MacGyver and I could be cousins

Today started out absolutely like shit. Fortunately, it got better although not a whole lot.
I was about a block from my house at about 6:30AM when I heard something under the car go clunk under a wheel well. The school where I work is about 30 miles away. I didn't see anything coming up to it, but something did not sound right. As I accelerated onto the highway, it sounded normal so I didn't think much more about it. I just passed the next to the last exit and the car starts feeling funny so I pull over, get out and see the left rear tire is very low. I'm in a horrible place to change a tire, so I roll back to where the end of the guardrail is and turn back onto the grass. This gives me about 3-3.5 feet to the edge of the slow lane.
I digress slightly. I have a first generation Honda Insight, and with a few minor modifications and slowing to 55mph, I typically get about 80mpg. In town it is much worse, only about 60-65mpg. Since it is a hybrid, the 12V battery is used to run the computer to control the 144V battery and the 12V is the size a Harley Davidson motorcycle uses. It is a very lightweight battery that should be changed every 4-5 years, but it hasn't given me any trouble.
I leave the flashers on, but shut the car off. I didn't even think about the headlights until after I moved all the junk in the back out of the way to access the trunk. The trunk is a misnomer as it is the size of a medium sized cooler. You have to remove the trunk which has a few items in it, then the plate beneath it to where you find the dinky spare. At this time I shut off the headlights and leave the flashers on. I change the tire, get everything into the hatch area and try to start the car. $#!%#!!!!!!!!!! it doesn't have enough juice to run the computer. Not 2 feet away from me is 144 volts and I have no way to access it. My car can be jumped, and I don't need big jumper cables to do it, just enough wire to get 12V to the computer.
A teacher from my school saw me and went up to the exit to turn around to help me. There is not enough room for him to get close enough to jump start my car without turning the wrong way on the Interstate Highway. I sent him on, but borrowed his set of dinky jumper cables. Our School Resource Officer was already on the way and while I was waiting, I thought, "How could I get 12V from his car to mine?"
I remembered that I had an extension power cord in the back of the car, but how could I hook a set of jumper cables to each end? I could cut the ends off and strip the wires back, and then it hit me. I could bend the plug terminals sideways and if I could find a paperclip, I could cut it in half and put the pieces into the receptacle side to hook the other set of cables to. Lo and behold, there is a paperclip in my console! The SRO stopped and was backing up and appeared to be waiting for an opening to turn around. I ran to his car and said, "I think I have a solution so you don't have to turn around." I just backed him up to a few feet from my car. I hooked everything up and the computer came up and car started. It doesn't sound or start like a regular car, and he said he didn't know if it was running until he saw the engine vibrate.
I unhooked everything and still made it to school before it started, although I was about 40 min late than my usual time.
Usually when a tire gets too low at speed, the sidewall is too damaged to use again, so I went online to see if I could get another tire. Of course MY car has to have special tires that are ONLY made for that kind of car. The last time I ordered them about a year and a half ago, I had to wait almost 6 months for them to come from Japan. I went to the website I got them from, and they showed 1 tire in stock. If that is correct, It will be here on Thursday.
I'll see if my buddy will let me borrow his classic Camaro with over 400 horsepower and then some.
Of course I won't get much fuel economy, but our hot secretary says it was her favorite car of all time....then she asked what color? Red. I wanna ride!!!

Fun!!

The first picture was taken by a buddy as we were flying over Asheville, NC at about 8500' and 180MPH heading home.
The second one is me showing out at a Fly-In in Tennessee. (I'm quite a ways from the camera.)

Cops, Robbers and Betty

I live in the South Eastern part of the USA. Where I live, crime is much lower, or I would expect it to be much lower than most other parts of the USA. Still, I am paranoid of being ripped off. I have an alarm on my house, religiously double lock my doors and make sure I lock the car. Except for last night.

Let me digress for a minute. Quite a few years ago, after a crooked business partner and a couple of poor business decisions, I ended up a homeless person in New York from October to March. If you are homeless in the winter, you definitely want to be in Southern California or Southern Florida, not New York. Of course me being me, warm weather was nowhere to be found. Sometimes life sucks, but I never robbed anyone of anything and I was able to work a few odd jobs and got to drive a limo for a while until I had enough money to get back somewhere where I could start over.

It was about 5:35 AM Tuesday morning and I was putting my clothes on to exercise a bit before getting ready to go to work. I had my short pants, T shirt and one shoe on, but not tied. Betty, my little dog who sleeps in a "crate" at night because she will pee and poop all over the place when she is unsupervised was growling. My roommate, Desiree, was on her way back from the bathroom to her room said that she thought I had been out there as she heard something.

