Time For A Break

So there I was...trying to put together the weekly blog a day after Thanksgiving but having trouble finding the drive to do so.  It might just have been too much turkey.  I was going to tell about a time in Paris, France when a young Asian woman speaking in broken English approached me on the street wearing a green bowler hat, blond wig and Heidi dress.  She asked if I was an American and when I answered in the affirmative she and her five or six other friends all started jumping up and down and screaming.  Seems there was some sort of initiation that she was going through and she couldn't eat until she had her picture taken with an American.  So the group gathered around me and started clicking pictures as my wife looked on with a most bewildered expression.  Off the group ran giggling all the way.  It is bizarre how these things happen to me but lately things have been very quiet.  I don't doubt that they will get crazy again but I think it's time for a Christmas Holiday.  I'll resume the weekly blog in the new year.  See you in January 2013. 

Do Angels Draw?

So there I was...driving along the shores of Lake Ontario coming back from the boatyard where my boat is wintering on dry land.  As always, I was in awe of the vastness and power of that large a body of water.  It helped to put things in perspective as it had not been a good couple of weeks for me.  First my boat had been broken into and alot of my tools had been stolen, many of them passed down to me from my father.  Then with much effort and in the cold Kim and I had set up the frame and covered the boat with a new winter tarp only to have it part at the seams and rip itself off the boat with the strong winds.  My best efforts were being rewarded with less than ideal results.  
There was a time some 35 years ago that life was really beating me up.  Sometimes after work I would drive an hour and a half to get to the Rhode Island shore and sit on a break wall listening to the crashing waves.  Here I tried to figure out what I really wanted in life and why things were not going as planned.  One of those evenings, after sitting there for about an hour, a girl walked out to where I was on the rocks and handed me a sketch she had done of me from where she was sitting on the shore.  After I thanked her she smiled and just walked away.  As I looked at the sketch I notice how small I was in relation to how big the ocean was drawn.  That is when I started putting things in perspective.  Don't sweat the small stuff.  There are greater things in life to think on.  There is a much larger purpose for living than my day to day successes and failures.  There is a God and He has plans for me.
To this day, I find myself wanting to be around large bodies of water.  It keeps me grounded.  It keeps me from thinking too much of myself.  It helps me to see things as they really are.

Rocky and Bullwinkle

So there I was...having my morning coffee when I heard the squirrels running on the roof of the house again.  It was common as we have this huge pine tree close enough to the roof to make it easy for them.  I noticed the sound being louder than usual and with a little investigation found the critters to have taken up residence in an upper section of the attic accessible only from a damaged roof vent.  Before I could fix the vent I had to get these guys out but they had no intention of leaving despite my many efforts.  Then I bought the "Squirrelinator" (cue dramatic music).  After mounting this devise to the roof I captured the varmints within a day.  I secured the roof vent so I don't have to pull out the "Squirrelinator" (cue dramatic music) again.  This brings me to my other animal story from several years ago.
So there we were...winter camping on Mt Moosalamoo in Vermont.  My close friends, John and Rich, had been doing this annual excursion together for some 30 years straight and through the years others would join them, this being one of the years I did.  We "Robust Trampers", as the guys aptly named us, would backpack on snowshoes through the 4 ft deep snow a fair distance into the woods to set up a base camp and day hike out from there.  It was usually 3 days in zero degree weather sleeping in tents and cooking your meals on small camp stoves laid on a table you cut out of the tamped down snow.  We came back from a day hike on Moosalamoo to our camp and within a few minutes John quietly turns my head to show me a huge moose that is standing no more than 30 yds from us.  After she effortlessly trots off through the 4 ft snow we go to where she was standing to check her tracks.  My two hands end to end equaled the size of her hoof.  Then we saw her calf, some 6 feet tall, run off in a different direction from the mother.  I put on my snowshoes and told the guys that I had to track it.  After all, moosalamoo is the Abenaki Indian word meaning "trails of the moose".  As I followed its trail I saw where it crossed a snow covered frozen pond where it obviously slipped and took a digger as the snow was cleared from the ice where its body slid.  A memory of the scene from the animated movie where Bambi slides spread eagle across the ice came to mind.  Its tracks leading away from the site indicated that it was walking normal and no harm was done except maybe to its pride.  It was turning dark fast and the thought of the mother moose finding me tracking her young might end badly for yours truly so I headed back to camp.  These huge animals just thrilled me and made my weekend.  Can't say the same for the squirrels.

Upside Down At 3,500 Ft

So there I was...watching the news yesterday as they showed Laguardia Airport in New York covered in water with just the runways showing.  Hurricane Sandy had pummeled the area that I had boated through only a month ago.  Looking at that flooded airport reminded me of a day about 28 years ago when heavy rains in Kansas City, Missouri had left a small outlying airport surrounded by water, but the runways themselves were still usable.  The reason that was important to me that blustery morning was I was about to go up and jump out of a perfectly good airplane at 3,500 ft. hoping to land on dry ground.  Kim and I had not been married long so I wrote a quick will on a scrap piece of paper and had it signed and witnessed by a friend of mine there just in case gravity won and I lost.  I had training the night before and the morning of the jump as I would be jumping by myself and not attached to an instructor.  It is called a static line jump where a tether is attached on one end to the plane and the other end to your parachute so as you jump from the plane the 15+ ft line goes taut and pulls the parachute from your pack.  After a short freefall the air fills your chute and landing on dry ground is all you have to worry about.  As I stepped out onto the strut of the planes wing to prepare my spread eagle exit into open air, I became fascinated with the power of the propellers thrust.  Looking at it as I jumped caused me to fall in a twisting motion and as my chute deployed the lines wrapped around my legs.  I found myself hanging upside down at 3,500 ft with a partially opened parachute and falling fast.  Kim can see the deformed chute from the ground and knows things are not going well for me up there.  All I could think to say was, "Oh crap" and realized I better move fast.  Doing a mid-air situp I started unraveling the lines from my legs until finally I fell upright and the chute filled fully.  After a pleasant flight I made a good landing only 5 ft from the bullseye (a bath towel on the ground), and more importantly, not in the water.  Kim was breathing again but if I remember right she hit me...hard!