Monday, March 28, 2011


Monday's Pun(s) !!!

I had to decide between making salad with my mom or playing catch with my dad, it was a toss-up.

Having too many vowels is a consonant struggle in the game of Scrabble.

The man's igneous puns were eventually written in stone.



747 Pilot comments about carrying the Shuttle

Walt and all,

Well, it's been 48 hours since I landed the 747 with the shuttle Atlantis on top and I am still buzzing from the experience. I have to say that my whole mind, body and soul went into the professional mode just before engine start in Mississippi, and stayed there, where it all needed to be, until well after the flight...in fact, I am not sure if it is all back to normal as I type this email. The experience was surreal. Seeing that "thing" on top of an already overly huge aircraft boggles my mind. The whole mission from takeoff to engine shutdown was unlike anything I had ever done. It was like a dream... someone else's dream.

We took off from Columbus AFB on their 12,000 foot runway, of which I used 11,999 1/2 feet to get the wheels off the ground. We were at 3,500 feet left to go of the runway, throttles full power, nose wheels still hugging the ground, copilot calling out decision speeds, the weight of Atlantis now screaming through my fingers clinched tightly on the controls, tires heating up to their near maximum temperature from the speed and the weight, and not yet at rotation speed, the speed at which I would be pulling on the controls to get the nose to rise. I just could not wait, and I mean I COULD NOT WAIT, and started pulling early. If I had waited until rotation speed, we would not have rotated enough to get airborne by the end of the runway. So I pulled on the controls early and started our rotation to the takeoff attitude. The wheels finally lifted off as we passed over the stripe marking the end of the runway and my next hurdle (physically) was a line of trees 1,000 feet off the departure end of Runway 16. All I knew was we were flying and so I directed the gear to be retracted and the flaps to be moved from Flaps 20 to Flaps 10 as I pulled even harder on the controls. I must say, those trees were beginning to look a lot like those brushes in the drive through car washes so I pulled even harder yet! I think I saw a bird just fold its wings and fall out of a tree as if to say "Oh just take me". Okay, we cleared the trees, duh, but it was way too close for my laundry. As we started to actually climb, at only 100 feet per minute, I smelled something that reminded me of touring the Heineken Brewery in Europe...I said "is that a skunk I smell?" and the veterans of shuttle carrying looked at me and smiled and said "Tires"! I said "TIRES??? OURS???" They smiled and shook their heads as if to call their Captain an amateur...okay, at that point I was. The tires were so hot you could smell them in the cockpit. My mind could not get over, from this point on, that this was something I had never experienced. Where's your mom when you REALLY need her?

The flight down to Florida was an eternity. We cruised at 250 knots indicated, giving us about 315 knots of ground speed at 15,000' The miles didn't click by like I am use to them clicking by in a fighter jet at MACH .94. We were burning fuel at a rate of 40,000 pounds per hour or 130 pounds per mile, or one gallon every length of the fuselage. The vibration in the cockpit was mild, compared to down below and to the rear of the fuselage where it reminded me of that football game I had as a child where you turned it on and the players vibrated around the board. I felt like if I had plastic clips on my boots I could have vibrated to any spot in the fuselage I wanted to go without moving my legs...and the noise was deafening. The 747 flies with its nose 5 degrees up in the air to stay level, and when you bank, it feels like the shuttle is trying to say "hey, let's roll completely over on our back"..not a good thing I kept telling myself. SO I limited my bank angle to 15 degrees and even though a 180 degree course change took a full zip code to complete, it was the safe way to turn this monster.

Airliners and even a flight of two F-16s deviated from their flight plans to catch a glimpse of us along the way. We dodged what was in reality very few clouds and storms, despite what everyone thought, and arrived in Florida with 51,000 pounds of fuel too much to land with. We can't land heavier than 600,000 pounds total weight and so we had to do something with that fuel. I had an idea...let's fly low and slow and show this beast off to all the taxpayers in Florida lucky enough to be outside on that Tuesday afternoon. So at Ormond Beach we let down to 1,000 feet above the ground/water and flew just east of the beach out over the water. Then, once we reached the NASA airspace of the Kennedy Space Center, we cut over to the Banana/Indian Rivers and flew down the middle of them to show the people ofTitusville, Port St.Johns and Melbourne just what a 747 with a shuttle on it looked like. We stayed at 1,000 feet and since we were dragging our flaps at "Flaps 5", our speed was down to around 190 to 210 knots. We could see traffic stopping in the middle of roads to take a look. We heard later that a Little League Baseball game stop to look and everyone cheered as we became their 7th inning stretch. Oh say can you see...

