Niagara Falls

I had some work to do near Toronto so I made a couple side trips.

First I went to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum  which was pretty cool and I had a good time talking to a guy that had flown Lancaster's in the war...  I bought his book :-)

Then I headed for the Canada side of Niagara Falls which I hadn't seen before.  The town was pretty much closed but looked like it would be pretty carnival-ish in the summer - lots of wax museums and arcades.  I had lunch at a horrible "Italian" restaurant. :-)  Then walked around in the drizzle.

Tour boats stored for the winter.

The falls were fun to see.  I had forgotten there were two sets...

Fun with Hipstamatic...

Then on the way home the next day I stopped off in Detroit to watch my Cousin (2nd twice removed?) Eric play High School Hockey, which was a lot of fun.  He scored in the second period which was great :-)

At the game were some of my fathers first cousins - Eric's parents Howard and Audrey on the left and Phyllis and Randy on the right.

Florence Storm

I went to Florence again just before Christmas for a few days.  It was a pretty routine trip, through Amsterdam which is always easy, but during the big European snow storm that had much of the airports shut down for a while.

I do love having a good, complimentary wine selection :-)  On one trip they had a wine they described as having notes "of wet gravel" which I thought was hilarious.  Didn't get the "wet gravel" sense myself, lol

-84F !  Yikes.  I had to have more wine to steel myself against the terror of freezing during an accidental depressurization ;-)

At the hotel I was able to get my wireless network going so I had good access for my phone and notebook - nice. I carry my Airport Express router with me everywhere I go.

I was in a rush to get a Calzone as soon as I got there :-)  This one came with a very cloudy house wine that turned out to be just OK,  I was surprised - usually I've liked every wine in Italy. This was a pretty meaty/cheesy loaded sort of a tourist spot calzone, because it was an early dinner and the first few restaurants we tried were not open yet. The ones I've had outside the tourist areas were much simpler.

When I first went to Italy the only fat people I noticed were Americans (Not ME!! lol).  I wondered why... so paid attention for a few trips:

* There was a McDonald's but very few people in it.
* At meals, only the Americans drank sodas.
* The pizzas and calzones generally have very little cheese, meat and are thin crusted.
* The Italians tended to order pizzas like the Margherita - just tomatoes and cheese.
* They walk. A lot.

Our co-workers had wanted us to stay at the plant for lunch, but it was going to be a long wait with nothing to do and the food is not that great in the cafeteria, so we headed out for the above mentioned calzone... which turned out to be fortuitous because it began to snow.  By the time we walked back to the hotel the cabs had quit running. After trying to get a cab for 30 minutes or so, I suddenly realized that if we DID manage to get back to work....  How would we get home?  When I called the plant to tell them we were not coming back from lunch they were put out, but later they told us stories of how it took them all night to get home.

Lots of abandoned scooters in 7 inches of snow.  The buses just stopped wherever they were, which I first thought was a little irresponsible, but thinking about it - they probably didn't have parking for all the buses anyway as they would expect them to be on the road.  It really jammed up the town.  Then it began to rain which REALLY shut things down when the packed snow turned to ice.  My friend Tina walked 6 miles home, uphill to Fiesole, through the snow and ice. Yuk.

There were lots of people out walking in the snow.  Some kids were having a snowball fight across this piazza (Piazza del Duomo, I think).  They could have used an experienced Alaskan battle planner (one side was ripe to be flanked), but I just waded through, yelling "non-combatant". 

Baby Jesus was OK, since they don't put him out until Christmas eve. This is Santa Maria Novella.

I don't know what this scooter is, but it looked good for getting around in the snow.

Sunrise from hotel dining room.

After it rained a few days, the snow was gone but it was still cold - with a humid breeze that cut into you.  I was glad to have my winter boots, gloves and a hat.

This is in the kitchen where my friend was staying.  Dated around 1500?  In a house on the river from the 1200s.  It's concave and painted right on the wall.

