December 2017

FIRE!!!

While the fires in California may no longer be big news in your part of the country, they sure are here. We are still in no imminent danger as the fires are 70 miles (120km) away but we have grey sky's and ash covers our deck everyday. If I had my plane here, I could go up and throw water bottles at it. Every bit helps, no?

As we go to press, there have been over a 1000 homes destroyed, it has burned over 400 SQ miles (1000 km) and is now the 4th largest fire in the states history. And it's growing... After 10 days, it is 30% contained. It's weird seeing people walk around with face masks to avoid breathing the smoke.

Show and tell...soon.

As I have mentioned once or twice, I am not found of blabbing about stuff that is not finished and such is the case this month. We are very close to finishing a number of projects that have been in the works for some time, but the key words are 'very close' and 'not finished'. So, we will have less to share this month. 

Otherwise, the big news is that I went in for my second shot in the eye for the Macular Degeneration thing, (to make me feel better my aunt wrote that she always knew I was a degenerate) and I was told that I was among the very few who responded so well to the treatment that my vision had actually improved from the first treatment. Not that is was bad before, but...

Furthermore,the doctor expected that I might regain all I had lost after the next shot. Very good news and should be a big help with my astronaut application with NASA.

The hits kept on coming though, when I was diagnosed as having possible borderline Hypertension  (I beat that in a hurry) and blood work for potential diabetes. Crap, it was like I was turning into an old woman circling the drain or something. I was put on an exciting diet of no beer** (4 months without left me seriously dehydrated) no rice, no candy and no bread. In the end, the test numbers  for diabetes were not what I had hoped for.

It is becoming more difficult to make a convincing argument that I am bulletproof. So, if you have been meaning to tell me how much you love me, now might be a good time. The end could be near. 

** " With wine, there is wisdom.
       With beer, there is freedom.
       With water, there is... eh.........bacteria"

A winter wonderland

California style


ABCDEFG

I heard this month that only 30% of third grade students in California are reading proficiently at grade level. This apparently makes them 4 times as likely to eventually become high school dropouts. We are not proud of that.

So, you would think that escaping to Canada in the summer would provide a reprieve of sorts. That was until it was reported that  the Durham school district [in Ontario where we hide out], now provides their elementary school teachers with (take a deeeeeep breath here) LGGBDTTTQQAAPP inclusiveness training. Never mind that being self-pollinating isn't listed (should I feel excluded?) but it is one more reason the island is only 30 feet (10m) from the border, should a quick escape to the land of the free and home of the brave prove to be necessary.

Merry Christmas from our house to yours.

November, 2017

Avila beach.
No, its not my picture, but it is one of our favorite hang out's and its iconic California.

Fun of the month

A fun find. A slab of 2000+ year old California Redwood. We all know that each ring represents a year. The fourth brass marker from the center (left of Janice's head) marked the birth of Christ. The last marker on the outer edge was World War 1.

Montana de Oro (mountain of gold) park is a great place for cliff walks above the beaches and watching the dolphins jump, whales migrating and sprouting along the horizon. [below]

Every year the nearby town of Cambria hosts a scarecrow festival around Halloween. The whole town's merchants and residents get into the act trying to outdo each other with whimsical themes. The scarecrows line both sides of the street for about a mile. Here are a few samples. 

In an ongoing attempt to raise our cultural level, we attended the Russian Ballet.

For the record, we vehemently deny any and all allegations that we have colluded with them.

I really love being back in California, but sometimes its a bit like being back in France. The place is great, but some of the things that go on are well...incredible. Take, for instance, our Delhi Sands fly....please! The fly is on the endangered species list and has a lifespan of almost 48 hours but has managed to stall or stop important projects like the construction of a hospital.

Or the attempt to enact a law that would cause people to pay fines or be imprisoned for accidentally scaring, hurting, killing or disrupting the habitat of any animal on the endangered species list. Did you read the part about 'accidentally'? 

