Off We Go

Here we go again. Off to see the world, or at least a bit of it we've not seen before.

I hate long airplane rides. It's not that I'm claustrophobic...maybe a little bit.  For miles and miles you simply sit in a very small space with severe limitations on movement. I think any flight over 2 hours is cruel and unusual punishment. However, until we get one of the Enterprise's transporters it's all we have.  So, the best we can do is an eight hour flight. At least it is less than our longest flight to date: fourteen hours.  That flight was nonstop from Atlanta to Tokyo. I thought we were caught in a time warp and the flight would never end. 

There is packing, which I am not fond of. What to carry? I never know. What will the weather be like at our destination?  Who can tell? A television weatherman told me once that weather forecasters were right 85% of the time. Which means they are WRONG 15% of the time. Should I pack according to  what the weatherman says the weather "may be" or carry too much stuff to cover 100% of the possibilities? I do not pack, my wife is much better at it than I. What camera should I take? Or Just take my smartphone for capturing the images of breath taking vistas? How much cash will I need? Should I have gotten some Euros at the AAA?  It gets stressful. 

Have you noticed that lately that you can book a flight on a particular airline but when you get to the departing gate it is a completely different airline? Coufusing? It seems the airlines have partnerships with other airlines. When I book a flight on Delta I expect to get on a Delta plane not Air France.  But, then again, Air France has better food. Once upon a time you could use seat layout diagrams of various planes and airlines to pick a seat with a little bit more leg room.  But no more! The airlines have become wise to this procedure and now charge a premium for this little bit of extra legroom. Thinking about it is stressful.

And then there are the government agencies you must deal with in air travel. They operate in the name of security. I for one believe in airline security. I don't believe you can be too safe flying through the air at 30,000 feet at 400 miles per hour. But that does not mean I like to go through security checks. Kinda like going to the dentist. You hate the pain and suffering but you love the results. TSA, the Transportation Security Administration, is the biggie. Yep, that is where you take off your shoes and put all other stuff you have in your pockets in a plastic wash basin and place it all on a conveyer which goes through an x-ray machine. I always seem to forget to remove some small item from my person. Once a TSA employee found a pocket knife in my carry-on bag I had been looking for for two years! Usually going through security is relatively painless.  But what if I look like somebody on the "no fly" list. And then there is the possibility of the dreaded body cavity search. Flying can be stressful.

I have a friend who refuses to fly without medication.  Let me rephrase that.  He refuses to fly without being medicated. But not me.

Perhaps tonight you will look into sky in and see the blinking lights of an airliner and think of me/us as I/we have climbed into the "big sewer pipe with wings" and taken to the sky.

Bon Voyage!

Bubba letter.

Dear Tony,
I seen your blog post about NASCAR Hall of Fame on the internet. I want to tell you what me and Darlene done not so long ago. "Bout three weeks, I guess it was.  We went to a dirt track race like the kind we used to go to way back  before stock racing got so popular. Back when you never seen a driver that didn't walk with a limp or had some scars from wrecks.  Before all the cars looked alike and drivers spoke better english than I do. And there was drivers like Fireball, Little Joe, Banjo, Junior and Fearless Freddie. You Remember them days?



We was at this little dirt quarter mile track up near the mountains. They was having what they called "Old Timers Day".  Me and Darlene went.  She said we ought to dress up like we did then. Well I slicked back my hair back in a duck tail, rolled  up a pack of Marlboros in my white T-shirt sleeve and pulled on a new pair of Levis. I had on my black penny loafers with white socks. Oh, yeah, I hung a well used church key on a chain around my neck. I looked like a worn out teenager from the fifties. Darlene on the other hand looked pretty darn good.  She had her hair tied back in a ponytail and wore a black T-shirt that was about a size too small with white short shorts. Solid white tennis shoes was on her feet. She had a good summer tan on her legs and looked as good as she did the first time I seen her.

