Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

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

Range Report

We missed our weekly trip to the shooting range last week since we were out of town. This week, however, we made up for the missed fun last week.

Firearms Inventory

  • Glock 30 .45ACP
  • Para Warthog .45ACP
  • Glock 26 9x19mm
  • Smith & Wesson 908 9x19mm
  • Smith & Wesson 686 .357 magnum
  • Remington 870 20 gauge
  • Remington 870 12 gauge

We brought both .38 special and .357 magnum ammo for the revolver. We put up a target and started off with the revolver. We then mixed it up with all the handguns. I think we shot a total of 90 rounds of 9mm through both the S&W 908 and the Glock 26, about the same number of .45ACP through the Para Warthog and Glock 30. We also put 20 rounds of .38 special and 20 rounds of .357 magnum through the 686. At the end of the session, we each put 25 rounds through each of the Remingtons.

The Para Warthog did very well today. Towards the end of the session, she got a little dry and one round failed to feed. A quick drop of oil on the top of the receiver and racking it a few times fixed that problem and she fed the rest of the session without incident.

21 Sep 2008 by Firearms Sports

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

Catalina’s Casino at Night

Damsel usually gets all the good photo shots we post here, but this is an exception. Last Saturday night while we were in our hotel room, I snapped this picture of the Casino, a famous landmark where the annual Avalon Ball is held. There was an event in the ballroom this night, hence the lights were on in the upper level. This was a definite photo opportunity. Please click the image to see the 1024 x 768 pixel version in the viewer.

Casino at night

Canon A710 ISI used my compact Canon A710 IS camera mounted on a Gorillapod wrapped around a patio chair on the balcony where we stayed. I had the camera set to Shutter Priority (automatic aperture) and an exposure time of 1.3 seconds. I used the shutter delay feature to let the camera motion stabilize after I pressed the shutter button. I did some minor image processing to balance the light levels.

16 Sep 2008 by Photography Travel

One Reporter’s Opinion – George Putnam – RIP

It’s with sadness that we re-post this piece we did in December 2005 – the great George Putnam passed away over the weekend. Even late in his life, he was busy writing his unique “One Reporter’s Opinion” columns at NewsMax. We will miss George Putnam.

No one who lived in the Los Angeles area between the fifties and the seventies, will forget the iconic television newsman, George Putnam. One of the regular features on his newscast was “One Reporter’s Opinion,” during which he would editorialize on a topical issue. I enjoyed watching Putnam’s newscast, primarily because of his conservative point-of-view in spite of the liberal Times-Mirror‘s ownership of the television station, KTTV.

Well, I’m happy to report that George Putnam’s “One Reporter’s Opinion” feature is alive and well at NewsMax on line. Better yet, his politics are still in line with reality:

One Reporter’s Opinion – Americanism Left ‘Cold in the Night’

It is this reporter’s opinion that the very heart of America is under attack. There are those, foreign and domestic, who actually HATE this great nation and all it stands for. Led by atheists and the ACLU, there are groups who would love to destroy the promises on which our nation was founded – our very way of life.

Aided and abetted by strange court decisions and oddball judges, each day brings a new shocker. We find federal judges ruling against the Pledge of Allegiance as unconstitutional, finding that “one nation under God” violates schoolchildren’s right “to be free from a coercive requirement to affirm God.”

The latest target of the atheists is to remove “in God we trust” from our currency, claiming that this phrase violates the so-called separation of church and state.

Continue reading George Putnam’s article on NewsMax: One Reporter’s Opinion – Americanism Left ‘Cold in the Night’

15 Sep 2008 by Cyberspace Media People

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