The History of my Pathtic Choice in Vehicles

Most folks take time and figure out what sort of car they need, go buy it, and live happily ever after. Not me, and it is not surprising; it's in my genes. My dad actually paid money for a Ford Pinto. My brother Robert bought a Chevrolet Vega. These are two of the worst automobiles (and i use that term loosely) that ever came out of Detroit.
I'll discuss three vehicles here that all started when I bought my first hot air balloon in 1986.
1. Gray truck
So I needed a truck to haul the balloon around in. I found a pretty darned nice looking one, gray, with seats with no rips. Only one problem; six cylinder. Load up the balloon and two people and 60 was pretty much max speed. Then it got worse, much worse. I bought a new balloon and it came with a trailer. Towing the trailer now meant a maximum speed of about 50 or 55 with a best gas mileage of about 10. Yes, ten miles per gallon. We did a trip from Tennessee to Albuquerque, 22 hours in this lumbering thing, never exceeding 55.
2. Jeep Cherokee
HA!! This is a worthless piece of shit of a car. I thought the word "jeep" would mean a rugged vehicle with a big engine and skid plates, and tow hooks, and big gas tank, and all that, making my gray truck look like a mommy car. Well, It's not. This thing also had a six cylinder, 4 speed, 18 gallon gas tank, no skid plates, plastic everything, and so on. I have no idea why i bought it, but back then i was really relentless about not changing my mind. Hook up the trailer, and yep, it would do 55 i 4th gear, and if you floored it in 5th gear, you could get 65. That is, until you approached a hill at which time it would promptly grind to a stop unless you downshifted back to 4th, which meant max speed of 55 again. It also tended to overheat when pulling the trailer so I would come barreling into the parking lot of a balloon race, smoke bellowing from under the hood, with the back end looking like a ghetto car. YEs, that was another thing, the suspension on these things are meant for "mommies" to take their kids to soccer practice. We called it the "sag wagon". I had to go install air shocks just to get the rear end up enough so it did not rake the muffler on small bumps.
3. Ford Explorer
Finally a REAL vehicle i thought!
Whatever, it is a cushy mommie car as well, narrow (not built on a real truck frame), underpowered, sags in the back, small gas tank, but I will say that it would pull the trailer pretty well at 65. Crappy mileage when hauling the balloon of course. This thing was really expensive and had all sorts of unnecessary options like "puddle lamps".
4. Miata.
enough said

Finally, after two decades, I bought a real vehicle; a ford pickup (f150), which happens to be the most popular vehicle ever sold in the US. Good reason; it is a real vehicle. The V8 engine hauls my balloon at 90 if I want. Suspension is solid, plenty of power, 18 mpg even with the balloon in the back, 25 gallon tank, and so on. I is white, sleek, and means business.

Oh, i forgot, i also bought a scooter, that RULES. it is a yamaha vino, gets 75 mpg, looks sleek, and allows me and my shortie to go downtown and park right in front the restaurants and bars.

Major flaws in Famous Movies

Contact: My favorite movie of all time, but there is a huge flaw in the ending. The review board essentially calls Elli a liar on her description of the time travel trip. Hello, the ball landed safely in the net below and clearly is ready for another run. Put Mr. Skeptical in the ball and give him a spin. I mean, I am sure this big machine uses a LOT of gas, but you would think the human race could afford the cash for another run.

Star Wars episode 4 (the first one): In the Death Star destruction scene, a small handful of fighter pilots head out toward the death star in a certain suicide mission to place a missile-bomb-thing in a hole the size of a basketball while cruising at near mach speed. On the way out, "Red leader" comments on the radio "Man, look at the size of that thing". "Cut the chatter Red Leader" barks the big fat leader. So here they are on the way to certain death and Red leader cannot even make a simple comment. If I was Red leader I would have manueverd behind Fat leader and launched a photon torpedo right up his rude ass.

The HoneyMooners
Ralph has a fulltime job as a bus driver. they have no kids, and yet his wife sits at "home", which is a shack apartment. They have not even a single picture on the wall or any furniture. what does alice do all day long? Norton works in the sewer, but his apartment is all painted up nice and looks great.

