Whirlwind

This weekend is mostly a cleaning expedition here at the lake...  I was working on the motor scooters that we keep here for most of the day, while Loyce was cleaning the house...  Not very exciting stuff...

I had jumped on the larger scooter and buzzed into the T Shirt town over by the dam looking for fast food to bring home, when the clouds began to gather in earnest...  This was a McDonalds run as it is a bunch farther to Wendy's....

But when I came out with the burgers, I noticed big splats of rain on my windshield.... Oh oh....  So I zipped back home which is about 4 miles by road...    I wasn't home long, and the sky openend up and drenched everything for about a half an hour....

Of course that was when Biscuit started to whine loudly that she had to go out potty...  She was put out on her rope for that session....!!

We cleaaned up the humming bird feeder mid morning, and almost immediately we had birds...  I wonder how they know to find the fresh necter...  Usually we buy the packets of powder which have the red color to the sugar, but more importantly they seem to have smell somehow added as well, as it is very decidedly orange flavored...

We have to go back to KC tomorrow, so this was a whirlwind trip...

Retired Rod

Blogcation

I went on blogcation yesterday....  Didn't read too many and didin't write one last night....  Not sure why, but perhaps I was bummed out about another unproductive day...

But I can't say that, as I was up in time to go out and mow the yard before it got too hot...  And the sun was shining too, except that it didn't last...  The weather people had us getting even hotter than the day before as well, but that didn't happen either....

The car needed washed where I had the back bumper spot painted at the body shop last week, and I decided to get that done while it was under 90 degrees and still fairly cool....  So out came a bucket and hose...  By now the yard tractor and push mower were back in the garage....

And as I had pulled the car back into the garage to dry off the water so it wouldn't spot in the sun, things changed rather dramatically...   I clouded up and began to rain...  Not just sprinkle but really rain...  The weather folks said no chance for rain, just hot....  Wrong...!

Anyway I'm not sure what happened to the rest of the day, but I didn't read or write any blogs...  And the temps actually went down rather than up as it was only about 88 degrees...

Now today we had decided to drive back down to  Lake Ozark, as our only other option was to help our son Chris paint some of his house...  I helped him with the ladder that is stored in our garage this morning and sent him with well wishes....

So tonight we are in the lake cabin looking out of the sliding door at the crazies as they  boat up and down the lake...  Many people are making an entire week out of this Fourth of July thing...  Since the holiday is on Thursday, when is the actual three day official weekend...?

We have to be back to the city on Monday the first of July, so that won't happen for us this year...  But maybe we can get our business sorted and get back here before the official day...

It was 90 inside the house when we arrived, since we leave the AC set at that temp.. Many years ago we used to turn off the AC when we weren't here, but that melted the furniture and candles and stuff...  When we would arrive back, it would be about 110 inside and take all night to get cooled down...

Even at 90 it seems to take forever to get back to 75 inside...  I just sat here in the chair and daydreamed as the boats went by....  Its almost midnight and folks are still boating past the house....  Friday nights are like that here in the summer....

Retired Rod

Just like Arizona....... The surface of the sun....

I had the best intentions to do wonderful things this afternoon once returning from the morning visit to the Doctor's offices.....  Another diabetes visit this morning with no breakfast....  Some of you know the drill......

But as the day progressed we ran into a little problem with outside activities....

At almost 3 PM I thought we had reached the hot part of the afternoon, so I snapped the picture from the car dash....  Well, not exactly as when I went back outside at about 5 PM it said 102....  That would be 39 C for my Northerly friends...

I came inside and looked at the temperature in Mesa, Az just for fun and it was registering 102 as well...  only they had 8 % humidity and we were somewhere around 40%...  I didn't even bother to find out what that made the heat index...

So since we were now sitting on a block of ice for the rest of the afternoon that slowed down our fun...

Loyce had taken the grand kids to the swimming pool about noon, but I went after her to make sure she knew how hot it really was...  The water in the pool is much cooler than the air temp, but a few more days like today and it will be almost boiling......!

Officially we had 98 today as a high, at the airport where the National Weather Service office is located...  It's out of town in the country a couple of miles so it is generally cooler out there....

They forecast tomorrow as 95...  That sounds like much the same to me...  Anyway we aren't doing too much but staying inside, other than trips to the pharmacy, given the doctor can't leave any prescription alone when ever you go for a friendly visit.....  (It's expensive to toss out  Rx s)

Retired Rod

Rain spoils the fun

I awakened to rain this morning and it was coming right down...  Looking at the radar screen told me it was going to be here for quite a while, so there went the luncheon ride.......

My riding friend told me on the phone that it was OK with him because he had other appointments.....  Well, so did I...  But I didn't want to go do them...

I still had that last tag renewal that needed an inspection...  And I now had the car to go get it inspected.  In the rain, but they have a garage that's inside.. Inspectors don't stand in the sun or the rain....

