Life and Stuff: April 2007

Monday, April 30, 2007

Downtown Richmond

I've had a pretty crappy day up to this point (around 5pm). It seemed every task I encountered today was a real hassle. It started with checking out of the hotel in Atlanta. I had to wait behind a man who spoke no english while the TWO people behind the desk dealt with him for 20 minutes.

This put me slightly behind schedule for getting to my flight on time. I still had to refill the gas on the rental car before turning it in. I could not find a gas station by driving around, so I pulled over and pulled up the directions to the nearest gas station on my TOMTOM gps. I spent 10 minutes driving to it and it was closed up (out of business). I plugged "airport" back into TOMTOM and it took me by a gas station on the way, so I filled up there. I was about 30 minutes behind my intended schedule at this point.

I then returned the car to Hertz and had to go in and give them the voucher from Sportvision - so they wouldn't charge my credit card for it. The guy I dealt with decided to do all of this in the computer with 1 hand, while he held his coffee cup in the other. It took him almost 15 minutes. When he was done - I ran out the door and tried to catch the shuttle bus to the airport, but even though they had not pulled away from the curb, the driver looked at me standing beside the closed door and slowly drove away. I then had to wait for the next bus.

The next task was surprisingly short - I checked in immediately with Delta - with no undue delays.

THEN, it was time for security. They have 2 lines in Atlanta that both snake around beside each other. Woudn't you know it - I picked the slowest one while the other one just whizzed by. When I finally got up to the screener, I very efficiently placed all my stuff into 2 plastic bins and put them on the conveyor belt. I walked through the metal detector and waited for my stuff to come out the other side.
The bag in front of mine must of had something in it that the woman screener didn't like and so she stopped the belt (with all my stuff still in the xray machine) and in an almost whispering voice, she said: "bag check". Well no one heard her and she didn't care that no one heard her. She just sat there all kicked back for about 3 minutes and again said very softly "bag check". Then she just sat there longer. I turned to another TSA guy who was standing there waiting for it all to get moving again and told him that she needed a bag check. He just shrugged his shoulders and kept standing there. WHAT A BUNCH OF IDIOTS!!!! Then, another guy came up and asked what was going on. She said she needed a bag check. Then he started talking with her and the other TSA guy about their work schedule without even dealing with the bag. There were about a half dozen people there who were ready to kill these idiots. It was as bad as going into McDonalds sometimes.

Finally, they got things moving and I got my stuff. I looked at my watch and had 30 minutes until my flight and it was only 1 concourse away, so I asked the name of the idiot woman and then asked who I could complain to. I found the supervisor and let him know that his 'elevated' position of supervisor was going to have him listen to a complaint. Then I let him have it. I was so pissed off. He was smart enough to say he would handle it and he was sorry it happened. Probably nothing will come of it, but he was smart in the way he handled it.

I then made it to gate A9 where they announced that our plane was having maintenance problems and they sent us to gate A20 where we waited for another plane to come in and take us away.

I got to Richmond about an hour later than I was supposed to. It took the luggage 45 minutes to show up in baggage claim. I then followed TOMTOM's directions to downtown Richmond to the "Radisson today - Doubletree tomorrow" hotel. It's changing names/owners tomorrow and the whole place is a mess. It's a fancy room once you get into it, but it's a total wreck everywhere else.

I needed some food, so I got walking directions from the desk clerk of how to get to Popkins Tavern. Things got better once I got there and had some food. It's a really cool place with 20 foot tin ceilings. Very old decor. After eating, I walked around a very old section of Richmond -with cobblestones showing through the deteriorating pavement. Here's some photos I took of the area.

Off To Richmond

I'm about to leave the hotel in Atlanta to fly to Richmond for the next race. The Richmond race is Saturday night, so I don't have a day off this week. The good news about the Richmond race is that we are staying in a hotel that is not so far away. While at Talladega, we were in a hotel that was located 45 minutes away. This is the case with a lot of these tracks that are in the middle of nowhere.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Start of the Race

One of the cool things about working the races is that every race has some cool planes fly over at the end of the national anthem. Today, it was 4 A-10 warthogs. I took these photos from just outside where I work. Today I'm running the Fox 3D cam.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

More Talladega

I'm starting to think that pretty much all of the posts from the tracks look the same. I'll post when I think there's something different to put up.