The Doberman Gang
HAHAHA!!! This movie is a riot! A group of bad guys decide to rob a bank using a pack of trained dogs. They send the dogs to the bank with notes tied around their necks telling the tellers to put lots of money in their saddlebags they are wearing. Well, they come barreling in the bank and start raising all sorts of hell and guess who happens to be standing there; a bank guard with a..... GUN. Boom boom boom, story over. nah, one of the dogs bites the guard on his "gun hand" so he cannot shoot them. Hmm, I bet I could shoot a gun with my left hand if i tried.
It's a stupid movie, but worth the pain for all the laughs.

The accidental Tourist
The flaw in this movie is that IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN MADE. Will Hurt plays a role that is so depressing and boring that you need red bull injected directly into your veins to tolerate him. Gina Davis plays one of the most annoying characters you can imagine, especially that nauseating "cluck" sound she does with her mouth. What a pile of shit.

I don't like Kirk anymore

James Kirk is an asshole, and here is why.

First, check out this picture of him from the movie posters:
Pretty evil looking, wouldn't you say? I would place him as a prime suspect in any serial murder mystery. Or a cocky smart-ass bastard. In stark contrast, William Shatner was a jolly sort of fellow.
In the latest movie, they show kirk as a cocky kid driving a vintage mustang off a cliff and essentially ridiculing a policeman. The policeman should have taken this spoiled brat and beat the living crap out of him to let him know the meaning of the word "respect". Then cuff him, beat him again with a club, and then throw him off the cliff.
So in the movie he reprogrammed the computers so he would not have to do the "face death" scenario during the testing. he cheated death and thus failed at the most important situation a captain can be in. It seems that kirk is one of those people who enjoy "getting away with things". Spock and the counsel should have run his ass out the door right then.
It is beyond me how he managed to stay in power.

The history of my "Technicals"

In gas ballooning, you have several things in the basket that require electrical power from a battery, and you need some sort of distribution "thing" to run the power from the battery to each device. For my very first race, I was all uptight about having everything perfect, and the only technical I had ever seen was Willie Eimer's box. See Fig 1. Below

Fig 1. The "Eimers" version

It looks like something that should be on the dash of a 767 Airbus. I made an exact replica of Wilies, thinking that since he was such a veteran that he must have come up with the optimal solution. Well, it turns out he just likes to tinker. Anyway, This one was a rats nest of wiring on the inside, complicated to hook up, and hard to deal with at 2am.

So I decided to simplify. See Fig 2 below. I figured all I really needed was the connectors on the bottom and a main switch, but I added a new feature, a switch on the front to select one of 4 batteries that are under the seat.

Fig 2. The "MacNutt Multi Battery" version
This looked and worked great, but for some reason my radio would stop working sometimes due to lack of power. After two years of irritation, I figured out that I had too many thin wires with all those battery selections, and it was starving the radio.

This year I had had enough of this shit, and came up with the optimal solution; See fig 3 below.
One very thick cable from the box to the battery, a simple digital voltmeter, and 3 cig sockets for accessories like cell phone chargers.

Fig. 3 The "Finally Something Reasonable" version

It weighs nothing, has almost no wiring on the inside, and provides solid power to the transponder and radio.
I wish I was clever like other people who get things right the first time, but I am a dunce.

just blah

How a single sentence derailed Jewel's career
When Jewel first hit the scene, she released a decent song "who will save your soul" which had a really good video; gritty, saturated colors, etc. People loved her because she had those cute slightly crooked teeth like linda rondstaht, and also the story that she used to live in her car. Well, then all of the sudden she starts putting out these whiny songs about lame stuff, and then wham, she writes "you were meant for me", an absolute nightmare of a song. Dripping with whine, and the one line that put her career to a dead end... "Put on my pjs and hop into bed". The public no longer had money to buy her albums because they had to spend it on anti-nausea medicine. Violent vomiting was reported to be widespread across the country when this song hit the radio. AT the point when she uttered this pathetic line, you could see car doors opening all down the highway with people hurling out on the road.


HALF BLOOD PRINCE??
what a stupid name for a movie.

I have determined that the unemployment rate in Austin runs around 35%.
you can go around town at any time during the middle of the day in the middle of the week, when everybody SHOULD BE AT WORK, and the roads are clogged solid. that means nobody is working.

one of the WORST songs ever done was that incredibly stupid "she's gonna be somebody's baby tonite..." song. i dont know who wrote it, but they should be beat and then shot. HOLY SHIT! this is by that moron jackson browne too! same as the stupid pretender, lender, sender, legal tender song. well, it is official, this guy is a total loser.