After reaching Vero Beach, we turned north to follow the coast line back up to the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF). There was not one person laying on the beach...they were all standing and waving! "What a sight" I thought...and figured they were thinking the same thing. All this time I was bugging the engineers, all three of them, to re-compute our fuel and tell me when it was time to land. They kept saying "Not yet Triple, keep showing this thing off" which was not a bad thing to be doing. However, all this time the thought that the landing, the muscling of this 600,000 pound beast, was getting closer and closer to my reality. I was pumped up! We got back to the SLF and were still 10,000 pounds too heavy to land so I said I was going to do a low approach over the SLF going the opposite direction of landing traffic that day. So at 300 feet, we flew down the runway, rocking our wings like a whale rolling on its side to say "hello" to the people looking on! One turn out of traffic and back to the runway to land...still 3,000 pounds over gross weight limit. But the engineers agreed that if the landing were smooth, there would be no problem. "Oh thanks guys, a little extra pressure is just what I needed!" So we landed at 603,000 pounds and very smoothly if I have to say so myself. The landing was so totally controlled and on speed, that it was fun. There were a few surprises that I dealt with, like the 747 falls like a rock with the orbiter on it if you pull the throttles off at the "normal" point in a landing and secondly, if you thought you could hold the nose off the ground after the mains touch down, think again...IT IS COMING DOWN!!! So I "flew it down" to the ground and saved what I have seen in videos of a nose slap after landing. Bob's video supports this! :8-)

Then I turned on my phone after coming to a full stop only to find 50 bazillion emails and phone messages from all of you who were so super to be watching and cheering us on! What a treat, I can't thank y'all enough. For those who watched, you wondered why we sat there so long. Well, the shuttle had very hazardous chemicals on board and we had to be "sniffed" to determine if any had leaked or were leaking. They checked for Monomethylhydrazine (N2H4 for Charlie Hudson) and nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4). Even though we were "clean", it took way too long for them to tow us in to the mate-demate area. Sorry for those who stuck it out and even waited until we exited the jet.

I am sure I will wake up in the middle of the night here soon, screaming and standing straight up dripping wet with sweat from the realization of what had happened. It was a thrill of a lifetime. Again I want to thank everyone for your interest and support. It felt good to bring Atlantis home in one piece after she had worked so hard getting to the Hubble Space Telescope and back.

Triple Nickel

NASA Pilot


Hat tip to the Southwest Editor at Large for this one!

Friday, March 25, 2011


It's Aloha Friday....

...no work till Monday!!!


Doo de doo, de doo, de doo ....

It's raining, it's pouring, the olde man...... is watching Varsity Lacrosse on Friday .... Wings on Saturday and a little CR-914 racing on Sunday. Y'all have a GREAT one!!

Doo de doo, de doo, de doo ....


"Get your island fix on the Internet with KPOA!"
Listen live to the island sounds from Maui!

Huh?

Canadian general to take NATO command of Libya


What am I missing? A Canadian? No offense to Canuckians, 3/4 of my family are them, but WTH has a Canadian General done...in a war...with bullets and stuff? What could go wrong? Oh, Canada.......

Am I the only one feeling that FUBAR! will be the battle cry
?

(Excuse me while I GOOGLE "Great Canadian War Victories")

UPDATE: Ruh Roh.... OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada's minority Conservative government was defeated in a non-confidence vote on Friday, setting the scene for a federal election in early May.

Abducted?!

Sammy Hagar says he was abducted by aliens, or at least that they downloaded his brain. In an interview with mtvhive.com about his new book, Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, the ex-Van Halen frontman said that part of the book where he recounts dreams about UFOs actually happened. Saying that this might make him “sound like a crazy person,” but “It was real.” "They were plugged into me. It was a download situation ... Or, they uploaded something from my brain, like an experiment." He went on to talk about seeing a space ship hovering over a field in broad daylight when he was four years old.

Maybe it was something lost in the translation....or tequila.

OregonE.

California is messed up. That is a given. Fate has taken me to Oregon, Oreagan, up north....etc, on several occasions. Nice place. I could live there except for the fact that the state is run like a crucible for wingnut theories and practices. It's' like San Francisco on a larger scale. Want details? Check out the musings of Oregon Guy.

What started this post was my reading of another. Seems president Zero recently hosted the Guvners from all the states for a big suare' in Washington to celebrate their awesomeness. The "significant other" of the current lefty in charge of Oregon was "whisked" along for the trip. as a treat for her minions she authored a lenghty e-mail recounting the breathless adventure ...of ...it... all.

Then, once we were all seated, the President stood and asked us to welcome Gladys Knight! She entered through the back of the room, walked right beside John’s chair, and joined the Pips on-stage. (I hadn’t even known they were the Pips). She put on an amazing performance. Several times I just looked around at the whole scene and said to myself, “Is this really my life? Really? Incredible.” [Emphasis added]


Later upon returning to their hotel the First Significant Other of Oregone decided to put on a show for the little people.


When we arrived back at the Marriot, it was late and I was bundled up in my black wool coat. But at the door, I told John I had to exercise the gown. He understood immediately and removed my coat and held out his arm. As we strolled through the lobby in tux and designer gown, shamelessly turning heads, knowing we had just dined with the President and First Lady, I reminded myself of Julia Roberts in the Pretty Woman hotel lobby scene (minus the part about being a prostitute of course J). A truly amazing, special evening

I wouldn't be so quick about deleting that prositute angle. Nevertheless, the good folks of Oregone need to be bracing for a fresh round of tax hikes....the First Significant Other of Oregone has seen Paris and somehow....the beast must be fed.

