News from Colorado ...

Got another update from Sharen in Colorado. She and some family members jumped on the bikes for a road trip. I would love to do this someday. I’ve always wanted to roll out on a hog for an extended adventure. South Dakota and Mount Rushmore just happen to be one of my prime targets as well. Looks like someone beat me to it! Here are some shots from the trip that she was kind enough to forward. Guess who wants a Yamaha V Star Silverado now! Hey Tony, what kind of mileage does that RoadStar get around town?





Traffic could be hell at times...


-Scott

Fingerstyle ...

Taylor Guitars has posted some new streaming video of fingerstyle virtuoso Doyle Dykes. This to commemorate his tenth anniversary as a Taylor clinician. There’s a retrospective piece which encompasses his last decade of service and another little jewel showing him putting the new DDAE (Doyle Dykes Anniversary Edition) model through its paces. This fella is one heck of a guitar player and a fine example of what we should strive to be as human beings. Nicest guy you could ever meet, and I’m proud to say I have. (See the “Oh my Aching Arms" post in the August archives)

Don’t believe me?.. Here’s the link … Enjoy!!!

Nice Avatar...

Found this .gif file while perusing one of the many forums I frequent. It was just too funny not to post. All my cat lover friends will appreciate this one.


Machine Gun Kitty
This is what happens when your 4 Rat Terriers and 1 Dachshund pick on the cat too much...

-Scott

Ty: "What's wrong with lumber? I own two lumberyards."
Danny: "I notice you don't spend too much time there."
Ty: "I'm not quite sure where they are."

Chevy Chase and Michael O'Keefe - "Caddyshack"

Week 3...

The Monday Vegas results for last weeks round have been posted on the Mega Vegas sister page. I'm jones'n for next weeks installment. I had a very good evening with the marble. Must have something to do with the lightning show tonight.


Jason and Pat polishing the stones...

-Scott

Phil Green vacation update . . .

Phil has updated his blog with pics of his vacation and Pismo trip..

Feel free to visit and comment... Phil's Blog


Jarod chillin' at the pond

-Scott

Mega Vegas...

Got the results from week two and it's not pretty.. Week 3 was even worse but I'll post those #'s at a later date. Man I HATE freshly oiled lanes. Takes 2 games to figure out the pattern. Had a good time with the exception of having to remind Sal it was his turn to bowl every time he was up. Christine's daughter is more disciplined. I'm all for having a good time but when you're not watching what's going on, you mess up things for everyone else. Secondly, you don't give instructional tips to a gal in the next lane who just handed you your ass on the scoreboard. Especially when someone on the next lane is waiting on you. Embarrassing to be sure. Anyway, enough of the Sal rant. Christine started off very well. She's getting the hang of her new ball. Her Mom Charlie however squeaked out a one pin advantage in both of the first two games. Handicaps are a wonderful thing. The pics that follow are of Christine, (center) her daughter Cassandra and of her Mom Charlie (Charlene).. Photogenic bunch eh? Mom hangs in there and is the catalyst of the bunch. The voice of reason. Maybe she'll be able to get Sal to slow down on the beers every so often.. NOT!!! I'm doing Iced Tea and stinking the place up so I have to go to Plan B.

I'll let you know when I figure out exactly what that may be. Second shot is of Christine throwing the marble in her opening game. All apologies for the poor lighting but my camera doesn't do well indoors and I didn't want to distract her witn the flash. And lastly a scan of the league report. We have a really small league as we're connected to larger groups that bowl at other houses under the same ownership. Kinda neat actually. Forest needs to look into another web host where you can post league results from your existing scoring software. I know of one really good one that's dirt cheap. As you have probably surmised at this point we're not going to set any scoring records but it's all good. Getting a little excercise and socializing on a Monday night. We'll get 'em next week. Put up a link on the main page that will take you to the Mega Vegas Monday Results blog as well. This so we can look back and reflect on how poorly we throw...


Click on this or any other image to Super Size!

-Scott

Hangin' with the Hounds...