Today I spent some time making a 3D cam replay of a pivotal moment in last weeks race. The winner (jeff gordon) went into the pits just as a wreck was happening. They wanted me to recreate where he was in relation to the pits and to #20 at the time. I recreated it and they will use it during the race sometime.

I went to the garage again today to take some photos of the logos on the cars for the skins in the 3D program. Here's some photos from the garage.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Talladega Days

I flew to Atlanta today from Daytona and then drove the 80 something miles to the Talladega raceway. It's supposed to be the fastest track in Nascar. It's certainly large - but sitting in the middle of nothing.

The weather was good today, but it's supposed to be raining in the morning. With this in mind, we got as much set up as possible today.

I'll be looking for Ricky Bobby.

This photo is from us lifting our gear up to the camera platforms with a crane

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Working around the house

Today, I got some much needed yard and pool area work done. The palm trees were needing some trimming to get the lower fronds pruned back. While pruning, I noticed that my White Bird of Paradise plants have bloomed for the first time. Here's a photo of the one on the north side of the pool.

The Hibiscus are looking good as well. I have several hibiscus plants in various bloom colors.

I had to trim the plumbago back a bit, but left most of the blooms

The back yard is looking pretty good. The later in the day it gets, the more vibrant the green of the grass, plants and trees gets.

Tomorrow, I head out for a 2-race stint without coming home. First to Talladega, then from there to Richmond. I'll be back home on the 6th of May - bascially a 12 day work-week.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Photos from Boat Trip

Well the sailing trip was very good overall. We had good weather in general with a few bad weather days thrown in just to keep it interesting.

The boat currently sits on a mooring in Vero Beach and will hang out there until sometime around the 8th of May when I return from my next 2 races. I'm happy with where it's sitting. I'm only slightly concerned about mildew/moisture in the boat. I left the foreward most and rearward most hatches in the "air can get in, but rain 'shouldn't" mode. I also hung up 3 of the large 'damp-rid' dehumidifiers. It's only about 3 weeks, so I think it will be fine.

Here's a couple of interesting things about coming back ashore after being on a boat for almost 3 weeks.

1. Jan and I were in the car and I saw something that I wanted to see closer up - so I started to reach for the binoculars.

2. We returned from being out yesterday and the light was left on in the closet at home and I had a momentary worry about the battery drain.

Photos:

Underway

Navy Submarine during manuevers off of Dania Beach

Sunrise at Ft. Pierce

Dolphin on the Port Bow in the St. John's River

The lighthouse at Jupiter Inlet

Downtown Miami from the Anchorage

3 Photos of Stiltsville. Stiltsville is a (decreasing) group of houses built in the water south of Key Biscayne.

Moored at the reef near the Sand Key Light

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Sunday

Today Jan and I enjoyed the last day of her vacation by not really doing much. We went to the Port Orange Art Fair at the city center and then caught a movie.

Jan goes back to work on monday afternoon and I catch a flight out to the Talledega Race on Wednesday. I'm getting my phone all back up to speed. The above photo was taken and sent with it.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Weather Stops Us

It's Saturday evening and we are at home, but the boat is in Vero Beach. We had a beautiful start to the day on friday. At 8am, we weighed anchor and headed north on the ICW. We missed the first bridge opening by 3 minutes and had to sit and wait for 27 minutes until the next opening. About 1 mile north of that, we got to a bridge 15 minutes early, but they were working on the bridge and it didn't open for that scheduled opening and we had to wait there for 45 minutes. It's pretty disheartening to be underway for 2 hours and only have gone 2 miles.

From then on, we made pretty good time. Our goal for the day was Vero Beach Marina where we planned to get fuel and then continue on north on Saturday morning. Shortly after we passed through Ft. Pierce, we hit a strong head current that slowed us down to around 5 knots and then the wind picked up to over 25 mph on the nose and we were slowed to 4.5 knots.

