Adventures with Dial-A-Bus

Twice a week I drive the elderly and disabled in a large Crown Victoria Ford with 100,00 miles on it. The riders are mostly sweet elderly widows with sparkling personalities. Yesterday the rider was way out in the country (Kiger Island Drive near the airport). She used an oxygen tank which I carried to the car for her. Unfortunately I bumped the valve and turned it off with neither of us noticing it. Well, she started to turn blue and I was panicked. My wonderful engineering background led me to see that the pressure gauge had gone to zero and I twisted the valve back on. She sat there for a minute and asked me to turn the output to 150% while she recuperated.  

My favorite saying now is "It seemed like a good idea at the time." I now know where most of the beauty parlors in town are located. One of my runs was from the retirement home to the liquor store and back. I sat as low in the seat as possible while I waited in the parking lot for the transaction to be completed.  The chaplain for the moose lodge goes to the hospital to tell jokes to gladden peoples' day. He keeps asking me to join but I tell him that being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints leaves little time for other "hobbies." One patron is a blind guy with a seeing eye dog. When they get in the dog reaches over from the back seat and licks my cheek in greeting.

My goal is not to get a ticket or have an accident. Although I did run a red light the other day which made my rider quit talking to me. I enjoy talking with the people. Each shift has an adventure!

New Carissa Salvage

This is what two retired OSU employees do for excitement. Shades of "Second Hand Lions". 

Ten years ago a large ship dragged its anchor and beached itself during a violent storm.  The ship then broke into two pieces. This month the salvage operations finally began.

Jim Hay and I drove the van to Coos Bay, Oregon to see the Titan Salvage Company's operation. Jim used his spotting scope to get a view from an observation point atop a knoll three miles away.  I hiked through two miles of soft sand to get a closer look. There is a cable line to shore so they can ferry equipment and  men back and forth a couple of hundred yards to the work platform.  

The stern of the ship New Carisssa has been mired in about 20 feet of sand for 10 years while a legal battle took place about who would pay the over 20 million dollars to disassemble the hulk.  A decade ago the rest of the ship was towed about 200 miles out to sea and sunk by naval ships and a submarine.  The hope was that it would form an artificial reef for sea animals.

If you go to see this, hurry because it should be done in a couple of months.  It is hard to find so ask for directions to the Horsfall Off Highway Vehicle (OHV) campground which is before the big bridge north of North Bend. We stopped at a USFS information office and they gave us excellent directions.

We also visited the water front in Coos Bay.  Coos Bay is an amazing international shipping terminal for wood chips that are loaded on barges and in ships.

Afterwards we dropped the van off in Medford. Our son Neil is running a 100 mile (24 hours) race in Northern California this weekend. The van will be the mobile motel from which he and two friends will embark on this Herculian event. This sounds like something Forest Gump would attempt. Neil is around 40 years old and tough as a mustang.

Jim and I also spend our time watching our raised bed garden grow and cleaning our shotguns.  

Missed anniversary and building chests

At 8 pm on Sunday our oldest son Ken asked when our wedding anniversary was. Janeil and I looked at each other and said, "Is it today?" Sure enough, we had breezed through our 44th without even realizing that it was almost over. 

It has been a great adventure. We have been almost constantly together 24/7 for the six years of retirement. 

Later this week we are taking our camper-van to the Cascades for a night and then on to Bend to deliver a gun case to our handyman son-in-law Jonathan. This gun case is the fourty-fifth chest/gun case/toy box I've made in the last couple of months. I've purchased cabinet doors from the ReStore (Habitat for Humanity recycled building supply outlet). I then screw the doors into a six sided wooden masterpiece. The wood doors was mainly maple but also included hickory, oak, pine, and cherry. Depending on the clerk at checkout counter the price per panel was anywhere from $1 to $5. Including hinges the completed chest cost anywhere from $6 to $35. 

Janeil found homes for the chests at our kids' houses, although we have six chests in our house as well. One of the biggest challenges was that the dimensions of the panels were not uniform so I had to be creative in how I assembled them. Trimming the pieces to size wasn't an option because the panels were routed. I tried about half a dozen different hinge designs but was never very successful in getting a professional look. 

I bought a Panasonic digital camera with a telephoto (10x) capability and a wide angle feature and a stabilization feature that makes up for my hand shaking. This may be my new hobby!