I turned on the light and saw that things weren't quite right. I opened the car door and saw that it had been rifled through. We ran out to the street and saw two people running down the street. We started out after them. It took two blocks to catch them, but we did, and I got all my stuff back. My left foot was bloody and my ankle was swelling, but I was glad I got the stuff.

I don't run....it's not that I just don't, I can't. I had a head on collision 10 years ago when I was living in the Bahamas and broke both ankles, a knee, my pelvis, my hip socket was in 7 pieces and my sternum was split. Other than the bump on the head, I was ok. I was pretty happy that I was able to run down the perps. Until I realized they couldn't run very fast because of all the crap they were trying to carry. They were a homeless couple...and drunk. I was still pissed, but they took off after I got the stuff, but I would not have been able to go after them anyway with my ankle and hip starting to ache.

The police came, 3 cars worth, and rode around the neighborhood, but didn't see any one. One of them took a report and basically said they couldn't do anythign about it. All they had were descriptions and I didn't lose anything so findiing a judge who would take out a warrant without names, addresses or not missing anything.
Whatever happened to breaking and entering was a crime??

They also chastised us for going after them. What if they had been armed? I said how do you know I wasn't? She looked at my feet and said it looks like you've used up half your ammo, noting that I only had one shoe on. I then said my aim is impeccable, and that's how I got my stuff back.

While this was going on, the police car overheated and wouldn't start. It was in my driveway behind my car. So I got to wait for the wrecker. Still, I was only 15 minutes late for work.

I'll be gimping around for a few days, but I locked my car last night.

I love my plane and my car!

I'm going to paint the plane the same color as my car.
I'm not looking forward to the amount of work to paint it, but it's too nice not to.

As time goes by, the memories fade...

I won't forget that day 8 years ago. It used to be that I would get tears in my eyes when I saw movies or images from the 9-11 attacks. Now, it seems I only get tears when I see videos. Still images don't have the same effect. It does not diminish how I feel, but I'm still very sad as we all lost something that day.
I was going to write more, but I think this says it all.

School's are nice places when nobody is here.

We have just finished our 5th full day of High School. You would think that by the time the kids get here to 9th grade, they would have just a minuscule amount of common sense. Not so. For the most part, I have been dealing with bus issues..."What bus do I ride?". Then I have to ask, "Where do you live?". I have talked to several 9th graders who do not know their own address.
I've talked to parents who want their kid dropped off at work (the kid's job, not the parents) and it happens to be out of the county.

I'm old, and I can get to any classroom from any classroom in less than 5 minutes. Parents call and want the time extended so their little darling can get to class on time. I explain that the class change time is for getting to class on-time and there isn't much time for talking to their friends. "My son goes from class to his locker and on to the next one and simply cannot get there on time. So I walk from the kid's class, to his locker, pretend I'm opening it with a couple mistakes and change out what I need and walk to the next class. The next day the kid makes it on time. It's a freaking miracle!!

I've taken bets (figuratively speaking) from teachers and other administrators to see which kid is most likely to get suspended first. It's amazing that almost everyone picked the same guy. I would hate for every student to be just "another brick in the wall", but it certainly would simplify some of the things I have to do.

Pictures of the trip

Little puffy clouds over Illinois

White Knight II flying demonstration. I was amazed at how quiet it was.

Long EZ planes look like they are grazing when the nose gear is retracted for tie down.

Very nice and very expensive paint job. It probably cost almost as much as my whole airplane.

As far as you can see in most directions are airplanes.


On the way home flying between some of the clouds we aren't allowed to fly over.