Or our legislators raising our gas taxes .12c a gallon on top of the highest gas taxes and prices in the nation for road maintenance. Like Canadians, Californians have never heard of a tax they don't immediately fall in love with. There is nothing wrong with California that a little regime change wouldn't fix. Just saying.

WWW.Projectsthatneeddoing.com 

This season here is a little different from past ones. We do have a substantial project in the works but we will not see it to its conclusion until next month, I hope. This has left a fair amount of free time between play days to get to things that have been lingering for ages. You know, those kind of things in your 'one of these days' file.

So, after promising to build another linen closet in our upstairs bathroom 30 years ago, I built it this past month. Go me! Then, I remembered when we had our final building inspection 33 years ago,  Janice looked like she was 16 months pregnant so the inspector took pity on us and signed off, allowing us to move in. He did though, have me promise to finish the last 6' (2 M) of banister I had built on our circular staircase. He did not specify when.

A promise is a promise so this past month I put it in. It is in the same spiral circular form, made of Honduran Mahogany with a Peruvian Walnut inlay that I built the rest of the house cabinets out of. We are now legal, and of course it is safer. Most important: Promise made, promise kept. Before I go on beating my chest, there are more of these unfinished 'loose ends' than I will probably ever get to in my lifetime. It won't be from a lack of trying.

I really did love getting back into working with exotic hardwoods, building furniture and furnishings. General construction and building things is great but working with exotic hardwoods is like the difference between flying a real airplane and a model. In the woodworking world, to me it separates the men from the boys.

Speaking of promises, as long as I was at it, I built the  bookcase for our bedroom I had promised Janice 30 years ago also. She had been using a cheap one from Ikea awaiting the real deal. Patience is a virtue and she has been nothing if not virtuous. I built it out of  2" (5cm) thick West African Afrormosia and Aboudikro wood (also known as Sapele).

With all these promises kept, I should be called  'Mr. Promise Keeper' as 'Mr. Wonderful' might be a tad premature. Now that the 30 year old promises are kept, I guess I can start working on ones I made 29 years ago.

Back yard picnic area

Not promised but needed nevertheless, was spreading 3000 sf (300sm) of walk-on bark around the landscaping in the ongoing effort to spruce up the place.

Then, we put a little 'artsy-fartsy' project together. We found these vine wrapped  branchy looking things in Sedona Arizona years ago. We had no idea what to do with them and they hibernated in my workshop for years until we finally came up with this. What are they? We haven't a clue. We just though they looked cool.

Finally, I was instructed to remove the small built in refrigerator out of our master bathroom and build some shelves. I had installed it next to the 2 person Japanese Jacuzzi tub I installed when we built the house and stocked it with whipped cream, chocolate and Champagne in an valiant attempt to keep the romance alive. With 5 kids, it clearly worked. With the romance now self-perpetuating, Janice decided it would be best used in my workshop to keep me hydrated while I worked on her  great new ideas. 

All in all, just another relaxing month hanging out at home.

Keeping it real

It may seem that we has nothing but good news to share, but that is because by and large, that's all we have. We are constantly looking for something to complain about but can't seem to find anything. We are blessed beyond words, and we know it. In the interest of keeping it real though, I do have a setback of sorts to report. 

I recently had an eye test for new prescriptions and was referred to a specialist. Surprising, I thought, since I am bullet proof. After an exhaustive battery of tests, including injecting dye, it turns out that I have wet Macular Degeneration in my left eye. That is the bad kind that can degenerate quickly.

The treatment called for shots in the eye and the doctor said we would begin immediately. "Stick a needle in my eye? No problem" I said. "You will just have to kill me first". For someone who is as phobic to needles as I am, I told him that I would rather have cancer. The idea of getting a needle in my eye was as appealing as getting a shot in my male appendage. I then asked  just how drunk I could be to show up for future treatments.

I will have to continue treatments in France and when we return to the island, in the hopes I don't become a one eyed pilot who can only land on the right side...

A year ago, before the election, there were some people who swore that if Donald Trump was elected, they would leave the country. If you know any, you can tell them you have great news.

