Missoula, Montana

RBG's travel blogs are my favorite, so I thought I'd give it a try. I know Missoula isn't as exotic as Helsinki. I was expecting more of a hick town, and was pleasantly surprised by the character here. Lots of very well maintained old brick buildings nestled in the mountains, in the Bitterroot valley. Most of the old buildings have a plaque describing its history and architecture.
The class is Helibase Manager Training. If you're not familiar with the concept of the 'Peter Principal', it implies that you keep promoting and progressing until you reach your level of incompetence. That's why I'm here.
My dorm room is OK, kind of like a hostel. It's $3.95 a night and the classroom is right below me. There are 6 beds in my room. Good people work for USFS

If you want to be rich like me, do the things I do

Here's your chance to get in on something big. You should know by now the people who hit it big in Amway, Shaklee, and the other MLM's are the ones that got in early.
I want to set up Multi Level Marketing company called 'Greenway'. We are going to sell carbon offsets.
Here's how it works. For a small buy-in, you can use the business name and attend fabulous seminars. You get to work from home and do all the work online. Your market is easy----if you can list twelve people that don't realize Al Gore is a liar and a crook, you've already met your first quota, and earned your 'green belt' by signing them up. If just half of THEM sign up 12 people who buy in, you only have to forward 75% of that buy in....you get to keep 25%. At that point you become a certified "Green Warrior" (I'll send the certificate myself. It will be etched in naturally sloughed birchbark and delivered by zero impact hitchhikers)
Isn't this just a pyramid scheme? NO!!! You'll be selling a real thing people are very in need of--peace of mind. Media has made everybody feel really bad about their carbon footprint. Here's a way for the little guy to shed the guilt by purchasing carbon offsets. They get a bumper sticker too. There's a bunny on it, by the way.
The bumper stickers will be made of 100% post consumer recycled waste with adhesive from sustainable rubber trees, harvested by third world starving animists.
Here's where the offset comes in. We will be publishing 3 color graphs that show Amway's carbon footprint from packaging, shipping, posters, and reams of paper used administratively. "Greenway" will be completely digital; in fact, you must take an oath not to print out anything. Flashdrives are acceptable. Our graphics will show the HUGE carbon savings "Greenway" offers as an MLM when compared with "Amway". As the company grows, so grows the carbon savings. We'll be making a case for the carbon footprint for a $20 bill (eight tons of polar bear killing CO2) and we'll guarantee that when those bills work their way to the top, we'll have methods to dispose of the cash appropriately.

Mobile gel mixer

So we took delivery today of the 'mobile gel mixer'. We heard rumors of it coming. Someone way high up outside our department decided the city was safer if we had one and came up with funding.
It's huge. It's a massive trailer with a 3000 gallon steel tank that can be placed hydraulically on the ground, and an 1800 gallon mixing unit. The idea is you set this thing up, find a water supply, and start mixing fire fighting gel then pumping it to the tank. The copters can dip out of the tank or use the snorkel to fill. It's really, really big.
We'll see how useful it is on a real fire. Right now generating a user's manual and buiding a structure to shelter it is the concern. I'll bet you don't have one of these at work.
Did I mention it's really big? Shiny too.

Canadian Geese, eh?

I got back from vacation and checked in at the lake office. Two of the dock hands came in very flustered. We had rented the pontoon boat out, and a pair of geese nested and laid two eggs; the dock hands were trying to relocate the nest. Geese, apparently, don't like that.
I told the lake manager to leave the geese alone and call the newspaper to get some press out of it at least. Ed Zeiralski is the outdoor news writer for the San Diego Union/Tribune and stays at our cabin whenever he comes up, he was nice enough to give a little plug at the end of the article. http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/apr/11/1s11outdoors224030-winged-squatters-are-rocking-bo/

2 Grams of friendship

Just have to rave about Byron and Paula. Byron brought us to the airport even after I gave him the wrong dates; then picked us up (5:00 am) this morning. He picked us up in AnnaMarie's car, which Paula had washed/detailed. When we got to their house to drop off Byron, Paula had gotten up early to bake fresh muffins, and packed a bag with yogurt, fruit, drinks...It was the perfect thing for 5 weary travellers, and I don't think we were spry enough to fully appreciate them. None of this will come as a surprise to anyone that knows them. Whenever we have a party, they show up to work----and don't even have to ask what needs to be done. Paula always adds an extra touch of style, Byron always brings something that makes the party---spud guns, iron puzzles, liquid nitrogen ice cream, magnesium engine blocks to burn---something.
Not sure why we're so blessed to have friends like this

