On the Road Again... Still...

So now that the wyf is done with her temporary assignment as the official blogger for the Coast Guard, we've set out on the next leg of the summer travel adventure extravaganza. Here's what the route for this leg looks like:


The first scheduled stop was in Virginia (not marked on the map, but about an hour down the road from DC) where we caught up with my old friend Steve McCoin and his wife Jen. Steve and I were in high school and Sea Scouts together and lost track of each other after I went off to college and he enlisted in the Marine Corps. Since then he's settled down a bit on the East Coast and it was really great to catch up with him and see the success story he's turned into:


After dinner with them it was time to head further south to John and Brenda Visneski's place (Ana's brother and his wife) where we were to collect the little dogs. It turns out they were well cared for and not at all happy to see me:
In fact, since we picked them up I've been making a regular habit of wrapping them in whatever I happen to have handy:

They're kinda pathetic.

The following morning we finally set out toward the West. On the way we spotted this happy motoring pit bull:

We were bound for New Orleans so Ana could do the final few things to get signed out of her old office. We ended up getting there fairly late on a Sunday afternoon, but still caught the tail end of a local car show. It was kinda nice to see a bunch of vintage cars and hot rods all straightened out and shined up. I'm not used to that.

I snapped a few pictures so you could enjoy it too:





Next up: the detour north. Stay tuned...

Coast Guard Foundation Dinner

For our last night in Washington DC, Ana and I ended up going to the Coast Guard Foundation's fundraising dinner. I don't have much to say about it other than it was nice to get all dressed up...

...and the cocktail hour was pleasant...

...and the venue was pretty impressive all the way around...


...Oh, and Ross Perot was there (remember that guy? I thought he was dead or something) and so was Lucy L. Bean (granddaughter of THAT L.L. Bean and founder of Linda's Perfect Maine, a web-based business that allows you to order live Maine lobsters delivered to your door*), the Commandant of the Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, about a dozen other admirals and generals (many of whom were named "Allen" as well), and half a dozen US Congressmen.

By the time it was over I had eaten too much and drank too much and generally just enjoyed the heck out of it.

Ana, on the other hand, actually had to work while we were there. Her job was to post Twitter tweets throughout the event, so whenever someone made a memorable statement or something interesting happened she'd start typing away on her little iPhone. I found out later that people on the other side of the dining area were reading her tweets in realtime during the event.

So it's quite possible that I was the only person who was actually paying attention to the event as it was happening. Wierd.

*I've suddenly got a great idea for a practical joke or two...

Wandering the Capitol

I've just finished up something like six weeks in Washington DC while the wyf was working off her temporary assignment to USCG headquarters. She's had a very busy job with painful long hours and lots of pressure to deal with.

Meanwhile, I've just been wandering around the city enjoying all of the monuments:

Here's some random pictures from the National Mall:



And the Capitol building:

One evening as we strolled past, Ana and I stumbled across a concert featuring the US Army and Canadian Army bands:

I'm pretty sure this band consisted of something like 26% of Canada's active-duty military personnel.

Meanwhile, it turns out that they have a monument to just about anything you can think of somewhere in DC. There's also plenty of random statues just waiting to be harassed:


It's also good to be nice to them though:


Anyhow... It's been a fun trip, but I've definitely worn out most of the things I planned to do in DC.

Next up: the Voyage Home...

The International Spy Museum

Today we visited the International Spy Museum. This is the only museum Ana and I have gone to here that actually charges admission. There were plenty of fascinating displays and whatnot that were all sorts of intriguing. All told we probably spent the better part of two hours learning all about everything from ways to insert agents behind the lines in WWII to the smuggling of American atomic weapon secrets to the Soviets in the later 1940's.

There are no pictures, because I was never there.

At the end of the tour there was a gift shop with all sorts of entertaining stuff. Among other things, I got a t-shirt with this Russian cosmonaut pinup printed on it:


This was a pretty random thing to find in the Spy Museum. You can also find this pinup, and others like it at http://www.bawidamann.com/. I've been a fan of this guy's work for years, so randomly stumbling across a t-shirt with one of his designs meant I had to buy it.

Time to Take Up a New Pastime

The other day Ana and I went to see the Disney Pixar's "Up" in 3D for the second time. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. It's a well-written, beautifully rendered film that was just as much fun the second time around.

In case you don't know, it tells the story of a grumpy old man who decides to move away by tethering thousands of balloons to his house, lifting it off it's foundations and carrying him away to a South American adventure. For most people, this would be rampant escapism followed by a return to normal life. For me (and the author of this article) it just leads to all sorts of engineering questions.

How many balloons would it take to lift a house?
What kind of support structure would be required to keep everything in the house from falling out through it's bottom?
How much would the helium cost to fill all of the balloons?
Would it be possible to custom-build the house so that it would be readily able to lift on little or no notice?

According to the article, it would take between 100,000 and 2.5 million helium balloons to lift a typical 1,800 sq.ft. house. The rest of the questions I'll probably get around to answering later. In the meantime, I'm thinking I want to spend more time playing with helium balloons. Since 2.5 million helium balloons would probably be a bit pricey (even when buying in bulk), I think I'll have to start smaller than an entire house.

You may have heard of Mr. Larry Walters. He became famous in 1982 when he lifted off from his San Pedro, CA backyard in a lawn chair buoyed up by a bunch of weather balloons meaning to go up a few hundred feet. Instead he reached an altitude of 16,000 feet before drifting across the air traffic control pattern over Long Beach Airport. Then he shot a few of the balloons with a BB gun. He began descending gently toward the ground, but didn't make it all the way. Instead, his balloons got tangled in some power lines and caused a 20 minute blackout in downtown Long Beach. I am not making this up.

It turns out that was not the first or last time that someone had tried the same sort of stunt. In 2008, a Catholic priest in Brazil took off in a chair suspended by 1,000 party balloons. He drifted out to sea and radioed for help. He had a GPS with him, but didn't know how use it. He was last heard moments before crashing into the sea, unable to give his position. His body was found offshore by the Brazilian Navy nearly three months later.

On the slightly more sane side, there's a very small group of folks worldwide who have taken up "cluster ballooning." This is a sport* which involves getting into a harness dangling from dozens of oversized latex balloons and ballasted down with water bags and then taking off and hoping you don't land in a razorblade factory or a forest fire.

Everything about this sounds cool to me, so hopefully by the end of next year I'll look like this:


Remember this so you don't get wierded out if you get a phone call from me with a hurried tone asking if it's okay for me to land on your roof if I fix any damage I might cause.

You've been warned.

*There are a wide variety of definitions for the word "sport." Here are some of the uses of it as a noun:
1. an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.
2. a particular form of this, esp. in the out of doors.
3. diversion; recreation; pleasant pastime.
4. jest; fun; mirth; pleasantry: What he said in sport was taken seriously.
5. mockery; ridicule; derision: They made sport of him.
6. an object of derision; laughingstock.
7. something treated lightly or tossed about like a plaything.
8. something or someone subject to the whims or vicissitudes of fate, circumstances, etc.

They all seem equally applicable, but in this case I like version 8. Everyone else can stick with version 6.