The jet is ready and they are now boarding

October , 2017

A stroll down memory lane

With Halloween upon us, we flashed back to when the kids were young and the years we would decorate our dome (home) by turning it into a 33 foot high (11M)  pumpkin, complete with the 3 foot (1M) stem on the top. The figure by the front door is a witch riding her broom, having crashed into the wall face first and embedded herself there. We are nothing if not subtle.

FIRE!!

Several people have written asking us if we are affected by the fires in the state. We are not. They are happening north of San Francisco so they are hundreds of miles away. Still, it is the season so you never know. As I write this, there are 11,000 fire fighters on scene from several states, 40 dead, hundreds missing, over 5,600 structures have burned and 100,000 people have evacuated. Containment comes and goes depending on if the winds kick up. 

The vineyards, we are told, are not as badly hurt as one might think as they act as a natural fire break between areas being burned. The good news being that you can keep buying that best-in-the-world California wine. 

It never rains in California

Well hardly, anyway.

Sure is nice to smell that salt air and walk the beaches again. When we first arrive, we do a big clean up. Our property manager does a great job of turning the place over for the guests we have had, but since we rent our home out for short term vacation rentals while we are gone, we realize that we have had over 350 people go through in the past 8 months.

That being the case, when we arrive Janice washes every pot, pan, dish and utensil in the kitchen and sanitizes every sheet and blanket in the house including duplicates, followed by trimming all the landscaping. I wash every window in and out (the sunken living room skylight is 22 feet off the floor), shampoo the carpets and sofas, mow the 3 acres, repair parts of the 1/3 mile of 3 bar fence surrounding the property and complete minor repairs and other minor maintenance items. 

Once done, it's time to tackle new projects that you-know-who will dream up.

So, what is there to do in California?

Well, sip champagne at the beach, for one...

Wash a few windows....

Read a good book...

Do a little landscaping...

Visit my favorite mother in law and her friends...

Seal the stone wall....

Take a time out for date night...

Eat some BBQ at the farmers market...

and go for walks by the pier at the end of the day....
It is not an easy life we lead.

The man cave revisited

Last month, I wrote about this workshop of sorts that I was putting the finishing touches on before we pulled out for the season. This was the last stage in an ongoing saga that finally came to a close. For the first years here, I stored my tools in bins in out-of-the-way storage areas wherever I could.

How it used to be.

Now I ask you: Is this any way for a grown man to get at his tools?

Then, about 8 years ago I decided to build storage spaces under the cabin so I could slide my bins in and out after removing the hanging lattice doors. While a real improvement it was still a major pain.

Last month, I showed you my poor mans workshop under construction. 

 

I was mercilessly teased by some of my kids (names withheld to protect the guilty) for having hired a crew to roof the house, with inappropriate comments about age and inability to do the work myself. For their benefit, and to protect their inheritance, I roofed the shop myself. I was thinking of doing it one handed while doing push ups with the other, but I figured they would think I was just showing off. The picture below is for them.

Note to the guilty; I am not getting older, I am just warming up!

 In any case, this is the latest rendition of how to access my tools and supplies and get a little work done. Larger power tools are in one area while smaller power and hand tools are within reach. All 4 walls are like this so It's simple. If I can' t see it, I don' t have it.

OK, so it is a poor substitute for what I have at home but that's why it's called a poor mans workshop.

California...ahh, that's more like it!

From the flight deck

Yea, yea. I know. 
Last month I wrote that you would not be subjected to more aviation news for 8 months. The thing is, the six weeks I was told that it would take for the contusion on my rib to heal, took 10 days. I'm bullet proof, baby!

That being the case I was able to get a little more air time before pulling the plug. As I put my baby to bed for the season I mused that although going anywhere without flying is no fun, having just flown from the East Coast back to home in California, commercial airplanes with security right out of Stalinist Russia, food unfit for raccoons, and seating designed for pygmy prisoners, ain’t always great either.

 

We fly so easily these days that we tend to forget that we are boarding a load of metal and fuel and catapulting ourselves into the sky. While physics says it is possible when we see departure after departure take to the sky, our common sense stubbornly insists that it is just plain dumb.