So after about an hour of standing in line and paying the $20 fee, I was on my way to the DMV..... Yuck...  This time I didn't have a computer to make an appointment, so I had to go and make it at the door and sit around waiting...

I was about 50 people back in line and they had 10 clerks on duty out of 18 windows...  I waited about 45 minutes and it took another 10 minutes at the window....

When I came out, it was still raining and much too late to just drive the car to the luncheon...  It was clear over in Missouri on the East side of KC...  Would have taken an hour to make it thru the traffic..  And that would have been on the interstate...  This town is really quite large... Not like Chicago or anything but still we have run on suburbs...

Later tonight I did get the bike out in time to go get some gas and that Wendy's burger.. I was experimenting with the helmet headset bluetooth phone arrangement...   I purchased a menagerie of wires and connectors that managed to get me plugged into the dash radio...

And I called my son Chris while I was riding along and he returned the call... So I got to hear it interrupt the radio and ring me.  Then once I answered, it muted the radio completely while we were on the phone...  All of this while I was riding along...

Did you know that the fellow on the motorcycle next to you in traffic might be talking away on his cell phone??  Of course this is hands free, since you really can't hold you phone and drive a bike...  But I'm sure there would be some that would try it....

It was still overcast and really windy tonight, so tomorrow might not be good either....  We still reached 91 today with a gazillion percent humidity....  Wonder what that made the heat index..???

Supposed to be 97 by Thursday.......

Retired Rod

Chasing birds............

Our excitement today was trying to chase the young baby robin out of our garage...   It was old enough to fly.... Well kind of anyway..  We tried to get it out last night, but it was scared and kept flying up into the top of the shelves and stuff...

This morning it was cheaping its head off for its mom.... But when we opened the door it wouldn't fly out...  It had made quite the mess of the floor and our cars...

Neither one of us could chase it away...  But then Loyce got the idea that it was thirsty, and put a small pan of water out by the open garage door...  We didn't watch, just went back into the house...  And after a while we couldn't find the bird anymore...

We think it flew down to get a drink and then it was almost outside so it flew away....

Never did mess on the motorcycle...  I guess because there was nothing above it for the bird to perch on...

We spent the afternoon going back up to the center of town retrieving one of our cars from the repair shop....  Of course it was done right at evening drive time so that made for a slow return of ten miles thru the city streets...  The freeway was almost a parking lot coming home, so we never got onto it...

With a couple of million folks living and working here in KC, the commute can be brutal...  Glad we don't have to do that every day......!

Nothing else here other than the same old same old...

Retired Rod

Today doesn't have a title!

From Field Day yesterday as we were making contacts....

Tim, the fellow sitting next to me handed his Apple phone to another friend, and that fellow was more used to using his SLR Nikon D7100....  So he managed to get his fingers into the shot...    No looking thru the lens on an Iphone...... LOL

I'm not real sure why I was smiling like I just ate a canary, but perhaps someone said something funny....

And while we were there eating that bar be cue.... A fellow went over to the motorcycle row and began taking pictures of the nice red VTX 1800 parked next to mine...  But then he began to picture the Goldwing.....

That would have been fine, except it was covered in bugs from zooming all over the place going to lunch.....  And it was quite dusty too...  I was embarrassed...   Wonder what he plans to do with pictures of my dirty bike...?

Well that worked on me all night when I got home, so mid morning today I was out with my bucket and soap.... Along with the power washer hooked to the hose....  Those darned bugs don't want to come off very well.  Maybe some dynamite.....

That turned into a hot experience as it was about ten million percent humidity here this morning...  And before I was done it was afternoon....

Still you can see in the shine on the black paint where those darned bugs were...  I even polished with a polishing compound, and then the Meguiars shine stuff....   That cleaned up the worst of it.....

And of course on Tuesday we are supposed to go over into the North end of Independence to a restaurant along the frontage road of Mo 291...  A local divided highway after I 470 discontinues...

None of us have been here before......  Should be interesting.....  More bugs..!

I had thought about going over to the motorhome and putting on its new license tag, but when I went out in the afternoon it was well over 90, so I went to Wal Mart instead....  And like my friend Al up in Canada, I came home with some of the stuff I wanted. but forgot the rest....  Hate it when that happens.........

Retired Rod

Amateur Radio Field Day on the Bike....

I spent the afternoon out at the Shawnee Mission Park...  I never found out if it was a city park or a county park, but that didn't matter....  I was with the ham radio club....   That I haven't seemed to attend much in the past couple of years...

They were having their Field Day Exercise and I arrived in the sleepy part of the afternoon when things were getting really warm...  I rode in on the Motor Cycle......

Not long after I arrived, I learned that one of my ham friends had just had surgery for prostate cancer.....  Of course I know all about this kind of thing...  But luckily he was able to have the camera scope surgery and was only in the hospital for a couple of days...

I was able to work with him on the main voice station for a couple of hours when no one else seemed to be interested in its operation....  We made about 60 contacts, until supper arrived.........

