Chopper

S! to you Shep. Have a good and afe journey.

:minuteofsilence: S!

S!

Good morning. Getting over whatever it was that got me last week. And a new mouse replacing the old one that died Thursday morn.

Morning all. Humid. Humid, humid, humid.

S!

There's this guy in my hometown, Windsor Ont., that has taken upon himself to collect stuff the gov't says it doesn't want to handle, mostly foodstuffs, basically because of the cost and bulk. He started collecting stuff Friday and loaded it onto his truck. He now has 3 trucks. My neighbour just dropped in to tell me the first 2 trucks have crossed the border at 7 pm tonight (19:00 hrs EDST).

Firefly is the old RR inlines. Advantages for using Rolls Royce engines would be there's a lot of them. Inlines, due to better cooling with water is a tad more fuel efficient. RR inlines have a reputation for reliability and modest maintenance demands for an inline. Note that I'm talking RR inlines only. Now the Sea Fury would have the radial engine. Radial engines generally are easier to maintain. The big thing about radials of course is the huge improvement in power to rate ratio. A 1500 hp inline might weigh 2000 lb (including all its peripherals) whereas the radial of same power might weigh 1200 lb. There's 800 lb of fuel, or over 100 imp gal/120 US gal of extra fuel that could be carried. Radials are less vulnerable to battle damage. Inlines have to cool its coolant so you need a radiator and plumbing and stuff that can be hit. Both need to cool their oil however. Inlines do have a significantly smaller frontal area even when including its radiator, and is more effectively streamlined with cowling. It's a balance and a bit of a tough choice, but radials generally win because of its power to weight ratio and maintenance. The inline would win because you may already have alot of them.

So the word is go then. S! and good luck.

I just got back from a weekend of camping and I was hungry soooooo............

Fish & Chips with malt vinegar is very British. Poutine is French. Check that, no it's not, it's Quebecois. Yes there is a difference. I grew up on fish & chips and fries and gravy.

It's the lack of heat Brian. Pepper plants grew very nicely, but refused to fruit. Need heat. Sustained heat for a couple of weeks or so. Ii found after a few winters beards do work. Dehydration is a problem when it's cold but a good beard acts as a water collector from the air and breath. Just pop a beard icicle in your mouth and you're good to go for a bit longer. The problem I have after writing such a thing is the "Damn, I forgot to say ........ " that inevitably occurs after.

And the tv evangalist Pat Robertson was praying for another vacancy. Spooky. Kinda backfired some though.

Wrote that piecemeal throughout the day (on Word). I could have written so much more. Those years were very full.

