Travels with Gunther and Kara

There’s so much BEP (bovine end product, a more PC version for BS) out there on what are supposed to be news sites that you can’t believe ‘em…instead you’ve gotta read a bunch of places, extract the actual facts from the article, and then form your own opinion. Back in the day…Walter Cronkite just read the news…you would never have guessed from his daily presentation that he was a pretty far lefty politically…but today journalism is pretty much dead. Instead we’ve got opinion talking heads posing as serious journalists when they’re really more interested in being the news or creating the news in their own likeness.

‘Afore I get into that though…let’s see where we were on this day in the 

Blast from the past

In ’19 we were stuck in Cody WY waiting on Neil’s kidney stone treatment but in ’18 we were in Medway ME at the Katadin Shadows Campground…so named after Mount Katadin which is the highlight of the most popular state park in ME…Baxter State Park. We had considered hiking up to the top of the mountain but decided that due to the limited number of parking spaces and having to win the daily lottery to get a hiking and parking pass…it would have been a nice walk with a thousand or so of our closest friends…so we passed on that and instead sought out other less popular things to do in the park.

Katadin Shadows was actually a pretty nice campground…we had reserved what we thought would be a nice site with an open shot to the SW for our satellite dish but on arrival found that it was not open at all. Fortunately…we were right next to the cabin occupied by the owner’s parents and she offered us a connection to her DirecTV system which was a bit to the south of her cabin and our site out in an open area.

We headed out through the town of East Millinocket which turned out to have a really great dive bar that we ended up at several times…good thing it was nice as just about the only watering hole around…and into the park for a drive along the river and through park road. We actually drove that rode several times in search of that mythical creature known as moose…headed out early two different days and stopped at the ponds that “always have moose” according to the locals…bzzzzt. We did however…find some nice views of the river and mountains although actually seeing Mount Katadin was pretty hard due to heavy tree cover…but then it is the backwoods of Maine.

This was the coolest little river…it was never more than about 2 feet deep and had a solid rock bottom, no sand or gravel to be found. We watched a bunch of kids playing in various parts of the river near where we got this shot and had lunch one day.

Lots of nice waterfalls…this one is on a different river than the one above.

The same river less than a half mile downstream from the falls above…hard to believe it is the same one since it is so calm and placid here…these two shots were taken about 20 minutes apart as Neil remembers.

We’re pretty sure this is Mount Katadin…it was taken from the same spot as the one above but about 30 degrees to the right…you can just see the mountain on the far right of the shot above.

This is still another river in the park…best shot we could get as there was no place to get looking onto the face of the drop and even these Neil had to stick the camera lens through the chain link fence which keeps morons from climbing out and then falling down the waterfall.

So…about that gathering your own facts…this week Uncle Joe Biden announced his pick for VP…and almost immediately the right started bashing her while the left declared her to be the second coming of Moses. There was some kerfuffle about whether she was eligible to run for VP…with some idiots declaring that her parents weren’t legal residents when she was born and hence she is not a natural born citizen…and some more kerfuffle about whether she was eligible to be called African-American since her parents were an Indian and a Jamaican citizen. Frankly I don’t care what she calls herself…she’s way too liberal to get my vote but that’s just me…and anybody that either has googled the definition of natural born citizen or took civics in high school back before taking civics and government classes went out of style knows that if you’re born on American soil…you’re an American citizen, it’s as simple as that.

Next the arguments descended into her attack on Mr. Biden during the debates about how she was in the second integrated school class in America. Now again…I could give two hoots…but instead we have the idiots from USA Today deciding to fact check the claims that she was not telling the truth when she said that.

Turns out that she was born in 1964 and started school in 1970…and the claims by her detractors were that she was not part of an integration during the 60s or the second integrated class. In comes USA Today to…fact check this claim. In their article…they officially declare this claim to be false…but there’s a little problem with their conclusion. First off…she didn’t start school until 1970. Second…her school district started forced busing to achieve school integration in 1968…so she would have actually been in the 3rd class of students in that district. Thirdly…the researchers at USA Today didn’t bother trying to find out whether her school district was actually the first one that started busing for integration.

All of those are minor errors I’ll grant you…and her little speech did make a good debating point even though she completely mischaracterized Mr. Biden’s record on the issue. However…even in the face of facts that they included in their article…USA Today’s ‘journalist’ concluded that the claim by her detractors was false…and that’s a straight up lie. Granted again…it’s a minor point…but technically the claim is completely true…however that doesn’t fit the narrative this so called journalist wanted to perpetuate. Like I said…real journalism is dead and buried.

My suggestion…you’re entitled to your own opinion but you’re not entitled to your own facts. Figure out what the actual facts are and then at least you have an informed opinion even if I disagree with you.

The other big topic in the news this week…is how the President is deliberately trying to emasculate the postal service in some sort of attempt to rig the election…I’m sure you’ve seen the claims that blue mailboxes are being picked up and mail sorting machines being retired. Then there is the coup de grace…the letter that the postal service sent out to all 40 states that…according to the articles you read…tell of drastic inability to deliver the mail in ballots on time. Well…that’s what the article says anyway…but then if you actually go and read what the letter says…and do a little research on the numbers you will see that the truth is just a little different.

