arod138 in beautiful West Chester, Pa

Fair thee well, West Chester!

2011-07-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

Hi y'all, (I can do that now without feeling silly) have you figured it out yet? Had I sufficiently managed to put the writing on the wall? Yes, I can confirm it's true, I've left West Chester for greener pastures, or in my specific case, whiter, sandier beaches. It was a tough decision, but in the end, it's going to be for the best. I'd give almost anything to have been able to stay, but it just wasn't in the cards. I've moved to the sprawling suburbs of Jacksonville, Florida to take a job that's shaping up to be a much better fit for me and my career.

Am I going to miss West Chester? Really? Do you have to ask? Of course I will. Now of course what I will miss the most about West Chester, is not the geographic boundries that make up the borough of West Chester, with all it's charming homes and buildings, but the people that live within those boundries. (and immediate area) I resigned from the Borough Planning commission and that was hard, especially with the wishes of good luck from the people I worked with there, they really made me feel appreciated for the time that I put in to that labor of love. Then there were the friends I made there, people like Dr. Jim Jones, professor at West Chester University and member of the Borough Council. His interest in preserving and documenting the unique history of West Chester is invaluable as well as is his stewardship on Borough Council. He was the one that encouraged me to serve on the Borough Planning Commission and I'll be forever greatful to him. Mary Bigham, of West Chester Dish, bringing awareness to all things foody going on in West Chester is a gem. Jim Breslin, local writer and founder of the West Chester Story Slam, simply put, you couldn't meet a nicer guy. He really has made West Chester a special place by bringing together some of it's denizans to tell our stories. Finally no discussion about the character of West Chester personified could be complete without mentioning, the irrepressible John Young of Guerilla Drive In, Brandywine Rollergirls, and many many other side projects. I would hate to embarrass him, but John really has been an inspiration for me, and I hope West Chester realizes what they have in him as a community cheerleader. Good wishes to them all.

I suppose before I leave the subject of people of West Chester, some might find it incomplete without at least a passing reference to Mr. Bam Margera. Now it's true that West Chester has generated some important and famous people, like Samuel Barber, the writer of Addigo for Strings, and Bayard Rustin, early civil rights pioneer, but the truth is the reason some people in the United States and the world might be aware of the borough of West Chester exists at all is due in no small amount to him. People fall into either a love him or hate him catagories, and although I've only exchanged a few nods of acknowledgement from him when I would see him around town, I find myself not being a hater because he did bring "The Note" music venue into the borough, where I've enjoyed on more than one occasion an excellent show. Having only been in Jacksonville a few weeks and learning about the passsing of his friend Ryan Dunn in that horrible accident, my thoughts turned to West Chester and how uncomfortable it felt to be away from a town that I love that had suffered a loss of one of it's own.

Oh one more mention of West Chester People, I have to admit what made me proud about living in West Chester was the weekly anti-war protestors/pro-troop supporters on the corner of the courthouse. I'm glad I lived in a place where people felt strongly about anything enough to hold a sign and stand around for an hour once a week. Suburbia doesn't have a lot of that, I assure you, unless you count the people holding signs for going out of business sales at furniture stores.

So to be truthful, there will be some physical places in West Chester I'll miss, one of the many places is this home on West Nields Street. I've never met the people who live in it, but I've admired this home since the moment I moved to West Chester. That Craftsman style with the Frank Lloyd Wright touches, the natural colors, if I were going to build my dream home, this is pretty much it in a nutshell, I wouldn't change a thing.

So this is it West Chester, my last blog about living in West Chester. It might not be my last entry into this blog, as I have a feeling that West Chester and I will cross paths again and again, there's just to much things to draw one back at least to visit. Meanwhile, blogging will continue, so would you consider following my new Blog, "Blogging the First Coast". It will be my attempt to make the greater Jacksonville area seem as interesting as West Chester is already. Wish me luck.

Yours,
Andrew Rodriguez
arod138

PS, did you ever wonder where arod138 came from? arod from Andrew Rodriguez, and 138 from the 138th Aviation Company (EW), the unit I served with in the US Army. Now you know!

Things I would miss, IF I was to leave West Chester

2011-05-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

You know, it's an early Sunday afternoon. The spring showers haven't come yet, a mild breeze flows through the open windows of the apartment, the grumble of the more and more frequently appearing Harley-Davidson passes by, and wafting through the newly leaved Oaks and Maples of West Chester is the lilting sounds of Irish Music. Now it's true, we have an Irish Pub a mere steps from where I live, and occasionally, the sounds coming from there are no less as fine as to what I'm listening to now, but the source of the music in this particular case seems somehow a little bit more pure, and not sullied by the attempts of a money making saloon owner to draw in additional patrons.

Keegan, (age 11, on Whistles) and Alexander, (age 12, on fiddle) are simply playing there hearts out to raise money so they can go to Ireland to compete in a Irish Music competition this summer. I'm not sure if I can say with any certainty, that at any given moment, somewhere in these great United States, some one, in particular a pair of some ones, more particularly a pair of young men someones, is out on a street corner playing beautiful music, raising money for a trip to represent us in a World wide competition, while at the same time adding to the ambiance and quality of life we enjoy here in West Chester.

I have very serious doubts, that if I were to live anywhere else in the country, say, Jacksonville, Florida for example, I doubt that I could open the windows to my place and hear the dulcet tones of fiddle and flute being expertly played just outside, and it is for that reason, and many many other reasons, that I would seriously miss, like SERIOUSLY miss the people and the place that is the community of West Chester, Pennsylvania.

If you are living outside of easy visiting distance of West Chester, I would highly recommend an evaluation of your life so much so that you might determine if you might be able to move here, I assure you, you wouldn't regret it...Oh, and if you hear them around town, can you throw them a few bucks?

Signs of West Chester

2011-05-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

Hola Amigos....Let's just pretend that you're not wondering why I haven't posted a blog in over 2 months, and just get into it already, shall we?

(Boy I'm getting worse than Jim Anchower)

Anyway here we are, well into what is it, May? Crap! The year has moved along at a good clip, ain't it! And I'll be honest, I was kind of boycotting Blogging until the weather got better, but somehow, it managed to snow on April 1st, and we've had lot's of cold and rainy days since then, all the while the trees kicking in on the annual pollen pollution drive, so I've been out of it just trying to get by for a while. (Poor me, right? Yea, right as if I expect any sympathy from you guys...:)

When I finally got some time to walk around town, and the weather somewhat cooperated, I started to notice a lot of signs. Sure, the signs of spring were finally here, like when the Cherry Blossoms fall onto parked cars along our borough's congested streets, but other signs too.

I suppose there is something about the skate culture that is more than prevalent in West Chester, that says you have to tag things with stickers. Thank you Bam Margera, Shepard Fairy and Banksy for all that then. You know what I mean right? You've seen stickers on signs all around town right? Like these?

Don't get me wrong, I really don't have a problem with any of the stickers, it's part of our urban landscape, and heck some of the stuff is downright whimsical, like the ubiquitous STICKMEN in the street, but now there is Yawn Bombing, H/T to John Young for discovering this link. I wish I knew what some of them meant, I have a hard time grasping the idea that someone took the time and trouble to silk screen some image onto some sticky sided polyvinyl to then post onto some random object in public only to perplex squares like me?

That's the mission patch for STS-95, the return to space of Astronaut John Glenn! I'd like to meet the nerd who put that there!

Of course there will be somethings I won't like, like stickers quoting Che Guevera, boy that's somebody's mug I sure could do less seeing of, but as long as there are clueless college kids with money, there will be his visage thrown into the faces of those of us with Cuban ancestry as a constant reminder of paradise lost. (Let alone of relatives lost to firing squads by his personal hand, but I digress.)

And yet these are not the only signs we see around West Chester on a regular basis. Why just the other day, a lot of signs were seen at a rally to support education in Pennsylvania on the steps of the County Courthouse. State Senator Andy Dinniman hosted the rally, with his dog a giant poodle for some reason. I'm not sure if he couldn't get someone to watch the dog or what kind of image he was trying to convey here. (No, I'm not writing words dripping with sarcasm, why do you ask?)

Now I don't know exactly how one opposes supporting education, that's like being opposed to oxygen. If there is a hitch to it all of course, it's the ability to afford it in a budget strapped environment. We can have the most educated populace on the planet, but none of it is worth a hill of beans if we are an economic wasteland because we've defaulted on debt. I get it, really I do. However amidst the hoopla, once again, there was another example among the signs that were there that seemed to have the sole purpose of vexing me was this one.

Was he being ironic? Was he being allegoric? Was he being idiotic? Was he just an asshole, I'll never know, I sure didn't want to find out what ulterior motive, if any, he had.

America, Fuck Yea

Circling the Wagons

Finally I figured it would be an interesting weekend to check out our 1 hour express war protests on the corner of Market and High in front of the Courthouse. A lot's changed since President Bush left office, in so much that the population density of the protesters shifted from the anti war crowd to the support the troops crowd.

I knew all along that there were few people on both sides truely commited to their ideals, in so much the anti-war group was really populated with anti-George Bush people, and right on que, when President Obama got elected, they were replaced with anti-Barrack Obama people. I really respect anybody who really is for peace, but they got to be consistent. That said, it warms my heart to see someone sending love towards a soldier and hoping for victory on the battlefield, but when the politics get involved, taxes, immigration, and birth certificates, it's such a turnoff. All that being said, it was a weekend for the pro troops people, who didn't gloat or get any more jingoistic than usual, what with the very satisfying demise of Osama Bin Laden, they stayed on message. So did the antiwar people believe it or not. I think the few hard core peaceniks that are left have the honorable conviction of their feelings and are just wanting peace, and who can argue with that?

Anybody seen my wallet? Oh there it is...

2011-02-23T14:14:00.000-08:00

Anybody else ready for winter to end? Yea I thought so me too. I have to admit that we're much closer to the end of winter than the beginning of it, but this stretch of time when one day blurs into the next for days on end is so much tougher than in the beginning, when we are kind of eased into the season with the various holidays that we actually look forward to like Halloween, Thanksgiving and Kwanzaa.

Maybe it's a coincidence, that during these dog days of winter, (or is it "cat" days of winter?) where I really, really start to lose my mind. Specifically, I've been losing my wallet lately. Not misplacing it, but flat out losing it, only to have the great lucky fortune of having it be found by a kind stranger or in the last place I'd look, (as if I'd keep looking after I found it)

I think a lot of the reasons I'm losing it in the first place is because I'm usually doing something outside of my routine, like getting up early in the morning to move the car out of the parking garage to some far off corner of the borough where I can leave it there without paying. Or going across the street to the YMCA to workout for an hour. In both examples my wallet is not going into my right rear pocket like it does every morning of every day when I work, but it's going into a pocket in my sweat pants, or a pocket in a pullover which leads me to be lose track of it if it falls out into the snow covered streets without making a sound.

It should be known that I've yet to lose my iPhone, as that little collection of silicon chips might as well be surgically implanted into the palm of my hand at this point. Yet twice now in the last two weeks I've gone through the exercise of turning the apartment upside down, and retracing my steps through the streets of West Chester to see if I might come upon it, laying on the sidewalk, undisturbed, as if somehow I prearranged to meet my wallet here at some future point like the meeting of old friends in town for a drink.

I even go through the steps of bringing the spiritual world into the process, by reaching out to Saint Anthony of Padua, the Patron Saint of lost things. I'm sure I got started on that kick by my mom, back when my GI Joe's head would somehow become liberated from the rest of his body. She'd have me pray to him to help me find it, and sure enough, sooner or later I would find it inexplicably buried in the sand box in the back yard in some sort of ritual warning to the other GI Joe's to stay out of enemy territory. I mean it's kind of silly when you think about it, to check in with a celestial lost and found, but hey, I'm not taking any chances.

You know the thing of it is, I could probably avoid all the hysterics, by making my wallet as exciting as the glove compartment in my car by reducing it to a simple carrying case for money, ID and credit cards only, as all of those can be replaced pretty easily in this day and age. But I've got some really personal things in there, like my old Military ID, long since expired, my PADI Dive certification card that's still good, but, it's got a great picture of me being 21 years old at the time that I got dive qualified. Finally it's got a picture of Lana and a lucky dollar bill that she gave me when she gave me the wallet, the first of many gifts she has given me throughout the years. (and I hope many gifts she will continue to shower me with in the years to come.)

That's what makes the wallet almost irreplaceable, it's a bit of the nostalgia I've got going on in there, and the sense of the future that's there too. Plenty of room for pictures of the kid(s) that may happen one of these days.

So, if you have to be walking up and down High Street, and you see a black leather wallet sitting on the sidewalk, would you stop by the Greentree Building and drop it off? No questions asked, reward if returned.

Snowbound and down

2011-01-26T11:57:00.000-08:00

Sigh.

First off, let me say Happy New Year! For that matter, Merry Christmas and Chappy Chanukah. (You like that last one? Yea me too.) Anyway, sorry I didn't write a blog for December, I was going to put in my 2 cents about the local controversy about how the Philadelphia Free Thought Society (Atheist) didn't get to put up their "Tree of Knowledge" decorated with ornaments that are the covers of books written by famous non-believers. I was going to juxtapose this with the fact that a few blocks down the street a homeowner who really goes all out for Christmas with the inflatable lawn decorations had some of them stolen right off his lawn so he pulled all his decorations inside in protest. I was going to cleverly tie together with some wit and insight on freedom of expression, religious freedom, and commercialism, then I realized I'd get in over my head and decided to drop the whole thing because in the end I would have probably arrived at a depressing conclusion.

Speaking of depressing, what's the deal with all this snow? Again I've mentioned it before, despite my Florida nativity, and my Cuban ethnicity, I know snow. In fact, here are some pictures of me in the snow from when I was in the Army.

Ok here technically I'm not in the snow, but I'm taking this picture hiding in my room in the barracks instead of going to PT in the snow, so I still count it. Ft Devens, 1986

Here I am in Chitose, Saporro, Japan, January 1989. Coldest place I've ever been.

They had us staying in WWII barracks instead of the Marriott this one time, can you believe it?

Fort Sheridan, Illinois 1993

I think if you looked back at all my blogs over the last 3 years, you'd think I live in some Arctic frontier town or something. Today of course is no exception, we've gotten snow overnight, with more snow coming this afternoon. I tell you, it's bad enough with the snow and never seeing the sun during the day, but with the early darkness of daylight savings time, I'm inclined to lend a lot of credence to that whole "Seasonal Affective Disorder" thing aka "S.A.D.", can you believe it?

Well despite it all, one has to make the best of things, like today, when I had to go get Lana's car from where it was parked, (why is she parked outside, blocks away from our apartment, instead of in the warm comfort of the newly built parking garage you ask? Because if you are not out of the garage by 7:30 AM, they close the gates and start charging you to leave, 75 cents every half hour. If she starts work at 3:00 PM, well, you can imagine it'll start to add up, so we play this game every other day of finding a place to park near Marshall Park) and of course when I got there the car had been covered with up to 6 inches of snow.

Trying to make light of things, I gave her car a Mohawk, (Snowhawk?)

Finally, coming back in from the cold, this is what my scooter looked like.

Well, what can I say, we're all hanging in there to one varying degree or another, it's very hard because it's very easy that in addition to the environmental factors, we allow that mental parasite known as the internet to get it's clutches on our brainstem, and we spend these dark evenings reading article after article about how everything is so terrible in these United States, whether it's about the economy, the war in Afghanistan, the rise of China, or ironically, the weather, for that matter. Oh and let me tell you, it's really hard, but a bit of advice from me to you would be to avoid reading the comments on certain articles, the things people spout off these days because of the anonymity, I tell ya, sheesh!

Please though, don't be shy, feel free to leave a comment! A special note to my readers from around the world, tell us how you are feeling? Russia, China, Japan, Brazil, India, UK, I see you there landing on my blog, check in won't you? Does anybody else on the planet have a sense of brightness of future right around the corner, or is everyone feeling the same kind of ennui that we are here?

Maybe instead of hiding under blankets, I need to get out there and make the best of it. I may end up in Arizona one day and then I'll be missing the snow.....then again, maybe not. Oh the heck with it, I think I'll go build a snowman.

Snowmageddon, West Chester PA 2010

See you soon!

Oh by the way, anybody else think the title of today's blog entry is even remotely clever? I do....just saying...

Thanksgiving, 25 Years Ago

2010-11-25T08:32:00.000-08:00

Hiya,
I almost hate commenting on the season since I'm sure that there are an infinite amount of personal stories related to Thanksgiving, given as to how it lends itself to themes of nostalgia what with the family aspect of one's childhood, of relatives and friends long gone and such, but I suppose since I was out at the Grocery Store last night and for a brief moment of looking at aluminum foil drip pans I became momentarily overwhelmed by a kind of emotion, I figured I ought to add to the record another story of Thanksgivings past.