Airventure 2009

In April of 2000, my friend Eric and I attended a workshop for hints and skills to build my plane, a Sonex. It was there we decided to fly to Airventure when I finally finished my plane. Airventure is the largest fly-in in the United States and might even be the largest in the world. Having taken the long road to finish my Sonex via a master's degree, a move and trying to save money to buy the things I needed, I finally finished my plane last October. "Finished" is a loose term, as it is unpainted/unpolished and still needs some detail work.
Eric flew out to South Carolina from California a couple of days before we were to leave to meet up with a couple of buddies and fly as a group of 3 planes. My Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS)had taken a dump 2 months earlier and I finally got it back the same day that Eric arrived.
We installed it that night and test flew it after I got off work the next day (Thursday). Everything seemed to be OK.
We left on Friday to fly to Clarksville, Tennessee to meet up with Robert and Frank, but stopped in Crossville to have lunch with another friend John.
The weather was not looking too good on Saturday, so Robert and Frank decided to drive. Eric and I felt that with the speed of the 3300, we could make the narrow window between two weather systems before they closed so we took off at 6am. Weather was not bad, although we did have to fly over some clouds. The ceiling was not too good at Rantoul, IL, but it was scattered enough to be able to land without difficulty. I called another friend Dan, who was planning on meeting us along the way, and he was still stuck in Columbus, Indiana with rain, so we left to face the traffic at Oshkosh alone.
The clouds were all gone as we got about 70 miles North of Rantoul. It was smooth flying to Juneau, WI for fuel in case we needed to hold over one of the lakes. Fortunately there was little traffic and we had become pretty familiar with the arrival procedures over the last few days.
Following a much slower plane, we were told to speed up on final and the plane behind us (a WWII fighter) was asked to slow down if possible. I landed on the dot after getting beat up on a bumpy windy final and got the hell out of the way. In Oshkosh, you can't really tell what the wind is doing as all the wind socks get blown away on a normal day as a blustery day is considered calm there.

We taxiied all over the place and finally arrived at Sonex where Jeremy said we should go over to Sonex Homebuilt parking and we would all taxi over together in the morning for the open house. He was able to lead us in his car which saved about a quarter million miles of taxiing.

We had an absolute blast. Neither of us had been to Airventure before, and we saw less than 1/10 of what was there. We might have seen as much as 1/8 of what was there, but I spent too much time talking about my little rat-rod airplane.

After 4 days there, looking at the weather, we decided to leave a day early. I didn't want to go home yet as there was too much to see and do, but to be able to get home in time to get Eric back on the plane to California was necessary.
We were number 3 to depart Wednesday morning at 6AM and it was absolutely beautiful flying until a bit South of Chicago.

Not too far from Chicago, we ran into more clouds, but the wind was behind us and we were making pretty good time.
Looking for holes in the clouds, made the arrival at Grissom, Indiana a little edgy, but once we got down through the hole, it was business as usual.

I called John to see how things looked at Crossville and in Spartanburg, and of course there was some rain, but it looked like it would be gone by the time we got there.
It had just finished raining when we got to Crossville and had lunch again with John to kill some time while we waited for weather to clear at home.
Heading South over the Blue Ridge mountains, we had to go to about 10,500ft (3200 meters for those of you who don't do feet) to clear the clouds, and when we turned East, and going slightly down hill with a tailwind groundspeed was between 180 and 200mph for the last 90 miles. That was way COOL!
Total time for the trip was 13.1 hours (including taxi time) and I'm still smiling.
It was nice to see old friends and meet some new ones who are all there for the same reason. We like airplanes!

We had the best time on this trip, and I hope we can do it again.

1500 miles round trip to the homebuilt airplane capitol of the world and home!

Well, we made it to Oshkosh and back. It was an absolute blast! With the economy being slow, there weren't as many airplanes as expected, but there were still about 8,000 of them and they were still coming. I got to see some friends, show off my airplane and not have to worry about work.
We came back a day early because the weather in Oshkosh was supposed to be deteriorating over the next couple of days, and it worked out well as far as traveling on the way back. There were a couple of places that required some maneuvering around the clouds to get in to, but 3 stops for fuel and wait out some weather and got home about 5PM.
The trip was too cool for words.
Next summer: Kitty Hawk to California...

24hrs to go

The Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS) came yesterday and I installed it last night. I sent it off 7 weeks ago for repair. It sat at the Post Office for 13 days before they picked it up. It then sat at the company for a couple of weeks before I was notified that it should be able to be sent back in the middle of the following week. 2 weeks later, they said that it was fixed and I needed to pay $280.
I paid it immediately. I kept trying to get them to send it and I finally got an email saying they were out of the office, but would be back in the following Tuesday. I said I was planning on the trip to Oshkosh and needed it as soon as possible.
They sent it Monday, a whole day earlier than they said they would! Does that make me happy? Not really as they have lied about everything up to that point.
Since I'm leaving tomorrow, it would be nice to have more than 1 day to test it, but I'll do that this afternoon.
No wonder they are going out of business.
At Oshkosh I'll be able to talk to the other EFIS manufacturers. I just hope I don't have to get a new one any time soon.

Countdown Has Commenced!

In about 32 hours we will depart the earth for Crossville, Tennessee. Flight time should be about an hour and tem minutes. A friend of mine is not doing very well healthwise, so we will stop by there to say hello and go to lunch. We will top off with gas and head towards Clarksville, TN. Flight time will be approximately 50 minutes.
We will meet up with a couple of friends who have planes similar to mine and depart the next morning (Saturday) at 6:00AM.

