TOTALLY RANDOM POST II

[f-e]

Not a phone booth. But, the penguins may hot-wire it and go for a drive.

I just spotted the ladder in the background. Has 10 foot of snow fell, hiding the fact this is the command room of a narco sub underneath? Meaning the penguin is waiting for the lift to come up?

 

[f-e]

The young’uns today just don’t understand the importance of phone booths. That was always my first stop in a new town. Hit a phone booth to rip out the yellow pages to look for potential customers.

Oh. So it was you stealing the yellow pages.

You Bastard!

lol

 

[tobedetermined]

I only ripped out the pages with the hifi dealers, so you can't blame me for all of them. I kept them in a foldy file in my trunk. I also had several hotel guides. Road maps. All the pre-Internet shit I needed.

 

[Green Squall]

The young’uns today just don’t understand the importance of phone booths. That was always my first stop in a new town. Hit a phone booth to rip out the yellow pages to look for potential customers.

Ah, yes. I remember abusing 1-800-Collect as a kid.

We'd call someone, state a short message when they ask who's calling and hang up lol.

 

[f-e]

I needed a box to call my seed dealer in the Dam recently. I drove miles. Town after town. I ended up 20 miles away, at a box that wouldn't take enough credit on one go to connect and give chance to put more in. Limited, as it was in the middle of a social housing area, and it only got emptied when the crooks get out of bed to rob it.

What I really needed was a map, like the one ripped from the yellow pages.

 

[tobedetermined]

My most traumatic time when I needed a map was in Naples, 20 years ago. We had flown into Rome, rented a car and I was aiming for a hotel near Amalfi. Somehow, I blew it and got off the great autostrada and onto a highway – with no exits – that finally spit me out into absolute traffic hell in some western part of Naples. Napoli's drivers have no regard whatsoever for normal traffic rules. Stop signs are ignored. Lane markings are merely suggestions and they pass everywhere, anytime, whether someone is coming or not. They laugh at traffic signs. Just beep your horn and go like hell. Trucks, cars, bicycles & MOTORBIKES everywhere. Every single one was dented. Pure pandemonium. I headed roughly straight south, thinking I'd find a coast road (every town on water has a coast road, right?), or a policeman, fire station, gas station, anywhere I might get directions - in English. I'm a geographer's son and I inherited an excellent sense of direction. But Naples? I lost it. I was screaming at my wife to help me. She was screaming that she couldn’t. Finally, after blocks and blocks of madness, I saw a break in the solid line of parked cars and I pulled over to look at our silver dollar sized map of Naples. We discussed abandoning the rental and taking a taxi and claiming our rental was stolen.

Then, an angel appeared. We were blocking the driveway to a house and the owner came down to see why we were blocking his driveway. He spoke no English. We spoke no Italian. But sign language and pointing at Pompeii and Amalfi on the map must have accomplished something. He gestured for me to wait and he got in his car and motioned for us to follow him. After 3 blocks or so he stopped and pointed down a road. We thanked him and trusted him and 5 minutes later we were on the expressway heading out. Grazie molto.

 

[armedoldhippy]

Oh. So it was you stealing the yellow pages.

You Bastard!

lol

that's cold, but not as bad as the assholes that piss on the toilet paper in public restrooms. that deserves the death penalty...a long, slow, painful death penalty.

 

[EV3R]

I saw this 80-year-old lady lying in her yard today as I was walking in my neighborhood. Her pit bulls are chained up in her front yard, and "dozer" slipped his collar and she was trying to put it back on him when they apparently wrapped her up in the chains and tripped her. I go in to help her get up. Immediately after I start helping her, the pit that was still chained up bites me three or four times in the back. Luckily it was cold outside so I was wearing a hoodie and had some padding, so he never managed to get a hold of me. I was glad he didn't grab my arms or hands. Dozer ran around and barked, but he never attacked. I might have been in trouble with two of them. When I helped her up, she pulled the crazy one back and Dozer let me put his collar on.