So, we arrived at Vero around 6:30pm, tied up to the fuel dock for the night and made plans for leaving the boat there on a mooring. The weather for the next 2-3 days is for 20-30 knot winds out of the N-NE, which would be on the nose and intermittent showers. We decided that we just didn't want to spend the last 2 days of Jan's vacation in that weather.

The boat will be there for the next 2 and 1/2 weeks while I go to work in Talledega and Richmond. I'll go back and get it and bring it back over a 2 day period.

We're both very tired. We pushed harder on the trip back than I would have preferred, but the weather that held us up in Key West, put us a day behind. I think we'll make sure that our trips in the future are not so 'far reaching' if we don't have more time.

I'll post photos from the SLR camera tomorrow of the trip. I lost all my photos off of my camera phone. It's unfortunate, but that's the way it goes. My phone was back from Sony Ericsson when I got back here today. That's 8 day turn around from the day I sent it from Key West until I had it back. All work was done under warranty. Sony Ericsson's customer service is top notch.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Thursday Night

As you know, I'm without my phone, so i can't post while I'm traveling. I have a loaner phone.

We've had a very busy 3 days with some serious sailing. The forecast was good for 3 days of offshore sailing and I wanted very badly to get as far as Palm Beach on the "outside" because the draw bridges on the ICW between Miami and Palm Beach are terrible. There's so many of them and they open on a schedule. It has you waiting for a long time. I did that trip back in 2005 and swore that if I could avoid it, I'd never do it again.

Jan and I left Key West around 8am on tuesday and made it to our target destination on tuesday night - Long Key Bight. We anchored there around 6:30pm. We had dinner on the boat and watched the sunset.

We left Long Key Bight around 7am with Marine Stadium anchorage in Miami as our goal. It was a 73 nautical mile day, but we pulled into the anchorage around 6pm. Doug and I stayed there last week, and we were hassled by the cops and told to leave, but I was able to talk our way into staying overnight. We'd noticed that the folks anchored behind us had stayed hidden in their boat and the cops never even approached them.
I told jan as we were entering the anchorage about it and to be on the lookout for the cops. Before we'd even gotten all the way in the anchorage, a cop passed by on the way to the east end of the anchorage. I told jan to go below and I quickly tossed the anchor overboard, payed out about 50 feet of chain, closed the companionway doors and snapped the cover over them. I then jumped through the hatch into the boat. The idea here was to look like no one was on the boat.
The cop went around for about 30 minutes and told people to leave, but he never even came over to our boat.

We had dinner at the Rusty Pelican with the lights of Miami reflecting on the water.

At 6:30am, I pulled up the anchor and we were headed for a 65 nautical mile trek in the ocean to Lake Worth - just north of Palm Beach. The forecast was for west winds at 10-15, then going NW late in the day. That forecast never came about. IT was NW 15-20 from the beginning and I made as much of it as possible, figuring that it would go north during the afternoon - and it did. We saw speeds of 8.4 knots while it was NW, but we were heeled over 15-30 degrees all day. About 2 hours out from Lake Worth inlet, it turned due north (right on the nose) and we had to put the sails away and motor straight into a 20+ knot wind. It was not fun going from 8+ knots to around 5.

We anchored around 5:30pm and dingied over to the sports bar that I was at about 2 weeks ago.

We plan to be home on Sunday night. I'm not sure if I'll post again before then.

Jan says hey.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Jan Arrives in Key West

Sunday morning now. Michelle and I picked Jan up at the airport last night around 9. It's great to be back with her again. She needed a break and I'm glad she's getting one.

Today is Michelle's birthday, so we went to BLUE HEAVEN for breakfast and tonight will be a party at friends of Bill and Michelle's for the occasion.

Doug flies out of Key West in the afternoon. He slept on the boat last night and will bring the dingy in. Jan and I stayed at Bill and Michelle's since she got in kinda late.

We're going to get a substantial blow tonight,so we'll stay on land again at Bill and Michelle's. The wind will continue through monday with tuesday looking like a good day to start the trip home. I'll try to work on my new phone to see if I can set it up for doing email and sending photos to the blog.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Hangin' in Key West

Friday morning now.