Time: November, 1985

Conditions: Grey skies, intermittent snow and sleet, around 35 degrees.

Place: A quaint looking Farmhouse overlooking a harvested cornfield, now brown and littered with the remains of dried out cornstalks, just outside of Ayer, Massachusetts which is in turn just outside of Fort Devens, Massachusetts.

The Players: Six, 18 year old soldiers from around the United States learning Morse Code and two, 21 year old guys doing the same thing.

Opening scene is in the barracks at Ft. Devens, Wednesday before the four day holiday, right after "school".

Robert Nelms and Matt Calloni in the Foreground, Doug Dry middle fingering and others in background

Enter Robert Nelms, the slightly older, much cooler, leader of our gang. Very nonchalantly, he tossed a pair of unfamiliar keys up into the air only to catch them again and again, as he strolled into our day room.

"Guys," he announced, "I've got the ticket out of this depressing situation"

All of us looked up at him, with a brightness in our faces as it appears that we were to be saved from the collective gloom that had been our situation, which was to be young, far away from home, and missing our families on Thanksgiving.

"Mike and Annette are going to Indiana for Thanksgiving, so he gave me the keys to their apartment off Post, so we are going to have the greatest Thanksgiving dinner since the Pilgrims got to this miserable state!"

Yes! We were sold, no need for any cajoling or persuasion, we were 100% on board, anything, ANYTHING to get away from these goddamn barracks and away from Captain Chang and First Sergeant Willis. I crammed into the back of a red and rusted 1974 Ford Pinto, a car that had apparently been at Ft Devens for generations of soldiers, passed down from someone who was graduating to someone in the class behind them for about 50 bucks each time. We drove slick and slippery roads to the local A & P Grocery stores and proceeded to act like idiots as we tried our best, with what money we had, to buy the ingredients and accouterments needed to put together a Thanksgiving feast. I'm more than a little bit sure that we were followed at a distance by the store manager, as I'm sure that our actions of youthful, goofy excitement, yelling to each other across aisles, and the reenactment of scenes out of the movie Animal House where we faked putting various staples down our pants gave him something to be suspicious about.

Now unless you've never been 18 and male, you might not be able to appreciate that putting together a Thanksgiving dinner is not exactly something that comes naturally. Odds are that in homes across the USA, even today, the teenage boys are not exactly involved with the cooking process. This thus explained the series of long distance calls that were made over the course of the day made to towns in Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, and others to Moms and Grandma's and Aunts to ask what went into the Turkey stuffing, what went into the corn, the potatoes, etcetera, etcetera. The Kitchen became a whirlwind of activity, young guys cutting, chopping, and sauteing, bouncing off of each other like heated molecules as they opened kitchen cabinet doors and reached for measuring cups, knives, bowls, frying pans, whatever it would take to make this dinner happen.

Believe me when I say I offered to help, I really did, but I was summarily dismissed from the kitchen for blatantly ethnic discrimination reasons. "Get out of here Rodriguez, you don't know anything about Thanksgiving, you're Cuban! Go back into the living room and watch Football or pop in one of those Porno tapes we rented." So I obligingly went back into the living room and watched a young, (as it would turn out, an entirely too young) Traci Lords do some of her best work. Who was I to complain with that kind of mandate? Strange note, to this day, I always seem to have a ridiculous smile on my face whenever I smell of Turkey in the oven.

Now I know that nowhere in that iconic Norman Rockwell image of Thanksgiving is a TV in the background showing hard core pornography, but maybe it's on in another room who knows. (Look at the smiles on these people's faces, it can't be just about the Turkey, am I right?) Anyway, despite the porn, the scene from windows of that second story farmhouse living room couldn't have been more idilic. The sun was nowhere to be seen, hidden by indistinguishable layers of low hanging, slow moving, grey clouds. On any other day it would seem gloomy but for some reason on this day they didn't. Snow lightly fell into the empty fields where cornstalks lay strewn about after the harvest, frost formed in the corners of the panes of glass set in the wooden frames of this old house, and the smells of things being cooked, boiled and baked were very heavy in the air.

Finally, night fell, and we were STARVING. Since we had all been in the apartment throughout the previous night and into the day, we hadn't eaten anything. Away from the barracks also meant being away from the Mess Hall and free food, and of course with the kitchen fully employed at the effort of making dinner, nothing else was had to eat. Imagine that while at the same time being in a room thick with the aromas of food being cooked. It's a wonder the Turkey came out of the oven in one piece.
The moment had to be preserved, so I took out my camera, a very nice Pentax that I had yet to afford to buy a flash for, so everyone had to remain absolutely still for several seconds posed around the Turkey, much to the annoyance of my friends. "Goddamn Rodriguez get a real camera next time for fucksake, I'm starving already!" Sadly, that photo no longer exists, but it's blurry colors, those overly extended smiles on people's faces, and perfectly hued Turkey are something that remain with me and always will.

For a brief moment, we transformed into gentlemen. We gathered around the table, we bowed our heads in prayer and thanks, and we toasted to each other. We then proceeded to have a some of the best Turkey I've ever had, and probably ever will have. In reality I'm sure the Turkey wasn't perfect, but rarely is Thanksgiving about the food, it's about the moment, and this was as fine a moment as I'll ever have.

I was especially proud of my contribution to the dinner, without which it could not have happened. The Tin Foil Drip Pan that the Turkey sat upon, that was me. The day before at the A & P among the chaos and merriment I spotted what was the stores last example. Thanksgiving Dinner's success or failure depended on procuring this critical item. As I reached for it I realized I was in a race for it with some other woman. Realizing what was at stake my reach became a lunge, and I snatched it out of it's display shelf mere milliseconds before she could grasp it. I smiled and walked away not looking back at what I'm sure was her heart broken face.

Last night, at the Grocery store, I saw a large stack of these drip pans and was for a moment, overwhelmed by a surge of nostalgia. I became momentarily weak kneed and weepy. Seriously my eyes became moist I kid you not and I'm not afraid to admit it! I thought, "Damn, I'm doing the same thing I was Twenty Freaking Five years ago." Today, the company I keep and the circumstances under which I live are light years and 100's of miles away from that time, yet I suppose if there was a point in sharing this story was to point out how THANKFUL, I guess, I am for having had that experience. I'm thankful that I was young, immature, naive, and all those things I'm not today (well, somewhat), because without those experiences I wouldn't be who I am today, and I wouldn't be sharing these experiences with the people I love today, so again, I have a lot to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving Y'all.

Post Script:

The rest of the weekend, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning, well, you can bet that any semblance of a orthodox Thanksgiving went out the window when we invited a bunch of other people who were stuck at the barracks, along with some local girls, and a kitchen sink filled to the brim with fruit punch and several different clear grain alcohols. The Sunday morning clean up, the racing back to the barracks, the sheepish apologies for the mess we had made are legendary and still reminisced at get togethers to this day, but those stories are for another day. Maybe Tomorrow since after all it was 25 years ago this week....

Just checking in...

2010-11-14T17:39:00.000-08:00

Hi all. Not much going on really, not a whole heck of a lot to report on, but I wanted to just write something for the sake of writing something. The new gig keeps me pretty stressed out and working long days, so my life in town has me retreating beneath the covers of my bed almost as soon as I walk in the door. There's a great deal of shame in that as I find excuses not to go to the gym, but there you have it. I know people say that working out relieves stress, but what if you're too stressed to go? Anybody got any tips in tricking the mind into getting back at it?

Anyway I digress, there's not much going on at Borough hall either actually, the town's short about a million and a half bucks as you may have heard, so there goes my free parking on weekends at my own apartment. (Actually, we'll see, maybe somebody forgot to carry over a decimal or something.)

Joe, Lana, and Yours Truly

The only things of any interest, and probably only to me, was the stopping by of my brother a couple of weeks ago on his 2 week leave from his year long deployment to Afghanistan. This was followed up yesterday by the visit of his Canadian girlfriend on a 5 hour layover in PHL. *Note, yes he actually has a Canadian girlfriend, not the kind that we nerds would make up to tell our friends, but an actual French and English speaking Canadian. How aboot that, eh?

Yours Truly, Lana, and Sheyla

One of the things they now have in common, (ok, now one MORE thing they have in common) is that they've both visited West Chester. They both rave about the place by the way, they are so impressed with our nature, our winding roads, our babbling brooks, our historic architecture, and great restaurants.

You know I think living here one might lose sight of how darn nice it is here, and it's something worth preserving as well as promoting. Now one might think the two ideas can't coincide, but let's face it, if we're ever going to get out of our million dollar hole, it is by preserving what we have, and promoting what we have to others. Which as you are probably getting it by now, involves preserving what we have as something worth promoting!

(In other words, can we not tear down everything in town willy nilly especially if we're not going to improve upon it?)

That's why I participate on a Historical Preservation Task Force, trying to figure out what kind of things should our town hang on to, and how do we get more people informed and involved? Should the borough be in the business of helping homeowners renovate the historically approved way appropriate for the property they own? What does that look like, is it "hand them a pamphlet about how to do it, wish them good luck and that's the end of it?" or "a financial/tax rebate kind of thing" if they use historically correct materials in any renovations?

Speaking of tax things, I sure hate the idea of being taxed or having to pay for services I currently don't pay for now. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure there are too many people out there who do like to pay for stuff they're not paying for now, but if not that, then it's going to have to be cuts in the services I currently get, and you just know that translates into a poorer (pun both intended and not) quality of life for those of us who live here UNLESS, we can shift the burden onto some other magical entity that would pay for it.

Let's see now, I grew up in Florida, hmmm, I remember not paying state income tax, hmmm, what was it that kept me from paying more in services from the community? Hmmmm, yes, labor costs were not as much down there that's true, but there was something else, what was it, oh I remember, TOURISTS! If we can figure out a way, to attract people from other parts of the world to come here, to enjoy what we enjoy, and get them to leave a few coins in our coffers, (while somehow minimizing their impact and demand for services) then we may be on the right track!

Would we as a community, live with our roads packed with 1000's instead of the currently 100's of bikers (the spandex kind) pedaling along the sides of our roads? Could we tolerate 1000's of bikers (the leather kind) roaring up and down our roads? Could we tolerate 1000's of ponytailed college girls with shinguards and sticks with nets at the end of them running up and down our fields? How about Revolutionary War Re-enactors, Civil War Re-enactors, hell, WWII re-enactors having encampments in our parks? 1000's of cross stitchers? 1000's of Roller Derby enthusiasts? How about minor league baseball fans? I know, I know, we're trying to make money, not lose it here, but hey, has anybody really done the numbers?

I'm sure out there there are people with great ideas, we just have to move them off of the comments section of the Daily Local News and into a forum where they actually get heard by those that can make them come to fruition.

I can tell you what, just like I've learned (or re-learned, pretty recently, I might add) in life, the accepting the status quo is not an option.

So, who's with me, who's got ideas to make this a better place to live? (that don't cost so dang much!)

Well, THAT was interesting!

2010-10-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

I've actually had a busy week, when I'm not in over my head at my new job, (well, not in over my head, but the analogy of having the similar feeling to that of a gentleman who is a below the knee amputee at a contest where kicking the posteriors of others comes to mind) I've gone to a Planning Commission Work Session, a community meeting of the Historical Preservation Task Force, (thanks for coming out to THAT West Chester...said sarcastically) and finally tonight the Turk's Head Stadium Alliance presentation at the Charles A Melton Arts and Education Center.

Now I'm sure like you, although the idea of a Baseball Stadium in West Chester has been buzzing around the borough for about 5 years, it seems like only recently has there been a burst of activity in the last couple of weeks, when there was an impromptu, and perhaps ill advised press conference about how the Philadelphia Phillies, a local athletic club of some renown I'm led to believe, is ready to commit to coming to West Chester with one of their Minor League organizations. This led many to immediately man the redoubts and take position, because one had the feeling that one might get run over by this steam roller express and not have a say in it before thousands of people come traipsing through our sleepy, innocent little burg.

Well, as it turns out, we are nowhere near that happening anytime soon, if my year or so on Borough planning commission has taught me anything. If the Borough is going to get involved in purchasing land from the current owner, and then leasing out to a tenant, in this case the ball club, a LOT has to happen first.

As for tonight's meeting, I'm not sure I saw it coming, but I suppose it could have been predicted. You had sitting at a table, in 3 chairs facing a group of about 30 people, 3 very nice looking, elderly, white AND white haired gentlemen. One, was the owner of a local sporting goods establishment, the other, a man who has when they say, "Baseball is my life", really made it his life, being a player in High School, College, and the Pros, as well as in executive positions with many teams and as a consultant in bringing Minor Leagues to towns across the USA. Now normally the race of these I'm sure fine and upstanding men wouldn't even be used as an adjective under normal circumstances, but sitting across from them were the actual residents of the community in which this stadium might be built, right smack in the middle of a historically African American Community.

This Dr. Killenger (not LBJ BTW)

From the moment it began, these men spoke in what I'm positive was a heartfelt place, about a passion for the sport, and a passion for the town. They dropped names of teams played for, coaches they worked for (You played for Doc Killinger? Really? The black garbed, "villain consultant" with the Henry Kissenger-esq accent from the Venture Brothers? Oh, not him, some other guy, oh never mind then, that's just me watching way to much Adult Swim.)

Not This Dr. Killenger

The problem was as I saw it, was that these gentlemen, all in their 70's in age, were not connecting to this audience. As the murmurs grew while they spoke of alleged benefits to the community most effected, you could tell the speakers weren't picking up on it. That's why they seemed so unprepared to deal with unleashed fury of a community that felt neglected.

In the words of some people, "our kids have nothing to do" "somebody came and broke all the side view mirrors on our cars parked on the street last night" and "we didn't even get the snow shoveled out during the last storm", true, non-sequitor statements given the agenda of the meeting but none the less, it felt like, and I say this as an observer, so who knows if I got it right, but that "maybe this project was just another thing that old white guys are trying to dump in our laps"

So, we all know what NIMBY is right? Not In My Back Yard? Well, there are a lot of people who would love to have this in their back yard. I know for a personal fact that the residents near 1060 West Addison Avenue in Chicago around Wrigley Field don't seem to mind much at all, in fact they love it.

So why the hostility tonight?

The truth is I think a lot of the initial frustration with this project, despite what some might say about how it seemed to be gathering steam in the shadows, despite what some might say about where the money is going to come from, is that people are projecting the current problems of the borough on to project thinking that somehow the project will magnify these issues a hundred fold. Now of course who knows, maybe it will destroy property values, tax rates will skyrocket, and quality of life will diminish, EVEN MORE for a certain sector of the community who've historically had it rough all along. (You think all those chemical companies and trucking companies are there for no particular reason?)

What made it worse I have to say, was how these gentlemen, goodnatured all I'm sure, were just unprepared for it. Unprepared in that they had no numbers on taxes, traffic flows, foot traffic, revenues, policing needs, light pollution, noise pollution, on and on and on. Furthermore they seemed to want to push away from that subject, as if they only were the group brining an idea and matching it with the decision makers in the community, and weren't otherwise responsible for working out the details. While that maybe true, one might want to do a little advertising first, solicit ideas, have some numbers for people to mull over, before presenting something that looks like it might break ground next spring. That is in fact what's so troubling, it's no where near ready to go, but they were very clumsy in trying to get that fact across.

They did talk about 125 jobs, they did talk about a all year long, 100 seat indoor auditorium for lectures and college classes, they did talk about giving the kids something to do via free tickets from local churches, they talked about Halloween parades at the park and New Years Eve celebrations with fireworks, they did talk about how it might seriously help get the SEPTA R3 West Chester line back to the borough, they even talked about how the Chester County Pops Orchestra needed a place to call home, but they just didn't have much else.

Add the age gap, the race gap, and the income gap between the audience and the presenters, and it just made for a cringe inducing evening that I hope won't be ever be repeated.

I tell you what though, if you want to see fireworks, go the next Borough Council meeting when this is on the agenda! I think I'll pass, and let Anne Pickering of the Daily Local News tell me all about it!

There's a doing's a transpiring...in West Chester!

2010-10-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

You know, I had to look up my own reference, has that happened to you? I knew when it popped into my head, the title of today's blog, I just knew it couldn't have been an original thought, so where did it come from?

My first thought was that it came from a cherished Warner Brothers Bugs Bunny Cartoon, the one where he's traveling through the Ozarks, and runs afoul of these two hillbillies, Curt and Pumpkinhead Martin, and the subsequent savage beating they give each other in the course of a hyper-violent square dance called by Bugs himself. Now I know political correctness has it's place, but I wonder what with the some of the more distasteful by today's standards cartoons having been swept under the nation's rug for their shiver inducing racism in the way that some ethnic minorities in the 20's 30's 40's and 50's were portrayed, the fact that the two main characters are white, (and southern redneck to boot) the uber violence is somehow ok, SINCE it is happening TO them.