The worst part was that my shoes got ruined in her snowy/muddy yard.

Good samaritan sigh

 

[big315smooth]

i seen an old lady go down on ice recently felt bad for her she went down hard. she was up by the time i got to her to help her

 

[CosmicGiggle]

i seen an old lady go down on ice recently felt bad for her she went down hard. she was up by the time i got to her to help her

That was me, thanks, I had just opened up my gas bill and collapsed from the shock, $190 for the past month at 71deg.

 

[big315smooth]

That was me, thanks, I had just opened up my gas bill and collapsed from the shock, $190 for the past month at 71deg.

funny cosmic i woulda burned one with you. one hand to help you up and a doobie in the other. i coulda got to the lady alittle quicker but was afraid someone would round the corner while helping her up and think i was mugging her

 

[moose eater]

Trying to locate a heated shop space for automotive work, that rents a bay by the hour or half-day. There used to be places like that around, a few of them, anyway. No longer, unless I'm just not looking in the right places.

I'd pay someone $100 to $150 for a 15-hour period of rental space in a heated automotive bay.

But I suspect liability insurance that covers persons injured on a premises in such circumstances is a serious driving force behind there not being too many such opportunities offered. That, and the premium placed on heated shop space here in the Winter.

The one friend whose shop I've used before, currently has an aircraft and a paint booth set up in his place, so there's no wrenching to be done there for now.

I've got about 1 week and 2-3 days to find a spot, if I want this to go off without a hitch.

 

[moose eater]

Update: Got a free space to do the catalytic converter, exhaust manifold, sensors (if needed), and serpentine tensioner pulley at, but the owner doesn't want the fuel tank dropped indoors near his boiler (BUT WHY???!!! ), so the rear sway arm bushings, control arms, fuel fill pipe, and related work will have to wait until we have a heated space, or the young man gets a warm day with a Chinook wind, so the hardpack and ice don't feel quite so cold.

Maybe one day I'll have a heated garage... maybe.

 

[big315smooth]

i think the blower fan behind woodstove is on its way out. it sounds like a super vibrator and sometimes it goes off and on in turbo mode

 

[moose eater]

It was -20 f. on the front porch about an hour ago. At that time, it was -27 f. at the University's weather reporting station on their hill, and -31 f. at NOAA's NWS site at the Fairbanks International Airport. We're supposed to get up to +4 f. today, but I'm skeptical. Who knows, though?

Need to mail a pair of slippers back to the source; seams split after just over a month of wear, and they're not a cheap pair of slippers.

Pick up a few supplies on that trip as well.

Should have several packages at the post office today, including a whole bunch of spendy automobile parts I've been waiting on.

Younger son says he'll be repairing my freighter snowmobile this week that I've been waiting impatiently for.

Last night he was out running the Tanana River, headed back to town from the Village of Nenana in the dark, running 70 mph (~115 kph) with spots of open water. No doubt, operationalizing the concept of 'outrunning one's headlights'. Rarely a positive thing.

I told him he hasn't run rivers here as a rule, and there are factors he may not have taken into consideration, to include changing ice thickness depending on speed of the current in that specific place, underground warm spots beneath the bottom of the river, sometimes from thermal springs or warm zones, which can keep water from freezing, right down to -50 f or colder.

Didn't have enough time in the call to elaborate, and frankly, after the heartache generated by this young man over the last several months, I didn't have too much to say to him in general.

He replied with, "When we hit open spots of water on the ice at 70 mph, we just skip right over it." (*Yes, snowmobile skipping is a thing. I guess for those folks who are afraid of heights and find attempted suicide through bungee jumping to be a bit much).

I mentioned to him that this 'sport' claims the lives of a number of people up here each year.