When we got to the dirt track the crowd was gettin' pretty big and there were a lot of folks dressed up in the late fifties and early sixties style. The water truck had just pulled off the track and some of the cars were starting warm-up laps.  I knew we would be dodging chunks of red mud for a while when the cars went into the first turn. It was looking like old times as the sun went down and the lights come on. They lit up almost the whole track. Willie Johnson, the promoter, would save a buck anyway he could so the backstretch was kinda dark. Some said Willie would rig a race if he could. Everybody knew Willie liked to have Charlie Chappells win because the  fourteen-year-old from Lincolnton, Georgia, would really draw a crowd.
But that was many years ago and Charlie was retired now after racing in NASCAR a few years. They had found a few of the old race cars like we had watched back in the day. It was quite a show as the old coupes from the thirties and forties with their flat head Fords and inline six cylinder Chevys barrelling into the turns. Many of the superstars of NASCAR got their start on tracks like that. It was back in the day when a guy running  a filling station or garage could build a car in his spare time and really be competitive. I don't think that happens any more. There were three heat races before the main race.  We watched the cars as they entered the first turn with engines roaring.  The chunks of red mud rained down on us and the smell of exhaust pipes and oil filled the air. Darlene and me managed to keep the mud out of our faces but got some red stains on my white t-shirt from marble sized bits of red clay. Heat races were short bout ten laps I think.  There was a lot of banging and crashing between the cars. We got us a hot dog between the races. Between races we saw Woodie and Shelly Winthrop. We hadn't seen them in a coon's age. You remember them don't you? Used to drive a black '60 Chevy coupe with "Mister Lonely" painted on the rear quarter panels. It was said to pass everything on the highway but the gas pump!  We enjoyed talking with them about old times. They said Buddy Johnson's daughter would be driving today. She's about our age you know. Remember that when we were in high school that her daddy was such a dirty driver that nobody would talk to her! The other heat races for the cars were just like we remembered. Yep, there was even a fight in the infield after one of the heats. In this kind of racing the driver has to beat 'em on the track and then sometimes beat 'em in the infield. Darlene always gets excited at these events and jumps up and down yelling.  At the race she was attracting considerable attention. Darlene does not believe in any restraining undergarments. That used to bother me.  You know, the men staring at her but not anymore.  You see, she always goes home with me.
For the special main event they had rounded up a bunch of "skeeters". They were the little early thirties coupes and sedans whose bodies were chopped, channelled, and sectioned.  They were powered by small block Chevys or Fords with fuel  injectors and burning alcohol. (All the alcohol at the track wasn't being burned in the cars!) They didn't have transmissions, just in-out boxes. They were called "skeeters" because of the wing they had on top.  When they were racing it sounded like a swarm of bees.  On a quarter mile oval the straightaway ain't not very long. They put on a great show.

We were on our way to the truck to go home after the races when we happened on a fight in the parking lot. It seemed two fellas had a different opinion over who the greatest race car driver was and were sluggin' it out. But then the law came.  She must have been nigh on to 200 pound and a good six feet tall.  She walked up behind one of the fellas and grabbed him by the collar and said, "Git into my car over there!" She was talking about her county car with the star on the side.
Before he could say anything she had reached between his legs and grabbed a sensitive part of the male anatomy. His voice was a couple of octaves higher as he asked, "What car do you mean?"

As we drove away from the track we talked about going by Tastee-Freeze for a dipped cone.  She tried to find Dick Biondi on the radio but couldn't. I guess Dick is gone.  But he sure was great back in the early sixties on WLS Chicago.

That's all for now
Your ole buddy,
Bubba

Iron Men in Horseless Carriages

In Charlotte,NC is a museum dedicated to the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing. There, on Martin Luther King Boulevard is homage to the men and machines that created the second most watched sport in the country. In the 175,000 square foot structure designed by Peter Cobb Freed and Partners are many displays of which many are interactive. We visited on Wednesday which was less crowded than the weekend. There was considerable activity due to  television technicians setting up for the evening telecast from there. (The 2016 group of inductee into the Hàll of Fame were to be announced.) When we bought our tickets we received a small plastic card about the size of a credit card. It's called your "Hard Card". We were told that when we activated these cards they would grant us access to certain interactive displays. After completing these tasks, which I did not care for*, we began to look around. The first thing you see is hat appears to be part of a racetrack. Upon this track are race cars beginning with a 1952 Hudson Hornet. As you continue along the track the walkway is inclined as the track is banked. The cars represented are noteworthy. Fred Lorenzen's famous "Yellow Banana" Ford and Buck Baker's "Black Widow" Chevrolet and the cars of famous drivers past and present. It is easy to see the evolution of the NASCAR racer. It is also interesting to experience banking of the track as you allowed to attempt to stand on the 33 degree banked surface.

Once you walk pass the last car on the track you find yourself on the second floor. On this floor are the simulators. There are more than a dozen cars on a small section of track. You pay your money and pick your ride. Then the race is on and the spectators can watch the action on a large screen television. The leader board changes as the race progresses although the cars never move. We did not do this. I had once driven an actual race car at Darlington. Nearby was a place to have your picture take driving a race car. For many all these activities you use your "Hard Card". There are many kiosks around the area in which you can use your Hard Card to test your

skill knowledge and performance. One such test is to see how fast you can change tire and refuel a race car. One activity i enjoyed was testing an engine on a dynamometer. You can punch in changes to the engine and then test it to see improvements. In the raceweek area you see cutaway version of the racecars which allow you to see "under the skin" of these 200 mph machines. The Hall of Honor is where the inductees into the NASCAR hall of fame are featured. the cars of the recent inductees are displayed along with drivers bios and videos.