At that time we all had catered Bar Be Cue..  Brisket and Pork on big tenderloin size buns.......  Did I get it off of my face yet..?  LOL

By about 7 PM the heat of the day was starting to get to me, so I jumped on the bike and rode home......  The younger kids can take over from here......

I've been listening to the repeater here at my chair since and the folks seem to be going out for the night shift...  One was just asking if the gate would still be open to the park.......  I remember when I used to take those night shifts...

We also used to do all the cooking and cleaning up afterwards, but our leadership struck on the idea of having it catered and that was a super idea....

So that wraps up the activities here for today......

Retired Rod

Mowing and the DMV..... yet again...

We're still here, but not much is happening since we posted last...  Oh, if you classify mowing the lawn as a happening, we seem to still do that periodically...

And such was the case yesterday in the early evening....  I had waited until the sun went off over the West at a low angle...  It was still hot and humid but the lack of direct sun made it much more bearable..

Today I was back up to the trusty DMV for renewals of our license tags.. As you might remember, last year was a fiasco...  It took several days just to wait in line... Eventually just turning in our paper work and getting a call to come pick up the finished tags several days later..

Well its the end of June and that is our deadline month....  My son Chris was over there earlier in the week and said he got right thru...  A good sign...

So with anticipation rather low, I made the appointment for a spot in line over the internet...  They use your phone number and send messages as texts..  I was 40 minutes back in line....  I didn't trust them.....

So I put my shoes on and left right away...  And in about 5 minutes a second text came that I was 15 minutes out...  Come in right away...   Right away turned out to be about 10 minutes more of driving time...

When I walked in, I was third in line and I almost didn't get seated before I was up to the window..  About ten minutes later I was leaving with new stickers in hand.....  Bang!  Just like that........

I was back home in about 50 minutes total....  Happily replacing those old stickers for new ones ...  I only did the car and the SUV...  The motorhome is still in storage, and the scooters are down to the lake....

So other than going for coffee with my Romeo friend at McDonalds late in the afternoon, Friday was over....

But we did try out our Blue Tooth headsets with our respective cell phones on the way home...  We kept right on gabbing even though we were miles from each other...  Well alright now, that will work...

And before someone suggests that we pair the headsets and talk, that was the original plan... But his set is of different manufacture than mine...  And I need mine to be my manufacturer because it works with the Honda...  They turn out to be proprietary on pairing.....  Something about protocol... Who knows...?

Retired Rod

Passing on the Picnic and swimming........

The day was sunny right from the beginning this morning and quite pleasant in the morning....  The Romeo's had big plans.......

They were meeting at the McDonalds in Gardener to head down to Emporia for their summer picnic....  That's about 96 miles each way....  To grab a Subway sandwich and eat in the local park on a picnic table...

Now don't get me wrong, I like a picnic as well as anyone...  But after 2 hours of riding on the interstate at 70 mph I would have been hot and tired...  Then with no restaurant to get out of the heat, which turned out to be over 90 today, I would be facing a two hour ride back up the same interstate....

If it would have been a leisurely country ride at 60 then maybe....  But 75 for 4 hours......  Nah....  I decided last night that I wasn't going...  My friend Al never even brought it up yesterday, so I knew he didn't have it on his mind either...

Loyce went and gathered the grand kids and went to our subdivision pool for most of the afternoon, and biscuit and I hung around waiting for the UPS man...

He brought me a blue tooth headset that goes into my helmet so I can answer the phone or listen to music...   If I get another blue tooth transmitter, I can hook that up to the bike and listen to its radio and intercom as well...  But that piece is more $ yet, so I am cooling it....  Remember that tax man had to be made happy this month...

Late in the day, I had to go for a Wendy's and ride around with the new music in my ears...  Just to check it out..   you know how it is...

Anyway that was our pressing schedule here today.....

Retired Rod

Ruby's Landing, Atchison, Ks

Its 65 miles up to Atchison..  We went up on the Missouri side of the river and came home on the Kansas side...

Ruby's was a Bar Be Cue place along the river in Achison about a mile North of the river bridge.. They are building a new span just South of the older bridge in the pictures...



The river serenely passes by.......  You could sit here all day....



But hey, there's Pulled Pork sandwich inside on a hoagie roll and Sweet Potato fries.......




Again these pictures are courtesy of my friend Roger Shores and the Romeo Web site for today..

Retired Rod

Dreary weather day outside....

Another of those drippy dreary days here today....  It was overcast and dark from first light.  I kept looking at the radar map and the storm was just west of us..

I thought for sure it was going to cover us and rain hard again, but it never did...  Still I did not chance it and push the cycle out of the garage...  And then late in the afternoon it did rain fairly heavily, but by then the sun was out over in the West...

I went to wall mart for the fixins for loose hamburger sandwich...  Not sloppy joe, but more like made rite if you have ever heard of those...   Some folks use chicken broth but I use beef...  You add your own seasonings and cook the broth down until its almost gone making an Au Jus..