Now I admit…the USPS is a basket case and is effectively bankrupt…but this is due to a whole bunch of factors including both political parties, Congress, multiple administrations in the White House, USPS management, USPS union leaders who keep getting more expensive contracts, and how the post office is run and regulated even though it is supposed to be self funding. I could go on for many paragraphs about all of the ills in the organization and who is responsible for them…but suffice it to say that it isn’t a simple explanation and has a multitude of factors.

So…what do these letters really say…and will the post office be able to deliver all the mail in ballots?

Let’s look at a couple of numbers. The USPS handles about 145 billion pieces of mail each year and while there are no specific numbers that I could find on letters verses packages…I’m going to assume that about 120 billion of those or so are lettres…although the actual number doesn’t make much difference to the outcome. That 120 billion letters per year is about 330 million letters per day. Now in the US there are about 153 million registered voters and generally about half of them vote in any given year…so be generous and call it 100 million votes this year. I have no idea how many of those will be mail in ballots, but even generous guesstimates on the interwebs put it at 40-50% of votes will be mail in so let’s call it 50 million mail in ballots and let’s assume that they all got mailed over the 3 days prior to and Election Day…that gives us about 12 million mail in ballots for each of those four days.

With the USPS handling about 330 million letters per day on average…do we really think that adding another 12 million or so will overwhelm the service? Of course not…but that doesn’t fit the narrative the Democrats want to have…but from a capacity standpoint these mail in vote numbers are well within the capability of the USPS to deliver the mail.

What did the letters actually say? Well…the letter from the Postmaster General this week is essentially the same letter that was sent out back in March…which warned states that the limits that the states had imposed on mail in voting were the problem…not the ability of the USPS to deliver the mail.

For instance…in Oregon one can request a mail in ballot up through October 20 which is the Friday a week and a half before the election on Tuesday November. I can understand wanting to allow the maximum amount of time that a voter can request a mail in ballot. However…that doesn’t leave sufficient time for the USPS to guarantee delivery of the ballot from the elections board to the vote…at least according to the USPS long standing recommendation of 14 days lead time. That’s what the letter actually said (there were multiple versions of the letter depending on the election rules in different states).

What other problems are being blamed on the USPS? Well…in NY state…the governor directed all election boards for the recent primary to include a prepaid postage reply envelope in the package. Again…I can see how that might be a good idea…but the good governor failed to think his cunning plan through. NY election rules require that ballots be postmarked by Election Day…and by long standing policy the USPS does not postmark postpaid envelopes…it’s simply not done. So the governor specifically directed something that under state law made the ballots ineligible for counting since they would not be postmarked and hence the election boards would have no way to verify if they met the requirements in the law.

The governor’s response was to direct the election boards to count them anyway…and while the previous election was only a primary I can imagine that if he pulls a similar brilliant idea for the November election there will be lawsuits aplenty over it…the governor has no authority to ignore state election laws. I did see that a state judge ordered ones received by 2 days after Election Day to be counted…that seems like a reasonably fair thing to do but it does technically violate the state voting requirements, but then every liberal judge thinks they can just make up the law to suit themselves it seems. To me it is an open and shut case and they’re not valid since they’re not postmarked. However…in their overblown demands that ‘every vote counts’…they’re shooting themselves in their own foot.

Speaking of elections…Connie and Neil voted in the primary today and gladly provided their identification to the poll workers when checking in. They were glad to do this as proper identification prevents voter fraud. Forget what the right says about all the massive voter fraud that is supposedly happening…how much does or does not happen is unknown. Forget what the left says about there not being any voter fraud. What the rules requiring identification do is prevent the possibility of voter fraud…which is the goal. If the left is correct and there isn’t any going on…then I say “Holy shit…the rules are working.”

Unfortunately…none of the above which is Neil’s long standing desire…did not appear on the ballot. He thinks that it should and if it wins then you need a new election and none of the people in the previous election can run again. I’m really pretty sure that this year none of the above would win in a landslide.

Neil ordered some new bike shoes…his are over 10 years old and falling apart. That…of course…required a different kind of cleat to attach them to the pedals…which of course require a different design pedal to be clipped into so he ended up with shoes, cleats, and pedals. He wants a new bike too…but he said he’s waiting on the rig and truck to sell first. Connie suggested he just get one anyway and mebbe he’ll just do that…yaneverknow.

Interesting things found on the net.

It turns out that in Cape Coral…which thank goodness we don’t live in for a whole bunch of reasons…anyway it is illegal to park on the grass…even if it is your own grass in your own yard on your own property. Of course…this is the same jurisdiction that made it illegal to leave your garage door open so really I guess that is to be expected. I understand there are some valid reasons for both of those laws…but really?