When it was time to go home (just a few days before Christmas), the weather was not good.  The airport was closed for snow for a couple days, then closed a couple mornings for fog.  At this time most of Germany was shut down, Amsterdam was up and down,  DeGaulle was shut down.  I tried to get a direct flight to New York out of somewhere nearby, but couldn't.  I checked into taking the train to Zurich but it was a 24 hour ride. My co-worker went to Amsterdam as soon as possible to be sure he could get out of Florence, but the forecast was for increasing temps so I thought the fog would be OK the next day.  Also, I've made changes over flight delays and jumped from the frying pan into the fire once I lost my original reservation.

In the end, the airports and planes were crowded, but I made my original itinerary no problem.  There were people stuck other places for as much as a week I heard. But I didn't even have a delay :-)

Winter Night Flight

It's hard to get ready to fly in the winter.

Preheating with the Red Dragon propane heater.  It was 10F.  An hour was more than enough.

Just over Turnagain Arm on my way to Kenai.

Nice Anchorage coming back in the dark.

It was worth it :-)

New Heat Zones

The kids rooms had always been in the same heat zone loop as the living room. Since the living room is usually pretty warm from the windows or the wood stove, their rooms would get pretty cool.  When I remodeled their rooms, I pulled thermostat wire back to the boiler, and recently I finished splitting them out on their own zones.

First I added new zone valves so I could leave most of the heat on while I tied them in, which turned out to be a good idea since it took a couple days to get parts in the middle of the job.

The heat was originally run with a mix of copper and PEX.  Unfortunately we used 5/8 PEX in order to make it easier to pull (the house was largely finished when we put the heat in because we originally heated it with wood and a TOYO stove, but decided to go with baseboard once they ran gas to the neighborhood).  What was unfortunate was that 5/8 turns out to be an odd size. It took me a day to round up the only remaining 5/8 PEX to 3/4 Cu fittings in the Mat-Su valley, lol.  After, of course, I had already bought all 3/4 stuff since I was SURE that's what we'd run...

So I bought all the fittings I could find and saved some spares by the boiler.

This cut took Jake's room out of the loop.

This jumpered past the kids rooms to complete the living room circuit, 5/8 (blue) to 3/4 Cu to new 3/4 PEX (red).

The Cu is the new supply to Hanna's room and the red is the new living room return..

 Adding the first kid room loop...

Lots of copper on the ceiling :-)

Stack of completed zones...

At the end, the dielectric fitting was leaking at the boiler, which completely failed when I tightened it. It was worse than it looks...  Good thing there's a drain in the boiler room :-)

Another trip to Big Lake, arrived just under the 5 o'clock wire and I got a new one installed that night.  The whole black pipe portion needs improving - I'll pull it apart next summer and put a union in to make it all easier.

 One of the happy customers :-)

Commercial Multi!!

OK...

You can call me:

Commercial Pilot

Airplane Single and Multiengine Land

Instrument Airplane

Since THAT'S what it says on my license, lol  (maniacally)

I'm pretty stoked.

I went to an accelerated school in AZ (stayed at a casino across the river in NV) and got the commercial and multi ratings. What a blast.

These guys have it made. A little strip in the desert...

A Beech 18 on floats...

A race car...

That was blown up...

Gliders, cropdusters.... lots of stuff :-)..

Ground school was in a trailer...

And pretty exhausting for some of us, lol.

This is one of the Beech Travel Air's I trained in

This is where we hung out waiting to fly...

The casino I stayed at was smoky but nice enough, particularly for only $22/night, had a nice pool, a beach on the Colorado River ...

And decent coffee and breakfast bagels in the parking lot:-)

With a nice mountain view in the morning.

My DPE was a crazy high strung East Coast guy (of course, to me, high-strung and East Coast are synonymous), but a thinking pilot.  Right off the bat, I knew he had something to offer when he pointed forward and said: "We're trying to get THERE", then pointed up and said: "Not THERE, So how about a little more Bernoulli and a little less Newton?"  I liked the guy a lot.

I didn't want to leave. I told them I'd come teach all next winter in exchange for a CFI... but the instructors work REALLY hard. No time off.... Harder than I want to work really :-)