Let’s face it. There are a lot of good reasons to feel terror: Police shootings and the resulting protests that follow, hurricanes, ISIS, the dysfunction in Washington, Ebola, even attending a concert in Las Vegas. It’s just that I have come to realize that flying in a small plane is just not one of them.

Airbus or Boeing jets are serious airplanes, but I know that my Challenger appears more like the distant cousin of your lawnmower. To many, it looks like you could upgrade the motor on their lawn rider, remove a wheel, enclose your seat and add one for a buddy, bolt on a pair of wings and presto! Your grass eater would be ready for takeoff. At first, even I wondered if a thing of such a small size, subject to such wear and tear, could break apart, invariably with me in it. 

Besides, private aviation (I avoid the term amateur) is still a very tentative, DYI thing, almost like a bunch of guys taking their winged go-karts up for a spin. Charlie-India-Juliet-Quebec-Papa (my plane’s call sign), is loaded with instruments but has no autopilot, no computer, no updates, no inputs, no hitting enter, no digital communication between myself as the pilot and the controls, just me and the real world. I am calm but attentive; I listen for minor changes in engine noise, sensitive to every minor jolt of rough air.

The stick, which controls both the pitch and bank of my airplane moves in and out and left and right just like the controls of an old arcade game. Affixed to the ceiling is a trim tab control that resembles the hand crank similar as that found on a window. A throttle handle resembling one found on a go cart provides more or less power. The pedals at my feet do not brake, engage a clutch or ‘give it more gas’. Rather they allow me to turn right or left. At critical moments, like landing for instance, I can resemble a one-man band simultaneously strumming the guitar, playing the harmonica and tapping a foot drum.

As much as it would be amusing to me, I know it would be in very poor taste to power down, drop the nose and suddenly yell “Oh S**t!” as a joke with a passenger on board. Now, I depart the earth multiple times a day. Flying is a lot of fun, but it is not a game. Gravity hath no fury like loss of respect. I didn’t know any of this the first time I rolled on runway two four. 

Being back in California, I don' t really miss flying. Heck, I only have 238 days and 6 hours till I'm back in the air :(

Aviation tip of the month

If you don't live on the edge, you can't see the view. Besides, if you're not living on the very edge, you're taking way too much room.

September, 2017

Nana goes West

Last month Janice took a quick trip to Oregon on the West Coast to help Cassie out with the little ones while she started a new job, a move to a new town and got ready to start more classes. Me? I stayed back, held the fort, kept the mongrel hordes at bay and did a tiny bit of flying. 

She returned happy, tired and in serious need of an adult beverage.

Nana, with Cassie's munchkins

Another lazy day on the island

With all the fun and games here, I did have a little mishap this past month. I slipped on one of our docks and landed rather hard on my back. I spent several days quite sore until it became obvious that I should get an X-ray to make sure nothing more was amiss. It wasn't but I did have a contusion on a rib, so I have been drugged up like a drunk and am currently unable to fly. Still, too soon to go coffin shoppin' , I was told.

Since rest and relaxation was instructed (but not bed rest), I thought it a perfect time to put a quicky little poor mans workshop together. It was only relatively recently that a space opened up on the island to allow for one. Ironic, since I could have really used it all the years we were putting the place together in the first place. 

Think of it as a man cave, without the Bacalounger, the mini fridge full of ice cold beer, the wide screen TV or the September pin-up of 'Miss Aviation'.  (Honest honey, I don' t know if that even exists!')

I need to wrap it up el-pronto as we have started the countdown for our return home to California. I will post the finished results next month.

 

News from the flight deck

I had another great month 'dancing with the angels', going to new 'fly-in's' here and there. I even took best T-shirt award at one. Things simply have not aligned to get my floats on even though they are fully assembled, so I will do what in my better judgement know I should have done in the first place. Shut up until it is done, then yammer about it.

 

Best T-shit award

As we go to press there are less than 7 possible flying days left in this season if I can get off these meds before you get another 8 months of aviation free news from me. 
Did I just hear you mutter "Thank God!"?