There’s another whole kerfuffle on the interwebs over some game called Fortnite which is published by Epic Games and is available on both the Apple App Store and the Google Play store for Android phones. Both of these stores charge developers a 30 percent commission on sales since Apple/Google pay for the infrastructure on the stores, check apps for malware, collect the money and distribute and otherwise provide services to developers. So Epic decided that they didn’t want to follow the rules in the contract they signed with both Apple and Google any longer…so they introduced a cheaper way to pay them directly…which is directly in violation of the rules they agreed to. So naturally both Apple and Google kicked the game out of their store…and 2 hours later Epic filed a 64 page suit agains each of them demanding that Epic be allowed to run their own store for their games…and to collect 30% from all the other developers who would join the new Epic store.

Google allows other app stores besides theirs…however if you do use one of the other stores (known as side loading) then the Android OS on your phone pops up a notice warning you that you are going to a store not managed by Google and that Google has no way of determining the safety of going to that store or whether your identity, credit card information, or privacy might be violated. You’re not prevented from going…just warned.

Apple on the other hand…does not allow any other app stores…which is their right as I see it.

I don’t really see this suit by Epic going anywhere unless they’re hoping that Apple and Google will fold and give them their way…which is to provide services to Epic by Apple/Google with no renumeration to Apple/Google. Nuts.

Neil’s totally into this one.

Cyas.

Ok…before I get into that title I need to tellya one thing we’ve noticed during the corona…and we’re now up to day 149…while we’re suffering from a lot of things like no Elks Lodge, no bars, no eating out, and being pretty much stuck at home…one area we aren’t suffering in is eating. Between the two of the adults…they’re making some really outstanding meals pretty much every day…and they’re spending a lot less in the bargain.

This week we’ve been eating on a smoked whole chicken Neil did on the pellet grill on Friday. After taking it out to thaw on Wednesday…he put it in his large pasta pot with some brine Thursday morning…brined in salt, sugar, water, and spices…and after about 24 hours in there Friday morning he took it out, dried it off and put it on the grill set on low smoke which has a temperature of 165F about 0830. It smoked until about 1700 with the last 45 minutes or so on high smoke at 225F…on further review he thinks it needed about 2 hours instead of 45 minutes as it was just slightly underdone in the deep joint areas. It wasn’t raw…and smoked chicken tends to remain a little pink no matter how well done it is…but in his view it was a little too pinkish in some areas so he just nuked what we ate the first couple of days. We had chicken and some corn casserole both Friday and Saturday evenings…then sandwiches a couple of days. Last night he made a smoked chicken shepherd’s pie…cooked up some chopped onion and poblano pepper then added a bit of Better than Bullion chicken flavor, some roasted garlic, a bit o’ wine and then some stock and cream…then had Connie thicken it a little. Meanwhile…some cubed and boiled red taters became mashed with more roasted garlic, bacon, cooked shallots, and cheese and then the meat mixture went into oven proof bowls, topped with the taters, and then covered with a mix of cheddar and Parmesana Regiana cheese…we found an Italian market down near the Cape Coral Elks Lodge that has imported Italian foods and their cheese is so much better tasting than the US produced brands. Tossed the bowls into the oven for a few on broil to melt/burn the cheese and they were mighty tasty.

Connie’s got another medical appointment with her GI lady on Thursday…it’s the followup from a couple of scans she had done the last few weeks along with some more blood work.

OK…maskholes.

Back in the day…there was this TV show that ran from ’83 to ’90 named Not Necessarily The News…it was a satirical sketch comedy series that was similar to Saturday Night Live that came on earlier in the evening and was primarily based on current news topics. One of the stars was this guy named Rich Hall…and he usually had a sketch where he introduced the world to sniglets…which is a word that should be in the dictionary but isn’t. A couple of sniglets examples…squimmetz, they’re the stringy stuff on a banana…root-tooter which is the empty toilet paper roll once it is all used up…and aquadextrous or the ability to control the bathtub faucet with your toes.

So yesterday…Neil was reading for the umpteenth time some diatribe for or against the wearing of masks during the corona and it came to him…maskholes. A maskhole is a person who continuously and obnoxiously forces his/her opinion concerning masks…and to a more general sense social distancing, opening of bars, opening of schools, antibody testing, vaccines, the president and his brilliant/failure response (depending on your political persuasion) or various medical treatments for the corona…to the extent that you just get sick and tired of it.

I gotta be up front here…this isn’t a plea for or against masks or any of those other things…just a plea that enough is enough already.

Masks help…not nearly as much as some claim and not nearly as little as others claim. As I’ve noted before…reopening is a sensitive topic and we can’t only take into account infection rates, death rates, unemployment, evictions, or the economy…all of those things have to be considered by leaders before making any decisions one way or the other.

Us…we wear our masks when going out and they provide some protection against an infected but you don’t know it you giving it to other people…and perhaps a lesser amount of protection for the other way…it all depends on exactly which study you choose to believe or disbelieve. So…I’m not judging anybody for their opinion…I’m glad you have one.