Cross reactions in resourcinols

Yay, going to Hawaii where there is NO urushiol, the alkyloid in Poison Oak that causes a bad dermatitis. "Hey Daddy can we buy mangos?" No...I'll pick some wild ones for free.
Find mango tree. Pick mango. Mango sap drips on various exposed skin sites. Skin inflammation occurs, just like poison oak.
Mangos and poison oak/ivy/sumac are all sumacs. The alkylloid mangol is very similar to the alkylloid urushiol, and cross sensitivities are the rule, not the exception. Basically, if you have been sensitized to poison oak, avoid mango sap and skin of the fruit. Nuts. (Eating the fruit is fine and will not cause a reaction)
Oh well. The discomfort is minor compared to the excitement of learning something new.

Indian Mongoose

The Indian Mongoose was introduced to the Hawaiian islands to eradicate the rats that came with the ships. The rats were destroying the sugar cane. Problem is, rats are nocturnal, mongooses are diurnal. They gnosh on native birds, lizards, and the like.
Mongooses (not mongeese) are related to to meerkats. They can learn tricks and make fair pets, but like civets have an unpleasant scent gland.
The flora and fauna on pacific islands lack predation so the mongooses thrive.

Saving the planet

When we take off from LAX for Hawaii, the plane will produce more CO2 than the entire morning commute in the area.
You're welcome. We're doing our part as a family to save the planet.
Media's saying CO2 levels are higher than they've been in the past 650,000 years. So, geologically, yesterday. .01% of the history of the planet. There has been a rash of well intentioned people blinded by political motivation that have actually worked to DECREASE the atmospheric CO2. They saw a movie once, and since that guy was passionate it must be true.
It's not. Relax.
Here's the thing. The earth is like a giant battery. There is a MACRO carbon cycle you need to participate in. CO2 is in the air, plants convert it to sugars, binding it with hydrogen. Plants die, get buried, take the precious carbon with them deep under ground. Fortunately the plants had the foresight to evolve some organisms to the point they could re-extract the carbon and liberate it again back into the atmosphere, getting work done and powering this blog in the process.
The oceans can then fix some of the CO2 as limestone. This limestone is needed to grow crops. It's mined and spread on crops to feed higher organisms to extract more hydrocarbon to support the MACRO carbon cycle. When you deprive plants of their CO2 they really get angry.

Aloha!

Off we go! Maybe it wouldn't matter much where we're going. Far away from home maintenance, county code enforcement, power point presentations, school visits, work pills; Just the family in a nice little house on the North Shore.If I have access I'll post from there

Hey Wait A Minute!

If I put ice cubes in my water, they float. They float because they displace water equal to their mass, and water being more dense than ice, up they go. When my ice melts it exactly replaces the water formerly displaced and the water level in my glass doesn't change one bit.
So, if we warm the globe enough to melt off ALL the arctic sea ice, how does that raise the level of the ocean one bit? Land based de-glaciation I get, but that's a really small percentage of arctic ice. What am I missing here?

Step up to the Global Warming altar

I love this. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5028380/The-Global-Warming-Three-are-on-thin-ice.html These doofuses (doofi?) continue to ignore a preponderance of evidence against global warming, man made or otherwise, and embark on a quest to measure the thinning sea ice. Unseasonably cold weather and endangered polar bears are threatening their survival.
In Steinbeck's book 'Travels With Charlie', he attends a deep south evangelical revival. The tactic to boost membership isn't to talk about how awesome being with God in heaven will be; it's how horrible damnation is if you don't change your ways immediately. A Gallup poll shows a sharp increase in public opnion that 'Global Warming threat is greatly exaggerated'. The response from the G.W. alarmists has been to up the rhetoric---claiming the coming disaster is much more imminent and far worse than previously predicted. Go ahead and make your predictions; here's mine. This scare will be quickly buried and forgotten as soon as someone comes up with a new way to claim industrialization will soon kill us all, like soot on the ice caps causing a new ice age or something. Global warming will go the way of acid rain, hole in the ozone layer, killer bees, AIDS, the Spanish Inquisition...