Texas

  

Texas has this thing.  They make road surfaces out of chipseal.  Chipseal is a really coarse form of asphalt that makes a really rough surface.  Generally, chipseal is suitable for 45mph backroads, but Texas puts it on 70mph highways.  (Practically every backroad in Texas is a 70mph highway.)  It's a really loud surface to drive on.

 

Along comes the Mazda3.

 

 

I've had it for quite a while now.  It's a 2013.  It rides like a roller skate.  I really like that.  It's still like new; it's only got 25,000 miles on it.  I have to gas it up once or twice a month and it only takes 9 gallons.  There is a lot to like about that car.  Except the road noise.

 

It's loud.  It's loud on normal roads, but unbearably loud on Texas high-speed chipseal roads.  The noise comes from the tires.  I researched and bought the quietest tires I could get for it.  I bought new tires before the original ones were even worn out.  That helped, but not enough.  I downloaded a sound meter app to my phone.  Normal comfortable background noise is 70 decibels.  The Mazda, on the loudest chipseal is 80 decibels.  I took it to an auto stereo installer.  I asked if they did any soundproofing on cars before they installed expensive stereo systems.  They said they did.  I asked if they could pretend they were going to install an expensive stereo system in my car, but stop when they finished the soundproofing.  They said they would.

 

Soundproofing involves sticky patches of thin sound insulation stuck out of sight to inside surfaces in the car.  They took off the door panels and soundproofed the skin of the doors.  They took out the seats, lifted all the carpeting, and soundproofed the floor, firewall, and inside the wheel wells.  It is soo much quieter now.  On a normal stretch of road it's a nice quiet 60 decibels.  I can listen to the radio without having to turn it up past my pain threshold.  On the loudest stretch of pavement, instead of measuring 80 decibels, which is in the danger zone for hearing damage if that level is maintained for too long, it measures 75.  That's doesn't sound like as big a decrease as I expected or had hoped for, but we have to consider that decibels are a progressive scale.  80 decibels is twice as loud as 70 decibels.  By dropping to 75 decibels, we've accomplished a 25% reduction of total sound on the noisiest road possible.  Most of the time I'm not on that road.  I can now cruise normal highways at a very comfortable 60 decibels, which is only half the noise level of an acceptable 70 decibels.

 

Brilliant!

 

 

 

Washington - Follow-up

  

Before it was Washington State, that land was part of the Oregon Territory, a very large western territory that included all of present-day Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and parts of Wyoming and Montana.  When it was proposed to break off the northern part of the Oregon Territory, the part north of the Columbia River, the Columbia River being the current border between Washington and Oregon, the proposed name was Territory of Columbia.  That name was refused because it was thought it might be confused with the existing Washington, District of Columbia, so they named it Washington Territory instead.  Go Figure.

 

And now we've come to the day that Washington, D.C. statehood is being discussed.  (Thank you, Ken, for that thought.)  Should that happen, if that community goes from a district to a state, what will that be called?

 

 

 

From: Steve Taylor
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2021 9:56 PM
To: Bill Taylor (billt444@comcast.net) <billt444@comcast.net>; David Taylor (David Taylor) <taylor234@comcast.net>; 'Tom Taylor (E-mail)' <code-boy@earthlink.net>
Subject: Washington

 

 

 

 

Which one?  That's the question we always have to ask unless someone is so specific as to answer the question before we ask it.  When we already had a Washington, District of Columbia, why would we name a state Washington as well?  If we're telling someone about Nebraska, all we have to say is Nebraska and we're done.  If we say Washington, then we have to say Washington, the state, not Washington, D.C., or vice versa. 

 

Not an efficient use of language.

 

 

 

Washington

 

Which one?  That's the question we always have to ask unless someone is so specific as to answer the question before we ask it.  When we already had a Washington, District of Columbia, why would we name a state Washington as well?  If we're telling someone about Nebraska, all we have to say is Nebraska and we're done.  If we say Washington, then we have to say Washington, the state, not Washington, D.C., or vice versa. 

 

Not an efficient use of language.

 

 

 

Hot rod Lincoln

  

The refrain wandered into my head.  "Son you're going to drive me to drinkin if you don't quit drivin that hot rod Lincoln.  So I googled it.

 

Commander Cody.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl038GkYhjU

A blast from the past.  Music from our teenage years.  That was fun. 

 

And several other versions out there, the most disconnected being:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2_Kp_q786g

This one with a charming recognizable guitar trip down memory lane in the middle of it.

 

 

 

 

I’m still thinking about pivot sprinklers

  

We saw lots of them in Central and West Texas.

(Not my photo.)