The first leg will be to Rantoul, Illinois about 1:50 later for gas, leg stretch and bathroom break. Next stop is Juno, Wisconsin about 1:25 duration for more gas. We could make the trip from Clarksville to Oshkosh on one stop, but we are stopping about 40 miles away for fuel in case we need to be in a holding pattern for landing for an extended period of time (remember 10,000-12,000 airplanes will be showing up for the week).
The last leg will be from Juno to Oshkosh. Flight time is about 20 minutes. We should be there before noon.

This will be exciting! My Electronic Flight Instrument System has been repaired and should be delivered Wednesday. I'll install it and do a test flight. Other than a few minor details, the plane is ready. Calculations of weight with both Eric and I including fuel and luggage (minimal) will allow us 18 lbs shy of the gross weight of the airplane.

2-1/2 Weeks before we fly to Oshkosh

Yep it will be Oshkosh by Gosh!!! The Airventure website says 600,000 people and 12,000 airplanes! Although I'm not a fan of large crowds, when I started building my airplane a buddy and I made a pact to fly it to Oshkosh when it was finished.
This is the year!
The plan is to fly from Spartanburg, SC to Crossville, TN and stop for gas and visit another friend for an hour or so. Then we will make a short hop to Clarksville, TN to meet up with two other buddies who have similar airplanes.
We'll stay overnight and depart Crossville at 6:00 AM. That won't be too bad as they are an hour behind us.
From there it will only take about 4 hours flying time (or so as their airplanes aren't quite as fast as mine. YAY!!) But they can fly longer on a tank of gas....Oh well! (My plane gets about 30mpg)

We will need to make one stop for fuel, but will stop about halfway and then again just before we get there as we may have to fly a holding pattern for a while to get in line to land...remember, 12,000 airplanes?

We won't stay the whole week, but I am looking forward to it. And, I'm dreading it at the same time.
No matter what, it'll be one more lifetime experience I can add to the list.

Summer's are great at school

Schools are great places when teachers and students aren't here. It's quiet, the phone rarely rings and I don't have to deal with discipline problems.
I have enough to do, but I am waiting until the end of July to fly to Oshkosh Wisconsin for the largest homebuilt airplane fly-in in the world.
Airventure!!!
www.airventure.org

What a day

It has been quite a day here today. Started from yesterday with a couple of bus issues, a mad parent and getting cussed out from that parent.
Then I had an altercation between a boy and a girl, but the boy took off. The School Resource Officer finally found him in the woods laying down and realized he was drunk off his a$$.
We got him outside before he started puking, however.
His dad finally showed up and apologized. Even though his exams start tomorrow, I doubt he will feel well enough for an advanced algebra exam.
We had some money stolen out of a couple purses during the theater performance, and I ended up talking with 23 kids about it. Of course nobody knew or saw anything.
We had a senior food fight at lunch.
And a kid who hit another kid who has a broken collarbone and then laughed about it.
I finally got the little heathens on the busses and gone.
I'm ready for school to be out even more than the kids.

Meet Betty

After my dog got killed at Christmas, I felt devastated.
A blogger friend said I should have a grieve and get another one at the shelter as there are millions of them who need somebody.
I did just that. Betty is as sweet a dog as anyone could want, but I think I have incorrectly named her. I should call her Spud.
She is a couch potato.

Buddy would do everything with me. Even go for an airplane ride! I know I can't replace Buddy, but I would hope that Betty can be a "man's best friend".

I certainly hope Betty comes around some. I don't expect her to ride in the plane, but I do expect her to be a companion.

It's funny as she lies on the couch because she does watch TV.

16 Lunches to go

At 4 lunch doodies per day, I have 16 more of them. I certainly won't miss all the little bastards that throw their trash under the tables or leave it as a mess. It's mostly the rich kids, not the poor kids.
I draw a map each day who leaves their table as a mess. Then the next day I go to them and shame them into cleaning up. Funny thing, it's never the kids there, it was someone else.
They have been getting away with that kind of crap for 10 years, and it's better now than ever, but only because I go around and deal with it.
It's unbelievable!
I'll have lunch doody at my new school, but it's a lot more reasonable there...

I quit my job

I am an Assistant Principal at a high school in North Carolina and I turned in my notice today. In 30 days I won't have to come to this job where I dread coming to each morning.
In 32 days, I get to go to a new high school in a different area which will be a much nicer place to work.
I am lucky to be able to do that. I was getting myself physically sick coming to work.

I still miss my dog unbearably sometimes.