waiting

I'm still waiting for someone to say, "Hey, I've got an old Cushman motor scooter out in the barn. . . "

You can contact me through this site. Just click "comment."
Howard

Grandson

Our grandson, Matt, is finishing up his freshman year in college. So what is he going to do this summer? So far, his options include volunteer work at a hospital, working at a soccer camp, or work on a research project with his chemistry professors. Knowing Matt, he won't settle for just one. The one at the hospital might be good, because he plans to go into medicine, but how many professors ask a freshman to help out on a research project? And he loves soccer.

Matt is serious and level-headed. He makes good choices. We are proud of him.
Howard

shameless plug

This is just a plug for my daughter's travel agency.
http://www.altotravel.com Best deals on cruises.
Tell her Dad sent you.
Howard (aka "Dad")

WD to the rescue

Stuck cables can be a real problem. I think an occasional small squirt of WD40 cuts that problem down a lot. If it's a throttle problem on a scooter, it can be a lifesaver.

My daughter has a bicycle that she only uses when vacationing. They camp a lot. She had a modern Murray multi-speed bike and never got things adjusted up enough to be rideable. So she sold it and asked me to find her a bike that was a little less complicated. I found her a 28 year-old Huffy with skinny tires, fenders, and a Strumley Archer three-speed hub. It had almost no miles on it and someone had just replaced the tires.

That bike worked for her and she really liked it, but after a couple of Myrtle Beach trips, she found she had no rear brake. You guessed it. The cable was stuck. I think salt may have gotten into the cable housing. I applied WD40, but it appeared that the stuck part was the whole length of the cable and it just didn't get in that far. So I kept applying a squirt every couple of weeks until it soaked all the way through and finally it began to move. I worked a little more WD40 in there and didn't mention that I had gotten it unstuck.

Then one day I got a call from Myrtle Beach. "Hey, Dad! I have both brakes on my bicycle! Thanks."

And it's good for scooters, too.

So where is the hit counter?

That wasn't where I wanted to put the hit counter, but at least I have one. It might be interesting to see if anybody besides me is reading this stuff. (If it works.)

Just scroll down a little and look for apples.
Howard

bisquits

We ran out of shortening the other day and the bisquits are way too long.
Howard

hit counter

Web Site Counters

North to Alaska

In a couple of weeks we will begin Cruise XI, Celebrity VI, Alaska III.
That means our eleventh cruise, our sixth cruise on the Celebrity Cruise line, and our third cruise to Alaska.

We will fly to Vancouver, B.C. and take the Inside Passage north, and across the Gulf of Alaska to Seward. Then by bus to Anchorage, where we will fly home. No two Alaska cruises are alike. The first time we flew up and cruised back, the second one we cruised up, not quite as far and came back to Vancouver. This time we will do the opposite of the first one.

I remember flying into Anchorage and seeing a landscape below that was wall to wall glaciers. From the air, they tend to have black and white stripes. I also remember watching icebergs form in Glacier Bay as chunks of ice broke off the end of the glacier. That process is called calving. The bay was filled with floating chunks of blue and white ice. They say that only 10% of the iceberg is above the surface, so those were whopping big ice cubes.

We will visit picturesque little towns like Skagway and slightly larger towns like Juneau, the state capital. You can't get to Juneau by road. You have to fly in, or come by ship.

We will be cruising on the Summitt, a ship we have never been on before. It's a big ship. We will have a balcony and therefore a good view of some of the world's best scenery. I hope to see whales and eagles.

Expect some more detail when we get back.
Howard

gas mileage

You can get great gas mileage without trading cars. Here is all you have to do.
Drive no faster than the speed limit.
Keep your tires properly inflated.
Change your air filter every 25,000 miles.
Gain speed slowly, and start slowing down way back from where you plan to stop.
Avoid downshifts.
Gain a little speed going down hill and lose a little going up. Cruise control can work against you in hilly country, but in flat country it will save gas.

I didn't say it would be easy, but if you do those things, you can increase mileage by as much as 10%, and maybe more if you have a gas hog. If you save only three gallons a week, that's six bucks.
Howard

facts

If you are keeping a list of facts, add these:

There is no such thing as an unsinkable ship.

Everybody snores.

The best thing you can do to keep Social Security healthy is to die. If we all live to be a hundred, Social Security will go broke, and we will all have to join the same retirement system as members of Congress.

Since gasoline prices passed $2 a gallon, sales of motor scooters are way up and sales of SUV's are way down.

The number one weather problem in Juneau, Alaska is rain, not snow.

Small town America had a better public transportation system in 1950 than it does now.

Great Salt Lake used to be much larger, and it was fresh water with an outlet to the north. Now the water can only get out by evaporation. That's why it's salty.

Cushman made Eagles for 16 years. (1949-1965) A few left-overs were called 1966 models but they were manufactured the previous year.

Tucker built only 50 cars. Another was assembled from spare parts for a total of 51.

Eisenhower signed the bill that created the Interstate and Defense Highway system.
Howard

Birds

My sister used to live in Morro Bay on the coast of California between San Francisco and Los Angeles. She sent me an email about birds and I really liked this paragraph:


"In Morro Bay , Guy and I used to sit on the deck and watch the birds on
the hill behind our house. We put up a hummingbird thing and had tons of
those to watch. Of course there were a million turkey vultures.(here
they are black vultures) and we saw many hawks from little ones up to
the red-tailed hawk The Kestral was a great little hawk to watch. We had
CA blue jays and scrub jays, redwinged black birds and thousands of
ocean birds flying over including white pelicans that migrated from the
Colorado river every year.Lots of doves were there all the time. Once an
endless flock of shearwaters flew just off shore for a whole day. Who
knows where they were going. There were owls but I never could spot one."

She lives in Georgia now.

I highly recommend Morro Bay. It is a beautiful town with a nice beach, plenty of good places to eat, and Morro Rock. The rock is a haystack-shaped rock that sticks up at the south end of the beach. It is the remains of an ancient volcano, and you can reach it via a causeway. You can't believe how tall it is unless you see it close up.

Don't miss the waterfront in Morro Bay.
Howard