Author Archives: Dick

Adventure

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Floridian Ilse Telesmanich sprained her ankle hiking in South Africa. She was 90.

A retired builder, Englishman Tom Lackey, took up wing-walking at 89. His family thinks he’s mad.

Adventures come in many forms.


Superboat in Marathon

In 1982, Boppa looked around and said, “I’m 92 years old. Let’s move to Florida.” It was the first wanderlust he had given in to for 67 years. My grandmother, though, came from a family of semi-wanderers.

Her great-x-5-grandfather, Richard Barnard, wandered from England to the Colonies in 1642 to follow William Penn into what became southeastern Pennsylvania. His grandson (my first cousin six times removed) Isaac was an American lawyer who served as a United States Senator and in the Fourteenth Regiment Infantry of the United States Army Militia as a Major General in the War of 1812. Odd role for a Quaker. Another early cousin, Cyrus Barnard obtained a patent for a mowing-machine as early as 1820. He was also the first to import merino sheep into Chester County. Another odd combination. A subsequent Richard Barnard (my first cousin five times removed) was perhaps the first Chester Countian to go to California in search of wealth.

My neighbor sold his air conditioning business in Maryland and moved to the Keys to buy a boatyard. My own parents couldn’t stay put despite the fact that their lives were based in Chester County for five decades and in the Keys for a couple more. They wandered in road trips and in the boat and one hurricane season moved to Gallup, New Mexico. They are now circumnavigating the globe on a rose petal but that’s another story.

My path has been a little different because I got a variant “adventure” gene. I flew to Europe to ski the Alps and then later to work and annoy German waitresses. I conned a 50′ twin-screw diesel boat in the Chesapeake and built a 30-foot boat in the barn. I’ve rappelled down the Palisades.

Now much of my travel across New England, Florida, and the American Southwest is to get the light right on a bat tower, lie in the grass for a view of brown cows against vibrant foliage, view an ancient cactus bloom against biosphere glass, or capture the vanishing end of a seven mile bridge over clear green water.

I have visited 40 US states, but I tend to settle in. Although I’m a ninth-generation Pennsylvania native and I’ve resided in only four states, I found a home in the Keys.

There are adventures here.

Once upon a time, long after the pirates stopped sailing square-riggers, the Keys had powerboat races in the waters off Key West, Marathon, and Islamorada. Somehow, we lost the Marathon and Islamorada events but the Super Boat Grand Prix will return to Marathon on Fourth of July weekend. There should be 20-25 boats, the big iron, there. These boats can hit 150 mph going under the 7-Mile Bridge and past Inch Beach. And they’ll be back at the marina behind Faro Blanco.

I drove race cars for several years but I’ve never considered driving race boats. See, when I tried that I discovered that I don’t think in the third dimension at speed. Race cars go up and down but they stay (mostly) attached to the ground. Race boats go up and down and the driver needs to remember to land the darned things.

There may be a different approach.

On the news last night, SWMBO and I watched a piece on seniors (that means people waaaaaaay older than we are) taking up kiteboarding. Now-74-year-old retired science teacher Louis Self writes that “Riding and jumping with a wake board, being propelled only by the wind gives an unimaginable rush.”

Hmmm.


Surfing to Infinity

She told me that I can’t do it. A boy does love a challenge if I can just figure out how to land the darned thing.

I’m not going to try to master a headstand, though. I’m not nuts, after all.

 

Observation

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It is hard to believe that the Vermont DMV website (dmvexpress.vermont.gov) can be so exceptionally good while the Vermont Health Connect website (healthconnect.vermont.gov) can be so extraordinarily bad.

It’s a Gas!

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Hillary2.0 began the first rally of her campaign with a sharp attack on Republicans. “There may be some new voices in the presidential Republican choir,” she said. “But they’re all singing the same old song.”

Would those lyrics be “Dem policies cost too much, cost too much!”?

I drove the east coast last week, right through the heart of red states and blue states.


3-Month Gas Price, US v. San Francisco

The cheapest gas I saw was in South Carolina at $2.339.

Prior to the 1960s, Democrats were “firmly in control of the government of South Carolina at all levels. The state Republican Party was little more than a country club group… [but] from 1964 to present, the Republican Party has gradually gained strength and by the 1990s it became the dominant party of the state.”

It turns out that the Hillary constituency digs deeper at the gas pump than most North Puffin Perspective™ readers. Drivers in Santa Barbara, for example, pay 75 cents more per gallon than drivers in Tulsa, OK. The pattern repeats in all the liberal strongholds from the Left Coast where gas prices are on the wrong side of $3.50 per gallon to New England and the Northeast where $3 per gallon is the rule. The solid Republican regions across the Midwest and South have the nation’s lowest prices, well below $2.50 per gallon.


3-Month Gas Price, Vermont, NY, and South Carolina

On my road trip last week, I paid more for gas in the Peoples’ Republic of Vermont than in the Keys. In fact, I paid more for gas in Vermont than in any other state.

Florida $2.639 (in the Keys)
Georgia $2.459
South Carolina $2.339
Virginia $2.499
Pennsylvania $2.799 at the Sunoco at Davisville Road (I didn’t buy any)
New Jersey $2.429 (the attendant pumped it and washed my windshield)
New York Northway $2.839
Vermont $2.839

Blown away I was when I saw the price at the pump over the bridge in Vermont was exactly the same as the price in New York State. I drove into Vermont on fumes because I refused to pay that New York price.

New York stations have always charged a dime or two more than Vermont stations because New York gas taxes total 62.9 cents per gallon but Vermont gets “only” 48.9 cents per gallon. Now that extra 14 cents is going straight into gouging in an oh-so-very liberal state but that’s another story.

As a general rule of thumb, every penny we save on a gallon of gasoline results in about $1 billion of money that you and I can spend on stuff. That’s not trivial, even when all the 140-ish million U.S. car owners have to split it. Let me do the math for you. A penny puts seven bucks in your pocket if you drive an average number of miles. I get more because my truck gets lousy mileage. A dime at the pump gets us $71 each. A dollar difference at the pump means my road trip from South Puffin to North Puffin cost me $100 less.

One hundred dollars.

So, here’s the $64 question: Why do liberals vote against their own self interest, let alone against yours and mine? I mean does the liberal really like paying more for gasoline and food and doctoring and taxes and Kool Aid™?