What I am judging you for…is being a maskhole…here’s a couple of perfect examples of what I mean.

There’s this woman in LA…the one out on the left coast, not the real LA as in Lower Alabama…who’s going around with a badge on her chest that says “RTBA”. She goes into business establishments without a mask and her smartphone video camera rolling and waits until an employee tells her that she must wear one or leave. At that point…she tells them that she is from the Right To Breathe Agency of the government and that the employee can be sentenced to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for telling her to wear a mask…and that she can be personally sued for damages in addition to this. She then demands that the store employee go and get a manager so that she can threaten them too. The trouble is…this agency does not exist, is based solely on a private Facebook group that this woman is the founder of, and they have already been told by the DoJ to cease and desist claiming to be a government agency.

Yep…she’s a maskhole.

Then there is this school district in Paulding County in northwest GA which went ahead and opened their high schools this week and did not enforce a mask or social distancing requirement because it was “too cumbersome to enforce” although they did have suggested guidelines on the doors. I’m not. Sure how this is too cumbersome to enforce when students have been sent home because their short were around their thighs or because their skirts were a half inch too short…apparently those requirements weren’t too cumbersome. Anyway…naturally the brain dead teenagers which inhabit our high schools failed to respond to the suggestions for masks and distancing and crowded the halls. The crowding is to be expected I guess as they move between class periods but masks seem pretty easy to me. Anyway…a couple of students took photos and posted them on TwitterFaceTikGram or someplace to complain about the lack of masks and distancing. The school’s response…now rescinded…was to suspend the students for “violating phone and social media policies”.

Yep…maskholes…the school for not having requirements and enforcing them as well as the idiotic suspension…the students who refused to wear masks…and the student who posted the picture to expound on her views.

Then there’s our buddy Randy who runs a newsletter and website…I’ve mentioned him several times in the blog. He’s clearly pretty far left in his political views…and thinks that every body should wear a mask…and it appears that he thinks schools should mandate and enforce a mask policy as well. Now that’s all well and good…he has the right to his opinion as do all of the above folk…and I’m fully supportive of all of them expressing their opinion.

But yep…continually jamming it down your reader’s throats…maskhole.

However…for the love of sanity…just state your opinion…and even repeat it if you feel the need…and then JUST MOVE ON.

At this point…every person in America…yes, every last one I believe…has already made up their mind about masks, reopening schools, reopening bars, mail in voting, and every other damn opinion we keep seeing over and over and over again all stemming from the corona. None of these minds are going to be changed…not gonna happen…no matter how many times you scream in their face that you’re from the Freedom To Breathe Agency or how many times you post insults about the intelligence of those who for whatever reason choose to wear/not wear a mask, play/opt out of your professional sport, go vote/mail your ballot in, go/not go to the bar.

I highly recommend that all of you simply take a deep breath, realize the other side is not going to do it your way just because you think they should…AND STOP BEING MASKHOLES.

Let’s see what else interesting came across the transom from the internet this week.

As I’ve discussed before…polar bears…you know, those white bears that roam around the Arctic eating seals even though they are actually black skinned with translucent fir…well, they’re pretty big animals. Just how big you say? How about 1,002 kilograms or 2,209 pounds big. This is the taxidermied trophy of the largest polar bear ever taken…it was shot in 1960 in Kotzebue Sound in Alaska…when mounted in this standing position it stands 3.9 meters or 12 feet 9.5 inches tall. I believe this is the same polar bear that Neil saw in the Anchorage AK airport on his trip up to the ice camp back in the early ‘90s…it is no longer on display but it looks about the right size and pose as he remembers it.

And just in case you thought that only polar bears get big…grizzly bears get pretty large as well…albeit somewhat smaller than their faux white cousins.

Here…you can read about and see photos of the 1,600 pound grizzly that was shot by a US Forest Service employee while deer hunting in Alaska…it charged him from 50 yards away and he emptied the magazine of his 7mm magnum rifle…that’s a serious big gun with about a 3.25 inch long cartridge that fires a 7mm diameter bullet (about 0.3 inches). The bear collapsed at his feet but wasn’t dead until he reloaded and shot it a bunch more in the head. Upon analyzing it’s stomach contents…it had killed at least 2 humans in the last 72 hours. Backtracking from the location of the kill…the Fish and Wildlife Commission folk found half the remains of a hiker that had disappeared along with his empty 38 caliber revolver (that’s what police used to carry before they shifted the the higher capacity semiautomatic pistols they use today). The hiker had managed to hit the bear with 4 of his shots and an additional 12 7mm slugs were recovered from the bear’s body. When walking on all four legs…this bear’s eyes would have been the same height as a human’s eyes…and he could look into the second story windows in a house.

Look at the size of that paw.

Them be serious carnivores. Granted…most grizzly and polar bears aren’t that large…but they’re still pretty good and the one Neil was close to up in Katmai National Park in AK was still about 600 pounds they thought. We saw plenty of grizzlies and brown bears…which are actually genetically identical and not individual species as was thought for many decades…another example of settled science that turned out to be not so settled. However none of them were even close to the size of the ones above.

