Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

California

Catalina Channel – 180° View

After a horrible three weeks on Wall Street and another demoralizing day today (especially for conservatives), I’m going to just say woooo saaaaah and divert my creativity to these nerdy panoramas. In the top image, on October 11th, I stood at Del Cerro Park near the top of San Pedro Hill on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and snapped eight separate images in sequence from left to right. I used the Canon Zoom Browser Photo Stitch utility to assemble this 180 degree view of the Catalina Channel on a nice clear day.

Channel Panorama

The second image is an experiment – The normal mode for panoramas is to center the horizon vertically in the image and pan the camera. I wanted to get a panorama of the coastline from Del Cerro and to get the foreground to blend into the picture as well. I am pretty pleased with the results I got. I took the series by trying to keep the horizon ‘horizontal’ in the viewfinder. I took six such images going from left to right. I had to post-process the pictures using a parallel scan setting on the stitch tool to get this ‘fish-eye’ sort of panoramic rendering. Both the foreground and the distance are rendered in perspective – just the effect I wanted to get.

Del Cerro Overlook

Click on either of these images to view them in the image viewer.

15 Oct 2008 by California Panorama

A Look Back to Catalina

Damsel took a lot of photos last Saturday when the air was exceptionally clear here in Southern California. We spent quite a lot of time shooting photos along the coastline, but when it came time to climb back over the hill to our side, we stopped at a scenic overlook and took this panoramic look back towards the coastline and Catalina Island in the distance. Click for the full-size panoramic image in the viewer.

hawthorne-scenicview.jpg

13 Oct 2008 by California Panorama Travel

Lane Victory

lane-victory.jpgAt the conclusion of our romantic excursion to Catalina Island, we passed the Lane Victory berth which is next door to the Catalina Terminal in San Pedro. We took a day cruise on the Lane, which is a National Historic Landmark; the cruise left San Pedro and steamed across the Catalina Channel and back. Unfortunately, I lost the photographic record when I had a disk crash. We’ll make it a point to take the cruise again so we can get more pictures. Damsel snapped this photo of the superstructure as we passed the Lane. Click for big.

Wikipedia has this historic account of the Lane Victory:

SS Lane Victory is a Second World War Victory ship which is preserved as a museum ship in the San Pedro area of Los Angeles, California. As a rare surviving Victory ship, it is a U.S. National Historic Landmark.

She was named after Lane College, which was established as a high school for black youths in 1882 by Isaac Lane, a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Jackson, Tennessee. The school grew into a prominent liberal arts college.

The Lane Victory was built by the California Shipbuilding Corporation in Los Angeles, California and launched on May 31, 1945. On her first voyage, June 27, 1945, Lane Victory carried supplies in the Pacific. She was operated by the American President Lines.

In 1950 the Lane Victory was used to evacuate Korean civilians and U.N. personnel at Wonsan, North Korea during the Korean War. The ship also saw duty during the Vietnam War. In 1970, she was placed in the reserve fleet. Because of her excellent condition, the Maritime Administration decided to set aside the Lane Victory for preservation.

09 Oct 2008 by California Military Travel

Avalon Chime Tower

chime-tower.jpgThe Avalon Chime Tower still chimes at fifteen minute intervals from eight o’clock in the morning until eight-thirty in the evening. While the chimes are charming, the tower facility, itself, could use a little tender loving care.

We hiked up to the tower and had an up-close look. The building is missing some roofing tiles although the decorative Catalina tiles look pretty good. The building is cracked in several places, the door on the west side needs repair and the area around the tower is a bit overgrown.

Now, I don’t know how the building gets its financial support nor do I want to take any supporters to task, but it is such a beautiful and historic instrument and it deserves better. From a distance, however, the chime tower is as charming as ever.

I took this photo with my Canon EOS and telephoto lens from the balcony of our hotel room. Click on the thumbnail above for full-size in the viewer.

22 Sep 2008 by California Travel

The Catalina Casino – An Art Deco Treasure

art-deco-mermaid.jpgThe Casino in Avalon, CA. on Catalina Island, is truly one of the world’s greatest Art Deco treasures. The mermaid over the box office (see a closer image here) has become an icon associated with Avalon – her image appears on event posters all over town and on the mainland in the terminals.

