It's Otherworldly Out There

Redoubt erupting at night

See more amazing photos like this one at www.adn.com

This afternoon was beautiful in Anchorage. The sun was out; it was warm; the skies were clear...well, mostly anyway. Just a little bit of grayish-looking cloud here and there. But those occasional gray clouds were sort of like nagging feelings that you shrug away. They probably weren't ash clouds, I thought. And then, What does an ash cloud look like anyway?

I had other things on my mind, so I drove on, thinking about maybe going cross-country skiing in the park a little later. The darn volcano has been ruining my skiing plans for days now. It was time to go ahead and just go for a quick few laps around the stadium. The skis are brand new, for heaven's sake. I've only used them once. Good plan. After my errand. Driving on...

I was at a friend's house a little later, looking at (coincidentally) some amazing pictures of Redoubt on The Anchorage Daily News' website (referenced above). The dogs wanted out, so I turned around, opened the sliding glass door and the first thing that caught my eye was the deck. Earlier it had been clear. Now it was dusted with snow...dirty snow...didn't look quite right. And I noticed an odd odor--maybe like sulphur or soot or something--not sure what. As my eyes lifted, I noticed the rest of the snow beyond the deck--the snow that was formerly white--was dusted with ash. Oh no! "Ash!" I called out, like I'd just sighted a plague of locusts.

My wife was, as usual, quicker to act, as she quickly retrieved the dogs. I then quickly shut the door after the dogs were in and set about doing what I do best: I stewed. We weren't home and I wanted to be home. That meant I had to drive the truck, but when there's ash about, you really don't want to drive your vehicles any more than you absolutely have to. So now my sweet truck was going to be covered in ash--that's bad enough--but I was going to have to drive the thing--that's another really bad thing to do with the ash. So in the end, we just hunkered down while waiting for one of two things to happen: either I would run out of patience and just go on home or the skies would dramatically clear and I would go home then.

As it happened, the former happened first (as former things are wont to do). The sun was setting and I was running out of patience, so I headed on home, driving slowly so as not to ingest any more ash than necessary through the air intake. I set the air conditioning system to recirculate the air, put on a dusty old air mask (time for a new one!) from my wood shop (smelled like poplar) and repeatedly reminded myself not to use the wipers lest I scratch the glass with the ash.

Driving home the skies looked like something out of a movie. It was surreal. I wish I had a fraction of Sue Grafton's gift for metaphor so I could paint a better picture. If you've ever seen the skies when massive terrible thunderstorms are all about, when you know tornadoes are about to plunge out of the sky any moment, that's sort of what it's like. There weren't discernible clouds, but the skies were obscured, with a mixture of light, haze, and various hues in the blue-gray-purple spectrum. It was weird. The sun was setting, but you couldn't really tell where it was.

I remember watching Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds when I was a kid. As I drove slowly home, dust mask in place, with the eerie skies overhead and other drivers nervously looking skyward, I couldn't help but think back to that movie. Something evil lurked in the sky. That movie creeped me out as a kid. Creeps me out to think of it now. All I needed was some really creepy mood music.

At any rate...the sky may not be falling, but the ash is.

Volcanic Activity ~ Alaska ~ March 209

2009-03-27 08:59:59
An eruption of Redoubt volcano occurred at approximately 08:40 AKDT (16:40 UTC). National Weather Service reports the cloud height to be approximately 50,000 ft above sea level based on radar.



Image above courtesy Alaska Volcano Observatory


Image below...
AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) false-color satellite image showing the eruption cloud from an explosion at Redoubt Volcano at 3:31am AKDT on March 23rd 2009. Image was captured at 5:30am and shows the ash cloud passing over other volcanoes and heading NE towards Anchorage.

Picture Date: March 23, 2009 14:30:29 UTC
Image Creator: Bailey, John; Image courtesy of the AVO/UAF-GI.




Our daily excitement

An Eye for an Eye...

If you'd like to get in the habit of a daily Bible reading, but struggle for various reasons (as I do), I recommend reading Proverbs. A very good friend of mine recommended this to me years ago and I return to the concept--if not always the practice--often. The Book of Proverbs contains thirty-one chapters, so it's conveniently divided such that you can read one chapter a day. And even if you're not a big believer in the Bible or Christianity as a lifestyle, this book still offers sage advice.

I was reading today in chapter twenty-four and came across this passage:

Do not say, "I'll do to him as he has done to me: I'll pay that man back for what he did."

In chapter twenty, verse twenty-two, it similarly says:

Do not say, "I'll pay you back for this wrong!" Wait for the Lord, and he will deliver you.

Seems like there are other similar passages in Proverbs, but I cannot think of or find them right now. You get the idea: it's all about not plotting revenge. You might say it's also about forgiveness. That's certainly a related concept. But wait! you might think, what about that old eye for an eye thing? At least that's what I always thought. Seems like a contradiction. I thought if a dude punched me, I could punch him back. That's what they're talking about with the eye for an eye business, right?

Well, it wasn't terribly long ago that I came across the idea that the old eye for an eye thing wasn't about ensuring plenty of punishment; it was about limiting punishment. Think: no more than an eye for an eye. This site does a great job of explaining the idea:

Biblical Research Institute.