Out of all the cities I have been to in the world, I found Boston to be the most boring, and annoying. there are a list of historic sites to see and they are all separated by many many city blocks and sometimes having to cross under traffic jammed interstates along shitty roads and such. the restaurants in the center city were jammed and smokey and hot and irritating.
the traffic there is even worse that Austin, which is saying a lot.

this guy "Jackson Brown" which is basically two last names has this song where he rhymes like every possible thing he can think of:
pretender, sender, lender, legal tender, mender, gender, fender, and so on.
It's a stupid song and that's all i have to say about that.

I have tried SO HARD to like Radiohead. They are my heros because they made that no-talent ass clown miley cyrus look like the complete childish spoiled idiot that she is, but I just cannot seem to get into their music. I find it droning and bland. And yes, i know that it is totally hip to like Radiohead and no doubt they are talented, which discourages me because that means I am not hip. But I like Daft Punk and the Racontes, does that count??

GOOD news! I was out running on town lake trail and had a one hour rant on how stupid these middle aged jocks look (late 30s to mid 40s) trying to act like they are speedsters because they dress hip. HAHAHA! they are big fat nobodys. They are hardened with chisel jaws and a rough looking haircut with a mean look on their face. They wear overly trendy shoes that are expensive and have like a 2 inch heel full of gel and air and all sorts of nonsense. They hang out with bimbos sometimes. They wear those slinky silky running shorts that look mostly like girls panties. If they wear a shirt it is usually some sort of muscle shirt so they can show off their fat. Body fat runs in excess of 12% with a heavy look. They work ouyt at the gym excessively resulting in a huge lumbering body.

The REAL runners look totally different and I shall describe them now.

The real runners fall into two catagories:

1. Aged seventeen through mid twenties. skinny as a rail, pale, almost-racing-flat shoes, no shirt, and a serious look on their faces. They have a "six pack" stomach not because they waste time in the gym, but because they have no body fat to hide those muscles. Probably in the 4% range. They run in groups and blow by the middle aged oakley-sunglass wearing jocks like a hurricane. These guys turn low 30s on a 10k and sixteen flat on a 5K.

2. The elite. You rarely see them on the trail because they have no time or interest in running near people. Usually very tall, very black, and even thinner and more serious than group one with a body fat of about 2%. They wear racing flats because their heels never hit the ground. These guys hit upper 20s on a 10k and in the fifteens on a 5K. They make the middle aged spring-shoe wearing jocks look like senior citizens rolling around in scooters shopping at HEB.
I'll see if I can find some pics of the chisel jaw guys.

The agony I went through to see Bjork

I've been fascinated with Bjork since about 2001 ish when Vespertine came out. So when I saw she was touring North America, I snatched a ticket for the show in Montreal, which was the closest place she was playing to me. That's a long way to travel to see a show, but I had miles and thought it would be nice to hang out in Montreal for a couple of days.

I got to the park in the morning thinking I would hang out most of the day and then get in line for the show. Well, around noon, there were already thousands in line. I wanted to get as close as possible so i got in line. After 5 hours of sitting doing nothing and listening to the people around me all having fun speaking french, they finally opened the gates. It was like stampeding cattle. People all crammed up against each other to make sure that not a single person got past them.

After taking our tickets and passing through security, we were released to the back of the show area, a hundred acres outside with a stage at the far end. Everyone, including me, took off faster than Carl lewis for the stage. I got there in time to get pretty close, maybe about 20 people back from the stage. This is where it starting going downhill. I was already tired from hanging around this park all day with absolutely nothing to do and nobody to talk to (I don't speak french), so I decided to sit down as other folks were doing. But as more and more stampeding cattle came up, they were all jamming up against the back of us reducing my sitting area to literally the size of my butt. In order to sit down or stand up, I had to vertically rise in a space no wider than my body. i had nothing to drink or eat, thinking i would be able to get these things during the show.
After a couple of hours I asked the girl next to me if she had anything to drink and she gave me a apple juice box. That was the last thing I had until 11 pm.

After another hour or so, things started happening on stage so everyone stood up and packed even closer. This pretty much ended the chance of sitting down again.
Well, out came the warm up "band", which consisted of this hillbilly named "Will Oldham".