Sow grizzly…because she had a cub with her.

Brown…gender unknown…about 10 feet away. There’s a rule in Katmai NP that you cannot approach a bear closer than 50 yards. Unfortunately nobody told the bears about that rule so tourists who fly down on small planes and land on the beach get around the rule by getting ahead of the bear, standing still, and letting the bear come to them. That’s what he did…along with the pilot and other 4 passengers on our plane we were standing on a little tuft of grass about 2 feet high and 12 feet (as measured later) from the bank of the river and the bear walked between the water and the grass. He just glanced at them on the way by…although they’re wild the bears in Katmai are somewhat habituated to human tourists, we’re not really on the menu for them unless they’re starving, and it was fishing for salmon anyway.

Here’s a reflection shot to help settle ya down after all that huge bear section…it was taken in 2018 in Franconia Notch NH after we returned from the Canuckistan Maritimes. One of the best reflection shots he’s ever gotten…truly amazing how still that water was as can be seen by the perfect reflections.

Franconia Notch is where the Old Man Of The Mountain rock formation used to be before it fell off the size of the mountain…that formation was about a mile south of where he was standing and looking south for this shot…essentially around the other side of the ridge on the right.

OK…lessee what else I gots for ya.

This might only interest Neil…and DIL Jen the math teacher.

Everybody knows that the sun is larger than earth…but it would actually take about 1,000,000 earths to fill the sun as you can see here.

Another size comparison
can be found here. Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy took images of the sun and every planet in the solar system, adjusted their size so the relative sizes were right, and composited them into a single photograph. The link shows the full resolution composite image. So yeah…the sun is a whole lot bigger than all of the planets in the solar system…but then as stars go the sun is actually pretty puny.

Using the radius of the sun as 1 how big do stars get? For comparison…a star the size of the orbit of Saturn would be about 2,000 times larger than the sun and the largest star observed is named Stephenson 2-18 and is 2,150…it is located in the open cluster Stephenson 2 which has an additional 25 red supergiant stars.There are a couple of hundred listed on the page at wikipedia that are larger than the sun.

Turning to black holes…the largest one on record is named TON 618 and has a mass of about 6.6 times 10 to the tenth or about 66 billion suns and it’s size is around 1,300 on the same scale as the stars above or about 40 times the size of Neptune’s orbit…the luminosity is about 140 trillion suns.

I’m glad it’s far away since we would get sucked in by it otherwise. The closest large black hole to the earth is Sagitarius A which is the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy…it’s only equivalent to 4.3 million suns so as black holes go it’s again pretty puny…it is about 26,000 light years away and only about 20% bigger than the orbit of Mercury.

In other astrophysical news…NASA has decided to rename a bunch of long named that way nicknames…things that were named that because of what they looked like or who discovered them. Anyway…in the current days of PC as dictated by the WAMM…NASA says “community works to identify and address systemic discrimination and inequality in all aspects of the field, it has become clear that certain cosmic nicknames are not only insensitive, but can be actively harmful” and that it is “examining its use of unofficial terminology for cosmic objects as part of its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion”. So…the Eskimo nebula…it’s gone because the term Eskimo is. widely viewed as a colonial term with a racist history”…never mind that it looks like an Eskimo (or first people or whatever they want to be called) with his fur hood over his head.  Likewise…the Siamese twin galaxies which orbit each other “may have historical or culture connotations that are objectionable or unwelcoming, and Nasa is strongly committed to addressing them”.

People need to get a grip…and stop judging past people, events, and norms by today’s standards since it is very likely that many of today’s people, events, and norms could get cancelled by our progeny 200 or so years down the road. Football might be considered a barbaric sport right up there with feeding Christians to the lions by then for all we know…and eating a juicy medium rare steak might be considered poison for all we know.

Cyas.

Yup…another day quarantined by the Corona so let’s see what might be going on.

Really not much at all…since my last post we went to Mass today and Connie was the cantor again…the folks getting fully initiated into the Roman Catholic Church at St. Therese today included one young lady who was baptized and then along with another 3 received Confirmation and their first Communion. That means she had to do the Litany of the Saints as part of her cantoring duties…but she was as Neil puts it typically outstanding.