I like to wet the bun in this after 10 sec in the microwave....  Don't soak it, just lightly dip the surface that is against the meat...  Then a piece of cheese with some mustard...  No ketchup!!  For the purest anyway...

Again I was messing with the memory sticks and music tonight, making one for Loyce that will play on her car stereo like a CD....  I put 14 CDs on a really small one, but now days that was 8 gig and cost $5.69...

Retired Rod

Memories of Dad...

Happy Father's Day

My father Jim, passed back in 1994....  It was traumatic to me, as he was the corner post of my learning experiences in life...

Dad was in the Navy in WWII and was a fire control technician.  They were the fellows that calculated the firing solutions for the big guns aboard the cruiser he was stationed upon...

They used mechanical computers that had wheels and gears to do the math involved...  At that time they had vacuum tube computers but they were too large to put aboard ship...

In the 1950s and 1960s we ran an electronics parts store in Des Moines selling everything it took to make radios and tv s.   He understood all of this electronics stuff and taught most of it to me...  But when I went to college, I became an accountant, as it was far easier to get a job in that field in the 70s...

I think my mother really enjoyed that fact as she had been the bookkeeper in the business and I helped her as well...

Dad built computers from small kits in the early 1980s as retirement projects.  I remember one of his first machines had 4 K of memory....  That would be 4,000 positions of 8 bit wide memory....  The machine I am typing on right now has 2 Gig of memory...  That's 2,000,000,000 positions, and is rather small compared to the little laptop I purchased this spring as it has 8 Gig..

We used a small tape recorder to store programs and copied them into the memory of the machine with a modem at 150 baud...  Modems today are rated in the millions of baud........  bits per second...

I think it would almost be beyond dad's ability to comprehend the electronics of today, but you could bet he would have one of the biggest computers around were he still alive...

He never did like the desktop overlay programs like windows because he always worked from the command line..  Do you suppose that is why I still use linux today...?

Anyway Happy Father's Day!!

Retired Rod

Yep, it rained...... Oh, boy did it rain.

We spent the day riding from town to town here South of Kansas City....  Lewisburg and then LaCygne for lunch...  Then back to Osawatomie and the same restaurant that we were to last week.....

It was very hot and humid, but I had my wet vest on for most of the afternoon.   We ended up in an old bar in Hillsdale, where there is a COE dam and a state park with a campground......  Both of our son's and their families are camped out there this weekend..

But there was that 30 percent chance of rain.....  And as we were finishing up with the auction of stuff for the High school scholarship..  the sky became really dark to our South....  We finished up in a hurry and I gave up on going out to the lake....

I high tailed it for home up the four lane Kansas highway 7..   I could hear the lightning behind me and the mirrors showed clouds that were catching me...

I opened the garage door with the closer remote and zoomed inside as the gust front was crossing over....  The rain came down almost instantly and the wind blew it into a blinding frenzy.......

I barely got the door closed.... From inside the house the trees whipped and were bent almost to the ground.......  It took about an hour for the storm to pass and as I write this at about dusk, it is still overcast and eerie outside...

So much for that 30 percent chance of rain...  But I managed to stay mostly dry...  I did talk to the kids at the campground later in the afternoon, and they didn't have it as bad as we did here in town....  Still camping in the rain at a state park is confining when you have 5 kids to keep entertained....  Especially when they can't go outside of the trailers.....

But this is a typical day here in Kansas....  Hot and unbearably sunny, until the gust front and instant cool down causes a near tornado....

Retired Rod

Working on the music files..

I've been busy tonight making music files out of my old CD's that I found under the seat in the truck....  Seems that newer cars all want USB memory sticks now.......  But also they seem to like MP3 files....  Not the wav files on the CDs...

I know that almost all songs are now downloaded and no one buys CDs any more.....  But us old folk have 33 rpm records too.....  But that is the beauty of the Linux system... Almost any program is available for free from the software repository...   And so was the converter from wav to mp3....

It doesn't ask any dumb questions about the files its converting, like do you own this disk...  either....    So things were changed to mp3 s and written to USB sticks....  Well some of them anyway as I got to listening to the songs........

I spent most of the morning working on Income Taxes again as it is estimated payment day on Saturday....  It gets rather old working on that stuff all the time...  And I used to do it for a living....  Maybe that's why I get tired of it so fast...

In the afternoon, I went out shopping for a lamp shade..  Yep it was that slow of a day.....

Tomorrow is another cycle ride, but it may rain...  30%....  But if you are where the rain is falling, it always seems like 100% to me......  Go figure....

Retired Rod

Broken mower and a wet vest...

I never really know what to write on these days that don't seem to have much activity.  Since I don't really want to bore folks with nothing to do about nothing, I just skipped yesterday as a blogging day....

And my report about the lunch in Osawatomie seemed to be very un appealing as the number of folks viewing fell off again...  I tried to not even mention how I got to the lunch.....   Well that didn't seem to matter....