He and his straggly beard started playing an autoharp and playing some of the most boring and annoying music I have ever heard. He tortured us for an hour. When he announced he had one more song, the audience burst out in applause and sounds of joy. I would have rather watched drunk orangutans eating fish guts and vomiting all over each other, then licking the vomit out of each other's hair.

Another 45 minutes or so went by and we were all getting all geared up for Bjork. My body was killing me and my legs had divorced me an hour earlier.


Well, out comes.... the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Yes ANOTHER warm up "band". These guys are another one of those hipster bands that think they are too cool to have a bass player. The band consisted of a drummer, lead guitar, and a girl singer dressed in a ridiculous outfit with purple tights.
They finally started banging away and making all sorts of irritating noise. The first couple of songs were fun and a welcome relief from Will "Valium" Oldham. But after a few songs, this band showed their real colors. They were childish and were just doing the same old crap song after song, and it became apparent that they were rather amaturist. The singer had to keep pulling up her tights, about every minute or two, kind of like infants do with their diapers.

Finally, finally, they quit. Another 45 minutes. It was probably 8:30 or so, about 3+ hours or more since I was first crammed in. I was now running on fumes but certainly could not give up now. When Bjork walked out, the crowded crammed up again to the point where I was unable to move in any way at all. It was a vice from all directions. Bjork starts playing and it is absolutely stunning, which temporarily made much of my pain go away. Then it happened, at the end of the first song, the guy RIGHT next to me sticks his fingers in his mouth and lets out a long, screaming, ear piercing whistle that pretty much destroyed whatever hearing I had left. His head was no more than 1 foot away from my ear. It was impossible to move even 6 inches away because I was packed in so tight. This guy let out a airhorn after every single song, so I had to plug up my ears for about a minute, usually missing the end of the song.

So then the guy on my other side sticks his camera up above the crowd and starts snapping shots which of course is not allowed. The body guard by the stage saw this and pointed his super high beam flashlight right into the guys lens so he could not get a shot. Now I had a blinding white light in my face and a bone crushing whistler vibrating my head. I finally asked the whistler demon if he would stop. He just looked at me and went right back to it. The camera guy continued to snap pictures each time the bodyguard took a break with the light, the light went back up, the camera guy waited, then started it all over again. This continued to the end of the show.

Near the end of the show I had had enough and turned around to leave. It was impossible. The people behind me could not move a single inch out of the way because they were so pressed in. And I mean not an inch. I turned around and stood there not evening listening, no longer having even the slightest interest in this disaster. FINALLY, the show ended and the sardines around me slowly, ever so slowly started to move back. I now had room so I started walking. My knees gave out and i hit the ground in a hard thump. I had to sit there for probably 10 minutes before I could even get up. I walked to the beer stand, ordered two beers, and drank them both in 20 seconds. I had not eaten or drank in 7 hours.

I will never go to a concert again.

A flight that I enjoyed less than an aerobatic ride

I'll cut to the chase; in 1986 during a flight lesson, my instructor and I hit a powerline.

I like articles that get right to the point. Most articles would have opened like this...

"It was a warm morning, not unlike any morning in south Louisiana, a slight settling of mist in the rich green fields. The beauty of a certain green field was interrupted by the rainbow of colors of our hot air balloon, tethered to the ground, anxious to ascend skyward, anxious like a horse ready to ride..." and a bunch of crap like that.

This flight was my third lesson and only fourth time to be in a balloon at all. Prior to my lessons, I had only crewed 3 times and flown once as a passenger. This is rather unusual I think; most pilots have a substantial amount of exposure to ballooning prior to their flight instruction.

My lessons took place in south Louisiana near Hammond, a densely forested area that in retrospect is not a very good place to learn how to fly. The only good part was that it forced me to learn how to land in very small places, usually just a hole in the trees where a house was.