Ok maybe I'm reading too much into that. It just bothers me that I can't find decent copies on the internet of the Speedy Gonzalez cartoons where he has a cousin by the name of "Slowpoke Rodriguez" because as a slow running fat kid named Rodriguez, I was some how saved from further mockery because we all watched on Saturday mornings when Speedy would give the ever sage advice that, "don't mess with Slowpoke, he carry a gun!"

Anyway, believe it or not, this is not what this blog is about, it's about what's happening in town. And that is, not much, really. Well, let's cover a few things.

Brownfield of Dreams, or the West Chester Minor League Stadium.

If they build it, will we pay?

I'm still forming my opinion on it, but I lean towards positive, because I do recall having a very pleasant day at a Minor League ball park in Salt Lake City, and to have a venue of this size that is walkable from downtown, I have to say I like it adding to my quality of life, especially if there were outdoor concerts and such being given there. Now of course as my quality of life goes up, perhaps someone living next to it their quality of life goes down, so it all remains to be seen, there are so many things that have to happen before they break ground, I doubt I'll see anything presented to me at the planning commission anytime soon.

Demolition by neglect.

Photo Credit @ddragger

You learn a lot being on the Planning Commission, so the whole backstory on this property is fascinating, of course I won't get into it here, but suffice to say, the owners of the property probably prayed for this to happen so they wouldn't have to pay out of pocket for it's upkeep, given the building is in the Historic District and the requirements on building upkeep that go with that. So, with the borough's hands tied and a property owner who was too broke to bother, another bit of history is lost. It's bad enough when mother nature and fires take their toll, it's another thing when we destroy things on purpose which would bring me to talking about the First Presbyterian Church and their desire to expand their church by demolishing two 19th Century residences (that they do own by the way) but since that's been forwarded on to Borough Council for decision, I won't say much more about that.

So finally, filed under the category of "Why didn't I think of that", West Chester is getting it's first Hookah and Cigar Bar with free Wi-Fi. I don't get how they get around the clean air act stuff that has all but eliminated smoking from most bars and restaurants, but the idea of being able to sip tea, coffee, or wine, while smoking cherry flavored tobacco, while working on that screenplay of yours, wow, that's all I can say. It'll empty out the Starbucks in town for sure as every bearded, ironic t-shirt wearing hipster in town and every horn-rimmed glasses wearing babe who scribbles away in her Moleskin journal will flock to the place. Oh and you can bet I'll be there. I just wish I had a velvet jacket and a Fez.

OH I almost forgot.

It was The Simpsons, when Bart and the Gang had to go to Shelbyville to recover the stolen Lemon tree, the impound lot manager who sounded a lot like Walter Mathau, he was the one who said it. "There's a doing's a transpiring!"

God please shoot me....

Aestas Horribilis or, One Crazy Summer

2010-09-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

Whew, glad that's over with! Have you noticed I've been keeping the low profile as of late? What, you didn't notice? Oh, well then, fine, never mind....

Seriously though I can finally and thankfully say, "No more!" to the whole laying low thing. Not that I'm one to have a particularly high profile in the first place, but things have transpired throughout the month so much so that I feel good about raising my head above the trenches again without fear of having my head shot off...so to speak...I'll explain.

Under most circumstances, I tend to look forward to the summer months, like most people in the world do, for the longer days of sunlight, the passing of the spring allergy season, and the chance to take some time off from work.

This year, was a little different, and not in the good, John Cusack, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy tries to win girl back and hilarity ensues good kind of different like in the movies...

Here's the deal. In all honesty work for me was in a death spiral, and after 7 years it had become clear that there was no future for me there. Now normally one does not take a leap of faith in the middle of what is categorized as "The Great Recession", but I did, and alas, it worked! I actually found a better paying job!

Unfortunately, that lasted all of 2 weeks and 2 days before they rescinded the offer of employment, no explanation given. As one might imagine I was pretty much freaked out, but just when you thought that the team was up against it, and the breaks were beating the boys, (and you can file this under the category of "Will miracles never cease?"), I found another job!

Fast forward to today, after 2 weeks and 3 days of being at the new job, I can say safely that I will be there for the duration, thus allowing me to breath a sigh of relief, and start looking again towards the future.

To give you a timeline of when all of this went down, this was from June 29th to August 16th. Total time unemployed, less than 3 weeks. Not bad in the grand scheme of things if I do say so myself, NOT that I'm one to gloat, because believe me I started to get pretty full of myself after landing the first gig, I've since been a lot more humble (and thankful to God) the second time around.

Oh, and in addition, as if I needed to add to the drama and make this period of time even more of a emotionally chaotic time for me, I formally proposed to Lana in Key West. Thankfully, she said yes.

So, where do we go from here? Well, the personal life will assume it's course, that's for certain, and as for the blogging, well I'm confidant I'll be able to post more frequently. I've got a lot of pent up "writing lust' to work out of my system, and let's face it, there's no shortage of things to cover here in Beautiful West Chester, Pennsylvania.

I'll let you know how it goes...

Anybody want to explain this? Anyone?

2010-06-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

Call me naive, but I want to believe it's about the troops, I want it to be about patriotism and love of country, I want it to be about victory, and duty-honor-country, but can anybody explain this? (Look closely at the center, or look at the blow up photo below this one)

Ok, maybe it's about victory over fascism. Maybe this guy is saying, "See this flag? It's a "Riechskriegflagge", and my grandpa captured it from some Waffen SS troops when his platoon took the bridge over the Rhine at Remagen as part of the Big Red One." (1st Infantry Division) So he's implying that by showing the banner of a vanquished enemy that could easily be described without hyperbole as evil incarnate, supporting the troops is in fact a noble thing to do.

Or, maybe he's saying he likes white people and hates Jews...

No matter what, it's a question of messaging, with the question being, "What's the message?"

What is the message when 100s of bikers roll into town, and rally to support the troops? Is it only bikers that support the troops? Are these people racists? I think most importantly, are they intolerant of intolerance among their midst?

Why didn't anyone confront this guy and ask what his deal was? If anybody wanted to make the anti-war protesters job any easier and to help reinforce the narrative that anybody who disagrees with President or waves the American flag is a xenophobic, jingoistic, white supremacist, this guy did it perfectly! You can imagine them yelling, "You see?, you see?, they ARE a bunch of jackbooted Nazi thugs!"

I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that I can throw out every comment on every article I read online, because only extremists on the left and right apparently have the time (and are otherwise cowardly in that they don't speak out in person) to post such lunatic ravings. I wonder why those who lean left don't tell some of those among them to shut the hell up, because they are making them seem crazy, but as one can see by what's demonstrated today, people that lean right are just as either ambivalent or feel just as non-confrontational to say anything to the crazies that they hang out with as well.

I hate pointing out things in life that are wrong without offering a solution, but this here problem sure has me buffaloed. Anybody got any ideas? Anybody want to brainstorm this?

Anybody?

That Stupid Cake! (Flickr Stats)

2010-06-22T18:03:00.000-07:00

Hey all, just a quick note, I'm super busy what with having just got back from Saratoga Springs New York, and having to do a quick turn (2 weeks) to head down to Florida. Saratoga Springs was great, boy that town is like West Chester on Steroids, I'll never complain about the crowds or the nightlife here again. Their little burg is hopping on Friday and Saturday Nights, it's as if half of Manhattan caught the train into Saratoga Springs for a little shopping, swimming and night life. Anyway, I was up there for a military reunion, actually the whole story probably deserves its own blog post, so I'll see if I can get around to it soon.

What I wanted to post about, and I still haven't posted about what Grinds my Gears, that's coming soon too I promise, is this seemingly innocuous photo I took last summer at the "Back to the Future" Guerrilla Drive In Show on the roof of the Bicentennial Garage.

Why, is this freaking photo so G.D. popular? I mean it's my number one searched for photo on my Flickr page! I mean, every G.D. day, someone, somewhere Google Images queries this photo by looking for the keywords "Jailbird" "Uncle Joey Cake", or some combination there of.
I mean sure, it was clever, to have a cake who's design was taken from a movie prop and some throw away dialogue that never really entered into the main plot of the movie, but still, what gives?

So, curiosity got the better part of me so I Googled it and sure enough, my photo on Flickr is the number one result! Upon further investigation, it turns out that according to none other than the big "O" herself, (that's Oprah people, come on!) people throw "Back to the Future" themed parties, and no party is complete, no matter how many DeLoreans show up, without the freaking "Welcome Home Uncle Joey" cake!

If you've been paying attention, and I'm sure you have as I'm sure you always hang on my every posting, my every tweet, is that I've been posting a lot of photos I got scanned of me "back in the day" doing the whole Army thing. It's mostly pictures of a 100 pound lesser version of me drinking a lot of beer and looking cool in Ray Bans and a Flight Suit. Despite that though, I think generally I've got a lot of cool photos of Airplanes, Scooters, beautiful places, beautiful people, but are people interested in that? No. People are interested in a stupid cake.......

Wish I had baked it....

Man, Blogging is hard!

2010-06-07T18:22:00.000-07:00

Hey all, just a quick note to let you know I'm alive. I don't know how I let the month of May come and go without writing anything, certainly not because there hasn't been much to write about, but I'll catch up soon since I've got stuff on my mind I wanted to share.

Otherwise, I wanted to say we here in West Chester have successfully made the transition from Winter to Spring, and are about to turn the corner into Summer. Allergies have come and gone, with only a hint of pink eye. I even missed the World War II weekend in Reading, PA, my first in 5 years. Of course living with a female again might have had something to do with that, especially since we went last year. That said, I'm going to try and drag her to the air show at New Garden Flying Field in Toughkenomen this weekend, June 12th and 13th, Saturday there is supposed to be a flyby of a B-2 bomber, so that'll be cool! Anybody else want to come with? Anybody? No? Ok fine, whatever.

Oh, and another quick note, Tuesday is West Chester Story Slam, with the theme of "Broke", and I still don't know what I'm going to talk about, (I wouldn't know anything about not having money, *ahem*) and Thursday I'm one of about 10 people hosting walking tours of the neighborhood of Northwest West Chester starting from the Chester County Historical Society and compared to some of the human encyclopedias that live here in West Chester, I'll be lucky to finish my tour with the same people I started with and not get lost.

So on all counts, wish me luck, and once I get over the hump here, I'll write more about what's grinding my gears....

West Chester Film Festival in Review.

2010-04-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed, if you spend anytime downtown, that this weekend was the West Chester Film Festival. Signs posted in store windows, banners hanging across High Street, obnoxious Hollywood types walking around yaking on their cell phones, not paying attention to traffic, ordering their fu-fu Soy Decaf no foam lattes...oh wait, that one is probably one of us. Seriously, unless you are not the observant type, you might have missed it. And based on the attendance I saw, a lot of us did, and for that, for shame!

Listen I'm not trying to lay a guilt trip, don't feel bad, I get it. That's the one thing about living here, the plethora of things to occupy our time. We've got to shop, and feed ourselves and work out, and get the job done generally, and heck we simply do not have a shortage of things to do.

Heck, me and Lana took the bikes out on a trail, so we missed some of the movies...

Perhaps though, maybe we need to look at things from the perspectives of "wants to" and "needs to". When it comes time to support the arts, maybe that should be something we "need to" do. We manage to be athletic supporters, (I've always loved that joke) as there is no shortage of decal Eagle's heads or giant red letter "P"'s on the backs of cars around here, and Political Supporters, as there is no shortage of Obama/Palin stickers on the backs of cars around here. (Did you ever think you'd see those two names separated by a slash in the same sentence in your life? Yea me neither...) And you know you won't find argument in me that we are all supporters of our kids. Especially the ones that are on the honor roll, although God help me I can't find any bumper stickers that say "My kid is just your average kid, and he's great anyway!"

So we, Americans, and West Chesterarians, specifically, (I think that's right) at the beginning of the 3rd Millennium, do we have time for patronage of the arts? Now I know we are not all DiMedici's or Rockefellars, around here, and we can't pay out of our own pockets to commission works of art, be they sculptures or paintings or arias or amphitheaters, but we really should find some time in our busy schedule and treat ourselves to something like independent films, right? I mean if for nothing else but purely selfish reasons, why not entertain ourselves? The beauty of it is though, is through the act of entertaining yourselves for a couple of hours, you support people who are involved in telling stories through the medium of film. Through that, ideas are communicated, alternates points of view are shared, minds are changed, and can't this only be a good thing?

I managed to catch 3 different blocks of the Film Festival and enjoyed each one. There were on average 7 or so small films within the block of films running anywhere from 3 minutes to 15 minutes in length. The diversity was definitely there, Polish, Jewish, Israeli, Women, African American, Dutch, Chinese and of course French subtitled films made appearances. (You can't have a pretentious film festival without something French in there!) Honestly though, "Alter Ego" and "Le Hobby" both excellent movie shorts and hardly pretentious.

Oh did I mention we even got to vote for our favorite movie in the block that we watched? Thing of it is though, I felt a bit like Homer Simpson in the episode where Springfield has a film festival, and he votes for the movie, "Man gets hit in groin by football" in so much that I pretty much went for the obviously funny (but with heart) movies.

Heck and where else, after watching a movie, can you turn around in your seat and ask the director or the producer of one of the films you just watched a question as to how they made it?

I think maybe, and here's my two scents, both smelling good of course, is that a way to involve the West Chester community more is to, well, involve the West Chester community more? If Sundance has it's Slamdance, than why couldn't we have a Slam Chester film festival tie in? How about we grab our home movie cameras and make a few, few minute shorts? Invite the college kids to enter, keep them from drinking for more than 20 minutes anyway, (if you believe some of the people around here that that's what they are all about) Test our talents and entertain our neighbors, why not? Everyone a star or a writer/director for a day.

I'm sure there's probably some issue about releases and Unions and such that I'm not aware of that would play into this thing, but still, if you don't want to make a movie, can't you at least watch one?

I probably could have tweeted this...or not...

2010-04-12T17:58:00.000-07:00

Can I ask you a question? If I say to you, "...more beans Mr. Taggart?" wouldn't your natural inclination, your almost Pavlovian, involuntary response to this query would be, "I'd say you'd had about enough!"? Or any variation on that statement. It doesn't have to be perfect, for some reason we imagine dialogue that may never have taken place, but in our mind, the statement is incomplete without it.

What am I talking about? In a nutshell, we had free lunch at work, tacos, and somebody whom I THOUGHT was cool, was changing out the serving dish and replacing it with a new one that had more beans in them. Naturally, instincts kicked in, and I asked him the beggingly obvious question, "More Beans, Mr. Taggart?" and with giddy anticipation I awaited the correct response, like a challenge/response used in the military, like "Flash/Thunder", I was returned with a weak, "yes, more beans...." and an otherwise annoyed, blank look.

Now come on! I was so deflated after that. If ever I have more living proof of my "square peg" status at work. True, when a boss of mine actually wanted to end a meeting on a high note, and I said without missing a beat in my best falsetto, "AAAAAAAAAH", although everyone stared at me like I was choking on something, my boss said simply "History of the World, Part 1".

I shudder to think if he hadn't gotten it.

So, you would have gotten it, right? Kind of like if I ask you if you've got a pool back there, and you would say "............................................."

Right?

By the way, speaking in terms of quotations from Pop culture; a sign of advanced or stunted social development? Any worse than memorizing Baseball statistics from 20 years ago?

West Chester Awakenings

2010-03-29T18:58:00.001-07:00

Hey all, Did you ever see the movie "Awakenings"? Robin Williams, Robert DeNiro? No? Yes? Well I did. I saw it on a date in 1991 when I was stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. For that matter, have you ever been to San Angelo, Texas? I'll bet you didn't know it's the largest city in the United States....NOT located where a major interstate highway passes through. So, to sum up, you probably didn't see Awakenings, and you've probably never been to San Angelo, Texas at the same time. I guess it was just me. As far as the movie, the date, and the town of San Angelo, trust me you didn't miss much.

ANYway, lately, I'm reminded of the movie Awakenings by the schizophrenic weather we've had around here lately. Let me explain.

The basic plot of the movie "Awakenings" (SPOILER ALERT in case it was actually on your Netflicks list for that Robin Williams retrospective film festival you were going to have down in the basement.) is that Robin Williams is a Doctor working with catatonic patients, and that he stumbles across a drug that can bring these patients out of their catatonic state. Enter Robert DeNiro as the patient that "Awakens" to a world of brightness and opportunity and love after years of darkness. The problem of course, is that the drug's effect is temporary, and he begins to exhibit signs that he's about to go back into that catatonic state and there is nothing he can do about it. The movie ends as it begins, with Robert DeNiro once again catatonic.