Cap’n Bob captured this vertical panorama of the mermaid while standing in the loggia at the entrance to the theater and ballroom. He combined three images to render this top-to-bottom view of the mural and box office. Click on her for the really big version – use the scroll bars to see the entire image.

More about the Casino’s murals from LAMurals.org:

Date
1929

Location
The Casino’s Avalon Theatre
1 Casino Way
Avalon

Media Notes
Designed by John Gabriel Beckman. Executed by Emil Kosa. Jr., Aloyous Bohnen, Vyseled Ulianoff, Alexander Kiss, Eugene de Goncz.

Description
Nine panels of underwater marine life including a mermaid encircle the loggia’s inside walls. They are painted directly on the concrete.

Around the dome, within the auditorium in an Art Deco style, are local flora and fauna, scenes of early California, and abstract designs. They were painted on a burlap-like material with extra-fine ground pigments in a flatene medium (used as a binder by printers). On a seashell carried by seahorses, Venus rises from the the waves. She is the central figure above the proscenium arch. Inside the arch are other figures as well as a map of Catalina.

More about the Casino’s description and history from Away.com:

Continue reading…

19 Sep 2008 by Arts California Travel

Packin’ Heat for Catalina Island

This year for our trip to Catalina Island, we took a flight to the island on Island Express Helicopters, just as we did last year. I took some video of the last trip that you can see at this link. Damsel took some stills this year which I stitched together in the composite below – the helicopter arrival at the helipad – the departure over Los Angeles Harbor – Passing Avalon Bay – on the pad at Pebbly Beach.

Catalina by air

However, we did something this year that we have never done before – we took firearms. I made a couple of calls to Island Express and Catalina Express (the boat coming back) to inquire about the policies for bringing firearms for non-CCW private citizens. (We have the Utah CCW but the idiots in the California Legislature deem that to be worthless here).

The helicopter folks told us to declare the firearms to the attendant who would ensure that they were packed in the baggage compartment. We were instructed to pack the ammo in separate luggage.

The boat people said to present the weapons to the Captain of the vessel before boarding and the same admonition for packing ammo as before.

Since we didn’t want to take the guns with us during the day while we were touring and dining, we had the hotel clerk lock them in a safe compartment for which I was presented the only key.

We packed the guns (S&W 686 and 442) in their original cases with padlocks. To avoid blatantly carrying gun cases in the terminals and around the streets of Avalon, I packed both cases in a paper supermarket shopping bag which I kept with me at all times until surrendering to the transportation agents.

Lessons learned – we can get both revolvers into a single case since the 442 is very small and the 686 has a short barrel. The safe boxes do not have any padding, so there was metal-to-metal contact during storage and handling of the box. Next time we will put the guns in a pouch or padded gun case when we put them into the safe.

18 Sep 2008 by Aviation California Firearms Travel

The Warthog is Back

As we reported last week, the Para Warthog is back from the service center. The “work accomplished” section of the paperwork indicated that they installed a new recoil spring assembly and firing pin stop. They also adjusted the trigger pull to the factory spec of five pounds. When they received the gun, the trigger pull was only 3.5 pounds or so. They test fired the gun after the work with 40 rounds of ball and hollow-point rounds. They reported all functions OK.

Today, we test fired the gun with an estimated seventy rounds. Most of the time, all ten rounds went through without incident. There was one time when the round did not cleanly enter the chamber and jammed. I’m not comfortable with doing the tap and rack when that happens, so I ejected the magazine, cleared the round from the pistol, put the unspent round back in the magazine and reloaded. The gun properly functioned after that. I also paid attention to making sure that the gun got a little lube every 50 rounds or so.

I watched Todd Jarrett’s video on how smaller people should hold and fire a short-barreled .45 pistol. In the video, I believe that I’m firing the gun using the proper technique with wrists and strong-side elbow locked. In the video, you can see all ten rounds dispensing without problems.

We’ll have more to report in the weeks to come.

10 Aug 2008 by California Firearms

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