White alligator sighting!

Hi kids!

Speaking of things that could eat you, while Angel Jen and I were at
the zoo we saw this white alligator.

"Oh, an albino!" I hear you young geneticists exclaiming. And you
would be wrong.

This big baby is not an albino he's "leucistic". What's the
difference between leucistic and albino? Beats me. Sometimes I suspect
scientists of making up words. I suspect it means "white skin" or
something equally obvious in Latin.

Well, he's huge, he's white, he's very very rare and he has blue eyes.
They just about can't survive in the wild because 1) he can't hide in
the water and pretend to be a log which makes it tough to catch prey
to eat and B) the rednecks like to shoot them. What is a redneck, you
ask? Just look around you, kid. The woods up there are full of them.

But don't let the blue eyes fool ya. If you were to cuddle down next
to ole whitey here, throw an arm around him and say, "My! What pretty
blue eyes you have!" Mr. Alligator would say, "CHOMP!" and you would
be alligator lunch. Then he'd say, "Mmmm-mmmm! I loves my kid
lunches! Yeah, baby!"

Remember kids, you can always trust an alligator-to be an alligator,
that is.

So be good today, kids, so the teacher doesn't have to lay an
alligator chomp on you!

This thing could eat you!

Hi kids!

Like I said in the last post, Angel Jen and I hooked up with some
family and took a trip to the zoo.

This zoo had more animals and birds than you could shake a stick at.
Creatures from all over the world. They had signs telling what the
name of the thing was, where it lived, what it ate, stuff like that.
Man, I bet you wish you could read so you could learn about the
animals in the zoo, huh? Well, keep at it, little buddies. You'll
catch on some day. At least we pray that you will.

At thezoo theyhadallkinds of animals that could eat you. They had
alligators and bears, cheetas, jaguarsstuff whose name I can't recall

And they had this dragon. This thing was huge. It's called a Komodo
dragon and if he was hungry he could eat you. It's the biggest lizard
in the world.

Oh, and by "he could eat you" I meant he could eat YOU, not me. I'm
too big to get eaten and pirates don't taste good. He'd spit me back
out in a trice. You, on the other hand would make a delicious meal.
And since you're young you'd be tasty and tender.

Sorry about the size of the picture but I didn't want to get too
close. Maybe he didn't know that pirates taste bad.

So be good kids and stay away from the Komodo dragons!

Man, is this ugly!

Hi kids!

Well, little buddies, Angel Jen and I are in West Palm Beach,
Florida. We came here to visit with our daughter, son in law and
grand kids while they were on vacation in the area. We hooked up and
went to the zoo. More on that later.

In the mean time, I went to the library. I almost always go to the
library when we stop in a town. Free wifi, warm comfy chairs, pleasant
people and computer printers comprise the attractions to be had
there. On this trip to said library, while trying to sync my iPhone
and load some podcasts to listen to while on the lonely seas I got
interviewed by library staff. They wanted a quote from a patron for
use on their website. I waxed long and poetic about what a
wonderful thing libraries are in general and this one in particular.
They were pleased to have a happy customer. Then they asked if there
was anything they could improve. I said,"Yes. You have the ugliest
library furniture I have ever seen! You gotta get rid of this!" The
girl tried to say she liked it, but I leave it to you. Isn't this
chair ugly? Yucky green with an ugly print. Whew! West Palm Beach,
we expect better of you!

Dreams

Hi kids!


Here's a picture that was sent to me by my son. I love this painting.  I think its absolutely beautiful. No, I don't know what is a painting of and I don't care. It just makes me feel good to look at it.   It was painted by his wife. They are in London. She is studying art, making paintings and 'broadening' her experience. That's what they call it when you go do some wild and crazy thing that people like you don't normally do to learn things you might not normally learn.

London, as is well known to the junior geographists among you, is a big old city in England,  which is itself part of Great Britain. It's, whoa nelly, say five thousand miles or so east of Camptown.  A 'wicked long way' away, you might say.

So what's all this to you, you ask. Well, little buddies, the point is that people can go places and do things that are way beyond what you might think.

I remember when I was a little kid like you. That was when your teacher was a little girl, too, so that gives you an idea how long ago that was. I never knew anyone who had ever been to Europe or any of those far off places I read about in books.  I never knew any one who made paintings or did those fancy things. I was just white trash from the backwoods and hills.

But if you try, if you keep your eyes open and grab opportunities when they come around I'm here to tell you, dreams can come true.

Why, in my time I've been to London, Paris, Germany, the middle east where the men wear turbans on their heads, Japan where they have no chairs and all sit on the floor, Vietnam, Malaysia, lots of places. And now my son, who is white trash like his father, truth be known, though he's awful good looking and smart as a whip, is in London with a beautiful young woman making paintings and filming movies while his brother is the backbone of an Internet startup in Greenwich Village, New York and a masterful photographer, guitarist and all around fine, gifted young man.

Kids, dreams can come true. But remember, you have to hold onto those dreams like little bulldogs. Sink your teeth in and never let go until you worry that dream into reality.

Step one:  LISTEN TO THE TEACHER!

Why?  Come on. You know the answer.  Because she's always....

She's always what?

She's always RIGHT!*

*or at least that's the way to bet

Be good!


Pirate John and the ever lovely Angel Jen

Weather faxes

 

Hi kids!