Remember that weekend a few weekends ago where the weather was bright and sunny, seemingly only weeks after all that snow? Dudes walking around in ubiquitous cargo shorts and flip flops and ironic statement t-shirts with a red backward Phillies ball cap. Chicks parading in short shorts and tight tank tops, cleavage spilling over ever so slightly and appealingly. Dogs and baby strollers. Skateboards. Harley-Davidsons. That's West Chester on any given weekend when the weather is nice.

My question is, "where did it go?"

This is for John Young and Dr. Zibbs, another great Ben Folds cover, when he's not covering Dr. Dre, the Clash, the Cure, the Flaming Lips, the Buggles, the Postal Service, or working with William Shatner covering Pulp's Common People!

Well we are, West Chester that is, catatonic again. The cold is back, the rain is back, the darkness is back. I knew winter wasn't done with us quite yet, it was too early. I suppose it was a nice treat to get a preview of what's to come, but frankly, it's pretty depressing! We've collectively survived a tougher than usual winter, and I'm looking forward to getting on with the business of living the good life.

I'm looking forward to getting on my scooter and riding! I'm looking forward to the May Day festival at Everhart park, I'm looking forward to Swinging Thursdays, Grower's markets, Guerilla Drive Ins!, Turk's Head Music festivals. Continued Story Slams, Heck, I'll even be giving walking historical tours of West Chester this summer! (More on that when I have more info) The Airshow at New Garden Flying Field near Kennett Square, Then of course there is the Iron Hill Criterium Bike Race. Did I miss something? Of course I did, that's the beauty of it. There's a lot going on, a lot to do, so let's get on with it already!

(Mother nature you have my email when you're ready to apologize and fix this whole weather thing)

Goodbye Walter, I wish I'd said more... 1939-2010

2010-03-10T18:47:00.000-08:00

Walter and Friend, West Chester Swinging Summer 2009

Walter. You all knew Walter. Even if you swear up and down you didn't know Walter, I'm telling you, you knew Walter. Metaphysics aside, the deal is, if you hung out in downtown West Chester in the last 4 or 5 years, you knew Walter. Ok let me put it this way, you "saw" Walter, or you might have been "aware" of him. You saw him at the Coffee Shop before the Starbucks opened up, you saw him at Peace of Pizza, you saw him shuffling up and down Gay Street, the slight hunch of his back, his coke bottle glasses, his ubiquitous baseball cap, the cane he would use to steady himself, and his never ending smile.

And what I mean when I say "You knew Walter" even if you're reading this blog post from your corner of the world, you knew "A" Walter. A kindly old gentlemen who no matter what, managed a polite and enthusiastic one word greeting of "Hello".

I knew a Walter when I was a kid, an elderly man that we called Colonel Sanders who would come over to watch us younger kids play football on our front lawn in Titusville, and always at a pause in the game he would start into an unsolicited Speech about America, and Patriotism, and how great it is to live in these United States. The other kids I played with were kind of ambivalent towards him, and of course the neighborhood teenagers were a lost cause, but I kind of liked and defended him. One Christmas, before becoming a hyper conscious and angst filled teenager, before it became uncool, I convinced "the gang" to go around the neighborhood and specially Colonel Sanders house to sing Christmas carols. When he cracked the door open, behind padlocks and chains, surely put there by his experiences with the egg wielding teenagers at night, and saw us singing, tears filled his eyes and he offered us candy and of course, gave us one of his speeches. Maybe there was hope for our generation after all.I am ashamed to admit though, having become an adult, or for becoming for what passes for an adult, that I became the cynical, ambivalent, irony and sarcasm spewing elitist asshole the 11 year old version of myself would never thought, and would frankly be disappointed I'd be.

Walter Wright, was the first person I knew in West Chester. Having arrived here in town after an ugly, ugly breakup with a live in Girlfriend, the newly single me was a guy hoping to integrate myself into my newly adopted community. A pretty tall order to fill, what with my aversion to actually striking up conversations with people whom I convinced are not like me hence not worthy of my efforts to get to know them, or the seemingly clique-ish, clan like coteries that seem to exist in most specifically the Northeast USA. It seemed to me, (or maybe I convinced myself) that people around here just weren't into meeting new people, or allowing new people into their circles, because let's face it, people here are born here, they go to parochial school together, they vacation at the shore together, the ski in the Poconos together, they die here, they don't really have any room for a "new" guy.

Yet there was always Walter.Walter lived in my building, the illustrious Greentree Building on the corner of Gay and High Street in beautiful downtown West Chester. When I was going to work, there he was in the lobby, making his slow, deliberate journey to the coffee shop. I'm sure I'd be on 202 on the way to work before he made it across the street, but he always made it, and he always managed to stay there and hold court all day long. If I was going the Laundry room, there he was in the elevator, on his way to the Basement Recreation Room to watch TV on the Big Screen. And if I was in town picking up my dry cleaning, getting a Latte, buying a slice of Pizza, there was Walter, with baristas fussing all over him, people of all walks of life stopping to say hello to him, lawyers, construction workers, the *ahem* temporarily un-homed, everyone knew and loved Walter.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Walter too. I always said hello to him, I always held doors and elevator gates for him, I was quick to return his smile. If I saw him on the street I'd ask him how he was doing, and what was going on in our building. He was definitely wired in to what was happening in town.

But a part of me, god I hate to admit it, rolled my eyes when I saw him. A part of me cringed at the thought of having to start a conversation with him. "Geeze, what if he invites me to some kind of Bible Study group or something, that would suck." I'd think to myself. Or, "Crap, 2 years in West Chester, and do I know any girls? Do I know any cool people I could hang out with to have a beer? No. The only person I know by name in this burg is a 4'10 inch 90 year old man, could my life suck any worse?"

Last Summer, I noticed Walter shuffling along a heck of a lot slower than his usual pace. I really did give that guy credit, for the determination it took to be on his own and make sure he made his rounds around town. Alas though, about a month or so later I learned that he was taken somewhere to Pocopson where he could get the full time attention of people that my god, the man had earned by now. There were actually moments where I thought to myself, "I'll have to head out there and visit him, I'm sure he'd enjoy that." Then I thought to myself, "Yea right Andy, who are you kidding, you don't even call your parents on their birthdays....I'm such a Jerk"

Well, as you may know by now, I'm on the Borough Planning Commission, I'm on the REGIONAL planning commission, I'm a liaison to the Historic Preservation Steering committee, and between Guerrilla Drive Ins and Story Slams and having Lana up with me full time, I've got a pretty nice life now. I'm even enjoying meeting the people from the Chiropractic office in town when I wrenched my back a few weeks ago. So with my busy life, I came home to a photocopied article taped to one of the doors at the entrance of the Greentree Building.

Walter C. Wright of West Chester

Walter Caldicott Wright, 70, died Sunday Feb. 21, 2010.

Mr. Wright was known as the unofficial Mayor of

West Chester and was a longtime resident of the

Greentree Apartments.

Continued....

My heart sank. Then I knew I had no right to feel bad. Did I ever reach out to him? Did I give him a chance, to get to know him? Shit no.

I went to the Cornstone Christian Fellowship where he liked to hang out, no doubt he enjoyed the homecooked meals and the fellowship to pay my respects, but I had already missed the Memorial Service and managed only to observe a gymnasium full of Walter's friends sitting down to eat some great looking fried chicken dinners. Me? I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to say hello to anybody, I couldn't enjoy a free meal on his behalf, I just took a few pictures, thought about Walter, and got back on my Scooter and went home.

Don't be like me, don't let the Walter's that you know pass into obscurity, be fearless where I was cowardly, get to know people, life is too f'ng short. (God I hate cliches, but if there is something else more apropos to say, I don't know it.)

Ok, I'm impressed...

2010-02-10T14:30:00.000-08:00

First of all, to all of my followers around the United States and around the world, (if that Global Visitor Tracker Widget is to be believed) I want to assure you that I am indeed well and none the worse for wear.

I'm in my apartment with electricity, heat, gas, (I made Chili with beans) natural gas, Hot Chocolate and of course, in order that you may read this, Internet. You are probably reading online or watching on TV in your native language how we're going through our 2nd snowstorm in a week, and are probably worried to death, but no fear fearless reader, I assure you of my good health.

Part of me still feels like really, I've seen worse, and what's the big deal, but in truth that taken in context for the kind weather that we typically get here, it's kind of an impressive amount of snow. Remember, I was licensed in the Army, in addition to kill, licensed to push snow blowers along the sidewalks of the Officer's housing areas so their precious kids and wives wouldn't slip and crack their precious skulls open when I was at Ft. Devens, Massachusetts, and let's face it, the Boston area gets it's share of real snow storms. Later in Utah, where they have "The Greatest Snow on Earth" (if their license plates are to be believed) and Colorado, where 3 feet of snow can fall in an hour on Memorial Day Weekend and be gone the next day, I know my snow, so it should come as no surprise to anyone that I am impressed by two, day long storms of non-stop snow fall that have brought havoc two my small town.

Now some people might complain about the quality of snow removal, or the condition of the streets, but are you kidding? It's a freaking storm out there OK? Look I know, this is the United States of America. We are a nation of business and commerce, and we have places to go and money to make. But seriously, can't we take a break and sit home with a cup of Cocoa? Let these snowplow drivers do their job without having to dodge snowbound cars in the streets. Let's meet our neighbors on the street and say hello as we shovel snow. Take a walk and breath in this clean fresh air! It's a once in a lifetime event, when we are all off doing our own thing this summer, with either the steady routine drudgery of work or making trips out to the shore, the mall, or the city, you might look back with regret that you squandered this opportunity to enjoy a unique aspect of our life here in town.

West Chester....Rising

2010-01-24T12:29:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

I won't even go into apologizing about the lack of frequency of my postings, on the one hand one a month is not really bad per se, but I know how often you refresh your screens in the hope I've posted a new blog musing, and after a while, with nothing new, one might tend to give up hope. I'll endeavour to do better, I promise. Shit so much for not apologizing...

So what's up in town?

Well, I finally found my scooter in the parking garage flipped on to its side, ever so undignified and distressed. Was I mad?, oh yea, I'm pissed, but one can look at it as it having either being violated by the drunks in this town, or, basically, it has earned its stripes as a true urban hipster conveyance, since no scooter worth it's salt could have remained so pristine forever in this rough and tumble little burg of ours. Maybe the scratches to the paint and the headlamp will make it seem cooler, more authentic, give it "street cred" who knows. Anyway it fired right up, so life goes on.

What else is going on?

Well, what's going up (or down) I guess is the more apropos question, what with a couple of cool construction sites in the works and all.

First, the Monolith. Now of course I'm no architect or engineer, but I'm assuming that it wasn't planted by a race of ancient aliens that will change the course of human events here in West Chester, (or...will....it?) What I do assume it is, is the beginning of the elevator shaft, of which around the rest of the building will be built. Seems reasonable, right? This is just west of the New Courthouse complex. I'm not sure if they've got it rented out, (it seems to me we may have a glut of free square footage office space in town as it is, but maybe they know something about the economic recovery that I don't)

Second, is our new garage. Now I had assumed that it would be called the "New Mosteller Garage" but it will be known in fact, per Borough council, as the "Walnut Street Garage". Man oh man is this thing is shaping up to be a behemoth. When the big red crane showed up to help put up its prefabricated pieces, I sure nobody had quite a grasp of the scale of this thing. Now it seems obvious, that it could be a 20 minute drive just to get to the roof of this place, as cars will be high in the sky for sure. The place sure will have some good views of West Chester, no doubt, but Goth teens smoking homemade clove cigarettes and writing bad poetry will be attracted to the roof like moths to a porch light, so I'm afraid we may lose one or two of them going forward to blunt force trauma injuries because this place is going to be pretty tall and I'm sure won't have 24/7 security and you know how those kids seem to be less than sure footed in high places.

Now on to one of the few "FAILS" of our community, and that is the 124 Market Place project on East Market Street. Now as I understand, the buildings currently on the lot where these super hip condos were supposed to go up were suddenly and mysteriously "condemned" in the name of not having to salvage them for historical sake so work could get started right a way on these high end pads. Well in life just like everything else, timing is everything, and it seems that all this went down just as the financial crisis hit, drying up construction financing, especially in the area of home construction, what with nobody seemingly interested (or at least bank approved) to drop more than 400K on a 2 bedroom Condo with views of a Mexican Bodega and a Salvation Army across the street. Look I certainly don't begrudge someone holding off on some serious expenditures of capital in an economic environment like the one we are in, but come on, we have to live and work here every day, this is an eye sore, can't we get this if not covered in some sort of shroud, perhaps leveled and turn the property into some temporary surface parking while we sort this whole economic mess out?

To me, bottom line is, it's a quality of life issue. A broken window....if you will. If we leave things like this undone for months and months, the next thing you know, people are knocking over your scooter in the parking lot and not leaving a note or anything. I mean, when will it end? Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! That's what'll happen, I tells ya!

Generally we are in the right track, but we need to see more managed growth, growth that has the affect of benefiting the residents of this town. If only there was some sort of commission, made up of citizens, that could ask the tough questions of developers before they run roughshod over our fair community, oh wait, there is, it's called the West Chester Borough Planning Commission, and guess what, yours truly has joined it for a 4 year hitch!

I'll see what I can do about getting this place straightened out, and I'll update you from time to time on how it's going. There's a doings a transpiring down in the southern part of town by the University, (Dormitory demolitions, recreation centers and more parking garages being built) so I'll be in the know for that, and whatever I learn, I'll pass on to you.

In the mean time, wish me luck!

West Chester Snowpacolypse 2009

2009-12-22T18:20:00.000-08:00

Hello from under over 13 inches of snow in West Chester, Pennsylvania!

Now for those who know me, I grew up in Florida. Despite that handicap, and I do call growing up in Florida a handicap, I do know my way around snow, and I know that 13 inches in the great scheme of things, ain't a lot of snow, but allow me to make my point.

When I was 18 years old I was made qualified to push a snow blower around Ft. Devens. At the US Military Academy at West Point, I watched the snow fall on the shoulders of the bronze statue of General George S. Patton, as if he was frozen in that moment of time when his forces raced to Bastogne, Belgium to relieve the 101st Airborne at the Battle of the Bulge.

General Patton in much better weather than Belgium 1944

Then there was the infamous Thanksgiving weekend spent in a quiet farmhouse outside of Ft. Devens. (That's a story for another time, maybe I'll tell that one at the West Chester Story Slam in January!)

To continue proving my snow pedigree, I participated in an exercise with the US Army and Japanese Ground Self Defense Forces in Sapporo, Japan, in January, I've had Snow ball fights at Fort Sheridan, near Chicago, Illinois, I've skied in West Virginia, Washington State, Idaho, Colorado, Utah and Pennsylvania, and I've lived and worked in Salt Lake City and Denver for a year each.

So again, I know my way around snow. Unlike the Eskimos however, I have only one word for it. Snow.

Grounded Zero Zero

And did it ever snow in West Chester! Well, for West Chester it was a lot of snow. So much Snow that Starbucks had the nerve to close down early on Saturday. Was it a lot of snow by the standards I've seen? No. Was it enough to paralyze the borough? Thankfully no, but not because it was an underwhelming amount of snow, but of an overwhelming response by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Borough Management team.

I've got to hand it to people around here but they were on the ball. The timing to deal with the snow seemed right. Not wasting time and resources in the middle of the storm, but attacking the roads full force the moment the last snowflakes fell. Dump trucks, Front End Loaders, Pickups with snowplows, even Bobcat mini front end loaders got into the mix, clearing sidewalks, roadways, alleys, pretty much everything you might walk or drive on. Of course private individuals and business owners did their share too.

Did it help that the snowstorm came on a weekend? Man you bet your life it did. Still, the fact that it was for all intents and purposes a non event, and as such it allowed those of us without the responsibility to do anything about the piles of snow the opportunity to simply enjoy a winter wonderland. It is this fact, and I have said this countless of times before and will continue to do so, that reminds us of the quality of life we share here in West Chester.

Mr Developer, tear down this barrier!

2009-11-22T17:37:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all. Going a month without blogging is pretty much unforgivable, but you know I want to crank out a quality product so you'll come back for more. Geeze what am I talking about, come back for more, utter nonsense, let's get to today's story.

Actually we've had a lot go on in West Chester since the last blog, there was both the Halloween parade and the Veterans Day parade of which I wrote about last year where you can read about them here, and here. (BTW, one has plenty of turn out, the other one, not so much, but hopefully we can change that.) and then there was the 1st ever, West Chester Story Slam! Now if you're thinking about a bunch of soul patched, beret wearing hipsters smoking clove cigarettes from those long plastic filters and drinking espresso while snapping their fingers in approval after every story, it wasn't like that at all. It was more of a cross between open mic night at a comedy club, and an AA meeting.