August, 2017

Friends Joe and Charlotte, formerly from sunny California but now hailing from the great state of Tennessee, spent a few days with us this past month. Joe is a pastor who led our congregation back in California and he and Charlotte do missionary work in Albania on a regular basis. He offered to try to save a number of you but I told him it was too late as you were from the other side of the political aisle.  
Just kidding! :)

While traveling back and forth to Albania, they have made a point of stopping by to visit us in Brittany when we had a place there, then this past winter on the Riviera. This was their first time at the island after listening to us go on and on about the area for years.
We visited many of the obligatory local sights such as Boldt Castle, the boat museum and a good run around the islands including tearing up the river on the jet skis.

We love having company because it gives us an excuse to stop our chores. To be fair, if I did any less this summer I would be in a coma.
Laziness happens.

 What's new?

One of the fun things about being in this corner of the country is that we have found a local sawyer who runs his one man saw mill near us in upstate New York. Over the past several winters we have researched what we think of as really cool one of a kind pieces of furniture, send him pictures and he goes off into the forests he has access to, to harvest all manner of hardwoods.

We even took some of the pieces he made for us back to our home in California after furnishing much of our home here. This year, we commissioned a Maple Burl coffee table. It is a spectacular piece with more burls and spalting in any piece we have ever seen. The slab was cut from a hundred-year-old tree and has the characteristic 'live edge' we so love. With no room to add anything else, I think we are done.

Last month I wrote that we would have to re-roof the place. The fellows (yes, I got lazy and had it done) had the misfortune of hitting a wire and a hot water line with their nail guns. So, we had some electrical and plumbing work thrown in as part of the job.

Roofing day at the island

Island life

On an unrelated subject....

My wife refused to buy me these pants. I wonder why?

From the flight deck

Pic courtesy of Joseph Melrose

I flew to my first 'fly-in' last month. It's like any club gathering only here there were about 20 general aviation airplanes. It provides guys with an excuse to fly somewhere for a reason as opposed to just flying somewhere because. There was a lot of scratching and spitting, testosterone flying all over the place with talk of "my plane is bigger than your plane" or "my plane is faster than your plane" to which I chimed in with "Yea, but my plane flies lower and slower than either of your planes".

So there.

Besides, you could buy 6 of my planes for the price of one of theirs. A bonus to being a poor American, I guess. I wore my coolest sunglasses and practiced my swagger for days. A plus was that kids were lined up 10 deep to have a chance to climb into the cockpit, wear one of the headsets and pretend that they were 'sky pilots' while their parents took pictures.

On my way home, I took the long way back by flying over the lost villages near Iroquois. This is an area of the St. Lawrence river that was flooded in 1958 when the seaway was created. 9 villages were moved before the area was submerged, and portions can still be clearly seen from the air and some from the shore. Very cool.

Roadways and foundations under water

You would think that with over 250 hours in the cockpit I would have settled down and 'gotten over myself' with all this yammering on and on about how extraordinarily cool it is to defy gravity, play Peter Pan riding my magic carpet, hovering over the world below me, but no, I still...well... yammer on and on.

 

While visiting us, Joe threw all caution, common sense and survival instincts to the wind and climbed aboard for a flight over the islands.  I am thinking of getting some "I survived a flight with Michael" T-shirts for the occasions. 

 

In flight admonition on the back of my seat facing my passenger

Shortly after they left, I had my friend and former instructor Claude 'drop in' for lunch. He was our first fly in guest and it immediately occurred to me that with my plane here, there would be no room to dock other planes. "Sacrebleu! Quelle horreur!" So, I set out to correct this omission by creating two mooring stations in our sheltered bay. That way, they can tie off and I can pick them up in our runabout boat.

You can see the video of him taxing in below.

 

His plane, being identical to mine except for the color, docked on the aircraft carrier. Stub out on the left of the dock is the storage and refueling station, under construction.

Flying tip of the month:

Flying is the 2nd greatest thrill known to man.

Landing is the first.