Go read the ho thing (minus the part about the ho of course)




Tuesday, March 22, 2011



Turn Out The Lights...
The Parties Over......



From the blogProf:

Census Shocker: Detroit’s population falls to 713,000, lost 25% of its population in last decade

That's not just a dip. It is an exodus of biblical proportions. Over the last 10 years - since the last census - this means that approximately 65 people left Detroit... each and every God-blessed day.

The Rumbear migrated southwest in 1979. Might be time to migrate back and grab some of that acreage......just thinking.

Kiss me, you fool...

After being denied a kiss yesterday by a neighbor 39 years her junior, a 92-year-old Florida woman allegedly returned to her home, retrieved a .380 semi-automatic handgun, and fired several shots into the man’s residence.

As Grandpa Rumbear once told me, if a 92 year old woman wants a kiss, kiss her....with or without the handgun.

WizDumb

Hugo Chavez speaks out on....life on Mars.

Capitalism may be to blame for the lack of life on the planet Mars, Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday.

"I have always said, heard, that it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet," Chavez said in speech to mark World Water Day.

Chavez, who also holds capitalism responsible for many of the world's problems, warned that water supplies on Earth were drying up.

That was fun....moving right along.....





Pure Michigan

5 inches?! I will defer to our Michigander MidWest Editor for insight on that comment.




Ya Can't Make This Up......

A 49-year-old man is in Sullivan County Jail without bail after authorities say he showed up for a court hearing on a felony DWI charge drunk and carrying an open can of Busch beer, plus four more cans in a bag.

The Middletown Times Herald-Record reports that Keith Gruber of Swan Lake was an hour and a half late for his court appearance Monday before Sullivan County Judge Frank LaBuda, who asked him if he enjoyed his "liquid lunch."

Gruber said he did, then said he was sorry.

LaBuda sent him to jail with no bail.

More here.

Monday, March 21, 2011


Sarah on the Go!

Former American vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin expressed support for Jews praying openly on the Temple Mount on a visit to the Old City of Jerusalem on Sunday, officials who accompanied Palin said.

Palin and her husband Todd arrived for a two-day visit on Sunday afternoon and toured the Western Wall and its adjacent tunnels. They will visit the Old City again on Monday, tour Gesthsemane and the Mount of Olives, and have dinner with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara at their official residence in Jerusalem.

Someday, I would like to go to Israel. Not sure if they allow Rumbear's in....but apparently Mama Grizzlies are welcome.

Monday's Pun(s) !!!

I like the latest horror movie so much that I've arranged a private screaming.

The coffee tasted like mud because it was ground a couple of minutes ago.

A circus lion won't eat clowns because they taste funny.


Nobel Peace Prize Winner Enters Third War!

Living in the time of the audacity of hope, leaders win prizes they are not entitled to and then get to hang on to them when they do the exact opposite. Ladies & Gentlemen president Zero, Our Hero.

Using his time tested method of refusing to make a decision or take a positions on any topic, ole Zero voted "present" and got on a plane to Brazil. Three women made the decision and the Tomahawks they did fly.

Where are the protests of No War for Oil? Consulted the French, British, Arab League, Hillary, John Kerry, that idiot Biden but........ Has Congress approved this escapade?

Overheard:
"War! Uhh, what is it good for? Absolutely something! Say it again! War!"



Awwwww...STFU.

Racist, Bigoted, Gang leader, Calypso Louie Farrakhan has weighed in on Brother Obama bombing Brother K-Daffy..

"I warn my brother do you let these wicked demons move you in a direction that will absolutely ruin your future with your people in Africa and throughout the world...Why don't you organize a group of respected Americans and ask for a meeting with Qaddafi, you can't order him to step down and get out, who the hell do you think you are?

So, what you gonna do about it Louie?



Apple.....
...is there an problem they can't solve?



Apple has come under fire for approving an "app" that offers guidance on how homosexual people can be "cured" and convert to heterosexuality.


Click here for more.

Friday, March 18, 2011


It's Aloha Friday...
...no work till Monday!!!


Doo de doo, de doo, de doo ....

Busy weekend coming up, Band Trip to Knott's Berry Farm, Varsity Lacrosse Friday & Saturday .... Wings on Saturday. Y'all have a GREAT one!!

Doo de doo, de doo, de doo ....


"Get your island fix on the Internet with KPOA!"
Listen live to the island sounds from Maui!

Tuesday, March 15, 2011


Probably.......


Present!

president Zero is at it again. Economy tanking, death threats to Republicans in Wisconsin, war in Afghanistan, trouble in Egypt, Khadaffy shooting fellow Libyans, Japan swamped and still quaking.....

And....

Where is Zero?

Picking his choices for the college hoops brackets....of course.

Leadership? Not really.