It was pretty cool, listening to people I didn't know that well if at all tell us stories under the theme of "New Beginnings". I ended up telling the story of when I first arrived in Utah, when I got "diverted" on a tour that I thought was supposed to go to Park City, that ended up first stopping by to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Mormon History Museum, and the Genealogy Library. Not my strongest story, given how I've got some "go-to" gems like the High Altitude Chamber at McDill AFB story, and others, but it was a good start that just like skydiving, you're nervous and scared as you stare out the back end of the plane, but when you're safely on the ground, the adrenalin, man you want to do that again. So I'll be getting my fix again in January. Hope to see you there!

So, it's been an interesting month as it often is here in West Chester, we didn't burn the place down when the Philly's lost the World Series, so that was kind of nice, and the weather has been kind of bi polar, with dreary rain sprinkled days that last for days, and days of CAVU, (Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited) as we aviators say. :)

With the weather so good, Lana and I even checked out Longwood Gardens, my first time if you can believe it, and it’s clear that our timing was off, because the batteries on both my Nikon Coolpix camera and my iPhone dropped dead, that and if we waited a couple of weeks, we’d get to see all the Christmas lights and decorations. So guess who is going to drop another 30 bucks on getting back in to Longwood Gardens in the next couple of weeks? Yup, me.

Truly though it’s worth it, I’m not a plant guy by any stretch of the imagination, but I do find myself wishing I knew my botany better, if for nothing else than to be able to drive around West Chester on my scooter and say, “That’s an Elm, that’s a Maple, that’s an Eastern White Pine, that’s a Larch,(The Larch) that’s a TREEEEEEEE....as I wreck into one as I’m not paying attention...:)

Oh so I almost forgot, what’s with the title of this blog entry, right? A minor annoyance of mine is all, let me explain. You know it’s also the 20^th Anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall, which got me to thinking about freedom, which got me also thinking to Yoani Sanchez, the Cuban blogger who got beat up by the Cuban police, which made reminded me of the Veterans Parade and the freedoms we have here in West Chester to post anything we want, which led me to today’s blog. See, when the Rite Aid corporation bought out the Eckerd Drug corporation, they obviously had a redundant presence on Gay Street. So when they consolidated their West Chester operations into the one on the first floor of the Greentree building, they abandoned the storefront across from the Post Office. This lead to one of those amazing happenstances in borough life, that of FREE PARKING. With the Mostellar garage a gravel pit now, can you imagine, a place where you can park, in the center of town, FOR FREE, without fear of being towed? Now I play by the rules, and I pay for parking as part of my rent with the Greentree Building, but I was always happy for those people who could park there whether it was for them to run errands, buy a stamp at the post office, or for a night out on the town.

That's my other Blue Scooter, the '98 Chevy Lumina. Yea I parked there, want to make something of it?

That’s why it kind of upset me to see them put up Jersey Barriers around the parking spaces. It’s like the forces at work here couldn’t live with the idea of not making any money off of the 10 or so spaces, so they just denied it to everyone simply because they could. I’m not sure who’s responsible for it, but this strongly worded Blog about it should shame them into removing those barriers, tearing down those walls, right? Right.....

Happy Thanksgiving y’all, if anybody knows where I can mooch an invitation to dinner, let me know! :)

Just a good old boy....

2009-10-19T16:43:00.000-07:00

I wish I had a better way to illustrate today's story, but because I believed that it would in my best interest to make sure I didn't inadvertently create evidence that could later be used against me, so I didn't document my activities using my iPhone. I'm hoping though that perhaps my words alone and images from pop culture can effectively put an image in your mind of what I was up to on Saturday.

Was that previous sentence overly wordy? I'm working on trying to convey things with verbal efficiency. I am open to any and all constructive criticism.

ANYway.....

So, after 10 years of faithful, unfailing service, my $200 futon, bought in Salt Lake City, moved into 3 different apartments and having spent 6 months in a storage facility in Denver, then making the trek to the east coast, and 3 more address changes before settling into West Chester, finally broke. Splintered actually. It was an inelegant demise, with loud cracking, creaking and popping noises as it gave up the ghost, embarrassingly reminding me that I'm fat, as if it could simply no longer deal with the enormous pressure of serving as my couch and bed.

So I needed a new futon.

You're probably wondering, what's a successful, handsome guy like myself still doing living in a studio apartment, sleeping on futons? Hey, did you see that Philies game? Wow!

Soooooo, I found one at IKEA, a METAL futon frame, (I saved the large foam mattress, since it has had 10 years to memorize my unique body shape, so much for memory foam) that seemed to be the perfect solution to my dilemma, and at $80 bucks, such a deal!

There was one major problem, how was I going to get this unwieldy thing home? As you know, Ikea does the whole flat packaging thing, and it sure as heck wasn't going to fit IN my car, and I didn't have those roof carriers, so I thought I was screwed, but it turns out they have a cool solution, these triangular thingies (again, a problem with vocabulary) that you put on the roof of the car, and it helps to distribute the weight of the item on the roof of your car. They even give you free twine, as much you need, you just have to, you know, do it yourself. So, guess what I did?!

I muscled this 60 pound beast on to the roof of my car in the cold, unrelenting rain mind you, and man, I tied the shiiiit out of it, ask Mike Sawyer one day about his flying bed. There was noooooo waaaaay I was going to have this thing set sail off the top of the roof of my car, because I ran all of that free twine around the top of my car, threading it through the windows of the front and back seat, up top again, pulling tighter and tighter with each successive round trip, enjoying by the way my new driver's side window that rolls both up and down, thanks to me correctly deducting that I had a bad contact on the power window switch, not some $700 window motor that the dealer wanted to charge me. Sorry, off tangent a bit, but man I'm so proud of myself that I fixed it with a simple replacement after market window switch, and not getting ripped off by the dealership.

So, back to the pouring rain, and me tying down this flat futon to the roof of my car.

I probably went 6 or 7 times through the windows of my car with this twine, tying it down to the point that there was veritably no slack at all when one plucked at the individual strands of twine. I stood back and wiped the rain off my glasses so that I could better admire my handiwork. Then it dawned on me. How am I going to get into my car? You see, in my haste, or lets say in my unbridled exuberance, I neglected to you know, think it all the way out. I should have opened the doors first, and I'm assuming you, my loyal and more intelligent than me reader, would have figured it out from the outset, right? Right....

Now if you know even a little about me, it's not that I'm lazy, (no really!) it's just that I, (like electricity) prefer to take the path of least resistance. There was very little chance in hell that I was going to undo the all ties in the twine that I just spent the last 20 minutes tying off in the cold October rain, so with the windows already down, (ah, that new power windows switch, sooooo nice) I figured that if Bo and Luke Duke and every NASCAR race car driver can slide into their cars through the driver's side window, so surely despite my Boss Hogg size, I could do the same. Long story short, it wasn't pretty, it wasn't graceful, but damn it, I somehow managed to get into my car feet first through the drivers window.

I sat in my car for a moment, laughing at myself and my ingenuity, before tentatively setting out of the parking lot of Ikea for the ride home. I tell you what, I started off, 25, 35, 45 miles an hour, occasionally looking up to make sure my futon was still with me, although trust me, if it had blown off, I'd have known about it right quick. But with more time and confidence I had it up to nearly 60 mph on 202. When I pulled in to the back entrance of the Greentree building, all I had to do was grab the P-38 can opener on my key chain, and one by one, cut the individual twines until the last one popped, and "Ta-Da!" I was free, I could open the door to my car and exit it in a much more dignified manner than which I had entered.

The rest of the day is of course anti-climatic, putting the thing together was a piece of cake as is all Ikea furniture, and although most of my old futon is scrap wood now, I still have the original arm rests and mattress to remind me of my humble beginnings, aaaaaaand it reminds me of my humble present.....damn I need to buy a real bed, maybe get a real place to live while I'm at it?
Since I'm wishing for things, I want a puppy....sheesh.

Is it October already?

2009-10-04T15:42:00.000-07:00

A few things. Hello all, I'm writing to you to what amounts to my living room, (since I really don't have one in my 1 man cell, er, I mean studio apartment in the Greentree building) other wise known as the Starbucks across the street. First, welcome everyone to the fall season, here in beautiful West Chester, as if on some pre agreed upon signal, some of the leaves on some of the trees begin to wimp out on life, turn yeller, and make their suicide leap to the ground. Like lemmings I's tells ya these leaves are...

Second, my scooter crossed over the 1000 mile mark of trouble free service. I took this very clever picture at the northern gate entrance to Everhardt park as it crossed 1000, as if to give the casual viewer the idea that through fortuitous circumstance and fate that it just happened to cross 1000 ever so randomly at that particular location, but of course the truth is that I circled the park several times during the last mile, 999.0 to make sure I ended up there when the numbers rolled over. Sorry for perpetrating such a heinous fraud upon my loyal readers, but, well, whatever!

Third, as if this humble blogger cannot be given an even bigger head, I got quite the compliment from Godfather of West Chester Blogging, WCJIM, otherwise known as West Chester University professor and city councilman Dr. Jim Jones. I like to call him Dr. Jones, because it sounds so Indiana Jones-ish. Anyway, to read his post about myself and other local area bloggers, click here.

Finally, with the fall weather upon us, it can only mean one thing. ROTORFEST. Now I've always been, and will continue to be, a fixed wing man, but I do have a fond memory of flying in a Bell 47 up and down Cocoa Beach for 4th of July, 1975, and then several years later in a UH-1P as a Civil Air Patrol Cadet at McDill AFB, 1983, and most recently last year flying side by side with my brother Joe right before he went to Afghanistan in a Hughes 500. So suffice to say, it's difficult for me to imagine under what circumstances I'd miss a chance to check out ROTORFEST when it comes to town. This year it was Lana's turn to ride in a Helicopter, and surprise, surprise, she enjoyed it. She managed to get some great shots of West Chester off in the distance, and those miserable McMansions that are a sadly ubiquitous in the suburbs, no offence to my readers who are rocking the McMansion lifestyle, more power to you, no seriously, you use up a disproportionate amount of power! :)

So, with October off to a high and mighty start, I find myself looking forward to the last 3 months of the year, what with the Halloween parade, Veterans Day Parade, and Christmas Parade all on the horizon. The twitter-verse is all a twitter with talk of a Guerrilla Drive-In float in the Halloween parade, and you just know that's going to be fun! Also, the Phillies are also in the playoffs, so let's hope they make it all the way to the fall classic, but let's hope we avoid last year's celebration in the borough, what with the flipped cars and the fires and whatnot...

Charleston, South Carolina, or as I like to call it, West Chester by the Sea...(why not right?)

2009-09-16T18:48:00.000-07:00

Hola Amigos, I know it's been a long time since I've rapped at ya....(ok, who always starts off their editorials with that opening? Anyone? Anyone?)

It's been a great summer, and I ended it by taking some time off the week before Labor Day to take the train down to Southern Pines, North Carolina, my newest favorite get away location and of course to spend time with Lana.

Lana is the blond.....on the left

With us both having the time off together, and as nice and relaxing Southern Pines and Pinehurst is, we both wanted to strike out to someplace new and to her credit, it was her idea as she had heard some good things about Charleston and wanted to road trip it out there. Now I'm not sure how it happened, but I consider myself one of those gentile Southern gentlemen who knows his way around the South from Atlanta to Birmingham to Columbia, and all points in between.

Yet somehow, on those countless trips up and down I-95 from Orlando up to Ft Bragg to go shopping for uniform items, or those great Additional Flight Training Programs where we'd fly to Fort Rucker Alabama to hit a Barbecue shack in Enterprise, or St. Simmons Island Georgia for some low country seafood, I'd somehow never made it to Charleston. Maybe because it was out of the way, a good 50 miles off of I-95, and although come to think of it I might have briefly landed at Charleston AFB long enough to drop off some parts or something, I had not had the pleasure of checking the place out.
Here's the takeaway from today's blog entry, and that is that Charleston is a great place, and you should go there right away! (and no, just like I don't work for the West Chester BID, nor do I work for the Charleston Chamber of Commerce.

Charleston is a little bit older than West Chester, and I'd be willing to bet that they have as many historical buildings as we do here in town. Great architecture, great shopping and great restaurants, but the difference of course is that beautiful waterfront view. I just have a feeling that as great as life is here, could it hurt if from say the top of Coyote Crossings we could look out over the water and see a giant Aircraft Carrier permanently tied up to the docks serving as a museum? Colorful sailboats darting in and out of coves? Merchant ships escorted by small pilot boats in and out of our harbor? Yea, I know, nice thought right?

So, just like Charleston, West Chester is kind of off the beaten path, you have to almost go out of your way to visit here, but as I go along in life, I've learned going out of your way usually pays off in many ways, don't ya think?

Local Blogger survives second bombing attempt

2009-08-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

As many of you recall, last year an as of yet unidentified person planted an explosive device in the Mosteller Garage, in what was no doubt an attempt to ruin my day. Recently, after a relatively quite period, a second attempt was made, using nothing short of a JDAM, or Joint Direct Attack Munition, a GPS guided bomb dropped from the thousands of feet in the air by either a B-1A or B-52G bomber that was once again directed at the Mosteller garage where I park, but this time, with devastating effects....

Ok so that didn't exactly happen.

Still, my life has been somewhat disrupted because....god forbid....I have to walk a block, A BLOCK, to another garage in town. I mean I have it all timed out, if I can make it to the garage before the the courthouse clock tower rings 8 o'clock, I'll probably make it to work on time. If you want to watch the real time progress of the destruction of the garage on a webcam, click here!

When they closed the Mosteller garage, they didn't do anything to it for the first couple of weeks, thus for a short time it became the boro's largest indoor/outdoor skate park, with town's troubled teens running roughshod all over it. However it wasn't long before the concrete chomping machines came and began to wrought their distruction. The project is progressing along just fine, sure it would have been cool if they had imploded it, and let's hope the new garage goes up quickly, because it's really one of the only visible works going on in town, what when you consider they are supposed to be building a hotel behind the old Warner theater building, and those cool looking condos on Market Street next to Coyote Crossing. Then there's that proposed Zukin hotel on the old Rite Aid site across from the Post Office, we'll see if that ever get's off the ground.

Clearly the economy is going through a transition, and by extension so is West Chester, but hopefully things like the new garage will position the town for it's next incarnation. And I'll have front row seats for it....if people would stop trying to plant bombs in my way....

Insert "Intercourse" Joke Here.

2009-08-09T13:01:00.000-07:00

Hey, if the Amish can cash in on the name of their town, why can't I, right? I mean, who knows what kind of readers are going to find their way to my blog based on the word intercourse, but hey, traffic is traffic, right?

This weeks story...

I got it in my head, when I managed to get to Toughkenamon, you know, just beyond Kennett Square and back on the scooter, that further distances were possible, especially if you used the "walking" feature on Google maps, where you indicate you want directions to where you want to go by foot than by car, thus keeping you off the interstates and such, places where my scooter and I have no business, what with the highway speeds and all that we cannot possibly reach.

So, I found out that there was going to be this small fly in of airplanes at the Smoketown Airport, not far from Lancaster, Pa. Sure enough, there was a route of back roads I could take to get there and back, all 35 miles, so I figured why not?

So the trip starts off good enough, breakfast with my friends at Penn's Table, and then riding out of town on West Strausburg Road. The problem, if one can call it a problem, is the fact that there was a bridge out in Mortonville. This led to a very nice detour through Embreeville and Unionville before getting back on track. Thank God I had the iPhone with the Google Map and GPS feature, at one point I found myself at a crossroads in the middle of nowhere, cornfields at every side, I almost expected the devil himself to come out and make me a deal so that I could play the guitar really well or something.

There's definitely a change in the topography that takes place from where we are in the cool shade of the trees that hang over the roads and over the Brandywine river to where it begins to open up to our north and west into rolling farmland and open spaces. The other sign that things are a little bit different? Horse drawn Buggies. Men in suspenders and straw hats, women with scarves on their heads and long skirts, riding the scooter through piles of horse manure on the road, yup, the Amish.

The Scooter made it perfectly to the infamously named town of Intercourse, Pennsylvania, the gateway to where the Amish cash in. Who can blame them really, between their fresh farm grown products, the quilts, the handmade quality furniture, who can't resist the desire at some point living in the Mid Atlantic states or beyond of just packing up the car and making a little road trip out to this bucolic countryside and do some shopping or ride on a buggy?