There was one minor bauble in her performance…caused mostly by (a) the lack of any ability to actually practice before hand since there is not choir practice right now, (b) the we aren’t really sure which version is going to be in the ceremony since the bulletin, her notes, and what she’s familiar with for the Litany from before were all different, and exacerbated by (c) the pretty free form ceremonies that Father Jan does as opposed to his predecessor. But in any event…unless she had broken out into a cover of Ina Gadda Da Vida any faux pas on her part would have paled in comparison to the mistakes of the altar server (he’s an old guy who also happens to be the sacristan which is the person that is in charge of decorating the sacristy around the altar and sundry other important Mass related duties) and the head Eucharistic Minister…she would actually have been appointed as a Deacon (probably) if she was the correct gender for that…but that’s another discussion for another day…anyways she wears the robes of a deacon and marches in and out with the priest and altar server at the beginning and end of Mass…but there’s that whole patriarchy thing where she can’t actually become a deacon…but I digress. What I was getting to was that the altar server and the other member (besides the priest) of the Mass celebration triumvirate were both pretty high in the hierarchy of lay people within the parish management. So…after the readings, sermon, baptism and confirmation we got into the Eucharist portion of Mass…that’s where they bring the bread and wine to the altar so the priest can consecrate it…and…you guessed it…there was no wine. Father Jan did not look amused…but the lady ran back to the back and got the wine so we could go on. As I said…any and all errors that the cantor, reader, master of ceremonies for the initiation, or organist might have made simply disappeared into minutia after that. Neil’s been going to Mass for 66 years now…and has served as an altar server…and he’s never, ever seen them forget the wine.

After Mass we headed down to the Winn Dixie to pick up a few groceries…the Publix is closer but their produce section sucks and we needed a bit of that…as well as more wine which we got.

And that’s about it for exciting stuff on our end…so let’s see if there is a anything interesting in the news.

Out in Portland…there were naturally more protests…all non violent of course…well, except for the explosives, rocks, and other objects being thrown at the police and the attempts to read down the fence around the federal courthouse. At that point…the federal law enforcement folks went inside until the Portland Police…who have been essentially ordered to stand down by the mayor…declared the demonstration to be a riot and ordered the rioters to disperse. At that point the federal cops assisted the Portland cops in clearing the rioters and arresting a bunch of them.

Naturally…the protest leaders have declared…once again…that they were entirely peaceful and that the violence was instigated by the police. Bzzzzzzzzt…wrong answer.

It seems that the Postmaster General has been summoned to testify before some House oversight committee over his plans to “delay mail” which is obviously an attempt to undermine the mail in balloting for the election…at least that’s what you might think if you just read the headlines. If you get into the article…you’ll find out that since the USPS is essentially going broke…and it is really the fault of Congress since the USPS has to fully fund their pension obligations each year which is different from every other company or corporation…he has essentially mandated that there is no more overtime authorized. Before this statement…when a mail carrier left to go on his route if there was more mail that had not been fully sorted yet…the carrier went out and delivered, then on overtime came back to the distribution center, picked up the additional and now sorted mail, and made another run to deliver that mail. Under the no overtime policy…that not yet fully sorted mail that gets sorted after the carrier leaves on his route…well it will just be delivered the next mail delivery day but it will be fully sorted, postmarked if applicable, and sorted into the carrier’s deliveries for tomorrow. Sounds like a great cost saving idea to me…and yes it means that some mail might not get to the destination until a day later but that doesn’t seem like a huge hardship. 

So…how is this policy going to “undermine” the election when states “are relying heavily on absentee mail in ballots to be received and counted in a timely manner”? Simple…it isn’t. Ballots in most states have to be postmarked by Election Day…which will happen as I’m sure the Postmaster General will authorize overtime on Election Day if necessary to ensure that all mail is properly postmarked…and there is at least a 7 day grace period for delivery (more in some states). So this summoning…yeah, it’s just political crap.

I read this week that AOC is “the most effective and hardest working politician of her generation”…so far she’s managed to kill 25,000 jobs that Amazon was going to put into NYC and managed to get herself on the news more than most far more senior congress critters…but hey, her supporters in the WAMM say she is so what do I know. Bzzzzzzzzzzzt…wrong answer again.

You probably read in the news about the young black female teenager in Michigan that was “sent to prison because she didn’t do her homework”…at least again if you only read the headlines or believe the WAMM. What actually happened was she was arrested for assault on her mother and at her juvenile court trial she was sentenced to probation including a requirement that she attend school. Much like the fines and restitution in FL for felons…attending school was part of her sentence and was…ummm…required is the word I’m looking for here.

So…she didn’t do her schoolwork…which was online and at home…so the judge revoked her probation and sent her to Juvie…exactly where she needs to be. She is in a program designed to help with her psychological issues (she has ADHD and something else as I recall) and is making great progress in Juvie according to her counselors and evaluators…so the judge declined to let her out since it is not yet clear that she won’t assault her mother again. No matter though…according to the WAMM she’s been “sent to prison for not doing her homework”.

I keep reading on the news what a great job that CA and NY are doing with their approaches to the Corona…and that FL and TX are doing wretchedly…only it turns out that if you rank the states by deaths per 100,000 population FL and TX are nowhere in the top 15 while NY and CA are (statistics from statista.com). It is true that if you rank by cases per 100,000 population FL is in the top 5 but NY is still above FL in the rankings. So…what’s the difference? It couldn’t be that NY has a Democratic and FL has a Republican governor…could it?