So today was a little cooler, as we had been in the mid 90s for the last couple of days... Loyce was right after me to get the yard mowed early in the morning... Only when I started the hand mower, I found that the cable on the self propelled feature had parted which left the handle hanging limply...

I use the mower to trim all of the outline of the yard, but having to push  the mower against its self propelled gears was about impossible...  So I did the bare  minimum with it...

That left me using the riding tractor to try and trim most of the yard......  I managed to get things looking fairly respectable...  But headed right out to go find a new cable immediately...

This machine is a lawnboy which went out of business back in 2004...  But with some luck, we have a hardware store about 10 miles back into the older part of town that still specializes in their repair...  And that means he carries parts...  I have no idea where he gets them............  I'm just lucky that he does..

Once there, he explained that there were three different cables for the self propel feature and it depended on which model and year I had....  I couldn't find the model sticker so I couldn't answer him....

But he repairs so many machines like mine that I was able to pick out the exact machine from his stack of finished ones ready for pick up...  Even then he was skeptical that a cable would fit.....  He sold me the most likely one, and I said if it didn't work, I would return with the broken one in half an hour....

His choice turned out to be entirely correct!  I had it on and working in about 30 minutes after returning home......  Man its good to live in a city of a couple of million people....  Back in Iowa, I would still be trying to decide which cable I should order.....  And of course that would have taken a week or more..

I guess later in the afternoon I went over to my son Ben's house to see his new Chevy gas saver car that he just picked up last night..... A Cruze....!



Its a nice looking car, and he found a one year old model with low mileage...

Oh, on the way home from the lawnmower store, I stopped at a cycle apparel store....  There I picked up a vest that is quilted out of nylon material...  It kind of looks like it was made from an old furniture blanket...  But what you do is wet it down in the sink......



It soaks up water like a sponge....  I tried to wring it out once it was wet but couldn't get much back out of it...  You wear this vest under your mesh jacket while riding....  At normal speeds, the moisture evaporates out of the fabric and cools you down...  And yes it made my T shirt kind of wet, but it was 90 in the mid afternoon, and I didn't seem to overheat nearly as bad as I did on Tuesday when we were covering half of the state...

We'll see how that goes on one of these longer rides...  If it becomes too dry, it will make you hot in a heart beat as it would work for a winter coat liner otherwise.....

I promised not to bore you and here I have written half a book again.....

Retired Rod

Lunch in Osawatomie

Here we go again, another luncheon...  This time in Osawatomie, Kansas...

But wait, that circle is a lot larger than from my house at H down to Osawatomie at B and then back home...  And yes it is, because some of the folks I was with decided we needed to ride to Butler, Mo on such a nice day.. To get a cup of coffee at their McDonalds..  Well anyway we did 160 miles...

B is Osawatomie..
C is La Cygne
D is Butler, Mo
E is Harrisonville, Mo

It was 93 and a gorgeous day...

There were over 60 folks in the meeting room at the Whistle Stop Restaurant...




They put out an all you can eat buffet, with salads and broasted chicken..   Bar B Cue brisket and the fixins....  Even a soft serve machine with cones or bowls and sundae toppings......  All for $6.99....?

As always there are lots more photos on the official web site as some of them went to the John Brown Museum there in town....  You know John Brown's Body lies a Moldering in the grave.... that John Brown...

Romeo Rider Page here.....  And thanks to Roger Shores for his photo....

Retired Rod

Computers!!

No excitement today as we only drove back to the KC home...   A bunch of housework at the lake was worked on before we left...

Once back here, I worked on my Linux computer, setting up Chrome as a browser..  They use a special version named Chromium... It looks just the same, but seems to run with Linux more proficiently..

Oh, somehow while carrying the Samsung Galaxy sIII phone in my pocket, I pants dialed Airplane Mode..  Of course that shuts things down.... completely!!!   No service..  But for some reason I couldn't get it out of airplane mode.....

I called customer service on that one with the house phone..  They had me trying all the same buttons that I tried before I called........ still locked...

So we shut the phone down completely, and took out the battery...  Restarting that time made verything normal again.....   Computers!!!!

Retired Rod

Final day for the boat race....

We were supposed to finish the races today, but by 9AM it was torential downpour time... We thought it would be delayed a day...  But by noon the clouds parted and the rain stopped...

They wasted no time getting things underway....  The Pro Am class was run in the misty aftermath of the storm.....

It took them a while to get the extreme cockpit fellows in the water, and they had their exhibition lap to get lined up....  And then they were off....  One boat was again overwhelmingly faster than the rest...  It had jumped out ahead by the time they reached our place about two miles into the first lap...

The boat never looked back.... and about 4 laps in, they passed the slowest boat still on his previous lap.  Somewhere around the eighth lap the dark maroon boat lapped the second place boat....

But on the ninth lap, the fast boat didn't come by for his tenth and final lap.....  I though he might have broken down.... But then all of a sudden here he came, still in the lead but barely..  He went on to win...