Just to cover their bases though, because surprise surprise, not every guy likes going over quilting patterns for hours and hours, right in the middle of Intercourse is the American Military Edged Weaponry Museum. I saw this place and had to stop, I mean, a military museum? How can I not? I mean, knives and pointed sticks? I mean, I can defend myself against fresh fruit, (you know, loganberries, bananas) but a bayonet in the gut? I had to check it out. 3 bucks gets you buzzed into an old bank branch complete with vault where they have display cases of every kind of knife we have ever used in wartime. They even had several versions of the knife I used in the Army, the Aircrew Survival knife, through my skilled hands many a coconut has met it's demise when we were in Key West.

So, back on the road, and after a fill up first as the scooter refused to go an inch further without some gas, we made it through Intercourse (no sex jokes, have you noticed?) and went through Bird in Hand, (that's a town, Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania) before finally making it to Smoketown.

There regular pilot folks, with regular old general aviation airplanes, not a whole lot of warbirds, or fancy schmancy airplanes, just a few classics, getting together for spot landing contests and flour bombing contests. That's right, a contest where a pilot flies 500 feet above the runway and throws out a sack of flour to hit a target below. Something I don't see every day, that's for sure!

Beriev 103 Seaplane from Russia

It seemed like controlled chaos, but somehow it worked. Airplanes took off and landed, entered the pattern, all without the aid of an Air Traffic Control tower. This is what happens when people who have a passion for something, they can make anything possible, from the flying right down to the hot dog grill.

Planes and Trains or Amtrak and Airplanes

Before long, it was time to make the reverse trip home, and it was relatively uneventful, now that I seemed to know what I was doing. The bridge being out still forced me to take another scenic detour, but honestly, every turn it seems is a new path of discovery around here, I really hope I have a chance to try them all.

Hibernation

2009-08-02T14:32:00.000-07:00

This was just such a good weekend to hibernate for me. This morning, 10:00 AM was as dark as 10:00 PM, with rain on and off all morning long. This led me to knocking out my laundry several hours earlier on a Sunday than normal, since all I did this weekend was take naps throughout the day. I guess I'm making up for the lousy sleep I get during the week, and yes I know they say that getting exercise will make for better and more efficient sleep, so you won't be so tired, so you can do even more exercise which will then make you sleep even better, well you see I know there is supposed to be some up cycle to it all, but I'm on the other end of the energy spectrum, the part that is too tired to exercise, which makes my sleep lousy, well, my point is made right? I need to break that cycle, any tips?

So, I alluded to laundry a moment ago right? I'll get to that in a moment, but let me tie it in by mentioning the other things going on around here at the infamous Greentree Building, West Chester's most exclusive address! (um, not really) It's been one week since I've started walking to my car that's now in the Bicentennial Garage, since they've closed the Mosteller Garage. That'll be worth of it's own headline blog, but in a nutshell, so far so good. The other thing is there's been a change in maintenance management for the better, as I'm no longer showering in ankle deep water in my bathtub, I guess all the hair I've lost over the last 4 years living here finally managed to clog the place up. (Oh wait, unlike my brothers, I've not lost my hair, so what could it be????)

Anyway, one day coming home from work I find a note slipped under my door, (you know, it's the passive aggressive way our building managers communicate with us tenets.) to tell us they are installing new washers and dryers in the building. Are you kidding? Talk about exceeding my expectations! I had checked them out, and they are pretty cool, pure white, front end loading washing machines with black tinted windows, looking all futuristic out of 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Wait, can that statement be correct? Can something look futuristic if the aesthetic is set 8 years in the past? I guess it's easy for futurists and science fiction writers to have taken what was going on in their eras, and apply a little forward looking Darwinist evolutionary thinking to propose that if they were in 1968, by 2001 we'd have space stations and moon bases, just like with the decay that was evident in 1970's New York City, that by the late 20th Century, New York would be a dystopian, maximum security prison in need of being escaped from. Ahem. Anybody else saw The Disney Company coming into Times Square? Yea right. And no, Disney cannot be considered Dystopian...

Why do I get the feeling that my prediction of the year 2020 will have me driving a 30 year old car? I don't want to know, who moved my cheese, I want to know, where is my jetpack?

Ah the heck with it, it looks like rain again, I'm going to take a nap...rawr! (That's my bear imitation, woof, woof woof, that's my other dog imitation.)
Any body who can name where that last reference is from, (other than Ralph), I'll buy them a Coke. Ya Oddball!

Oh and if this post seemed to ramble, remember, I'm only now coming out of hybernation.

Another good weekend, jealous?

2009-07-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

Summer 2009 might go down in the history books as one of the most comfortable summers I've ever experienced. Who ever heard of July weather in the 80's? Especially under the shade of the giant trees that are in Everhart Park? (Man I wish I knew trees better, like the names of them, at this point I don't know if they are Oak, Sycamore, Maples, or what. I'm familiar with the song, "The Trees" from Rush, but despite its nerdy reference, it's never helped me understanding one from another) Well, let me just cover the highlights of the weekend.

I drove by on the scooter past a bunch of bikers who had rolled into town to support the troops as is our West Chester protest/counter protestor Saturday Morning and I video taped them as I went by. I'm thinking one of those helmet mounted cams might not be a bad way to go, seeing as how I had visions of losing control and careening into the parked bikes and knocking them over like dominoes. "I say we kill him!", "I say we let him go!" "NO!!!"

Then I did a run out to Downingtown just so I could work my way back into town via Valley Stream Road (think behind the Wegmans). Man that's such a nice little ride.

Then, I studied for my FAA Written Exam at the Starbucks, man if I don't get this ball rolling and finish the pilot's license, I'll never live it down.

It's just a jump, to the left....

THEN, as if Saturday wasn't fulfilling enough, I checked out the Rocky Horror Picture Show in Phoenixville. That was fun, last time I saw RHPS it was at the Dream Theater in Monterey California. Both the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville as well as the Dream Theater, what great old restored venues. Man, West Chester needs a theater. Couldn't we convince the guy who's supposed to build a hotel on the site of West Chester's old Warner theater to rebuild or at least have some of it restored as a boutique venue for cool foreign films with subtitles and crazy animation festivals?

Sunday, was much more relaxed, but again it was as simple as sitting under the shade trees and listening to the music and hanging out with John Young of Guerrilla Drive In fame and watching people drop 5 bucks a pop on air brush tattoos of his own designs.

I mean on the one hand, for all intents and purpose the Turk's Head Music Festival is simply another First Thursday or Super Sunday event in town, you know, funnel cake and tie dye skirts for sale along with spinal cord alignment and Bath Fitters set ups under portable tents, only with you know, more music. On the other hand, it's a great way to just enjoy some great music, from local acts, and it's not like they were doing cover band work either, but a lot of original music, and you've got to respect a band that can be able to great total strangers out there to dance to a song they've never heard of before....

I'm pretty tired though, I didn't take my normal 3 or 4 naps throughout the day, so I'm feeling good and tired now, but hey, I earned it, how many people did as much as I did in the last 48 hours? Oh yea, a lot of people did, man I'm out of shape.... :)

I'm in the middle of a big bike race!

2009-07-11T17:24:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite sketches from the seminal Canadian comedy Troupe Kids in the Hall is the one with Bruce McColluch, playing a young boy character named Gavin. I could tell you the gist of the story, but why do that when I can show you

Ok, so now we're on the same page, and you get my humor right? Ok, so here in town, another summer weekend, another something or other going on in town. This Saturday, Iron Hill Twilight Criterion. A bunch of 1% bodyfat people in spandex speeding around on bicycles more expensive than my car as fast as they possibly can around the streets of West Chester.

Sounds fun, right? Short answer, yes, yes it is. Fun to watch anyway, fun to people watch, simply just another example of the extremly high quality of life we routinely experience here in West Chester. (You'd think I was on the payroll of the Business Improvement District, but I'm not.)

It's simple enough, the day starts with them having to clear the streets around 1:00 PM, as demonstrated here.

It boggles the mind that this person didn't know what was going on in town, what with the electronic signs, the text messages from the borough sent straight to your cell phone, and you know, the old fashioned paper signs taped to the lightpoles and meters, but hey, I'm not driving around in a super nice car, so what do I know...

The race breaks things up between the women's races and the men's races with a kid's race, you know the kind of race were everyone's a winner!!! (Shesh, but still kinda cute)

But that wasn't the only game in town. Market Street was closed down for a street chalk art contest, some food, and a band of nice old gentlemen playing...."Classic RAWWWK".

And over on Church street, just north of Gay, during the summer months is a big "troubled teen" hangout in West Chester. The term is mine of course, I'm sure the kids are alright, (Who?)it's just that I'm old and they scare me. Why is it that at least twice now in my life I'm scared of teenagers? Heck come to think of it, at every stage of my life I've been afraid of teenagers, even when I was a teenager. But I digress, these kids, during the middle of the race had there own thing going, having set up an obstacle jumping contest right in the middle of the street. Say what you will about whiny Emo kids, they know how to have a good time.

It took a lot of photos, and I have to tell you it's about speed, and my little Nikon Coolpix camera doesn't quite cut it for capturing all the extreme sports action especially at dusk and at night, so thank goodness for the video feature to get the sense of speed and motion. Note the hair on the one girl, these guys are reallymoving and you could feel it all the way up on the 4th floor balcony of my apartment.

Acording to the people running the event, 20,000 people crowded into West Chester to enjoy the festivities. It seemed like it. It amazes me to because people have so many choices as to how to spend the weekend what with Blobfest in Phoenixville, another bike race in Philly, and the draw of the Jersey shore always present during the summer, it's nice to see so many people chose to hang out with me in my little town.

What the 4th is about Part 2 of 2

2009-07-08T17:54:00.000-07:00

Quick turnaround eh?

Ok, so, I'm on the R1, pulling into Terminal 2 when my phone rang. Now I don't get a whole lot of phone calls these days, unless it's phone spam....(wait, was there a name for when people called us at dinner with unsolicited sales pitches, what was that called when they did it, we all had to sign up on some federal list....TELE-MARKETING! That's it, although why I wrote and had you follow my thought process in trying to remember that, well, that's part of the fun right?) but for some reason I picked it up and what do you know, it was actually US Airways calling to tell me that my flight was delayed. Just a real person courtesy call, and that they had already took steps to book me on the next flight just in case I missed my connection in Charlotte (CLT).

Well, not much I can do about it, and hanging out in PHL is not exactly fun, but I manage to entertain myself with the already obsolete iPhone. Apparently the weather in Boston has delayed my Embraer Emb-190. This will be a first for me, to fly in Brazil's first official "full size" jetliner, and when I finally enter the cabin when it arrives an hour late, impressed is what I am. This is no stretched out ERJ-145, (what's that, right? It's Embraer's first commuter jet, let's just say they've come a long way baby since the EMB-110 Banderante! a 13 passenger twin turbo prop commuter airplane that I used to throw luggage onto back in the late 80's.)

Would I rather be flying in a Boeing 737 or 717? Sure, I'd like to say, "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going!" but airlines got to make money somehow, and these foreign government subsidized airliners like Bombardier, Embraer and Airbus make it all but impossible for Boeing to compete except in the higher profit margin aircraft like the 747, 777 and the 787. Although to be honest, I would so like to fly in the Boeing design assisted Sukhoi 100 "Super Jet", a 75-95 seat commuter jet. How often do you get to say you flew in a Russian built aircraft?

Gosh all this writing and I've not even gotten to the point of the second part of my 4th of July blog.

So, I'm flying down to Fayetteville to be with Lana, for the 4th of July and the 5th of July, a soon to be known and widely celebrated holiday known as "Svetlana's Birthday", day. I was packing a Garmin GPS as a gift, knowing that as the good boyfriend I couldn't show up empty handed. Turns out she loves the GPS, it has it's quirks, but to expect it to be 100% accurate in a backwater burg like Pinehurst/Southern Pines would be asking a lot, but it does the job.

No, not the French Riviera, but uh, Norfolk, Virginia? Really?

We had a wonderful time, but we never really nailed down where we were going to celebrate the 4th of July until the last minute. The thought occurred to me, "you know, Joe is only a few hundred miles away, in Norfolk, Virginia, and he's being visited by his girlfriend Sheyla, so why not call and see if he's cool to have some visitors for the fireworks? At first he seemed nonplussed to the idea, taking several minutes between text messages, and an allusion to having a very uncomfortable couch fold away bed, as soon as I mentioned that I could bring some "Fat Tire Ale" to the party, (a Colorado Microbrew that has only now made it east of the Mississippi, and is for all intents and purpose, the best beer I've ever had,) I felt like we had the greenlight to go!

Long story short, (that's another cliche I hate, because it never is either one, you know?) Lana and I make the GPS drive up to Norfolk, meet up with the bro and the French Canadian GF, (it was fun by the way to hear all the accents being spoken) got a tour of Langley AFB and got lucky to watch a flight of five F-22's take off in succession. Of course we got downtown to eat some Cuban "fusion" food, and a pretty high quality 4th of July celebration and fireworks show right on the water on the harbor. The events even attracted some tall ships from the navies of Brasil and Uruguay. Remember the Bicentennial? All those tall ships in New York Harbor? It seems no 4th of July is complete without those magnificent ships as guests to our ports now, right?

Next morning is July 5th, Lana's birthday, and after spending the night at one of the more sketchy Ramada's I've ever stayed at, which was not far from the Hampton Coliseum, (See "Hampton Comes Alive", a very good live PHISH album, by the way) we went back over to Joseph's places for Scrambled Eggs, Fresh Fruit, Crepes and Chocolate Nutella.

Yum.

Like all good times, they must come to an end, and the time to come home came way to quickly. Not that the last day went exactly smoothly, but hey, no matter what, the weekend can definitely be categorized as a huge success, and let's leave it at that.

Now in case you forgot, I promise you I didn't which is to tie it all in as to what the 4th is all about, and it is this, which is how I just loved how a Russian, a Canadian, and two nerdy dudes that could have very easily been born in Cuba if Fidel had only been a better baseball player, ended up celebrating the birth of the United States of America together.

When they say things like "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", I don't know how better to demonstrate it than to be with the people you love, eating, drinking, watching things getting blowed up, and doing things that you love to do. Whether that's paying homage to brave Helicopter Pilots, contemplating the future of global aircraft manufacturing, standing by a fence and watching F-22's take off for who knows where, enjoying the services of the 24 GPS satellites in orbit above us, or having crepes with Nutella, I can only hope that everyone had as nice a 4th of July holiday as I did, and that you took a moment to remember what it's all about!

What the 4th is about Part 1 of 2

2009-07-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody,

This is not going to be some long drawn out dissertation on patriotism on the nations birthday and that's why it needs to be a two parter, but simply I wanted to get something out since it had been a while since my last post, and I'm waiting for the photos from the entire weekend that are on another SD card.

So, my weekend starts with a ride to the the train station in Media, with a buddy of mine I used to work with. It's amazing how quite it is around West Chester at a few minutes after 6 in the morning, it's an hour I don't want to get used to seeing routinely anytime soon, but who knows maybe I should. We get into the city, my intent ultimately to catch the R1 Train to get to the airport to catch my flight to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Now part of the appeal of going as early as I did was of course the free ride to and from the Airport, (Thanks Jeff! I'll get you back!) but the chance to grab a real breakfast at the great Reading Terminal Market. Sure enough, I arrived just as they opened and I saddled up for some blueberry pancakes at the Amish diner they've got there.

Here's the cool part of the whole thing, not long after sitting down, a distinguished looking man, (as distinguished as one gets in a T-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes and a black stetson hat with the crossed swords symbol of the Cavalry) his wife and daughter sat down next down me. Now of course immediately, we all know who comes to mind when one sees someone wearing a black stetson, Colonel Kilgore, right? Well, although the character is a long way off from the reality of your typical Battalion Commander of an Air Cav unit, there certainly were no shortage of characters that make up the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, of which this man was a member, and here in Philadelphia attending the 26th anniversary reunion.

We talked Army aviation, helicopters, and Vietnam, while I filled him in as much as I could on what I know about the Amish, and life here in Philadelphia. All in all it was a great way to kick off my trip, with one of America's heroes. We talked about Chickenhawk, a book by Robert Mason, if you want to really understand the humor and the horror that was the helicopter pilot's experience in Vietnam, you needn't start anywhere else. Even his college age daughter had read it, I'm sure in an effort to know her father better, and she had mentioned that it's now required reading at Fort Rucker, America's training post for all future Army aviators.

My blueberry pancakes and scrambled eggs were ice cold by the time we parted company, but it was an honor to meet him. I mean I'm no stranger to Vietnam era Army Aviators, what with me having spent my 20's being chauffeured around by them in the back of an RU-21A, but still I just enjoyed the chance meeting. Welcome home Kevin.

