Las Palmas

I'm in Las Palmas on the Minnow. We're getting ready to go in a few days. I'll be updating the Minnow blog at http://hmsminnow.blogspot.com instead of this blog for a 3 weeks or so now.

St. Thomas (again)

When I parked the plane, they wouldn't let me park where I could tie it down. The guy at St. Thomas Jet Center said he'd put another pair of chocks on it. He didn't.

So this morning I drove to Home Depot, bought some tools, a 2x6 and a 4x4 and proceded to build some serious, hurricane-rated wheel chocks out in the parking lot. (The 8-foot boards wouldn't fit in my Hyundai.)

Since I was only going to use it once, I bought a hand saw. It is very time consuming to cut a 4x4 lengthwise on the diagonal with a hand saw. I got a lot of looks, comments, and questions ("Building a house?" "You must really like exercise!")

Eventually I finished, drove to the airport, and chocked the plane. They worked better upside down. Oh well...

Then I started sorting things out for the plane ride tomorrow -- commercial. I took 4 CO2 cartridges out of the man overboard module so I wouldn't be a terrorist. I'm going to try to get them to let me take the CO2 cartridges in the jacket/harnesses.

I was sitting down next to the plane with three giant suitcases, my brand new hand saw, 4 CO2 cartridges, tools, and other various and sundry stuff and equipment spread around on the ground while I packed and repacked, when a guy from Customs / Border Patrol came up with flashing lights and a big pistol. He was really nice, but I think he was surprised. Sometimes it's just hard for me to explain what I'm doing.

twebsterarmstrong

Tricia's blog. She should update.

twebsterarmstrong

Firefox, Java, and F-22s

When I left the St. Thomas airport and started to pull out into the "highway," something seemed odd. Then I figured out that they drive on the wrong side of the road here. We should sell this place to the U.K. if they can't learn how to drive! The funny thing is that when I drive, it doesn't seem much different. People honk at me a lot here, too.

Today I had just finished a traditional Caribbean lunch (at McDonald's) when a guy asked me for a ride. He made it less than a block before he wanted out of the car. What a wimp! My driving isn't THAT bad.

To run Java on Firefox, I downloaded the java runtime from Sun's web site and it asked which browsers I wanted to install it for. Here's what Mozilla says:

http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/faq#q2.2

The f-22 pictures from the last post came from

http://www.af.mil/photos/

I searched for "F/A-22"

St. Thomas!

I am at St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. St. Thomas is one the the islands. The town is Charlotte Amalie (I think).

Yesterday I flew to Fort Lauderdale and spent the night. There's quite a bit of hurricane damage, but nothing like Hurricane Andrew. Not as bad as Katrina. But Burger King was still closed, so I had to do without CiniMinis this morning.

It was 3.9 hours from Fort Lauderdale to St. Thomas. I flew on an airway. I figured they wouldn't like it if I file direct like I normally do. Other than flying through one bumpy shower, it was a smooth flight. Most of the time I was within gliding distance of land.

When I landed, I taxied to the FBO. Nobody was there to park me, so I wandered around a bit and finally came to a place I liked. A guy in an official car motioned me around like I was supposed to park the other direction, so I did. Then I stopped the engine, because I couldn't turn around even if I wanted at that point. And, of course, he said I was in the wrong place. So someone came from the FBO with a plane pusher to push the plane back somewhere different. At an angle, so it can't be tied down, because that will make more room for the Thanksgiving crowd of planes. I hope there's no hurricane.

Tonight I was walking around and went to a softball game. It's fast pitch, older that high school, and sponsered by local companies. There was a big crowd. Behind the ball field some people were playing basketball. It reminded me of home, except I was just about the only white person there. Everybody was friendly. The basketball and softball players looked about like they do at home, as far as ability -- a few good, mostly mediocre.

Someone (Tom Ed Moore) emailed me a powerpoint presentation yesterday of some F-22 pictures. It was obvious to me that they were from a computer game. So I told him, nicely. Then he told me he didn't think so. I was wrong, they are real. They look funny because powerpoint (or something before then) changed the resolution and color. So I downloaded most of the originals from the Air Force site and several others of F-22s. They're here:

http://xpda.com/f22

A New Junkmail from Bob!