 

Water is pumped up the center, goes through the pipe, and comes out the sprinklers.  I get that.  Each section, from the pivot point out, covers an increasingly larger area as it goes around in a circle, so the nozzles on each section need to be sized accordingly; increasingly larger as they get farther from the center source.  I get that too.  The part I have to keep thinking about is the locomotion.  You’ve got maybe ten sections for total length of a quarter mile or so.  The trolleys for each section move in a circle around a pivot point, tracing paths for ten different concentric circles.  Since every circle represents a different distance to complete one lap, I want to know how each trolley happens to do that without messing up the entire apparatus.

 

That quarter mile long pipe of water can’t be so rigid that all one has to do is power the outside trolley and the other ones will follow along.  Each one has to be powered.  The last trolley on the end will have to travel the longest distance, so that one can run constantly.  All the other trolleys have to be geared down just right to run constantly, or they all run the same speed and go intermittently, every one on a slightly different schedule.  Couldn’t count on every trolley running just like it should and never getting bogged down, so the solution has to be that each one runs intermittently.  But how do they know to do that; when to run and when to shut off?  Wires?  Lasers?  What’s the trigger?

 

Wikipedia to the rescue.  There are angle sensors at each joint for each section.  The outer wheels move at a constant slow speed.  When an angle sensor at a joint determines that a section is getting left behind, it triggers the electric motor to drive the wheels on that section until the angle sensor feels like it’s caught up and shuts off the motor.  Each section starts and stops independently, and the whole length of the sprinkler moves in an undulating manner, something like a sidewinder snake, always in nearly a straight line, but never completely straight if you sight along it.

 

Now my mind can be at ease about that.

 

 

 

Update:

  

What's the deal with Mercury?

 

Our resolution:  We're buying a different kind of tuna.  The larger the predator, the more accumulated mercury it consumes and retains.  We've been eating albacore tuna.  That's the biggest one.  We've switched to "Chunk Light Tuna".  Skipjack tuna.  It's a smaller fish and only has about a third the mercury of albacore.

 

Now that we're "tuna conscious", sometimes we eat tuna salad, sometimes we eat chicken salad prepared just the same but with different meat.  (The chicken salad isn't quite as satisfying, but it's a reasonable substitute.  And since chickens aren't apex predators, I don't think we have to worry about any mercury accumulation in them.)  So that's our solution.  Chicken salad, tuna salad with skipjack tuna, we don't eat it every day, and we don't worry about it when we do.

 

 

From: Steve Taylor
Sent: Thursday, April 1, 2021 9:49 PM
Subject: What's the deal with Mercury

 

 

 

 

It's a toxic heavy metal.  A neurotoxin.  It gets in the ocean and attaches to dissolved organic matter like decomposing plants and animals.  Microorganisms and minnows ingest the decomposing plants and animals and accumulate mercury.  Bigger critters eat the smaller critters.  Mercury is cumulative.  The top predator fish have in their systems all the mercury from all the smaller critters they've eaten; a dramatically larger amount of mercury than what's naturally in the surrounding environment.

 

Too much mercury is bad for us so we should limit our mercury consumption.  Our primary mercury source is seafood.  The worst fish we can eat is a large predator fish like tuna.  I love tuna.  Freshly grilled tuna.  Baked tuna.  Tuna right out of the can.  Tuna salad.  Tuna salad sandwich on buttered toast.  A scoop of tuna salad in a sliced avocado.  Grilled tuna salad sandwich with cheese.  Tuna casserole.  I love tuna!  Grew up on it.

 

I googled how often we should eat the kind of tuna Judy and I eat, to minimize our risk of overexposure to mercury.  Google said one serving every nine days.  What?  I'd rather eat it every day.  Is tuna primarily a danger to the development of young minds and bodies?  For me, that ship has already sailed.  Sitting in class, not paying attention to the instructor, but playing with the mercury drops one of the kids got by breaking a thermometer; liquid beads of room-temperature molten metal rolling about on a piece of paper, fascinating.  Not only that, but if you get it on your fingers and massage it onto the surface of a dime, that dime will shine brighter than it ever did when it was new!  Do you suppose I've absorbed at least my fair share of mercury?  Yeah.  That ship has already sailed.  Without a lifeboat.  Whatever damage could be done to my development has already been well done.

 

Is there a danger of excess mercury consumption for a senior citizen?  If I eat too much tuna now, will I suddenly go senile (quicker), or suffer some other life altering malady?  I don't know.  If there is no immediate danger, beyond whatever damage is already done, I sure would love to have at least one serving of tuna salad waiting for me in the fridge every day for the rest of my life.  What is one to do?

 

 

 

 

 

Drug bust

  

2,800 pounds of marijuana with a street value of $4.5 million seized at the U.S./Canada border last month.  What?  How does that happen?  Haven't they heard, marijuana is legal in like half the states in the Union?  How is it that it still has any street value at all?

 

I guess old habits are hard to break.