I talked before about sailors needing to know what the weather is.  The big, benevolent federal government kindly provides mariners and others access to great resources for weather prediction.  One of these resources is 'weather faxes'.  These are actual faxes that you can receive on your boat over special radios to show you pictures of the weather patterns for the day.  You can also get them online from the internet.  I look at several every day to figure out what the weather will be when we sail.

Here is a typical fax.  It shows an outline of the United States' coast, the presence of high and low pressure systems (look for an H.  That's a high.  Look for an L.  That's a low.)  The heavy lines show different air pressures and the little arrows show which direction the wind is blowing and how strong it is.  The wind blows from the tail of the arrow where the little 'barbs' are to the other end.  The number of 'barbs' tell you how strong the wind is.  Three barbs is 30 mph.  Two it 20 mph.  Two and a short one are 25 mph, and so on. 

This fax is a picture of the storm that just passed over you.  It indicates that your wind will be coming from the northwest.  In the center of the swirl of arrows it says 'hurcn force' which means 'hurricane force' or winds over 50 mph.  Woof!  A hurricane is blowing in the north Atlantic!  Guess I better stay out of there!

Here's an internet site with lots more of these weather charts:

http://weather.noaa.gov/fax/marshlatest.shtml

Have fun experimenting with weather charts!  If you check these every day and get used to using them, you'll always be prepared. If not, you'll be just another six year old.  Your choice, kid.

Viewing a launch at Cape Canaveral

Hi Kids!

I suppose you are wondering what it looks like to watch a rocket launch.  Well, here's a picture form the place we went to watch the rocket take off:

 

The rocket is about 11 miles away. There are four tall towers around it with letal antennas on top.  These taller antennas are designed to attract lightning.  If a thunder storm comes through, they don't want lightning to hit the rocket because A) rockets, little buddies, cost a whoa whole lot of money and 2) rockets are full of stuff that can blow up.  

The big building is where they put the rocket together.  There are a bunch of other buildings.  I have no idea what they are for.  You can also see a telephone pole which is much, much closer and a sign in the water that tells boaters "Don't get any closer to the rocket than this" which actually means "Don't get any closer to the rocket than this or we will arrest you and throw you in the slammer".  Official signs always have some sort of subtext like this, often unstated, which it would do you well to be aware of.  You are six and might be able to talk your way out of a trip to the hoosegow, due to your tender years.  But they would go a lot harder on an old Pirate like me who knows better.

This is where we stood to watch the shuttle take off, too.  But a picture like this from that time would  be useless because it was night.

So get the teacher to give you a run down on the concept of perspective.  Have her explain why the telephone pole, which is actually much, much shorter than the rocket, appears to be a hundred times taller.  Go ahead.  Ask her.

 

Rocket scientist sighting!

Hi Kids! 

Well, the big storm system that brought you all the new snow swung a little too far south last night for us to sail today.  This morning the wind was just a howling down here and we decided to lay low another day and sail south tomorrow.  The wind is predicted to continue coming from the north for the rest of the week so we have time to wait.

I checked the NASA rocket launch schedule on a whim to see if they still intended to try to launch the rocket they had planned for this morning.  It was 10:13 when I checked it.  The launch was scheduled for 10:26 and the schedule said it was still on.  So I said to Angel jen, "You want to go watch this rocket blast off?"

She said, "We ain't got nothing else to do!" (She likes to talk like that to make fun of my lousy English.  She's a card, she is.)

So we hustled up, dug her folding bike out of the shower stall where we keep it, dragged it up on the dock, unfolded it and pitched my bike over the rail onto the dock and we were off.  We bicycled the mile and a half down to the launch watching place and made it in plenty of time.  I was trying to take it easy on Angel Jen because she isn't much of a cyclist but she was having none of it.  "I'm Right behind you!' she yelled."Pick it up a little!"

So I pedaled faster.

When we got down there there was another couple there.  The launch got 'scrubbed' (which is rocket talk for 'postponed') after waiting an hour past the scheduled launch time.  We got talking to the other people and it turns out he is a retired rocket scientist!  A real live, honest to god, rocket scientist.  He wrote the computer software protocols for the communication of the Apollo space craft between the capsule and earth.  As you little historians know, the Apollo project is the NASA name for the rockets that went to the moon in the sixties and seventies, back when your teacher was a youngster.  Which was a loooong time ago.

They were really nice people so we invited them back to the boat for coffee.  We talked for a while and I asked him where he was when the rocket to the moon took off.  He said he was in 'the firing room'.  That's the room with all the control panels that we all saw on TV, the room with all the engineers who controlled the rocket.  He told us he had discovered a mistake in the software about ten minutes before the launch and was in hot discussions with his boss, the boss's boss, and the boss above him about how to fix it.  He got their permission to 'patch' the software and made it so the launch could happen.  Woof!

He worked for NASA for a long time then retired.  Now he comes out to the bridge to watch the launches with the rest of us.  It sure was interesting sitting down with a real live rocket scientist. 

He said when he goes sailing on boats with his friends he gets to be the navigator, figuring out where the boat is and how to get to where it's going because the guys tell him,"You're the rocket scientist.  You figure it out."  And he does.  It's good to be a rocket scientist.

So study hard, little buddies.  Maybe some day you can launch a rocket.  Or at least learn to navigate.