He had mentioned that there was tractor trailer parked out in front of the Marriott I should check out, which I promptly did when I settled my bill.

I don't know what else to say upon beholding this seemingly innocuous trailer, except for....cooooool.....a bar on wheels! A sanctuary where a Helicopter pilot can tell lies to his friends without contradiction, a place where one can toast those who came before and didn't come back.

The logic is pretty simple in justifying having a mobile tractor trailer bar on wheels, hey, beers at the bars at the hotels these days are pushing 5 bucks a bottle, and you can't smoke indoors anymore, so what the heck? The inside walls are covered with memorabilia from the glory days, pieces of helicopters hang from the ceiling, it is the perfect refuge. Sure it reeks of spilled beer and cigarettes, but it sure beats setting up a GP-Large every time happy hour rolls around.

Before long it was back to Suburban Station, to catch the R1 to the airport, and begin a pretty fun weekend, of which I'll share with you soon!

Another weekend, Another adventure

2009-06-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

I have yet to ride my scooter to work, mainly because I've used the excuse of rain and springtime pollen and it's associated allergies to keep driving the car, but that may come to an end soon. I took the C-3 out as far as I've ever taken it before, about 15 miles, from downtown West Chester to the New Garden Airport, just west of Kennett Square. Speaking of Kennett Square, it was nice, a wanna be West Chester, but with more Mexicans. Must be all the Mushroom harvesting houses, I guess they are they absolute opposite of a green houses huh?, and the area smells like, well, how else do you think they raise mushrooms?

What was my inspiration to make it out to New Garden Airport? Yes, another airshow, of course. This one is a small airport, so it's a small airshow, but I've noticed more people at this airshow than at the helicopter airshow we have at Brandywine Airport here in West Chester. I wonder if that might change, as I heard that there might be a wings and wheels airshow in September, which might bring out the people, so vamos a ver.

You know this being an airshow like the last airshow I attended, what stands out in my mind was the non airshow related stuff, like how nice the ride out was. More farmland, more shady lanes, more twisty roads, I took Google's "walking" advice as opposed to driving advice to come up with a map there, so I would end up on these back roads on purpose so I didn't feel like I was backing up any traffic. I passed this really cool set of ruins on the way there, and then when I arrived there, I got to park among the motorcycles and antique cars that were on display there. I felt like a VIP and I got some looks.

The other cool thing was stumbling upon someone's "hanger". I guess he opened it up for the airshow, and with the exception of a beat up glider hanging from the ceiling, this was really one man's collection of antique motorcycles. Nortons, BSA's, Vincents, Triumphs, and old Indians and Harley Davidsons. There's no law that says you have to keep airplanes in an airplane hanger, heck late in Steve McQueen's life he practically lived in his hanger with his airplane and motorcycles.

Now that sounds like the good life to me...

Update, Google Me, seriously

2009-06-11T19:27:00.000-07:00

Ever so randomly, if you Google "Andy Rodriguez" and "Motorcycle" you get this web page...

http://news.motorbiker.org/blogs.nsf/dx/movies-on-motorcycles.htm

In fact, there are probably a lot of words you can Google in combination with my name, but I'm not sure I want to guess where they end up.

However....

I am now forever linked to Guerrilla Drive In, the John Young created happening here in West Chester. Giving credit where credit is do, he does all the hard work, he spends all the money, it's just that when I go to watch the movies like any other member of the secret society of GDI'ers, I give John a hand, since I was A/V qualified at South Lake Elementary School in Titusville Florida, circa 1974 to 1978.

The last time I was in the paper was when a reporter came to the above mentioned school to get our take on the 1976 election between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. I think I indicated my preferences for dictatorships, since when asked "how long should the president's term be?" I answered something along the lines of "he should be president as long as he's doing a good job."

Yikes!

Anyway, shout out to John Young, congratulations for getting the recognition you so richly deserve for all the hard work you put in to entertain your friends both old and new!

Busy Summer Weekends

2009-06-11T17:50:00.000-07:00

Things really pick up in the summertime around here, so much so that often we are faced with choices as to which event we'll check out, so it's always fortuitous when you can do everything you want over the course of the weekend, and yet still, chances are, you missed something.

So how lucky was I when I got to go into the way back machine and meet General Douglas MacArthur? Now last time I saw him, he was lying in his crypt next to his wife in Norfolk, Virginia. (I bet you didn't know he was buried in Norfolk, am I right? I mean, General of the Army buried in the middle of a Navy town? Thank his southern belle Mother for that, and now you know)

Obviously I'm talking about having gone to the Mid Atlantic Air Museum's World War II weekend in Reading, Pennsylvania where military reenactors, restored to duty aircraft and military vehicles converge for living history presentations. I don't know, but for a guy like me, is there anything better than walking a few steps and visit a German encampment, and another few steps to an American camp, to an Canadian camp, to a Soviet camp?

I know that having been in the Army, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of voluntarily and without getting paid setting up GP Medium tents and concertina wire and wearing wool uniforms in the summertime, not to mention paying lots of money via buying uniforms, gear and the like for the honor of doing so, but I'm glad these people have this passion, because what better way to connect to our passed than try to live it?

Also, what I'm kind of digging these days is that more women are doing the whole reenactment thing, and not just as WAC's, but just as civilian women on the home front, because I imagine unlike a Civil War era woman with all her petty coats, there is something pretty cool (and comfortable) about the sexy look of 1940's women. Bright red lip sticks, tight skirts, hair done up and cute hats, it's a great look!

So that was Saturday, SUNDAY was Super Sunday in West Chester, and it was great weather for it. They close down Gay and High Streets, put some bandstands on either end, a bunch of vendors in between, and the opportunity to buy that ubiquitous turkey leg or funnel cake, and it's a simple formula for a good time. A good time as obviously had by this guy here, who just can't stop dancing to the cool jazz of a lazy, sunny Sunday in West Chester.

Shoulda been last weekend's blogpost.

2009-05-31T13:52:00.000-07:00

If you use blogger.com for your blogging platform, you know that there is a dashboard where you can Six Sigma to death your blog, from a metrics perspective, to see where traffic is coming from, and a bunch of other measurements I have no idea what to do with. Anyway, the one that I do understand, Top Search Queries, shows you what words or strings of words people put into Google.com in search of something where your blog might have come up in the search results, and then those that actually went on to land on your site. All of it is pretty cool, you can figure out of someone is stalking you if they use your name and West Chester and other overly specific keywords, or you can find out who's looking for some pretty freaky times in West Chester, it all depends.

One of the things that someone evidently searched for that really intrigued me was "B-25 Crash West Chester" or something to that affect. Now it was logical that my blog might have come up, seeing as how one of my very first blogs was about how an Eclipse 500 went skidding off the end of the runway at West Chester's Brandywine airport, but this was way too specific. I clicked on the link to see the returns that my mysterious fellow googler would have seen, and I saw links referencing a monument to the men who died in a B-25 plane crash near West Chester. The monument, and from what I can gather, the plane crash site itself is located at The Oaklands Cemetery, just outside the borough.

So, as you can imagine, I took the scooter out again, and gave myself a tour of the place. Now I'm not a morbid guy, or gothy in the least bit. I will admit to listening to the Cure and to a lesser extent Morrissey and The Smiths, but I'm no Azreal Abyss, Prince of Sorrow, Chris Kattan's character from the Goth Talk sketch on SNL in the late '90s.

Yet I really like cemetery's from a historical perspective, no really! I even took a girlfriend to the cemetery (during the day, during the day) in Key West, Florida because many of the sailors that had died when the USS Maine blew up in Havana Harbor were buried there and there was a cool monument built for them. (How's that for nerdy eh?)

So driving around this place, and let me tell you, the hills, the trees, it's Monterey, California Deja-vu again for me or something, because it is very serene and yet also endlessly fascinating. Some of the monuments have names that are very familiar as I make my way around town, Sharpless, Matlack, Barnard, Darlington, Everhart, Route 3, (just kidding!) so it's pretty interesting all in all. One of the many "famous" people buried there is two time Medal of Honor winner Major General Smedly Darlington Butler. He was quite a character in his time, I'll let you, the faithful reader Wiki him or Google him and have you draw your own conclusions about his place in history. My two cents, he died before he could see our efforts against fascism and totalitarianism, and if he had lived perhaps his cynicism might have dimmed somewhat, but we'll never know for sure.

Well, anyway, not far into the grounds, you can't miss it, on the left hand side of the road, is this polished granite memorial for the crew of the B-25 that crashed near by in May of 1944. I think it speaks volumes about the kind of people that live in West Chester, that the members of the community would take time and money to erect a monument to people who were not even the "local boys" who went off to war, but complete strangers, who had "slipped the surly bonds of earth..." during war time, a long time ago. (Note, I hate that it bothers me, but can anyone else see something wrong with the B-25 etched in stone that depicts what the crew that was flying that fateful night?)

I suppose it would have been more poignant to have gone last Monday on Memorial Day to pay respects, but I'm glad I went today, for I had the whole place to myself, for quiet reflection, to say a prayer of thanks, and to marvel at the fact that I live here. Such a great place I swear if you locals ever take it for granted that you live here, I'll remind you from time to time how good you've got it, ok?

Memorial Day Ride

2009-05-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Just a quick note, it was supposed to be a 3 day weekend, but I had to work somewhere in between the days off, so I tried to cram in as much as I could within the time that I did have off. One of the cool things that happened was running into fellow West Chester Blogger Dr. Zibbs from That Blue Yak at Chipolte. I think we were both craving a burrito at the same time.

So, on my agenda was to check out another airport, this time it was Pottstown Limerick Airport, not nearly as mom and pop as the Pottstown Municipal Airport, but an interesting place, especially given it's proximity to the Limerick Nuclear power plant. I don't know if there are guys standing around with Stingers defending the reactors, but I think you might want to avoid any overflight of the place.

That's a King Air F-90 heading west, the cooling towers are further away than it seems...

By the way, the drive from Pottstown, through Limerick, to Phoenixville is a nice drive.

On Monday, I got on the scooter to tool around first by kicking off the day with breakfast at Market Street Grill. In so many words, not to shabby a place for food anytime, like a diner, but just infinately better.

Now early on in my scooter ownership, I figured taking it out on the twisty, winding, and hilly roads just to the west of West Chester would be out of the question what with the 49cc engine struggling underneath a fat guy that tends to make it pretty anemic going up hill. But you know I said what the heck, let's go check out the Northbrook Canoe Company, the place John Young is always talking about, because that's only 6 miles from town, and riding to work is at least 2x as far, so hard could it be?
Well it turns out that it worked out great, precisely because of the twisty, winding, hilly roads, nobody is going terribly fast, so I didn't feel like I was holding up traffic, and so I made it down to the Canoe company, walked around, and took some photos and then found my way to the Northbrook Marketplace, another John Young recommendation, before turning my way towards home, but not before taking another video of the kinds of roads we have around here, which are pretty sweet, if you ask me.

Location, Location, Location

2009-05-19T15:19:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about living in West Chester, and I may have mentioned this before, is the ability to get out of town easily, and that in a relatively short amount of time you can be somewhere else that's pretty cool too. Whether it's someplace obvious like Philadelphia, (although I don't know why people venture into Philadelphia, since we have everything you could want right here in the Dub-C.) or more interestingly Washington DC or New York City.

I've made a couple of trips down to D.C. in the last couple of weekends, and I've had a lot of fun.

First off, since the new Administration took over, DC doesn't feel any different, it's still the center of power of the free world, and that's reassuring. Second, there's always something going on an any random weekend there, so you really can't go wrong when you show up, unless it's in the absolutely oppressive heat and humidity of August.

So on the one weekend I went down to DC with Lana, we stumbled upon the preparations for Earth Day celebrations on the National Mall. There were tents set up everywhere showing off all this Green technology stuff, at least highlighting what the feds are proud of as progress along those lines. There were some electric vehicles, including an Electric Scooter. And not the Hover-round scooter either, but an actual like motorcycle like Scooter. But can something be called "Zero Emission" though any more? Yes there is no pollution coming out of the tailpipe, but electricity comes from somewhere, and somewhere there is a smoke stack converting something that was something else into electricity, right?

The most recent trip to DC involved meeting my brother Joe who came up from Langley AFB for the long anticipated visit with the newest member of the family, little Judah. Now of course it turns out there was an open house airshow at Andrews AFB, so Joe and I couldn't miss that. How many times have we seen the same types of airplanes over and over again over our lifetimes? Too many times to tell, but that's hardly the point is it? There is no unique fact about any of these machines that we can impart on the other brother without them already knowing that fact, yet we go anyway just for the shear joy of being in our comfort zone. This particular trip was unique though, in so much as Joe actually was in Air Force ROTC with one of the 6 pilots from the USAF Thunderbirds Aerial Demonstration Team. Major Sean Gustafson, a super good looking, er, I mean "good" guy. (whoa where did that come from?) Seriously, those Thunderbird pilots look sharp, both in their Flight Suits and in formation.

Now back to the reason of our trip to DC, first some familial background.

In the Rodriguez-Carbonell family bloodline that arrived here from Cuba, there were 4 individuals that ended up comprising "The First Generation" of kids being born in the USA. I was the first in 1967, followed by Ralph and Joe, and our cousin Lauren was the last, arriving in 1977. Now despite our obvious manliness, my brothers and I have yet to procreate, (that we know of) so it ended up that Lauren taking on the burden of bringing in the first of the "second wave" of our family to be born here.

So looking and holding little Judah, you realize you're not looking at another baby for the umpteenth time, the babies of your friends, neighbors and coworkers, but you're holding a relative. Now I'm no judge of baby character, but knowing his parents as well as I do, I think the "second wave" is off to a great start. In fact, he's going to be a hard act to follow. God I hope there will be more to follow, the world deserves more little Andys, (and Ralphies and Jo-Jo's too), they may be the planet's only hope! :)

I hope this kid will like going to Airshows......like he'll have a choice.... :)

I got my scooter back, scooter back, scooter back, ribs...(sorry)

2009-05-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I got my scooter back from the shop where it had a recall notice taken care of an it's 700 mile checkup done. Of course I drove it all over town, you know, to break it in, and check out what's new in town.

Obviously this sweet photo is from the roof of the Mosteller Garage, soon to be demolished, in what, maybe June, July? I'm not going to worry about it until I need to worry about it. Did you notice the decal on the front above the headlight? That's the US Army Senior Aircrew Wings the kind I earned in the Army. It should make the scooter go that much faster, that's how it works right?

One of the things I did was stop by the West Chester Farmer's Market, where a man stopped me to ask about the scooter. He was a man in his late 50's early 60's perhaps, and mentioned that he hadn't ridden a scooter since his youth in England. So that put him riding around about the same time as the whole "Mod" scene back in the early to mid 60's. I told him I was going to put a whole bunch of rear view mirrors, an RAF rondel, and wear Italian suits while riding around town, and he laughed.

That's Sting, from the movie Quadrophenia, you know?

If the weather holds up, I'll start riding it to work this week. Sure the summer of nearly 5 dollar gasoline seems to have passed, so any sort of calculations I've done on the scooter paying for itself have gone out the window, but still, it's fun to ride, so what other excuse do I need?

Living the Dream in West Chester...

2009-05-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

If Twitter is supposed to be the answer to the question (that honestly, nobody asked), "What are you doing now?" Then a blog can be more about what did you do tonight, today, this month, on your summer vacation, this year, and use as many words as you like. So here's what I did today.

I have had another interesting week transitioning into my new gig at work. Well honestly it wasn't that bad, but I'm the kind of guy who likes to jump in and figure out how to swim along the way, as opposed to over study something and then somehow be an expert swimmer the moment my toes hit the water. Learn by doing, on the job training, that's the kind of retention skills I have, as opposed to theoretical, abstract learning. I guess that's why Geometry and Statistics were such fun classes for me than the other types of mathematics classes I took in school, they seemed instantly applicable to real world scenarios. But I digress, I can assure you I did no math today. I mention all of this because after a week like this, plus with the GF visiting again, and a day that was forecast to have no sunshine in it, I was looking forward to about 24 hours of sleep, but alas, none was to be had because much had to be done.
What I did do, is rent a U-Haul van, so that I might transport my little Yamaha C3 Scooter to Martin Motorsports for it's 700 mile tune up and get a part recall taken care of, just in time for the spring riding season. I'm obviously going to jump into riding it early now and ride later into the year as to recoup any advantage that comes from the 117 MILES PER GALLON (that's right, 117 MPG) that the scooter gets, before it becomes too cold and therefore too impractical to ride a scooter 11 miles through the back roads of West Chester, East and West Goshen, Malvern and Paoli to get to work. Not to mention the idea of riding around in the darkness a scooter that can barely keep up with 35 mph traffic.