Happy BD Alberta, my home for 21 years (1975-1996), the best part, and the most part for that matter, of my adult life. When I arrived in Edmonton the population was 450k. I believe it's now a million. The province had a bit over one and a half million and now about double that. As a goodbye gift when I left Nova Corporation of Alberta, and Alberta itself, I was given the first volume of the history of Alberta from my colleagues. Time for a reread. I arrived in the capital city Edmonton, a.k.a. Edmonchuk, June 1, 1975, during the boom years. I partied near constantly with Aussies and Kiwis, Germans and Austrians, Englishmen, Irishmen and Frenchmen, Ugandans and Rumanians, Ukrainians and Chileans, all "fresh off the boat". I had been wondering where the heck are the Americans? Until coming to Alberta my life was saturated with Americans, so I was a little disoriented. My first trip to Calgary a few months after arriving answered that question. Eventually I met an Albertan, poor devils. With 2 friends we took part in a programme to take in temporarily homeless kids, usually Amerind, the contract usually being for 3 months. But Rick, a Cree, stayed with us a year and John, an Inuit, a year and a half. The early European settlers were mainly French, Ukrainian (hence the nickname Edmonchuk), Norwegians, Dukabours and a smattering of anybody crazy and desperate enough to give it a go under the protective watch of the North West Mounted Police. All 9 of them. The Amerind nations were numerous. Cree, Inuit/Dene, Blood, Blackfoot, Blackfeet, Paegan, Stoney, Assiniboine to name a few, and all at war with each other. Sister Kitty’s first husband is an Albertan. Though they would move back and forth between Alberta and Ontario, their 3 sons were born in Alberta, and 2 of them are currently living there. Brother Joe met and married a Newfie girl in Alberta. I fell in love twice, in lust ……. constantly (Edmonton had a higher than average female population). Had a friend morph from man to woman to lesbian. Had a good friend die on the oil rigs. Another drive off a mountain road. Another hung himself. Party crashing was the norm even expected. Jobs were plentiful and money flowed. A buddy of mine had come out to visit. I was showing him the town, and during the tour 3 times at stop lights we had truck drivers, noticing the Ontario plates, asked us if we were looking for a job (no) and we could to-such-and such address to get one. Eventually the boom ended, and had a bit of a crash, but when I left, December 6, 1996, things were pretty darn good. When I arrived Peter Lougheed was Premiere and when I left it was Ralph Klien. What a contrast. I watched with utter fascination the war between Peter and Pierre over the NEP. I had come to respect and like Peter, even if he is a Blue Conservative, but I was a Trudeau-ite. I partied many times with Dave Getty, a co-worker and son of Don Getty, an ex-football player and the middle Premier while I was there. Poor kid. I’ve never seen a more accident prone kid in my life. I can still hear the SMACK as the baseball went into his face, and he was, still is, a damn fine looking boy. Like Ontario, politics are dynastic. Alberta went from centrist Liberal (1905-1921), to the socialist United Farmers of Alberta (1921-1935), to the populist CCF (1935-1971) to soft to hardening Progressive Conservatives (1971 –present). Federally I had watched the rise of Preston Manning and the far right Reform Party (becoming the Alliance and now merged with the Progressive Conservatives forming the Conservative Party). Oh yes, I remember Stephen Harper. I grew up on pool table flat land surrounded on 3 of 4 sides by water, and hundreds of miles of sandy beaches. I went to a region of mud puddles for lakes, except in the north, and my grand nephew plays in his sandbox that has more sand than all of Alberta. Ontario is deep forest in the north, the Canadian Shield in the centre east and flat, but very fertile land in the south. Alberta is desert-like tundra in the north, muskeg in the centre and dry steppe land in the south. But to the west there is the awesomeness of the Rockies. Lake Miniwonka (sp?), now that’s a place to party, surrounded by massive rocks, with the Columbian Glaciers not far away. Alberta does have forests, but pretty much just softwood. The closest thing they have to hardwood is the poplar (read: Really Big Weed). Southern Ontario is cities and towns from Windsor to Kingston. Heavy industry and chemicals and pollution. Alberta has 2 cities separated by some 300km or so. In between there’s Red Deer. I liked Red Deer. Way up north is Fort McMurray, once a small village a few decades ago, now a full out city the size of my hometown, since the discovery of the tar sands. However, the air and water, well the air anyway, is much cleaner. Hard to find water. Harder still to find it without iron or sulphur or something in it. Water softeners are a must. Oh yes, tar sands. Tar sands, oil, natural gas. Although the first oil well in North America was drilled at Petrolia Ontario, a couple of hours drive from me, when it comes to hydro-carbons, Alberta rules. When Leduc #1 (about 15km south of Edmonton) was drilled in the 1950’s Alberta went from a have-not to have province overnight and now the mainstay of the Canadian economy. The climate I grew up in has violent but refreshing spring, humid killing heat summers, wonderfully pretty autumns and yuchy wet but mild winters. I went to cold. Dry cold to be sure, but cold. Killing cold. Not much spring or fall, and the summers, not quite as cold. Lots of sun though and meteorogically pretty quiet. Froze my nose in my first -40C/-40F day in one minute. Froze my face motionless in 5 minutes at -25C/-13F after shaving my beard the previous day. Oh ya, a beard does help. No-one survives at -60C/-76F unless well prepared. Spring comes to the Yukon before it does in Edmonton. Further south around Calgary the climate is, well, it’s confusing. In the dead of winter the Chinooks will come, raising the day from -15C to +15C in minutes, then vanish just as quick. The east and southeast, wind. Wind was invented in Lethbridge. When the weather warms up, sorta, the people burst out of their homes and take any excuse to celebrate something. Anything. The big one in Edmonton it’s the Klondike days. Klondike? The Klondike is a thousand miles away for crying out loud. No matter, let’s party. Well it was the home of Wop May and the bush pilots that helped in some near disasters associated with Klondike travelers. The airport is still quite active, right dead centre of Edmonton that grew around it. Calgary has a more legitimate excuse for their party. The Calgary Stampede, said to be the biggest outdoor festival on the planet. You can’t grow anything in Alberta. Well ok, grass in the south and mosquitoes in the north, and not much more. Oh wait, cattle. The south is cowboy country in spades. But that’s because of the grass. They invented Tabor corn for human consumption. LOL, no it’s not. It was the norm to get “CARE” packages by families sent from the incredibly fertile south Ontario, packed with sweet corn, cucumbers, peppers and goodies to stave off scurvy. I tried with a couple of friends to live on a small, quarter section of land, for a year to grow stuff. Silly Ontarians. After chiseling a quarter acre of land to bits (5 days it took) then covering it with tons of horse manure from a neighbour, Fred, who raised Morgans and Percherons we planted and hoped something would come up before the snow flies. The harvest was disappointing. Pretty pepper plants that wouldn’t fruit, some really slim carrots, and pea-size potatoes. The Taber corn came up ok. Gave it a taste. Gave it to Freds pigs. Stupid Ontarians writing letters to home for a CARE package. But there ain’t nothing better than Alberta beef. My driver’s license is Albertan. Way expired but I keep it. I know what it’s like to drive onto black ice at 80 kph. Drove an RCMP officer off the highway. Oooo was he miffed. My favourite restaurant was the Pagolac in Edmonton (Vietnamese). Fireworks going of all “summer” long (mostly to celebrate warmth and the colour green I think). Bought and sold a house in Riverdale, Edmonton (which was under water in the flood earlier this year). Worked 3 years at Great West Electric, owned by Swiss, managed by an Austrian, British and German foremen and Australian and Irish electricians. Worked 15 years at Nova Corporation of Alberta (natural gas pipeline). I miss Alberta. mmmmm well, maybe not the winters. 8 months of cold and ice followed by 4 months of rough sledding. Ya it snowed the August of the year I left.