 

 

 

 

Coronavirus cases

  

 

We were in a league of our own.  Nobody else could fit on the same scale as us.  Then India and Brazil caught up enough to join us on the display.  Looking at the trendlines, it seems like we've figured it out.  It looks like India still hasn't.

 

Meanwhile, glorious early summer weather here.  Highs in the eighties.  Lows in the 70s.  Maybe a little bit of humidity.  Morning coffees on the deck.  When the outside temperature drops to 82 in the evenings, we can turn off the air conditioning and open the sliding door for real air.  Got to shut it all up and turn the cooler back on when it's time to go to bed though, so we can sleep at 65 degrees.

 

 

 

FW: Granddaughter Ayla

  

While we were in Arizona.

 

Grandpa fixed Barbie's broken leg.

 

 

 

The car of my youth

  

The functional car of my youth was the 1955 Chevy.

(Not my photo.  Not my car.  Mine was all blue and wasn't this shiny and nice.)

 

I loved it.  A V-8 and a Hearst floor-shift installed by my brother Tom.  I imagined it was fast, but with that small 283 cubic inch engine it couldn't have been that badass.

 

The car of my heart was the 1932 Model B Ford two-door sedan.  Dad found it for $75 and fronted the money.  The car didn't run then and never did, but it had most of its parts.  It sat in the driveway and I puttered with it off and on.  I bought an old Chevy V-8 engine, and rebuilt it to go in the Ford, but before I got the new engine put in the car I got distracted and joined the Army.  When I got home from overseas the 1932 Ford was gone.  That shape and style still calls to me every time I see it though.

(Not my photo.  Not my car, but this is generally what I had.)

 

While we were at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge we spotted a Model A sedan.  The owner was kind enough to chat with me a while.  It is a 1930 model A; a little harder lines; but not entirely different from my '32.

 

 

 

I always thought my car was a Model B, but I find out later that there were different versions of that car produced in 1932; the Model B, with an updated four-banger engine, and a Model 18 with a newly released flathead V8.  I had the V8 Model 18 with a whopping 65 horsepower compared to the 4 cylinder 50 hp!

 

(Again, not my photo.  I don't know if a photo of my actual car survives.)

 

Were I to have this experience to repeat, I wouldn't be looking to soup it up with a Chevy V8.  I'd be fine with that old flathead ford and a car that ran like the original.

 

 

 

 

 

In the morning light

  

It's a little steamy and wet out there.

 

But that's nothing serious for here.  It'll dry up in a few days.  No rain in the forecast for the rest of today.

 

 

 

Travel day

  

Phoenix Sky Harbor to Houston Hobby to Harlingen International.  A drive home.  Aah.

 

It rained half a foot while we were gone.  Our house is high and dry, but in the dark I can hear frogs in the field across the street.  It's not supposed to sound like that.  It's supposed to be dry grass.  We'll see what delights daylight brings tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

Austin

  

The timing was right for an orchestra concert with Austin.  He's second chair violin in the chamber orchestra.

                                                

He's only supposed to have two guests, but they made an exception for us, and Judy and I both got to go along with Matt.

 

It was a good concert.

 

And Austin has gotten a bit taller since we were here last.     

 

It's fun to see.

 

 

 

 

What’s wrong with this picture?

  

 

We got a rental car.  There are two drivers, so they gave us two key fobs.  That’s nice.  But what’s wrong with this picture?

                                         

The two key fobs?  They’re both on a steel cable key ring.

 

The steel cable is crimped into an unbreakable loop.  Two fobs, but there is no way to get them apart without bolt cutters!  What the…

 

 

A walk in the park.

 

 

 

 

The memorial was today

  

Desert Breeze Park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alex

 

Even though Alex is being cremated, there needed to be a preparation and viewing, for Matt's sake, even if not for everyone else's.  Matt spent all those hours in the ER with teams of people doing what needed to be done to try to save Alex.  That was not meant to be a sensitive time, it was meant to provide every effort for Alex's survival.  It was intense, invasive, and brutal.  This viewing was a chance for more peaceful last moments.  Matt and Lindsay spent the evening there, accompanied by friends and family.  Lindsay's parents, Steve and Lori, had Arie with them but dropped her off at the house before they went there.  Brian made sure Tony, Conner, and Austin got the time there they needed.  Christi and Andy stayed.  Becky made sure everyone got hugs.  Judy and I stayed home with Arie and Ayla and were there for others as they arrived.  Here's Ayla in her new unicorn dress.

 

So good to have friends from childhood, Chad, and Bo there.  We just love those boys.  They stood at Matt's side, in support, for the four-hour viewing; here, grabbing a bite in the kitchen after.

 

 

These two that we lovingly refer to as "boys" now are well older than Judy and I were when we first met them.

