big warm columns of air that were rising. They were just a big sailplane elevator. Once you got in one you just circled around till you got high enough, then bailed out and sailed around for a while.

Once you ran out of thermals, it was time to come back down. This was dicey at this particular airfield as there were telephone wires close up to all edges of the field. To get a sailplane down you had to pass over the wires, then cross up the controls, in effect to drop the plane as fast as possible. Then just before you hit the ground, you staighten the controls up and make a controlled landing. Nothing to it. Except one day, my sister Lisa talked the old guy into giving her a ride in his piper cub, and he took off right in front of me on the way down. It was too late to go back up, so we turned into the plowed field next door and made an improptu landing. This is when you learn to land with the furrows, not against them.

Like they say, any landing you walk away from is a good landing. Especially if you don’t burn.

greg

My wife, Kathy, likes to bead. She knits some, and has some other interests, but beading is tops. The advantages are saving money.. cheaper than buying jewelry, and also, it’s unique. No two peices are the same… and they look good too!

Lately, she’s been using beads from BeadForLife.

This is a non-profit started by two women from Colorado who, while wandering around Uganda, came across a women selling home made beads. These were made from old magazines and newspapers and were really cool. They brougt some home, and they were a hit! It is now a 3.5 million a year venture!

There are 300 Ugandan women making these beads, with more in training. It’s not hard to imagine this income will make a difference in their lives. So get some beads.. not only will you do some good but will look good too!

greg

I like to shoot. I primarily have old guns, which satify my need to experience history, and also have some fun shooting them. I reload shells for these guns for 2 reasons. Some are hard to come by, (you just can’t buy bullets for M1895 Steyr rifles) and it’s also cheaper. Well, I thought it was going to be cheaper. It’s not, you just shoot more.

But there are some guns you can have fun shooting all day and not ruin your credit. The bullet for these guns is the ubiquitous American .22 long rifle. The .22 comes in many forms, .22 short, .22 bb cap, .22 high velocity and on and on, but the plain jane .22 long rifle is cheap, abundant, and accurate!

There are a huge variety of guns for the .22 long rifle, everything from tiny pistols to huge tack driving custom made rigs. For a coupla hundred bucks, or less, you can have a pistol or rifle that comes close to shooting with the best of them. You can’t reload them, mainly because of the primers, but at 8 bucks a brick at Walmart (500 shots), who cares? And if you need something more accurate, then you can pay a little more for match grade ammo.

My arthritis gets in the way of my 30-06 shooting, but not with 22’s. You can blast away all day and not feel a thing. This low recoil feature is also the secret to it’s accuracy. You can’t hit something if you can’t hold on to the gun… Even wives like to shoot them!

So you should try it. For a coupla hundred bucks, you can get a hobby that will last you a lifetime. And if you should join a local gun club, you’ll make new friends, and you won’t meet a nicer bunch of guys (or girls!). The .22 hobby won’t break the bank!

greg

Looks like it’s going to be another hot one today! Boy, I’ll be glad when they figure some way to cool the air.. It’s not bad in here, though, these mud bricks make for good insulation.

The kid’s going to be 16 next month. He wants a chariot, for Gods sake…(and I do mean Gods…Whats Moses and those pesky Israelites thinking?). Does he think shekels grow on trees? And we don’t even have any trees… Maybe I’ll just ship him off to my cousin in Assyria, they’ve got plenty of chariots!

Everything is bugging me today.. What’s with my ancestors buried under the floor? Kinda creepy if you ask me… we should put them all in a plot of ground outside town!

And tonight we have to go the Temple AGAIN! for another sacrifice…at least they don’t use people anymore…

Well, off to work.. those oxen aren’t going to drive themselves…

Greg

The old 27 inch JVC is hitting the skids… when you turn it on it gets a bright thin line across a dark screen. After you beat on it for 5 minutes, the picture will fire up, and last for the night. I didn’t think I would have to deal with this till February of 2009 (when the analog signal bites the dust).. but realized that I have cable and would be able to put off buying a new tv for ever.

Apparently, the time has come, and it brings with it nothing but problems…

First, I have this neat cherry cabinet the old tv sits in, with shelves for nick nacks and a shelf for vcr tapes (they’re still in there..). There doesn’t seem to be a tv for sale that fits in this hole.. unless you get something smaller than your computer monitor..

Then, down at best buy, they have setup fees (around 200 bucks), because you just can’t take them home and turn them on (like the old one). You have to do all this arcane setting of things so that the image will be viewable!

Then you have to upgrade your cable to get HD.. that ain’t cheap! (But obviously I am…)

Then you gotta upconvert your dvd player…

Then HDMI, what is that all about?

Maybe I can take this thing in to get fixed…?

One of the recent Space Shuttle Discovery’s missions was delivering a new toilet pump to the International Space Station, to fix its troublesome toilet. Watching the docking on Nasa TV http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ was breathtaking!
It seems space stations have come a long way since the old Salyut and Spacelab days… For instance, the Salyut 6 had 90 sq meters of habital area, ran on 4kw of power, and could barely cram 3 guys inside it.

The present International Space Station, by contrast, has about 700 sq meters of area so far, with another 300 on the way, runs on 110 kw of power, and the new Japanese labs interior can strand an astranaut if he loses a handhold and drifts out into the middle of the room!

These space stations still have their problems tho. Recycling issues, radiation from space, and a lack of gravity still cause health woes…

And they still only have one toilet!

greg