Lack Toes In Taller Ants

A combination of Florida chilly and breezy has me not doing my usual and customary. I think a dog walk with Ellen and Lili (the dog) will take the place of a bicycle ride and possible flying model airplanes this morning. Once I get going.

In my defense I note that today is already breezy, and my small foam airplane does not handle wind well. And that's only the start of my problems. A good day is when my flight into terrain is under my control: a landing more than a crash. As for the bike? Dunno. Some days are better than others. Lately I've struggled to adjust to traffic.

Ellen is working on a painted-mailbox design for a neighbor. The design will include these small blossoms. 



We figure it's a decent Sunday when we are invited to brunch at the Vero Beach Yacht Club by Sharon and Bill. This is an old money sort of place. One dresses up, but within reason. And electronic communication devices aren't permitted in their dining area. The Theobalds brought a mutual friend whose late husband was one of Ellen's painting students way back when. Later this week, Sharon and Ellen are making an art trip to Palm Beach.





Resuming my interest in hanging out at airports, and taking pics of airplanes, I bought a used Pentax lens that will adapt easily to my Lumix cameras. Lens is okay. I think it might be in really great shape for mid nineteen-eighties used because it's not particularly sharp. Gets better when stopped down. For the moment, I think it will suit my purposes. And it was inexpensive, so there's that.








Above a test shot. One of Purdue's retired airplanes now working in Vero Beach, and Piper's new design in closed traffic. Camera & subject motion a factor in the last shot.

We are looking forward to seeing Xaque Gruber's movie The Pistol this weekend. He produced and directed. A great deal of it shot next door in Ellen's studio. Our house guest for the weekend will be one of the people who worked with Xaque. Stay tuned.

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Catching Up

Maybe the best way to begin to catch up on posts is a picture of yet another bicycle tire repair. I try to keep this kind of repair to a minimum, but I seem to find a lot of road debris. And, for me, there's nothing like a new tire to home right in on sharp stuff. A fragment of rusty knife blade did this. So a "boot" that will keep things together while I get used to time to retire early. Dammit.



Somewhere in all of it, I continue to be amused by airplanes. Well, amazed is probably a better word. My little foam radio control airplane keeps taking hard landings. I'm getting better at controlling my descent into terrain, but only by degrees. Meanwhile, in Melbourne, El Ambia has a new piece of aircraft debris. Looks like the front end from an IAI Westwind. I had intended to have lunch there after visiting Larsen Motorsports open house in early December. Got to El Ambia a bit before 11:00. Only to find that on Saturday they don't open until noon. So I came home and we had homemade. Weeks later I'm still savoring almost having a pan con ropa vieja (it's the shoestring fries).



Larsen runs jet cars. From the looks of their shop they buy a few used GE J-85 motors with high time. And, I'm guessing, that they don't overhaul them much. Mostly they use them up. Someone we met at WFIT radio station drives for them. Kat said her best is around 260 mph. Others have broken 300. I had noticed that most of their drivers are women and considered, first, why not. And second that women probably represent a weight savings where ounces count. - Once everything lights up, these cars are probably burning out about half a gallon per second.






Play your cards right, you might get a train on a railroad trestle near El Ambia. Not everyone is as pleased by this as I am.



Ellen embroiders. Lili hangs out with Ellen. Yesterday Lili got a trip to the Sexton ranch. Ellen was doing an interview for VB 32963 newspaper where she reports on arts. Lili got to hang out in the great outdoors and race around with a smaller ranch dog. She showed little interest in cows.






And winding up with enough for now. Raw Space Gallery has a show of and about women. Niurka Barroso doing portraits of local women using a random walk (kinda) of association to select the women by not selecting. She took photos of a few women and asked them to tell their friends. Pass it on. See where it goes. 

Niurka from Cuba. Later traveling the world, still doing a lot of this, doing photo reporting for international press. She one of the people allowed within a few feet of Fidel Castro. Also she who collected photographs abandoned in Cuba during the Revolution. Pictures now part of a national archive. 

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And They Wrote It All Down As The Progress Of Man

Vero Beach on its way to becoming the new Fort Lauderdale. Choking on sprawl and consequences. Can't build more fast enough. Haven't we seen something like this before? 

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Looks like folks are moving in about as fast as the new ones go up. Vero Beach sprawls and splatters outward. 

Man wrote a song about the last financial collapse: "easy credit, no money down, that's the way we built this town . . . and the only shelter that credit buys is a house of cards and a pack of lies." 

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Nuts On A New Level

Nashville has a Parthenon replica. Nuts on a new level. I contemplate, without resolving anything, why this might have seemed important. And to whom.

Nike, in Athena's right hand, is six feet tall. About eight pounds of gold leaf used for Athena. Bronze doors that appear to be hollow. Still a whole lot of metal involved.

And I make a little joke.

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Ye Olde Curiosities

Pictures that come my way. And a few pictures I've taken recently.

Captain Miller (back) getting the scene with his mojoPhone. First Officer is piloting the drone. Crested Butte, Colorado. - I stitched drone stills into a panorama.

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Closer to home with the Quiet Birds of Riverside Park. My little airplane nose down leaning against the van. Tom's various airplanes inside his van. He's a retired aero-engineer who flies a lot of sheet-foam pushers. - I, with about 1/2 hour total time, just try not to crash so hard that I do damage requiring glue and splines.

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Meanwhile, and nearby, the dog park. Our dog, Lili, in foreground. There had been a plan afoot, now thwarted (we hope!) for the city to sell this land for the cash. A brew pub would go in, and there would be a big ol' parking lot instead of happy dogs racing around. At a City Council meeting the public showed up in number and not in support of this great idea.



Parked at Wells Fargo. A succession of huge pickup trucks in the slot beside us. We have a couple of Honda Fit. Lots of room and really great mpg. Not the best visibility, seeing or being seen, in traffic.





Summer afternoon weather -

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