Yesterday we had another blow of sorts in the mooring field. It only hit 40 knots - which would have seemed like a big deal if we hadn't weathered tuesday night. In this case, it just kept us on the boat for an hour plus. When the wind calmed down and it was still raining a bit, I took the dingy into town to figure out how to get my phone situation resolved. The phone just quite working around 7:30 yesterday morning and would not 'boot up'.

My phone is integral to my being able to travel the way I do, so I came to the internet cafe and looked up Sony Ericsson repair for the phone and got a return authorisation number to send it back. This still left me without a phone, so I went to the local Cingular store and bought a new phone which I can return for full refund within 30 days. It does not have email capabilities, but I don't like the phone so I'm going back today to try to get another.

We're just hanging around. I made Mojitos at Bill and Michelles last night and we munched on a guac dip and some shrimp that Michelle whipped up.

Jan gets here tomorrow night and I can't wait to see her.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Trip Update

Bill and Michelle at Kelly's

Today is Wednesday and I'm sitting in the Plantation Coffee House on Key West. I've not had access to the internet in a 'full' manner for 6 days so I thought I should take some time to 'fill in the blanks' on the blog. I'm going to start with last night and then I'll fill you in starting last friday.

Last night was the most 'exciting' (in a terrifying way) time that I've had on a boat to date.

When we arrived in Key West yesterday afternoon, we picked up a mooring bouy in Garrison Bight around 3 pm I think. I tied off a single 3 strand line to the mooring and added some 'chaffe' protection to keep the line from getting chaffed where it would come in contact with the 'bobstay'. The bobstay is the chain support that goes from the bowsprit area of the boat - downward to the bow near the waterline. The forecast was for 10-15 knot winds and so we left it at that.

We went into town and met up with Bill and Michelle for some wings and margaritas at Kelly's Restaurant (my favorite happy hour in the whole world). Bill and Michelle were nice enough to offer us their bicycles to use while we're here, so we walked to their house and got the bikes, then rode back to the dingy dock and headed out to the boat. We were back on the boat by 10pm and watched an incredible lightening show off to the north. Probably by 11, we were in our berths asleep.

At 3am (I didn't know it was 3 am at the time), a couple of raindrops came through the hatch and woke me up, so I stood up in my berth and looked around outside and saw an incredibly dark cloud off to the north. I closed the hatch and about the time I was sitting back on the bed, the boat was hit with a gust front so strong that it heeled the boat over about 15 degrees. I got up quickly and tried to put my shorts on as I was tossed around a bit trying to keep my footing. Things were slamming around the boat (remember - it was a benign forecast). Doug and I met in the salon as both of us were heading up to the cockpit. I got into the cockpit to see the water frothy and all kinds of noise being made by everything on the boat.

I quickly started the engine and turned on the GPS. I did this as a preparation move and it actually was kind of instinctual - because I've run through lots of scenarios in my mind and I purposefully keep the engine key in the ignition for this reason. The GPS was turned on so that if we broke free, I would be able to steer us toward the deeper water (if we didn't get blown into other boats behind us first).

This gust front was incredibly powerful and of course I quickly started thinking about how much better a job I could have done tying off to the mooring. For starters, I didn't put a backup line from the boat to the mooring because I never expected this kind of condition. Lesson learned.

After about 20 minutes of absolutely howling winds, I went below and turned on some of the instruments and was able to watch the windspeed. The highest we saw was 57 knots (that's 65 miles per hour).

The readings stayed in the 50's for a while and then moved down into the 40's for over an hour. The boat was sailing back and forth at anchor at close to 40 degrees each way - off of the wind. I went forward several times in the strong wind to check the mooring line where it contacted the bobstay to see if it was chafing. Luckily it showed no signs of chaffing, but my chafe protection was not in the right place by about 2 inches. It was in the right place at 15 knot winds - with the line at a more steep angle, but in this amount of wind - the line was much more straight out toward the mooring.