So our 3rd flight was routine and after about 45 minutes, I was getting rather fatigued. I was at treetop learning a bit of contouring when it was clear that i had over-valved and we were headed directly into a tall pine tree about 20 feet from the top. My instructor, who I will call "Todd", (his real identity is unimportant for this story), sat down in the bottom of the basket and said dryly "I don't want any part of this" just as we crashed into the branches at about 8 knots. After we pulled all the limbs out of the basket he suggested that I take a break for a little while, which I wholeheartedly agreed with. Todd took over as we came directly over the I10 interstate, and thanks to a wind change, were now flying right down the middle of the median with 2 lanes on each side of us. Now, this was a very wide median, so there was no real danger of whacking side mirrors off the cars, so I did not see any problem, but let's remember that this was my 3rd lesson and did not realize how illegal and stupid it is to fly along with cars on a high speed freeway.

Todd decided to do a rather stupid thing; a few touch and go's down the median. Once approach was fine, then on the 2nd one, about 30 feet off the ground we heard an explosion overhead and saw a big fireball. Later we both agreed that we thought the burner had exploded. The powerline was the worst kind in that the poles were buried completely in the trees on each side of the interstate, completely invisible from any point of view. We had contacted the wires right at the skirt while in a descent. This is pretty much the worst way to hit (i think). Immediately upon impact the wires arc'd, blew some sparks, and my suspension cables starting popping. This balloon was a Barnes and had 18 cables. By the time the fireworks stopped, 14 had been severed leaving 4 to hold the basket. The problem is not the ability of the cables to hold, but instead, that they were mostly on one corner which makes the basket tip down in a rather steep fashion. Each cable has a tensile strength of roughly 1,100 pounds.
Todd immediately closed all tank valves which is the precise action that should be taken at this point. We were lucky that the power system breakers did not automatically reset as we jumped from the basket to the ground, a drop of only about 8 feet if I remember correctly.

I was rather shaken and sat on the ground for a few minutes until chase arrived. Hot on their tail were the police and two TV news crews from Baton Rouge. The news cameras were on us within seconds. Todd went and sat in the truck with the window closed, leaving me to deal with them. It was at about this point that I realized I had made a poor choice in an instructor. The news crew made sure to show all the damage and sensationalize the whole situation as much as possible. This is a news crew's job, make something out of nothing. As proof to this, let me divert the story with proof of my opinion.

Three years ago, my copilot and I did a gas flight out of Albuquerque and landed two days later just outside of Biloxi Mississippi. We were tired and low on ballast so we decided to do a standard landing in a tree'd area in a forrested area which is a safe place to be (no powerlines). In gas, any landing is a good one, and they most often are not pretty. We came in at tree level, saw a clearing, threw out the trail rope and popped the deflation port. The landing was gentle and of no danger. We could care less about the trees, but when ABC showed up, all they could talkl about was the "crash" no matter how many times I told them that gas landings are purposly executed in this manner. Well, the camera went live and the Reporter started out; "So tell me about this balloon crash". I responded "Well, this was not a crash, it was a standard gas landing". She just kept it up, repeating the word "crash" over and over again, with me correcting her each time. She realized that I had ruined her interview and stormed off. So back to the main story here.

My brother was on chase and being a rather responsible person, begin following the wire directions to see what sort of businesses and houses might be affected. He saw a concrete plant and took off running that way. The guys at the plant claimed that I had just ruined an entire batch of cement and would be suing me for the loss. Little did they know that my brother just happen to work in the concrete business (no kidding) and let them know that this was BS and promptly showed them how to water the mix to keep it viable.
We got everything cleaned up, gave the finger to the news crews, and headed home. Todd got on the phone and had a new set of cables overnighted to my apartment. The short story is that two days later I was back in the air. I could not get the balloon below 3,000 feet. Todd calmly told me that if we were to land, I would have to get a little closer to the ground. Over the next half hour I was able to get down to tree top level and started an approach. At this point I did not care what the landing spot looked like; I just wanted to get down. Well, I should have cared at least a little bit because the landing field was a muddy mess with dozens of cut off stumps. the mud/water was about about a foot deep. The envelope was draped over all the stumps and was a complete mess. It took an hour of staggering and tripping and falling through the mud and stumps to get the balloon out. It was hot and miserably humid. We went home, Todd got on a plane and headed home, and I just sat in a chair in my apartment, alone, and rather discouraged. I don't think it could have been any worse except for the fact that we escaped a wire strike with our lives.
A week later I got in contact with Dave Koenig, an excellent pilot, to continue my lessons. Dave took good care of me and after 3 more lessons I soloed and got my ticket about a month later. I now have 22 years and 800 accident free hours under my belt including a gas rating.