 

 

 

 

 

I think I just want to write about birds again tonight

  

Get close to a killdeer nest and Mom tries to distract you away from it by feigning a broken wing, broken leg, or broken everything.  Follow her far enough away, and she'll suddenly recover and fly off.  When she's sure you're not looking anymore, she'll plop back down on the eggs.

 

Even she can even be a little hard to spot from a distance.

 

I didn't really get this near.  I cranked up the long lens for the close-up shot.

 

 

 

In other news, Chad made it here as well tonight; all the way from Hawaii.           

 

 

 

Alex

  

I haven't talked about Alex the last few days because I didn't know much.  I still don't know much.  We had a story pieced together about Alex's final hours; how and where things went wrong; but not all the parts tie together.   We do know that when they got him to a hospital the doctors were able to restore a heartbeat, but it had been some time without one.  Through multiple efforts and medical heroics, two different hospitals and an airlift, they were able to keep him alive, but only just.  They were unable to get brainwaves back.  Matt had to make the decision about when to unhook him and let him go.  The family came in and said their goodbyes.  Matt held the phone up to him for Judy so she could from Texas.  Then Matt held his firstborn son as the final flame flickered.

 

Meanwhile the constant activity at Matt's house goes on.  There is still so much to do.  Both sets of grandparents are here.  Kids and noise, phone calls, condolences.  Details in demand of attention.  In the afternoons, neighbors, friends, and food show up at the door.  Judy made pudding cups.  Dinner gets served.  Dishes get cleared.  Both gymnastics clubs Alex was part of are involved.  Websites devoted to remembrances.  A GoFundMe account to help with the fiscal overload and the vision of a new project in support of recognition and treatment of adolescent mental health and substance abuse.  A stop at the optometrist before I left Texas resulted in an entire office in tears because they all knew Alex through us.  I tried to pay so I could go, and they wouldn't even let me.  Love and understanding from all over the country.  And here, we talk, and talk, and talk.

 

Through the haze of sorrow, arrangements must be made.  The mortuary.  Will there be a ceremony?  Will there be a viewing?  Will there be a grave?  A cremation?  What about clothes?  Possessions to be gathered and accounts to be closed.  An obituary to be written.  A eulogy.  Sorrow comes in waves for us.  Matt and Lindsay are still on the first swell.  Becky and Brian are arriving tomorrow.  Christie and Andy an hour later.  Childhood friend Bo after that.  Chad is on a military base in Hawaii.  That's a little harder to manage.

 

The last couple years have been difficult for Alex.  He has been going to counseling and has been in and out of rehab several times.  He went to Missouri to stay with his mom for a couple weeks and get away from it all.  He finished high school online while he was there.  The school will hold a place in his honor at graduation and announce his name.  He was 17 years 10 months.  There will be a viewing on Saturday.  The memorial will be in a local park on Sunday.  There will be another in Colorado in June.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look!

  

A killdeer nest!

 

 

 

This scraggly thing

  

 

Is an anhinga.

 

It's a diving bird, so it can't afford to have the natural oils that keep its feathers from getting wet.  Their feathers have to get wet so the bird can dive and swim to catch food, and not bob on the surface like a duck.

 

Afterwards, they have to perch and spread their wings to dry in the sun.

 

 

So they can gracefully soar again like this.

 

Judy is in Phoenix and I'm here in South Texas finishing up some things, with an inventory of bird pictures in the meantime.

 

 

 

 

Sad news

  

Grandson Alex has been battling addiction.  He lost that battle today.

 

Part of living is not being the first person to die.  Generally, that means watching your grandparents and parents go.  Contemporaries.  People we've known and loved all our lives.  Sometimes even we have to see youngsters with all that potential go.  I don't have a word for it.

 

Judy is on her way there, first flight in the morning.

 

 

 

Leftovers from the trip

  

Another spoonbill

 

 

Chestnut-sided Warbler.

 

Cape May Warbler.

 

White Ibis.

 

And a stalking Little Blue Heron.

 

 

 

 

 

Fifty years

  

Years ago we had our 50^th wedding anniversary.  Afterwards, we couldn't imagine how to top that, so we just toast 50 years of marriage each morning with a clink of the coffee cups.  We've done that 1,825 times.

 

Now it's time to move on from fifty years though.  55 years.  Happy Anniversary to us!  Clink.  55.

 

 

 

Home again

  

April migration trip map

 

 

Groove-billed Ani

Alder Flycatcher

Bay-breasted Warbler

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher

Black-whiskered Vireo

Yellow-green Vireo

Flame-colored Tanager.

 

  4 weeks.

  1,150 miles in the motorhome.

  130 bird checklists.

  A lot of miles walked.

 

We started the spring migration trip at 302 birds for the year.  We end it at 377.  A 75-bird migration effort.  Now, 23 birds to go for the year, and no plan to get there.  (But we'll think of something.)

 

Indigo Bunting.

 

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher.

 

Philadelphia Vireo.