I actually don't mean to get into a discussion at this point about the whole crime and punishment thing. I would very quickly diverge into a rant about corporate heads and their evil ways. Actually, in this post there are just a couple of ideas I wanted to touch on: the first is that reading Proverbs daily is a pretty structured way of getting into a daily reading habit and the other idea is that once you do start studying, it can be pretty interesting if you follow the leads where they take you. As I used to tell my son all the time: Question your assumptions. See where that takes you.

FedEx crash Narita Monday, March 23, 2009 (local date/time)

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

There but for the grace of God go I...

My prayers go out to the families of the pilots who died, the employees of FedEx, and to all of us who could've been sitting in those seats.

Cross country skiing

This first video shows 'skate' skiing. I make every mistake the instructor demonstrates!



This second video shows 'classic' skiing. This is much easier, but I still am not nearly as fluid as the instructor.

I just wanna puke!

Here's the first headline I saw: A.I.G. to Pay $100 Million in Bonuses After Huge Bailout

Okay, that made me sick. Then this morning I read this article:

Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House National Economic Council, said on CBS' Face The Nation this morning that recent bonuses paid out by insurance giant American International Group are "outrageous."

Reports came out this morning that AIG, which has received $170 billion from the U.S. government to prevent the firm from collapsing, has paid out $165 million in bonuses.

"It is outrageous," Summers told host Bob Schieffer. "The whole situation at AIG is outrageous. What taxpayers are being forced to do is outrageous."

But Summers also said that "you can't govern out of anger" and that the government doesn’t have the power to stop bonuses from being paid out under existing contracts.

"If we simply throw up our hands, refuse to deal with any of this, we'll have the kind of financial catastrophe that we saw after what happened at Lehman Brothers," Summers said. "[Treasury] Secretary Geithner has negotiated very forcefully with AIG. He has done everything that is legally permissible for the government to do to limit the payment of bonuses. But where there are contracts, binding contracts that were entered into long before the government put any money in to AIG -- we're not a country where contracts just get abrogated willy-nilly."

Summers added: "And if we were to start doing that, there would be potentially very destabilizing consequences."

What a bunch of crap. Excuse my language, but please, don't patronize me, Mr. Summers, with your complete and utter hogwash. What AIG is doing is utterly contemptible and what you, Mr. Summers, are saying is little better. Corporations abrogate contracts with their employees all the time. It happens every day in America. Now is the time for upper level management--or should I say in this case--mis-management to feel what it's like to have their contracts abrogated.

But simply eliminating the bonuses is not really enough. If only there were a way to put this soulless scum in prison...

Life After the other Shoe Falls

Imagine this. You're in your late thirties. You fly aerobatic airplanes. You ride motorcycles. You sail competitively. You live in Hawaii. What could be better? What could happen?

Then one day you notice a little blurry vision in one eye. Nothing big, right? It'll probably go away. Then the next thing you know, you wake up in the hospital. You don't know how you got there or what happened. You try to ask the nurse why you're there and find you can't speak. And if that weren't bad enough, the right half of your body is paralyzed. This can't be real, you'd certainly think. I'll wake up soon from this awful dream. But it's not a bad dream. It's not a nightmare; it's real. Someone finally tells you: You've had a stroke...

Meet my new friend, Carl. About eight years ago, if I have the story right, that was his life and that's what happened to him. I've had some bad days and I've had some serious life setbacks, but holy crow. Can you imagine? Can you really imagine? I get frustrated when I can't think of a word I'm searching for or when I'm in a foreign country and can't make myself understood. But I can still speak. But what if you can't? And you don't know why? Oh man.

Carl had to learn how to speak all over again. He had to learn to use his limbs again (to the extent that he can). And he had to decide what kind of person he was going to be and what kind of life he was going to live. Fortunately for me, he taught himself to speak, taught himself to use a lot of his body, and now likes to spend a lot of time sailing with a little help from his friends. Last month I had the privilege of sailing with Carl in Kanehoe Bay, Hawaii.

Carl has the tanned, weathered skin of someone who's spent a lot of time on the sea. His face bears the lines that come with his mid-to-late forties' age and the road he's traveled. He has a quick, high-pitched laugh, a great attitude about life, and seemingly limitless patience for the ineptitude of novice sailors like me. Despite the fact that one arm is basically fixed in place as is one leg, he gets around pretty well. And despite the ineptitude of his crew, he could still communicate well enough that we could manage the ship under his command. We had a truly awesome time.

There we were, three active airline pilots and one former pilot, sailing on a breezy, sunny day in beautiful Hawaii. I couldn't stop thinking how incredibly lucky we all were to be there, doing what we were doing, at that moment in time. The boat was heeled over just so, with two guys out on the trapeze, knocking into one another, splashing us all like little kids, grinning from ear to ear. It was a moment to treasure. And every now and then, I'd glance back at Carl and see a man in his element, at peace with the sea and the world, with no limitations at all.

Thank you, Carl. You're a heck of a man.

Disaster lurks nearby...

I've just finished reading a fantastic book that is a must read. It's called The Unthinkable, by Amanda Ripley. The subtitle reads, Who Survives When Disaster Strikes--and Why. That's the best one line summary I can envision. If you read this book I promise you'll be better prepared for the next emergency you face.

The Bachelor does some 'splainin'

Part one of two (March 2nd, 2009)




Part two of two (March 2nd, 2009)

A neat flying video