On the radio, they said he had lost count of the laps and thought he was done and pulled into the dock where they waved him on to go finish his last lap....  He was so far ahead though that he won anyway....

Later this evening, I went thru town and the maroon boat was still along the street..   It had four mercury outboards on it, each labeled 300 hp..   I wouldn't imagine that they were stock so even if they were putting out 350, that would be 1400hp....

The boat had a completely different sound to it when it passed, and looking on the internet shows that the 300s are 2cycle..  They were wound a lot tighter and were really high pitched in their noise....  The boat just flew...  of course they won't say how fast they were going, but one of the drivers said they were going into the corners after they slowed down at 150....

So in the straight away they had to be over 160....   That is really fast for being on the water....!!

Retired Rod

Lake Ozark Invitational Powerboat Race

We have a cabin along the shore of Lake Ozark about 2 and one half miles from the dam...   The lake is sort of curved, and we can see the dam out our front sliding doors...

Today the boats lined these shores for the first three miles of the channel...  They rafted together like they do in Party Cove, where boats are tied along side of each other and anchors are tossed  from each vessel..  This makes for a flotilla that can become hundreds of yards long....

I kept taking pictures with my Android phone...  They look about the same as they are all from our deck...  But more and more boats were arriving..

I think this second picture was actually taken first...  But across the main channel you can also see the boats lining up on that side too...

They had speed pontoon races first, which are pontoons with really big engines on them.....   The top speed boat was 65 mph...  They calculate this average over 5 laps...  Of course one boat was heads up faster than the rest....  As a comparison, our pontoon will go about 40 miles per hour with one person on board and the engine flat out...  We have 225 horsepower...  Some of the fast ones have twin 250s...

But later in the day the offshore racing boats from Florida raced, and they are some of the fastest boats ever made...  They fly helicopters overhead while the race is on with emergency divers on board...  Should an accident happen, the divers jump from the chopper into the water.

The top category of boats was listed as extreme...  This is for boats over 117 mph..  Some boats hit 150 as I understand....

 

The boats are in the distance in the middle of the lake....  If you double click on the video it will go to a larger screen...  Escape comes back...  Notice the helicopter is following the last boat in the video at just above the tree line...

I zoomed in to get a better view on the second lap...  They go by so fast, that it is hard to keep things in perspective...

I didn't have my cameras with me so these pictures were taken with my phone and the videos were with the Asus pad tablet...  It has an 8Mp camera which I would remember to be quite nice several years ago, but the lens on devices like phones and computers is essentially a piece of window glass...  So the pictures are what they are...

Anyway we had a ring side seat on the deck above the water....  Not planned that way, but it worked out to our advantage...

Retired Rod

Romeos in the AM and a fixed Computer in the afternoon

I'm about to fall asleep, so a quick post will sum up the day......  It started as I pulled away from the house headed for Orick, Missouri   and a fish fry....   Every now and then the Romeos like to go eat Walleye fish at the cafe in Orick called Fublers...

It took about an hour to get there on mostly the perimeter interstates....  And I was early and the first one there...  So I had brunch of biscuits and gravy with fried catfish fillets on the side......  Kind of like chicken and biscuits, only fish and biscuits....

Most had walleye and macaroni and cheese.......  Lots of take home cartons were carried away....

Once back in KC, I went to the computer parts store and returned the parts I purchased last night..  And they tested the  supposedly new hard drive and concurred that it was toasted...

And of course they suggested that I send it in to Toshiba....   But for only $52.95 they had new ones....  And they asked that I test this new one, to make sure it wasn't bad, right away..  Hey,, maybe we broke the 5 month old one somehow... How do they know?

Once back home, I reassembled the computer again and loaded the software...  It went on without a hitch.... Just typed in the time zone I was in and that I wanted USA English..  Had to supply a name and a password, and then just watch as it loaded everything..

About then, Loyce came home and wanted to leave for the Lake....  That was the plan all along.....  So the new old computer was returned to its place next to my easy chair...  I did download Chrome, and signon with my email account, and watched in amazement as my stored favorites and tabs synced with daddy google..  Just like that , configured!

The ride down here was uneventful, and there aren't many crops up due to the cool weather as well.... Usually our corn here would be a foot tall....  Hope its not a bad year for the farmers, as they lost everything in a drought last year....

So tonight I am posting this with an Asus Transformer Tablet, while the new hard drive and operating system are idling at home on their run in hours.....  I usually let that machine run all the time anyway, just shutting off the monitor..  So now with a new hard drive, it will be at least another three years before it is shut off again....

I did bring the laptop, but it is Win 8 where this tablet is Android, yet another version of Linux, but they really don't want you to know it....

Retired Rod

Computer still broken................

I'm kind of bummed out tonight, as I spent most of the day backing up my Linux machine, and late in the afternoon, I finally got the case off of the machine...  Remember I built this computer about three years ago.....