You could probably take from opening to closing to read all the captions, watch all the film, and participate in the interactivities. There is a lot to see and do. However, I knew much of the history and rather lacking in physical ability so our visit did not last all day. But, itis a "must see" for any stock car racing fan.

Notes of Gold

I remember the first time I had heard the name. The man sitting next to me on the Delta flight from Chicago said, "That's always a beautiful sight to me."

"What's that?" I asked as I felt the 737 begin to descend.

"That golden dome on the statehouse in Atlanta. The afternoon sun just makes it glow! Did you know  that all that gold was mined right here in Georgia?"

"Really? Where?"

"Dahlonega," he said a accent much akin to Jeff Foxworthy.

"That sounds more like the name of an Italian sports car than a place " I responded.

"Yessiree! In 1828 the first gold rush in the United States was in that little town of Dahlonega, Georgia.  It's 'bout sixty-five miles from Atlanta. The name came from some Indian word, I think," he said with a big smile on his face.

That was over forty years ago and I had visited Dahlonega several times since. But on April 15 I was there for  "The Bear on the Square" festival which promoted Appalachian arts and crafts and mountain music. The old Lumpkin County courthouse, built in 1836, is in the center of the square of the town. About fifty-two hundred people live in Dahlonega. Several years ago the folks decided that they would promote tourism with several festivals per year.  The "Bear on the Square" is  just one of them. We had driven from Athens on a warm overcast day with threats of rain. Like most festivals there were rows of booths selling or promoting something. What is unique at this festival is that Appalachian folklore crafts and music take center stage. We parked in a modern parking garage for no fee and walked up hill to the town square. There are no flat places in Dahlonega, it's a mountain town. The first thing I noticed was the music.  I find myself a seat on the old courthouse steps and listen to some mountain music. They're performing "Fox On the Run", one of my favorites. The band, of course, is all acoustic, two guitars, a bass, a mandolin and a fiddle. All these folks had salt and pepper hair and I'm pretty sure most of them weren't as old as they looked.  The girl playing the bass and one of the guitar players, another girl, did the singing.  Their harmony was great. I like good harmony. You don't even need music if you've got good harmony.  I commented to the woman next to me how great they sounded. She agreed with me. She was strangely familiar. She was about five feet six, I guess, and a hundred twenty-five pounds. She wore jeans and boots and long sleeved white shirt open at her throat. A black cowboy hat adorned her head.  I felt I had seen her before. She had flowing hair that was was once jet black but mostly silver now,  a heart shaped face with full vermilion lips and eyes as black as coal. There were crows feet in the corners of those eyes and her face had that tan of an outdoors person.  Yep, she looked just like the girl I had seen when I was a teenager at an auction in Pickens county. A Boy Scout came by selling bottles of  water. I bought one. When I turned to look at the woman again she was gone. Could it have been? I decided to check out some other parts of the festival and moved on around the square. I watched a woodcarver making a dough bowl with an adze and a blacksmith make some nails. One booth had a huge selection of whirligigs for sale. They were really colorful and most of them had animated characters either human or animal. A gentle breeze kept everything moving. There were more potters than painters. all styles of pottery from ultra modern to traditional and face jugs. As one band was fading from earshot another would be fading in. It is very interesting how the bands evolve. They may start with only two musicians.  Then they will be joined by others. But seldom more than a half dozen. They play only mountain music or old time string band music. The musicians were all ages and all skill levels.  It's not unusual to see an eight-year-old little girl fiddler playing with an octogenarian guitarist. The language of music has no age restrictions.  Occasionally, I see a black cowboy hat bobbing in the sea of hats and caps and I wonder. Claudette joins me after the second band.  We stop to watch a demonstration of buck dancing. Our ancestors brought buck dancing with them from the British Isles. Modern tap dancing probably evolved from buck dancing.  As the buck dancer was performing a little boy of about three or four came up and started watching. He would stare at the dancers feet and then look at his mom. He was a handsome little dude and people began to urge him to dance. He would slowly move one of his feet on the dancing service then look at his mom. We all cheered for him but he never did dance. But you could tell by the expression on his face that one day it would happen.

We were hungry.  I had my first foot-long corndog. It was almost good. The cornbread batter the wiener had been dipped in was sweet. I think there should be a law against sweet cornbread! Otherwise, it was good.  The brown mustard helped.  Claudette decided she would find something else.  While she was looking I went into this big tent and with a couple of hundred people were entertained by the Rosin sisters. Their vocal harmony on those old mountain songs was really good. Claudette joined me with her pulled pork sandwich which she shared. Up the hill a ways was the storytelling tent. Storytelling is a big part of Appalachian life. Adam Booth, a professional storyteller, was featured. I spoke with him a few minutes and mentioned that we had heard him in Charleston at the storytelling festival. Since we had heard him before we wondered on absorbing the music and culture. There was a place to try your hand a gold panning. Having almost frozen panning in the Yuba River in California with Claudette I had no desire to wash some Georgia mud!

