Year’s end brought us a flurry of deaths. President Gerald R. Ford passed away in Rancho Mirage, California. James Brown died in Atlanta and Saddam Hussein was hanged in Baghdad. Regardless of that, the sun rises, the wind blows and the windsurfers hit the waves.
A windsurfer at Cabrillo Beach — December 2006
I posted about our Thanksgiving Day, and Damsel posted about the sacrifice our military families make on holidays. All good and well — but — imagine having an untimely event happen in your family on this holiday and having to make the best of a bad situation — well that’s exactly the scenario for Retired Geezer and family as they rushed to be with their son recovering from a helicopter crash. Seems like Brian is on the mend and will recover — A Thanksgiving, indeed.
Note to Brian: get well soon — and welcome to the club. “They” say there are two kinds of helicopter pilots: those who have crashed and those who are going to. You and I are both past that milestone now. I was lucky and walked away from my crash in 1979. Damsel and I hope you keep flyin’ Brian . . . I kept at it and I’m thankful that I did.
Retired Geezer and Mrs. G at Blog Idaho have a tragedy on their hands. Please offer your thoughts and prayers for their son and his passenger.
UPDATE: From Retired Geezer . . .
Mrs. G just got off the phone with Flyin’ Brian.
He sounded really old cause he is drugged up with pain meds.He has a compound fracture of his leg, broken nose and multiple cuts.
He got choked up when he told us that if it wasn’t for the other people on the ground, searching for the woman, they both would have died because they crashed in the river. The other searchers pulled them out.
We’re going to drive to SLC tomorrow.
Brian comes under the heading of Praise but please continue to pray for Kevin Orr.
Space junk floating above Earth? In addition to losing a bolt on this mission (STS115), the shuttle seems to have shaken off an unknown object after testing the reaction control system:
From NASA:
Object Investigation, Weather Force Managers to Wave Off Wednesday Landing
The Mission Control Center in Houston informed the STS-115 crew about 10:45 a.m. EDT that Wednesday’s landing attempts have been waved off due to an unfavorable weather forecast, coupled with the possibility of additional inspections of Space Shuttle Atlantis.
An object was observed by flight controllers using a TV camera on the shuttle in close proximity to the spacecraft. It was observed following standard tests of Atlantis’ reaction control system about 2:45 a.m. today. Flight controllers continue to analyze the situation and are concerned the item may be something that came off of Atlantis.
Image: unknown object in center of highlighted circle (courtesy NASA)
This looks a lot better than I imagined. The Coast Guard flyover of Wake Island (post-typhoon Ioke) shows the island’s man-made artifacts survived the super typhoon in fair shape.
Damage on Wake less than feared, flyover shows
A Coast Guard flyover of Wake Island Sept. 2 shows little apparent damage from Super Typhoon Ioke around the runway and taxiway, officials said. (U.S. Coast Guard photos)
UPDATE: Coast Guard Flyover Photos
A reef, a blue lagoon and a coral atoll just barely out of the water — Wake Island may have been completely swept away by Super Typhoon Ioke.
Super Typhoon Ioke has made a direct hit on Wake Island, pounding the tiny U.S. Pacific territory with catastrophic winds of up to 300 kilometers an hour.
Ioke is the strongest central Pacific typhoon in at least 12 years. Forecasters expect the “monster” storm to submerge Wake Island and destroy everything on it that is not made of concrete.
Wake is home to a U.S. Air Force base and a scientific outpost, roughly midway between Hawaii and Japan.
The eye of the typhoon skirted the north edge of the coral atoll Thursday. The U.S. Air Force had already evacuated all of the island’s 188 residents to Hawaii, 3,700 kilometers across the Pacific.
The residents – Air Force personnel and American and Thai contractors – left Monday aboard two U.S. C-17 Globemaster planes. It was the first time the territory was evacuated in nearly 30 years.
More about Wake Island’s history in pictures from Fox News.
Why does the UN, along with western politicians and questionable diplomacy continue to guarantee that terrorists will always prevail in the Middle East? Hezbollah did not wait for the UN resolutions to go into effect before declaring victory. This is just sad — letting history repeat itself in spite of knowing what actually must be done.
From Cox and Forkum:
Hezbollah did not wait for the official UN Security Council announcement on a ceasefire and launched its own media campaign declaring it had ‘won the war against Israel.’ In the latest video aired on Al-Manar TV the terror group says it ‘defeated the invincible army’ and ‘July-August 2006: Legend shattered.’ The new video clips show thousands of supporters waving Hezbollah and Lebanon flags.