But that didn't mean that I remembered what was inside of the box....  The screws hadn't been out of it in all that time........  But now the hard drive is questionable and the time to fix it is before it quits entirely...

But it was just my luck that the drive was the old technology IDE style drive, and of course when I purchased the new drive last winter, I purchased a SATA drive...   But not the cables and stuff that it takes to hook it up....  Assumed the one in the box was the newer style........but it wasn't...

So right at 5 PM, I was driving like a maniac headed for the computer parts store before they closed...  Bought the parts I thought would fix it and came back.......

And after about an hour of installing the new drive, I determined that the new sealed up in mylar plastic drive is broken....  Of course since it was purchased last January, or perhaps even December and never installed there's absolutely nothing I can do about it.............  Go buy a new one and pitch the broken new one......!

So I am without my big screen desktop favorite computer tonight........  Well I could have put it back together with the old drive so it would work, but that seems like a waste of time....

Loyce decided that she was going to mow the yard today, and I hustled right outside and put gas in the self propelled walk behind Lawnboy...  It's older, but has a magnesium deck and aluminum motor, so its much lighter than anything you could buy today...

She did all of the trimming, and the front yard, and I thought things were going to be really good...  So I hopped on the JD rider and finished the large part of the back yard in fairly quick order...

But that's when I learned that the Home Depot people were arriving with paving stones to do landscaping.....  Uh,,,,,,  well, I guess we will be stumbling around these bricks for a while because the folks that are supposed to put them in are weeks behind.......  This will be an unfolding story for the future...

Anyway I'm still grumbling over my disassembled computer...  I'll have to go get more new parts tomorrow... But the day is turning out to be a zoo, so we'll see if there is time to work on it....

Retired Rod

Will the sun ever shine

We had four out of the five grand kids over here this afternoon, as they were cooking cup cakes for the youngest ones birthday party....  The four older kids were eating the batter for the cake before it was baked, and spreading frosting on each other........

I tired of this menagerie not too long after it started and declared that I needed a hair cut..........  Ya, I know its a cop out.........   But hey, I look much nicer now with short hair.........!

I was sitting out in the garage in the car changing radio presets when I returned and ..........   I could hear the screams from inside the house in the attached garage.......  So I balked at that......

And then tonight they all came back to surprise the youngest with her cup cakes and  a decorated kitchen with balloons and other signs and so forth....   Of course at 4 she can't really read Happy Birthday that is emblazoned on the curtains over the windows, but its colorful and not normally there....

I busied myself with making the windows 8 backup recovery disks that the laptop has demanded be burned for the last month.......   And then I downloaded the latest version of Linux Mint 64 bit, with the cinnamon desktop...  Unlike Windows where you get the graphics that Microsoft deems to be correct for your pleasure....  With Linux, you can choose several versions, which they call distributions..  And then you have your choice of desktop control programs to run the underlying operating system....  Of course you can type in commands from a command prompt as well but no one but programmers can run things that way.....

So its Linux and my distribution is Mint and its for a 64 bit processor....  The latest version is 15 which is named Olivia...  And I am trying the most complicated desktop named Cinnamon...  I was running a desktop named Mate, which is decidedly easier...  oh, and there is one even easier than that called xfce...  That one looks almost simpler than Windows XP.

So if I get this new one set up, and running, I will be graduating to a more complicated platform.....  Windows 8 is kind of a bust as after about 30 minutes, you are left saying is that all there is to it?  So bring on the challenge....

Obviously I didn't get to ride the Wednesday ride today, as it was a massive thunder clap the served as  an alarm clock this morning.....  The downpour was a torrent all morning.....    But now they are scheduling a Friday ride for Walleye fish....  No this isn't Minnesota, and you can't catch Walleye in the Missouri River...   But oddly enough the restaurant is in a small town just North of the river.....

Will the sun ever shine again?

Retired Rod

Nope not gonna happen........!

As things often go, it rained quite extensively today and trashed all three of our wash jobs on the cars....   We knew this was going to be the case, but it doesn't help, as you look at the muddy spots all over them....

Today was supposed to be my MRI, and it would have been too, except that the machine down here in the suburbs is not as big as the one in the main Hospital, as I am told....  And as those of you that have met me, already know, I am a big guy......  Too big to fit into the small machine.....  They tried to cram me in anyway, and when my nose was dragging on the roof  and both shoulders were wider than the sides..............  I had to yell stop....  or rather push the button they give you......

OK!  I give!!!  No way......!!

So the whole deal came to an abrupt stop about half way thru the procedure....  Had to call the doctor to see what to do next, and he was out of town........

And as I was making my way back out to the car, that's when the rain came pouring down..........

But thinking about more pleasant experiences, Monday afternoon I had to take advantage of the really nice afternoon by riding the Motorcycle out into the country....  I went West out of Olathe on  a country road that winds out past the old Army Ammunition Storage Depot  between here and Lawrence, Kansas....  Lawrence is where Kansas University is located about 25 miles to our West....