Speaking of Corona…I saw an interesting perspective on the whole quarantine thing this week…it comes from Mike Rowe who was the host of Dirty Jobs for many years, currently narrates Deadliest Catch and several other Discovery Network TV shows, and runs a foundation dedicated to the idea that a college education for everybody is not necessarily the best thing for everybody. His thought is that blue color jobs…plumber, carpenter, welder, and many others can provide a nice income for a lot of people and we need those jobs to be done. He isn’t against college education at all…just of the mind that for a good many people a cheaper education that provides them with a great job and doesn’t saddle them with $100,000 or more of college debt might be a better solution.

Anyway…he posts on Facebook…and is one of the few FB pages I read. He was taken to task recently because he headed out with his Dirty Jobs crew on a reunion tour of sorts. Now mind you…they took appropriate precautions, were all tested for corona with negative results, and are doing most of their reuniting with old Dirty Jobs people via video calls…but he was taken to task by a reader for his “unconcern with the corona”.

It’s a really great post…you can read it
here. In it…he says that he’s not ignoring the virus at all. He goes on to talk about a PhD epidemiologist named Michael Osterholm…who 10 years ago published a book predicting a corona virus (not THE corona virus but some virus in the corona family which includes the virus causing our current problems as well as flu viruses) that would turn the country upside down. In his book “Deadliest Enemies”…he described the “utterly irresponsible way in which the media would report on the situation, the completely opportunistic and shamelessly political way our leaders would likely react, and the unprecedented chaos and confusion that would arise from all the mixed messages from the medical community. “. He predicted that there could be as many as 100 million cases in this country and up to 480,000 deaths. He seems pretty prescient to me for a book written ten years ago.

Mike goes on to say that reading the book and talking to Dr. Osterholm enabled him to get past the first 4 stages of grief quickly and get into acceptance. He’s accepted that the virus will be with us a long time…that he might get it…and that somewhere between 0.6% and 1% of those infected might die. His point is that we accept 40,000 deaths a year from car accidents along with many other large scale causes of death…and is choosing not to ignore the corona but to take reasonable precautions. Just like one wears a seat belt with driving or riding in a car and avoids driving after consuming alcoholic beverages…one can respect corona, take reasonable precautions like masking up in public, washing your hands a lot, minimizing the number of trips outside of home, and practicing social distancing…and continue to live your lives.

That’s pretty much what we’re doing…masks aren’t the panacea that one side says they are or the complete waste of time that the other side says…they do provide some protection as does social distancing and avoiding crowded bars.

I do find it odd that with all the governor requirements to wear masks and the…let’s call it over enthusiastic…lecturing by some to wear them…that if you actually read the box that the common ear loop masks come in…it says “this mask will not prevent CoViD-19. Yeah…I know it’s just legalese BEP that the corporation counsel forced them to put on there…but if it were settled science that they are a surefire a way to prevent infection…would that legal disclaimer really be necessary? Dunno…but we wear ours whenever we’re out because as I said they do help.

Speaking of Mike Rowe…if you are a podcast listener you ought to give his a try…it is named “That’s the way I heard it” and is…according to Mike…the only podcast for the curious mind with a short attention span. Most of the episodes are 15 minutes or less in length and almost all of them tell you something interesting about a famous person that you probably didn’t know ahead of time. He spins the tale of the person…telling a story about their life…and at the very end identifies the individual and while Connie and Neil figure it out about half the time…there are still episodes where the person is a surprise. He sprinkles a lot of words that serve as teasers into the audio…although you don’t really realize they are teasers until you know who the person is…for example a recent one on Mick Jagger was entitled “Looking for Satisfaction” or something like that. Anyway…they are a great listen and if you’re into the whole podcast thing give them a try at
http://mikerowe.com or iTunes or however you get your podcasts…they’re even available in your browser.

Ok…on to some images…another in a series of blasts from the past…in this case from the summer of 2013…our second year on the road in the RV.

That year we went to the northwest US and up into Canuckistan to Jasper and Banff National Parks. This series of images…well they’re all Connie’s fault as she sent Neil the first one a week or so back and said “been there”. Take a gander and. See if it reminds you of anything…this isn’t one of our images.

No? Ok…keep that photo in mind while I tellsya the story.

The general location is Lake Louise AB which is located within Banff National Park. I’m sure you’ve all seen the famous photos of the Fairmont Hotel located at the NE end of the long narrow Lake Louise and the glacier at the far end roughly a mile away. If you’re standing in front of the Fairmont…looking off to the right is another smaller and higher lake named Lake Agnes…and on the shores of Lake Agnes is the Lake Agnes teahouse. It is about a 6 mile round trip hike up to the teahouse with about 1,000 feet of elevation gain on the way up. Connie had heard about it and wanted to hike up, have lunch, and come back down…so we did just that. An interesting side digression…back then she was still working…even though we had retired…for Northern Virginia Community College doing the scheduling for the internships for their medical laboratory students. She did all of this on the road up to about 20 hours per week and the agreement with the college was that if she read and answered an email then she got 15 minutes worth of pay. Her work was mostly done sitting in the rig on days when we weren’t doing anything else but she was always pretty anal about answering mails right away. So…by the time we hiked up, had lunch, and hiked back down…she had made enough to more than pay for our lunch…and it was an expensive lunch as there are no roads to the teahouse. Everything they cook and serve has to be brought up on horse or mule back so…just like on Mount Fuji in Japan…the higher you go the more things cost. Lunch…which was a pot of tea, a couple cups of soup, and a sandwich that we split was something like $40 with the tip but the walk and views were worth it.

