Category: Transport

The Helicopter and the Cornered

“Never give a sucker an even break”

Unlike those boring people that go out all the time I’ve stuck to my couch and began to take an interest in the reality television programmes concerning real-life policemen. You know the type of shows I’m talking about: Road Wars, Night Cops, UK Street Crime etc. etc.

Even these dramas played out factually are beginning to become formulaic. The car chase sequence went downhill after Steve McQueen yet it’s still in use, overuse. The voice over guy tries to ratchet up the tension as the siren-blaring cops race after the bad guys. Red lights are driven past, the wrong side of the road is used and there’s a swerve or two. All Beano and Dandy and seen before. Just when you think the baddies have got away they are captured. Most of the time because of the big bird in the sky.

The police helicopter tracks the progress of the villains giving the pursuers in their squad cars vital intelligence (it also doubles up as the programmes TV screen plotting the adventure). To give the felons a chance the helicopter should not be used. It’s not as if the carjackers have ground to air missiles in their armoury. Put those cheating copters away. As Shere Khan would say, It would make the chase more interesting.

Queued Up.

I’m back from another place and have queued a lot in the process of going and coming.  Departure tax payment, airport check in, bag drop, passport examination, security check, flight boarding to name just those involving departure and with two changes (one involving a US border entry) and a final wait for my checked bags.  I lost the will to count them all.

They have taken all the fun out of queueing.  In the old days one would arrive at the queues, (and there were always as many queues as there were servers), and with a practiced eye one could quickly evaluate the options, length of queue, number of families in each line, number of bags per person in line, gender and age of those in line, estimated nationality of those in line and finally, and most importantly, the gender and estimated national origin of the servers.  The fastest service could be almost guaranteed by choosing that queue of bored, sober-suited, middle-aged, white gents with small carry-on bags waiting, with paperwork in hand, for the highly efficient oriental lady server with the indestructible work ethic.  You could be through and out in seconds, step forward, slap down your docs., two questions, “Did you pack…?” “Did anyone give…?”  Machine spits out boarding card and you’re gone.  She would be pushing them through about two per minute, easy.

Continue reading “Queued Up.”

Space but not a lot

Still riding high after our week in Prague, Mrs J and I have spotted another get-away-from-it-all opportunity; this time an all-expenses-paid adventure offering travel, see-sighting (Mrs J’s word) and, best of all, celebrity – especially designed for the mature couple. Yes, it’s Mars and back with no interference from tour-guides, cabin crew, windmills, or LibDem canvassers.

Continue reading “Space but not a lot”

Not so Bad, so Far.

Front end of Sandy has blown out of the creek, the storm is still about 1500 miles wide so the back end will not arrive until later. (tomorrow maybe?)

The storm went right overhead a cat 1 hurricane merging with a big low pressure trough.

About ten inches of rain according to my rain gauge and no power since early Monday pm.

Continue reading “Not so Bad, so Far.”

Sandy’s Antipodean Connection

HMS Bounty, a replica of Breadfruit Bligh’s ship was abandoned powerless and sinking off the Carolina coast early today.  The ship had been in Chestertown,  Maryland over the weekend for our annual Downrigging Weekend, cut short this year by Sandy.  The crew were heading South to Florida and probably thought themselves fairly safe as Sandy was already well North of their course.  The ship was built for the Brando film “Mutiny on the Bounty” but has appeared in several of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films.

Story is here:

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/29/14775512-helicopter-sent-to-rescue-17-people-who-abandoned-hms-bounty-off-nc-coast?lite
Here’s a shot of the Bounty in better days passing by the head of the creek that I took this July just after the 1812 celebrations in Baltimore.

She was a fine and happy ship, unlike the original,  and the crew always welcoming and pleasant, I wish them all safe.

Gossip makes the best history

I’m reminded of this fact by Christina’s frequent anecdotes which round up all sorts of facts of every imaginable kind. Christina, you’re the Herodotus of the modern age! A strange comparison you may think, but akshully (thanks, Furry) the father of European history displayed an encyclopedic memory for both the valuable and the trivial, be it politics, geography, family life, war or mythology. He called it his ‘enquiry’, a record of his travels around the known world in the middle of the 5th century BC. “Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε” – “This is a presentation of the enquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos”.