This weekend wasn’t too terribly eventful as I was looking after the Mikkelsen hounds. Always good to visit the dogs. They were true to form with Hank and Elvis wanting nothing more than for me to break out the laser pointer and run them up and down the stairs. Natasha is either getting smart or lazy as she’ll just wait downstairs for the laser to come to her. Della gets a kick out of it too but isn’t anywhere near as aggressive as the others in her pursuit of the elusive red dot. 300 plus channels on the big screen and wouldn’t you know it, Goliath jumps from the couch to the adjoining chair and lands directly on the remote. Thus killing all signal to the TV. Took me 30 minutes of button pushing and by process of elimination I finally got the thing back up again. I therefore missed a good chunk of “Collateral”. No harm though, it was on again in the morning. The other downer is that there I was with the house all to myself and access to a swimming pool and what happens? It’s mostly overcast all weekend. This after a blistering heat wave in the preceding weeks. I can’t win!!



Hank can sleep in any position necessary!

The Mikkelsen clan spent the weekend in Vegas for Eric’s 21st birthday. They returned with some pretty good stories about some of Eric’s antics, bodily functions and strange choices in the way of sleeping arrangements. (Closets, bathtub, etc.) Sounds like everyone had a pretty good time and everyone got back safe and sound. Steaks and some Lamb chops concluded the evening with chicken Caesar salad on the side. It was all great. Back to the grind this morning so we’ll see how the week unfolds. . . . .

-Scott

Kayak News . . .

Pinched a couple of shots from my friends over at Cobra Kayaks. Ric has a running thread in the community and from time to time there’s a post regarding the Redneck Inventor. Here’s a shot of his latest creation. The Ultimate Fishing Platform..



And of course his version of the Riding Lawnmower…
Watch out John Deere!!!



Ric is the lead man in design and marketing at Cobra and has outdone himself with the release of the Mariner-XF. Looks like a hybrid cross of the Navigator and Tourer models. Somewhere in between in regard to length. Stable and from what people are saying surprisingly fast. Hatches and storage galore. Hope I get to paddle one in the near future..




-Scott

Tamiya TCS, 8/27/2005

Way late with this one but I’ve just gotten around to touching up the pictures. Sunday last at Phil’s behest I decided to head over to Tamiya America’s headquarters in Aliso Viejo to check out the TCS series. Very quick little RC cars that are quite fun to watch race. Tamiya’s facility there in South County is very nice and they have an excellent racing facility. The day was a little hot for my liking but there was plenty of bottled water and sodas on hand as well as hot dogs, chips and burgers. All at incredibly reasonable prices. Ran into Phil after about 30 min. of watching the GT qualifying rounds and we BS’d for a little while before he had to get back to the Tech tent. His duties for the day consisted of inspecting the entrants cars for rule conformity. The rules listed on the Tamiya site are longer than those I would expect from NASCAR. He was looking for parts violations, banned hop ups and such. I got to see a couple of GT races.. All of the early round Mini Cooper races and the ones I really wanted to see the open wheel F1 class races. With the open wheels I thought there would be a bigger potential for crashes but the drivers were so good and clean it was amazing. That was a really fun class to watch especially since I like the F1 and Indy car circuits in full scale.



Phil Green inspects an entrants chasis...

Had to hit the onsite company outlet store to escape the heat and looked over their showroom. The A/C was wonderful and they had quite the collection of toys in there.
RC and scale modeling stuff. This company has an outstanding reputation for their attention to detail. After perusing the store and getting my body temperature back to a normal level I headed back out for some of the F1 qualifying and grabbed another bottled water. Did I mention is was hot out there that day? This would make for interesting tire strategies on the cars as they were all running on the hot asphalt track. Click on any of the pictures for a larger image or visit the entire album by clicking HERE.

The Paddock and Pit area was unbelievable. I couldn't believe how many tools these guys had for their cars and how many tweaks were actually possible. The chasis and suspensions on the cars were very interesting and highly adjustable. Very close to the real thing in fact, just smaller.

Here's a shot of the Pit area followed by one of the snazzier paint schemes I spotted in the course of the day. Lots of wild colors on some of the GT class cars but every so often I'd spot one with an immaculate paint job and stickers.There was another one with a Nissan body that looked awesome with it's 3 color scheme and even the color of the wheels worked into the overall theme. With the right background I'll bet you couldn't tell it wasn't a full scale car.


Great day on the whole and sure beat sitting in my room sweating and surfing the net. I'd go back in a second. Those little cars can really scream around the road course and seeing all the gear the racers bring for tweaks was really something. One of my favorites was the little portable fans the fellas used. They would point them straight up and set their battery packs on them whilst charging hence cutting down on some of the heat. Great idea.

All in all a most entertaining event with the 3 class winners receiving expense paid trips to Japan for the worlds. Hard to beat that..

-Scott