Curious to know more....Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant

I'm not sure if there is still ammo in those old bunker buildings, but you can't get into the facility on the roads, and can only see the buildings at a distance from the country road on its South....  I would bet the Government isn't telling about it much either.....   Its all fenced with red warning signs on the fence claiming Danger.....  Think cameras in the bushes!!

Once over in the Lawrence area, I rode out to the Core of Engineers impoundment  Clinton Lake...  And rode thru the CG....  It looked like it hadn't been mowed in several weeks, but then we are sequestered....  We did have several folks camped and two camp host trailers, so it would be nice to put in a weekend out there...

I rode around the lake coming back into the Northwest side of Lawrence....  I stopped at a Wendy's to take a bathroom break and get that small cheese burger.....  With the biggest pop they had....   Motorcycle riding dehydrates you terribly...

Riding back home was on the main four lane highway K 10 which is an artery at 70 mph...  By then it was 6 PM and I needed to be home....

Of course the Romeos went right on with their ride today even though it was raining like crazy.....  The pictures of the Mexican place included a Taco Bar with all the fixins....    I could have driven the car up there, but was in no mood after being stuffed into that sausage machine...........  LOL

Retired Rod

Work on the weekend

I was checking as to the possibility of using Walgreens as a pharmacy under the AARP sponsored part D..    And yes they are a preferred provider....  I picked Target as I knew that they were all over the country...  With us going down to the Lake in rural Missouri, we do have a Target there...

I was treated with the utmost respect by the Target Pharmacy in Arizona, so it is probably dependent on which store you go to.....  We have several within driving distance, so the first step is another store..

Our weekend here has been a laid back do nothing kind of an affair....  Saturday we started in on dirty vehicles, by washing the motor cycle by hand...  And a pressure washer here in the driveway.....  That seems to take forever as there are so many crooks and crannies...

But then I began to run the cars over to the full service wash facilities....  Only problem with that was everyone else had the same idea....  So you have to get in line to get in, and then wait in line while they do the detail work once your thru the tunnel...  It was taking about 45 minutes a vehicle...

I ran all three thru so that shot three hours.....  We also had to clean up from the yard clippings that were stuck on everything....   Mowing when wet is never a good idea, but of course Saturday it was almost sunny....  I did sneak off on the clean bike to ride several miles out of town around our  state park lake just South of us....  The camping looked like fun, but cleaning the motorhome to get ready to go would have been a monumental task......

So as Sunday dawned, we were nasty and overcast again....  And way too cool to do anything outside...  Barely 60......  Didn't see the sun until mid afternoon.........

Tonight we managed to slip over to the older son's home and give the youngest grand daughter her birthday presents........  Birthday cake was strawberry short cake....  With whipped cream and fresh berries......  When someone says shortcake and berries, I'm always on my way!!!!  Right away!!

It never did rain again today but tomorrow it is to start all over again....  So much for those clean cars..........

Tuesday is Mexican day with the Romeo Riders club.... but, the doctor scheduled an MRI right at 10 AM for me..............  So we will miss that lunch...  Its a 50 percent chance of rain anyway, and would be mostly interstate roads to get there....  Interstates and rain on a bike, make for very wet riders.........

There is a long ride way out into the center of Kansas on Wednesday scheduled by the Topeka group.....  About 80 miles each way..... Maybe if the sun is shining...........!   We all go to each other's events, so I will know more folks than a few.....

Retired Rod

Singing in the .......... or should that be mowing in the rain?

What did it do in the middle of the night again last night??  Well of course, it rained and hailed...  We are flooded...  Both of our phones went off mid morning warning of flash flooding for our area...  But we sit fairly high here in suburbia...

Loyce went and got the grand kids about noon, which kind of brings our day to a halt as far as any productive work is concerned...  We had our younger son's three for most of the afternoon...  The girls went down for a nap but Caden is too old for that sort of thing...  So he went with me to determine why I didn't have the prescriptions filled yet....

Once there, we were told the Doctor hadn't called back...  Well did you call them again?  No, once is all we do....!  So its Friday and I go without my prescriptions all weekend ???  Not our fault......!  At this point I about lost it!!!!!!

Well see if you can call them AGAIN....... WHY DON'T YA?????......  I swear, Target isn't a bit better than Wal Mart..  They both have that give a shat attitude......  So with me stomping holes in the floor right out front of their counter, they managed to get thru...  I know I am a horses back side.... but one of these scripts, I really can't go without......  Plus you should take your blood pressure meds too.....

Back here at the house the girls were awake, and we played some more before returning to their daddy's for supper..   And then since it had been rain free for about 6 hours,  I came back and started the mower...

Of course the tall grass, all balled up under the mower deck, stained the concrete and made a total mess...  But hey!  Its gonna rain again tonight!! And tomorrow too.....  Maybe I can just sit here and take lots of medications for my bad temper and watch it flood......

Summer in the Midwest!!!  LOL

Retired Rod