On the way off the square we passed a band of young guys in their twenties. They performed "Uncle Penn", a classic bluegrass tune.  After two verses the singer stopped singing because he said he didn't know anymore verses. Their next tune was "Rocky Top".  I thought it might have caused a stir. "Rocky Top" is the University of Tennessee Volunteers fight song and we were deep in Georgia Bulldog country.  But they finished a rousing rendition without incident. On the way to the car we walked down  Luthiers Ally by the booths of handmade stringed instruments.  We had enjoyed our visit to the Bear on the Square Festival and it was threatening rain. As we walked passed a small eatery near the garage I caught sight of a woman in a black cowboy hat, boots and jeans with long silver hair duck through the door.

BMCAS Air Show

It was hot.  Even spring in coastal Carolina can be hot. The heat seemed to radiate from the asphalt where the flying machines were resting. We were at the Marine Corps Air Station, Beaufort, for their 2015 edition of their air show. It is a great family oriented event. There would be several thousand people on hand.  One of the most interesting things we saw all day we saw as we entered the spectator area. As you would expect on a military base security was enforced.  At the entrance to the exhibition area the marines searched backpack and hand bags.  They also used a metal detection wand to scan each person.   We were asked to extend our arms out from our sides for this.  Just in front of us a young boy of about seven or eight years of age was to be scanned by the Marine. However, when the marine demonstrated how the boy was to extend his arms the boy ran to him and hugged him! He had thought the marine wanted a hug! It was what they once called a "Kodak Moment". (I don't know what they call that now. A YouTube moment?)  After passing through security we set up our chairs in front of an orange plastic barrier with a full view of the airstrip.

There was a large exhibit of various airplanes. These airplanes were not to fly in the air show. Almost all of the aircraft were of the military variety. On previous occasions there had been many more civilian airplanes. One of the more interesting was the Rockwell OV-10 Bronco.  Broncos were used primarily as forward observation aircraft in warfare.  Pilots of these planes would report enemy positions to ground forces.  All the Broncos I had seen before had been the military olive drab color. But this plane was painted blue and white NASA  color scheme.  There were several F-16 "Fighting Falcons" on hand as well.  These fighter aircraft had "Viper" and "Swamp Fox" emblazoned on their tails. I think that one of the interesting features of the combat jet is the position of the control stick in the cockpit. In most aircraft it is positioned between the pilot's legs but in the F-16 it is  positioned on the right hand side. Incidentally, the "Fighting Falcon" is referred to as the "Viper" by the pilots because of its resemblance to the "Viper" fighters in the television show Battlestar Galactica. There

were several helicopters of different types and a C-130 "Hercules" cargo plane. I had flown in one of those in the 1960s.  Two of the newest American aircraft were also there.  The F-35 "Lightning II" and the V-22 "Osprey".  The F-35 is the most technologically advanced fighter plane today. It can be used by the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. It has the ability to take off from short runways, hover and land vertically. The V-22 can take off like a helicopter then rotate its engines ninety degrees and fly like an airplane.  Also on display was a B-25 bomber of WWII fame. The polished aluminum really shined brightly in the Carolina sun.  Surrounding the aircraft were booths selling food and drink as well as souvenirs.

The flying part of the air show started shortly after eleven with skydivers landing with a huge American flag. We stood and sang the national anthem with hundreds and then it was show time.
Each show has its announcer. Sometimes a performer has their own announcer. Aerobatic stunt planes are airplanes designed for that specific purpose. They are relatively small and powerful.  The pilots of these aircraft subject themselves to tremendous "G" forces during their acrobatic manoeuvres.  We watched as they performed barrel rolls, loops, figure-eights and other stunts which defy description all to the sound of screaming engines and blaring music from the loudspeakers.  This type of flying is descendant from the flying circuses f the 1920s.  I does make ones pulse quicken to watch an airplane seemingly tumble out of the sky.  A ribbon was stretched across the runway less that twenty feet off the ground and an airplane, flying inverted, cut the ribbon with its tail.

The military aircraft put on a show as well. And the Marine Corps presented a mock pilot rescue.  This involved paratroopers, helicopters, and jet aircraft. It was exciting with lots of smoke and fire and noise from the aircraft.

The last event of the day was an exhibition by the U. S.  Navy's Blue Angels. They thrilled the crowd with their flying skills in their F/A-18 "Hornets".  See my video here.