It's pretty typical and I guess natural Arch. You'd find Britain or France, countries that do have abilities, and egos, just don't immediately let outside help come in. First an assessment is done, rather wise for all concerned and wanna-be concerned I would think, and if the level of damage overtakes their capacity to deal with it AND overcome national pride AND we must add security issues into this nowadays, THEN the doors will open. Except for the pride, the rest makes sense. The pride, I guess it makes sense too in that it's human nature so you just have to go with it.

Good morning. A pretty one it is.

S! Shelly and be safe. Don't do that Shep. In todays world it is a decidedly impractical sentiment. Convert that negativity into positivity like pride.

Careful though guys. Don't piss on the majority because of the minority. I don't know Shep. If the last 3 centuries show anything it's that the Age of Empires, by physical means, is pretty much over. It never benefited the original conquerors a whole lot anyway, usually only the aristocracy. Rome is a glaring example of that when those of true Roman blood was pretty much reduced to irrelevancy. By the 2nd century of empire the real power lay in Gaul and Syria. Rome, the city itself, had become a welfare state and rotten to the core. After Claudius, not many emperors wanted to be in Rome. The Brits discovered it's just too damned expensive, and was in danger of the same irrelevancy Romans would end up with and were already seeing the changes in her own home, not much of it good and getting worse. Smart people the Brits. They could see the writing on the wall and began backpeddling. The writing said "Empire, the last gasp of a dying civilization". As far as I can tell, there have been no exceptiions.

I've been watching little else. CNN, CBC, CTV, BBC. ABC (Australia). I'd be quite suprised if that was not true.

Blood, blankets and beans being collected up here. That's just to start until details of what's really needed come, probably in a few more days.

Ya, that's been real rough down.

oooooooooooooo

It's all by-gones neddie.

Funny that. I call Americans Americans, Yanks and a few other things but foreigner does feel strange. Ok, now I’m scaring myself. But that statement exposes your nationality Rick Other nations, most particularly Canada, understand the USA far more than Americans will give them credit for. It’s impossible not to have a fair degree of knowledge of the US. Yet, the USA knows itself very well and little of others. Typical Canadians know more of American history than their own. In my day there was no such thing as Canadian history. When it did come out it was always in context with British or American history and usually as a bit part.. Most of us live within 100 miles of the US and flooded all our lives with American TV, radio, movies, Americans talking about themselves, and Americans in person (each summer Canada’s population temporarily grows by 3-5%). I was born a 2 miles from Detroit, 9 times larger than Windsor. Many Canadians find it easier to name American Presidents, States and cities then Canadian PM’s Provinces or cities. In my day Canadian history is taught that Canada is but a small part of the world stage. I was taught much more about Britain, USA, France, Italy, Russia or Spain than Canada. My knowledge of Canada now is 99% self taught. Nowadays that has changed somewhat, but I still have convey what I’ve learned to my nephews and nieces as they still don’t know nearly enough. But ya I know, a large standing army is pretty much a Cold War thing when the American Industrialist discovered that a large standing army maintained out of the fear of war was very very profitable. Before that it was almost un-American to have such a thing. The period I spoke of is 1860 to 1867. Oh yes, you had a huge army, and a population 15 times ours behind it. Reading about the evolution of the 2nd Amendment does bare that out. It’s a typically colonial attitude. However, since WW2 the USA has lost that distrust of the military, but up here we have retained it, although it has softened over the last handful of years. And yet we are constantly criticized for not keeping such an army. Actually, that can be a more threatening situation. Dealing with one leader is easier than half a dozen, each of which with larger populations and more natural resources (except trees and beavers) than all of Canada at that time. This is not a comfort as the numerous border raids and incursions would prove. Yes, Manifest Destiny, Monroe Doctrine, the Fenians, a huge battle hardened army, a war just ending that would shake off the loss of 600,000 people (about half the population of the Canadas), brutal conquest of the Amerinds (early period) and 1812 with 5 invasions still in living memory (each invading army larger, sometimes several times larger than all the Red Coats in North America except near the end with a break in the Napoleonic War freeing up more, but by then the invasions had already ceased). What were we supposed to think?