Now, a note: The mooring is about a 18 inch diameter ball that float high in the water. During this time, the mooring ball was completely underwater because of the angle of the pull. It was intense!!

During the blow, I crawled out on the bowsprit with a T shirt and some zip ties and zip-tied the t-shirt around the bobstay where the mooring line was contacting it. This made me feel alot better about our situation. The boat was 'hobbying' up and down a lot in the 3 foot seas (this is a protected anchorage) and this job of being out on the very front of the boat during the storm was very interesting. I made note to myself while doing it of how 'unafraid' I was. I attribute this to my understanding of knowing when things 'just have to be done'. I thought it out and made sure that I was not in a position of going overboard and just got the job done while focusing on it. It was actually kinda cool - but not in a "I wanna do it again" kinda way.

When we arrived at the mooring during the day, it was very hot an humid and so I had installed the foreward 'boat cover'. It's basically a heavy duty awning that custom made for the boat to keep the deck in the shade and thus keep the inside of the boat cooler. That awning was getting "worked" VERY HARD. I could not believe that it did not get torn off the boat - but it goes to show what a good design can do. The problem with it is that it's a very large item (sq. footage wise) and it was acting a bit like a sail. It didn't matter - in these winds it would have been suicidal to try to remove it.

After 2 hours of this type of winds (with the 2nd hour in the 30's) the wind finally died down to the 20's and we went to the bow and systematically took the awning down.

Once the winds stayed in the 20's, Doug went below and went back to bed. I stayed in the cockpit for another hour or so and when I went to bed (somewhere around 6am), everything started to seem 'normal'.

Here's another side note: After enduring an hour of 50-65 mph winds, we commented several times about how 'calm' 35mph winds seemed. It was really amazing. Of course they weren't calm, but relatively it was peaceful.

Here's a note to those of you who don't spend much time thinking about wind - The force of the wind is not linear. The force goes up by the square of the velocity. In other words - the force of a 50 mph wind is not 2 X the force of a 25 mph wind. It's 4 times the force of 25 mph winds.

Well, I've made this story long - not by choice, but by the fact it took a long time to tell it. I fell asleep before sunrise and woke up around 9am. We dingyed into town and came to the internet cafe.

Now - here's a recap since last thursday night:

On friday, I motorsailed south from Lake Worth - out in the ocean to Port Everglades (the inlet at Ft. lauderdale). I anchored in Lake Sylvia which is a 'cul de sac' on a canal that's surrounded with multi-multi million dollar homes. It's quite pretty there (in a lavish civilization kinda way). Doug and Karen and the kids drove down from Vero to drop Doug off for his week on the boat as crew. We had ribs at my favorite restaurant in Ft.Lauderdale -- the Bahia Cabana - which has the best ribs in the whole world.

On Saturday, Doug and I sailed down the coastline to Government Cut (the main inlet at Miami). We anchored in marine stadium - where I've spend the night in the past. This anchorage has a wonderful view of the Miami skyline (photos below in the blog). We had dinner at the Rusty Pelican - which is just to the SW of the anchorage.

Sunday had us heading under the Rickenbacker Causeway into Biscayne Bay and then out into the ocean - just south of the Key Biscayne lighthouse. We sailed between the houses in 'stiltsville' - which is basically a number of houses that are sitting out in the water - a few miles from any land - all built on pilings. Again, photos of this below.

We anchored Sunday night in 8 feet of crystal clear water on the SW side of Rodriquez Key - just off the south end of Key Largo. We had dinner on the boat that night due to the long dingy ride to a restaurant and the shallows between us and the shore.

Monday, we had a great 7 knot sail to Newfound Harbor (in Big Pine Key). We had a large pod of dolphin playing in the bow wake during part of the trip. Photos below. It was an awesome day of sailing. When we arrived in Newfound Harbor, some friends of Doug's came and picked us up in their flats boat an we went to ParrotDise waterfront restaurant for some awesome food.

On Tuesday, we motorsailed to Key West. The rest has been covered.

I'm looking forward to seeing Jan. I know she's very lonely at home without Snowy. We'll head north in the boat on Monday and I'm sure we'll have a great time.

More later.