Lake Agnes also runs long and skinny from NE to SW and the teahouse is located at the NE end right where the lake outlet spills over the waterfall and starts it’s trip down the mountainside to Lake Louise.

Looking almost due north from across the waterfall next to the teahouse.

This bird was on the rail near our table and was highly interested in our lunch.

Looking to the almost due east down towards Lake Louise…you can see the Fairmont through the trees at image center.

A zoomed in shot from a bit farther to the right…just about where the first shot above was taken from to better show the hotel and Lake Louise.

Looking NW from across Lake Agnes…the teahouse is just out of frame to the right.

And looking SW from the teahouse you can see another glacier that dumps into Lake Agnes and Devil’s Thumb behind it.

Now…looking back at the first image that isn’t ours…and was obviously taken much later in the summer than ours was since there is no ice on the lake.

You can see the teahouse at the far end of the left hand lake on the left side…it is the white building you see. The rounded mountain in between the lakes is the Beehive and you can see Lake Louise and the Fairmont to the right.

Yeah…I know…long story but the image Connie found brought back some memories and I figured they were worth sharing.

A few more photos from the same trip.

Ram Bighorn Sheep…these are actually different individuals as I recall…at least the photos were an hour or so apart and typically there’s only one fully mature ram with his harem in each group.

Moose in velvet…this is actually about the best photo of a moose we’ve even gotten…they’re almost mythical creatures and while we’ve seen a lot of moose butts as they disappear into the woods this one was laying down in the weeds literally about 15 yards from the main highway leading east out of Jasper AB.

Don’t let the color fool you…this is actually a black bear and not a grizzly…at least we don’t think so. It is too small, doesn’t have the hump, and doesn’t have the right facial structure for a grizzly.

Another bull moose we ran across on a hike in Jasper.

This is a Bufo Toad which is common down here in Florida. They secrete a ‘toxin’ onto their skin to repel predators but it is only mildly toxic to humans and if you wasn’t your hands afterwards then it causes no issues at all. You can see the size of it as compared to the toe of Neil’s bike shoe also included…this guy was dead on the side of the road and Neil didn’t touch it…but it had to be six or seen inches long in the body. It had not been run over…and he saw it as he left Magnolia Landing on his bike ride yesterday…it was almost right across from the entrance as he crossed US-41 and turned south…so I think it just hopped out onto hot pavement and expired the day before.

Speaking of bike riding…Neil (after yesterday) is up to 151 miles for the month at an average speed of 15.17 mph and an average distance of 12.64 miles…for the year it’s 771 miles, 15.07 mph, and 12.44 miles. He’s trying to do at least 150 miles a month with a stretch goal of 175…mad the stretch goal for June and it looks pretty good for July as well. He tries to get out every other day and mostly goes early in the AM before it gets too hot…once it gets to fall and winter he will be able to go later in the day if he feels like it.

Oh yeah…we did go out to Smoke’n Pit BBQ down on Tamiami Trail but north of the river a few days ago…pretty decent pulled pork so we’ll have to try their ribs and brisket next time. Not as good as Dreamland in Tuscaloosa AL or Oklahoma City Joes (now Kansas City Joes) out in KC…but definitely better than average. Neil ran into a Crimson Tide fan when he was picking up takeout…we had a nice conversation after he noticed Neil’s Alabama ball cap, asked if we had ever been to Tuscaloosa, and when he said yes he asked if we had been to Dreamland. Those are the two best BBQ joints we been to…and it’s really not close…every other place we been has been competing for 3rd place.

Saw this sign at the cash register…thought it was pretty apropos for the current corona thing.

OK…on to interesting things found the net…although actually she of them were found in our email instead. We have people ya know…our people are in charge of sending us neat things…and if you ever come down this way let us know and we’ll have our people get in touch with your people and mayhaps we’ll quaff an adult beverage or three or four. Jus’ lemme know when you’re in this area…and we can find some drinkin’ establishment to meet at…our available selections range from dive bars with great food to 4 star linen napkin sorts of places…although we’re partial to the former more than the latter but we are certainly comfortable with either.

The photographer had to wait for months to get his desired image of a jaguar and the shadow it casts.

I gotta admit…millennials and such fall right into this one.

Neil needs one of these for Connie…he’s threatened to push her off the side of the waterbed if she snores…but his bark is worse than his bite as he would never actually push her out of bed, he would just go to the recliner himself instead.

This seems apropos for the quarantine.

And finally…if the WAMM gets their way and we get rid of the police…

Cyas.