Photos

First Flatiron – photo update

August 23, 2014

Sunday evening, on a whim, we decided to tackle the first flatiron. (My details on the climb are in my Flatiron #1 post.)

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Red Rocks – photos update

August 23, 2014

A gallery of a few photos from my first hike in Colorado. I arrived late in the evening on Saturday, and this was my first exertion to see how the altitude really felt. Great little hike up a couple hundred feet.

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Louisville Colorado

August 17, 2014

Almost to Boulder. Spent the night — after some epic delays in Allentown, missed connections, missed standby, and terminal hussle in Chicago — in Louisville Co. Caught up with Mike; dinner, beer, and probabaly the last/only night under a roof. Sorted all my gear out this morning, and Mike’s leaving me the van for today. Couple stops, then off to try a trail hike to see how this “thin air” really works out.

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DD-882

July 12, 2014

USS Furse (DD-882/DDR-882) was a Gearing-class destroyer of the United States Navy, named for Lieutenant John H. Furse USN (1886–1907).

My father served aboard as a fire control technician (as in “gun fire”); He operated a radar tracking and guidance system which controlled the targeting of the ships guns. At other times (I believe “special sea and anchor detail” being the correct parlance) he was tasked as a “phone talker” which generally entailed following a half step behind the officer of the deck (i.e., the officer commanding the ship at any given moment) and relaying communications through a microphone and headset he was wearing. (So if the Captain wants to single up all lines, he can simply say, “fo’c’s’le, bridge, single up.” and the ever-present, invisible sailer repeats it into the phones.)

Anyway. Here is a small collection of photos my father took of USS Furse.

Some of my readers are salty dogs, and will wonder how a sailor took photos of his own ship under way. During a Mediterranean cruise, Furse exchanged some sailors with a French destroyer during joint maneuvers.

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Cat Island to Miami

May 13, 2014

Way back in 1980, my dad arranged to help a friend (a navy buddy if I recall correctly) named Drew move his yacht from Cat Island (in the Bahamas) to Miami.

It was as much a vacation for us, as it was us helping Drew and his wife move their boat. We took a commercial flight to Nassau and spent a day or two there. From Nassau, we took this little charter plane to Cat Island… which is just a spit of sand with nothing on it other than a tiny “runway”. From there we sailed the 200+ miles to Miami.

To make the “crossing”, my dad and Drew had to stay up in shifts sailing through the night. Although it does take some attention to detail to navigate, the real concern is that the area is thick with commercial shipping and the “rule of gross tonnage” suggests it is unwise to assert right-of-way (any sailing vessel has the legal right-of-way over any powered vessel.) So we prudently dodged enormous ships who couldn’t see us (visually) and probably didn’t care even if they did notice us on radar (via Drew’s radar reflector.) Anyway.

Do I remember anything in particular? Absolutely. I remember staying up all night, on the open sea, in the pitch black. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face… nothing but star-light. And the stars… The constellations looked to fall out of the sky onto your head.

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