He sounded like many of the members here discussing COVID, and he replied, "People die in automobile accidents every day, too." I bantered back with, "Yes, and that's why we try to mitigate those risks by doing such things as not engaging cruise control on slick surfaces, slowing down for cut-banks and curves where hidden ice deposits might be, slowing down for water on the road to avoid hydroplaning, and wear our seatbelts."

But he's 18 going on 12, err.... I mean 50, and he knows more than most mortal human beings. Or, at least, thinks he does.

I didn't continue on and tell him about the reverse rule of current speed and bends in a river, summer versus winter, and boats versus snowmobiles.

An outside curve in a bend in a river is typically moving faster than the inside curve, in order to 'keep pace' with the flow. And conversely, the inside is often moving slower. If you're running shallows in a river boat, the deeper the water the better, and the faster water permits fewer deposits of silt and debris, so the faster safer boating water is often found in the outside curve of a bend.

The inside curve is typically where there's slower current, and, therefore, in the Winter, thicker ice to the inside of the curve.

So, boating in the Summer, look for outside curve routes, and in the winter on a snowmobile, look for inside curve routes, not that a person can't still encounter open water.

But I didn't get an opportunity to tell him all of that, and we can't put term life insurance on the young man until next month, so I'm hoping some sort of grace follows him for a bit. Maybe during our next phone call, when he again verbally snaps at me at leisure, for no apparent reason.

I think a former Director at a mental health clinic I worked at was correct when he said, "Children; eat them while their bones are soft."

 

[armedoldhippy]

i hope he survives the silly season that most of us go through. "eat them while their bones are soft", lol. gotta remember that one..

 

[armedoldhippy]

i've seen guys on snowmobiles "skip" across open water on youtube. i've also seen them sink like rocks. one thing to go in with folks there to help you, another one altogether to do it alone on a river at night at those temps...God help them, no one else can...

 

[moose eater]

i've seen guys on snowmobiles "skip" across open water on youtube. i've also seen them sink like rocks. one thing to go in with folks there to help you, another one altogether to do it alone on a river at night at those temps...God help them, no one else can...

He had a friend or more with him, but once that water sucks a person under the ice, chances of survival drop to the lower single-digit odds.

That's the same stretch I took a 2-person soft-skinned kayak and my long-gone Norwegian Elkhound on, for, I think, my 25th birthday, decades ago, paddling away from my old cabin on the river, with firearms, cannabis, plenty of Anchor Steam beer, and headed downstream toward Nenana at about midnight on the morning of my birthday, with most of a 1/4-oz. of psilocybin in my belly. Made record time doing that trip (previously written about here). Many oddities and coincidences that night. And it was light all night.

Yep, I hope he survives the '10-feet-tall-and-bullet-proof' phase of his teen years and young adulthood.

A couple of younger boys were playing on snowmobiles in downtown Fairbanks near the Wendell St. Bridge a few years back. One of them was sucked under, when he was trying to get his machine unstuck from the incline at the bank of the river, and was standing in open water, when he was pulled under. Frantic moments, no doubt.

Drowning and burning are 2 of the worst ways I can think of to go, though drowning probably beats the snot out burning up. Panicked moments, in either case.

We're supposed to be having a La Nina Winter here, but other than for obscene amounts of wet snow earlier, and the regular dump of the white stuff since then, it's been fairly moderate, temperature-wise, considering January and February are statistically our coldest months. (Not that I'm complaining. There's just a bit greater comfort in predictability).

Found a new-to-me recipe for our somewhat traditional Jambalaya for our annual trip to the mountains for lake trout fishing and burbot, though this year it will be andouille, chicken and shrimp Jambalaya, as I'm leaving out the ham this time around (Ham being a Class 1 carcinogen, due to the nitrites/nitrates/curing, and I've got all the cancer I need..... thanks.. ).

 

[buzzmobile]

I'm starting a list of Things To Know In Alaska, moose eater .

#1 Summer go outside
#2 Winter go inside

 

[tobedetermined]

#3 Don't eat yellow snow ANY time of the year