I got my scooter from the garage of a friend of mine who was so gracious as to store it there for the winter with the only requirement that he get to ride it around every once in a while, and then I made the trek up to Boyertown, Pennsylvania where I bought the scooter originally from Martin Motorsports. It's a great place, as they sell Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, and Triumph. Oh man, and check this out, you know me I'm all about an aesthetic, about a vibe, over any sort of practicality, although often times the two overlap. When I went the showroom to look around at the new motorcycles that I can't afford and probably from a skill perspective have no business trying to ride, (even though I did pass the Harley Davidson Learn to Ride Course....barely), I saw this little beauty, the 2009 Suzuki TU-250X. (I'm pretty sure the TU is not from the Tupolev Design Bureau that designs such fine aircraft as the TU-95 NATO Code Name "Bear" and the TU-144 "Concordski".

Seriously though, isn't this bike cool? With it's 1970's retro look, yet 21st century reliability? I hope they keep this in production long enough for me to put some scratch together, I think it might be the way to go as badly as I would love to get my hands on Royal Enfield Military, I'm afraid I'm not quite the mechanic it would take to own an R.E., but hey one of the things I get to look forward to as I get older is becoming more reclusive and crotchety as I spend hours away from family and friends in a garage, (or maybe please God a hanger) working on inanimate objects in my own greasy jumpsuit like some sort of fat and dirty Doctor Thaddeus Venture. That would be the life.

So after the bike thing, I drove my empty van back towards the U-Haul place but not before consulting with my new iPhone to see how far out of my way would it be to check out Pottstown Municipal Airport. As it turned out of course, not far!

I love small town airports, as every time you walk into the shack where the staff works it's like walking into someones living room who's obsessed (like I am) about airplanes. Model Airplanes hang from the ceiling, pictures of airplanes line the walls, old men with baseball caps that have airplanes on them argue with each other over various aspects of aviation regulations and flying techniques, younger to middle age guys living the dream of flight show up to meet their often much younger flight instructor for their 1 hour session of turning 100 dollar bills into smoke.

Good times, good times.

The best part of a hometown airport, is the security system. In this post 9/11 world, with the monster of a bureaucracy that the Transportation Security Administration is becoming, the TSA should back off worrying about these small town airports as a potential threat to national security, especially if they all employ the guard cats that they do at Pottstown Municipal. Because as we all know, the thing that terrorists fear above anything else, is a little pussy.

The fine folks at TNT Air at Pottstown Municipal asked me to pass along to anyone who might be interested, they want the world to know they have two prides of joy there, (and who knows how many cats, that might be an operational security secret, ok TSA?) one of them is N22904, a Cessna 172 SP with the Garmin G1000 "Glass Cockpit" and almost all LCD display cockpit with GPS navigation and engine management hardware built right into the displays. The word "cool", doesn't begin to cover it's innate coolness.

The other thing that they are proud of is their Full Motion Simulator, which can be programmed to be almost any type of aircraft, flying from anywhere in the world, under any weather conditions! Suffice to say, it's pretty neat-o. Tie a few of those things in on a network and make them Mustangs and Messerschmitts, (a whole mess of Messerschmits! as Buggs Bunny would say on mthose now banned to due to politically incorrect WWII stereotypes) and I might be there every weekend.

Of course a consequence of such a pursued lifestyle as mentioned above would be that I would soon forget the touch of a woman, and having had gaps in my life where that happened, I don't think I'm going to risk it, so like with everything else moderation is the key word here, but generally speaking I'm thinking my 40's will be a pretty fun decade to live through.

An evening with Dr. Zibbs and the Swedish Chef

2009-04-25T11:41:00.000-07:00

What can I say? I suppose I'm making lot of people around the world extremely jealous simply due to my fortuitous choosing of West Chester as a domicile, because of its relative proximity to one "Doctor Zibbs" of "That Blue Yak" fame. There are a lot of people who would pay any price, bear any burden, to make the pilgrimage and worship at the feat of the great Doctor, so it got me to thinking about starting a business, some sort of tour guide to West Chester, pointing out sites where Dr. Zibbs has been seen, pointing out actual bar stools where he has sat upon, or perhaps spiritual guide to West Chester, to help pilgrims cleanse themselves emotionally and physically in preparation to actually meeting him.

Let me tell you about how I met Dr. Zibbs.

The Doctor's hands are the key to life

Saigon, shit.....I lay in my hotel run, looking at my orders in disbelief. I couldn't believe they wanted him dead, West Point, Airborne, Special Forces. "Terminate with extreme prejudice" they said. I had to meet the crew of a Patrol Boat-River (PBR) at the mouth of the Brandywine river for the trip upstream so I got a ride on a Huey gunship with a troop from the 1st Cav, and lunatic surfer and battalion commander known as Lt. Col. Kilgore.

The crew of my PBR were a strange lot, the M-60 gunner looked like a very young Cowboy Curtis from the Pee Wee Herman show or maybe Morpheus from The Matrix.

After a surreal journey filled with pointless allegories and allusions, incoherent scenes with no point to the plot, (although the Playboy bunnies having to flee on the skids of a helicopter, that was a nice touch) I arrived at his den. The natives all seemed to look the same, holding glasses of thick black liquid, just staring at me otherwise silent. Then I met the Swedish Chef. He babbled excitedly, "he, he, he's a good man, a great man, he's changed my life, I'd follow him anywhere..." he went on and on, several different cameras dangling from around his neck. He seemed to go off on tangents, he was clearly insane, one minute he was talking about putting a bomb on a bus that would explode if it went less than 55 miles an hour, the next minute he was talking about the road to retirement, and having a plan, and about Ameriprise Financial. (By the way, who picks a stockbroker on the advice of Dennis Hopper?)

Then there he was, the Doctor himself. An ethereal glow seemed to emanate around his aura, the wicker chair providing the perfect framing backdrop, his white suite gleaming to the point of me having to shield my eyes. He wielded his spade shaped hand fan like a magician, effortlessly cooling himself, his bottle of 7-Up dripping sweat in his other hand. His first words to me were not exactly clear, something about being caffeine free, never had it, never will.

Ok enough, I think my memory of the evening was blurred by about 4 Guinness's, and the free swag we got from them, (T-Shirts and key chains) so I think I'm confusing my stories between Apocalypse Now, Hearts of Darkness, and a 7-Up commercial. Suffice to say, I met the man himself, and it was good. Everyone should meet Dr. Zibbs at least once in their lives, at least that's what it says in the Koran anyway. As for the Swedish Chef, as it turns out, we've probably met each other before at of all places, at John Young's Guerrilla Drive in! (It's a small world, and a really cool town West Chester is) He even grew up with and knows Nikki from Van Ryn's barbershop, she's the one that cuts my hair, of which Lana approves of. :)

I'm telling you, living in West Chester is great, spring is here, summer is coming, you got to get here!

Jealous?

2009-04-24T18:06:00.001-07:00

Album drops April 28th, but who's got a copy now thanks to my friends at the Mad Platter CD's? Yup, THIS guy!

Wait until I tell you about my evening with Dr. Zibbs!

More from West Chester University...Khristos Voskrese, Voistinu Voskrese

2009-04-21T17:40:00.000-07:00

This will be a short blog, in contrast to the fact that the weekend was crammed with so much stuff, Friday night was a nice long walk in the borough, Saturday was a day (and a lot of the night) trip to Washington DC, and Sunday was Russian Orthodox Easter, and thus a pretty long day, having managed to cram in a trip out to Net Cost, the Russian Grocery Store on Bustleton Pike north of Philly, then down to St Andrew's Russian Orthodox Church, for the blessing of the Easter Baskets, and then back to West Chester University for a presentation by the Russian Language and Drama Club of some classic Russian Fairy Tales, including Teremok, and The Turnip.

Thanks to Dr. Jim Jones of WCJIM fame for referencing the play at WCU on his website, and thanks to Dr. Alice Speh for keeping me informed about the play, it definately capped a fun weekend! Oh, and thanks mostly to Lana, you know, for just everything...OH, and I just noticed, look for how long (minutes and seconds) the video runs.....I'm just saying...

It's official! Congratulations to West Chester University Gracenotes!

2009-04-14T18:01:00.000-07:00

Hi all, I get to write this blog at the intersection of where two of my interests meet, in this case, West Chester, and Ben Folds. It seems that about a year ago Ben Folds had stumbled upon some videos on You Tube of various University Acapella groups doing versions of some of his songs. This inspired him to reach out to the interweb and solicit more groups to doing his songs, the best of which he would record and put out in album which, as it happens, "drops" April 28th, "Ben Folds presents, University Acapella"

And who made the cut? Among some very amazing talents, from some very amazing Universities, was West Chester's own all girls Acapella group, the West Chester University Gracenotes.

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I've never seen them preform before, I don't know any of them personally, unless I helped them during the mock interviews the women's business club put on campus last year or they work part time as waitresses at any of the restaurants up and down Gay Street I've probably never met them before, but I can't otherwise feel happy and proud that their version of "Fred Jones Part 2" made the album. This is especially impressive for me because I never really liked the song when it came out because it is about a man getting laid off, and it came out about the time I got laid off that one time, hence the depressing nature of it all, but yet hearing them sing it is somehow more soothing, more palatable, almost made me look forward to getting laid off again. (God Forbid) Besides, they're College Girls, and who doesn't like College Girls?

So Congratulations to the Gracenotes on a job well done.

And since I'm plugging the album, (why, I have no financial stake in Ben Fold's success, other than the more popular he gets, the cooler I become) check out this group that has also made the album, the Sacramento State University Jazz Ensemble.

In order to realize how good the improvisational, scatting version the students do I've included the original song from 1997 when Ben Folds Five performed on Sessions at West 54th Street, a great little show on PBS for some great music. Watch and listen to Ben's version, and then watch the kid's version, it's like, scary good.

It's safe bet that on New Music Tuesday April 28th, I'll be at the Mad Platter in West Chester after work picking up my copy, maybe I'll see you there?

Fashion Advice from my Cousin

2009-04-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

No comment from me, except to say that this is my cousin Lauren, and she managed to get a plug in for her new kid, which is either my nephew, or 2nd cousin, depending on how it works out and she knows all about this fashion stuff, and she can work miracles because she can make even me look good. (It usually involves me wearing all black, pinstripes and platform shoes for some reason...)

Orlando versus West Chester

2009-04-09T14:42:00.000-07:00

I wasn't sure how I wanted to express my thoughts about my trip to Orlando, other than start off by giving a high level overview of what I managed to accomplish while down there, and then go on to discuss the specifics of what I observed, as if my two cents offers a fresh alternative look as to what's happening down there. So, since I can't think of a better way to express what I'm thinking, let's just begin exactly as I outlined, why not right?

Ok so in a nutshell, in the course of 9 days in Florida, I managed to:

Have Dinner with my brothers Ralph and Joe and his Canadian girlfriend Sheyla and family.

Have Lunch with my brothers and my mom.

Have a few drinks with a couple of my Army buddies.

Watch Ben Folds at the Hard Rock Live Venue at Universal Studios with Ralph and my Godson Brian.

Spend time with my girlfriend.

Spend time with my Ralph.

Spend time with my Dad on his birthday.

So, I got a lot done. As infrequently as I get a chance to spend time with family, I have to take these opportunities when I can. For those friends of mine whom I missed, forgive me, we'll hook up next time in town, promise!

The other thing is that I get a chance to compare and contrast where I've come from, to where I live now, and see how much has changed since I left in 1999. Every time I go back to Orlando, I look around as I'm being driven to my Dad's house where I usually set up camp for my stays, and I'm overwhelmed by 3 feelings, awe, jealousy, and relief. Awe, in that I'm amazed at the shear amount of growth Orlando has had in the years since I've been gone. True, much of the growth is phony, like a giant Potemkin's Village has sprouted up over night, (think the fake Rock Ridge, next to the real Rock Ridge from Blazing Saddles) Jealousy, in so much that I'd love to be living among friends and family in a place that has grown so much. Finally Relief, in that I'm so glad I don't live there now, because in some respects I doubt I could have grown as much as I have personally, if I had stayed. In the years since I've left, I've lived in Salt Lake City, Denver, and in the Philly Burbs, and had more than my share of interesting experiences along the way.

Of all the things that changed that impressed me the most, about Orlando, was the arrival of the classic "Hipster" (Nihilistus Artsyfartsycus) (That's the Latin name for the genome and species) :)
I'm serious, I couldn't believe it. Skinny jeans, ironic t-shirts, pork pie hats, single speed bicycles, in ORLANDO, the City where cool trends go to die. The thing of it is, one of two things is about to happen, the hipster, as we know it, is about to become extinct because it has arrived in Orlando, or, the Orlando that I knew, the Puerto Rican/Redneck-Rebel Flag/Evangelical Christian/Boy Band producing town is becoming extinct.

How did the Hipster manage to make it down to Orlando, I wonder. Are they leftover implants by the Democratic party to relocate Obama voters to the south to turn Florida into a Blue State? Are they economic refugees in so much as it's just gotten to be to expensive, even in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York for them to afford to live there?

Seriously though, I imagine that the University of Central Florida, through it's Bachelors Degree in Visual Language from its Digital Media department, as well as its Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy. Valencia Community College has some graphic arts programs as well as the "DAVE" School (Digital Animation and Video Education) at Universal Studios, and of course the Grand-daddy of them all, Full Sail "University" has attracted many of them down there.

Part of my loathing for them is my jealousy of them, first in that they are skinny, but also in that they get to pursue something they love, while living the bohemian lifestyle, while not exactly eschewing the need for technology, as on the one hand maybe they don't have a nice car, but they have iBook and an iPhone in their messenger bag while tooling around on a Vespa motor scooter or that ubiquitous 1 speed bike. Plus, all the coffee you can drink while writing that screenplay? Sign me up!

So in the 10 years that I left, Orlando got Hipsters, non Starbucks coffee shops, hell, Orlando actually GOT Starbucks coffee shops, independent record stores, motor scooter culture, pretty much all the cool, hip things I pursued these last 10 years between my visits to Seattle and Portland, and my stays in Salt Lake, Denver and now here in West Chester. So, should I move back to Orlando now that I have a place to hang out that wasn't there before?

There was and still is the Enzian Theater, an independent movie place (that served beer) that showed foreign films with subtitles and those Spike and Mike sick and twisted animation festivals, (are you listening West Chester? We need a cool theater!) but Orlando was about as shallow and superficial as it got. (lots of orange tanned, fake boobed bimbos, rhoid raging, spiky haired douches) Not a whole lot of places for a guy like me to gather with friends and discuss the nature of travel beyond light speed, and Roman Legion Order of Battle.

I guess the answer is no, I wouldn't move back, because with my luck, if I'm right, the trend would be over by the time I got there. Seriously, it's a matter of practicality at this point, I've got the good job happening here, this place has everything I need, PLUS, here, in West Chester, there's actually no need to run the air conditioner...in MARCH, like it is down there. Trust me I'm no big fan of the winters here, but come on, 90 degrees, in March? I grew up with that for 30 plus years, I'm kind of digging where I am, thank you very much...

Area Blogger Returns Home to West Chester, celebrates with Prime Rib at Iron Hill

2009-04-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a week in Florida, more blogging to come regarding my trip, (who knew Brooklyn style hipsters and scooter culture have made it to Orlando of all places) I can tell you I'm enjoying a 14 oz Prime Rib at Iron Hill at the moment, and it's really good. Don't believe me? Here's what it looked like, along with 1/2 of an Iron Bound Ale before I tore into it.

I had a pretty good time, from spending some time with my brother Joe and his non imaginary Canadian Girlfriend before he gets sent to the desert on another Middle East Deployment, to spending time with my Godson Brian and my other brother Ralph by taking them to see Ben Folds at the Hard Rock Live venue at Universal Studios, to finally showing off my girlfriend Lana to my family and friends down there. (Initial grade for her, A+)

Anyway, more later, I'm still loading photos to Flickr from the trip, as well as getting ready for the reality of going back to work. :)

I don't speak "Man"

2009-03-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me begin with what is probably a glaring, obvious and redundant statement, which is to say, I am.....a man. Not just any kind of man, but an extremely macho, manly man. I'm so manly, I am confident I don't have to belabor the point of how manly I am, because to do so would only indicate a sense of unsureness or insecurity in my manhood, of which I have none. Besides, my mommy says I'm a big man now, so I don't know what more proof you could want.

I would go on and on and list how many things that I have had punched on my man card, but again, as a man, there is no need. (and frankly, as a man, the list is so long, we haven't the time to list them all)

Yet, every year, the Ides of March come, which in Roman times was a pretty manly holiday, what with celebrations dedicated to Mars the God of War and all, not to mention to the manliest of assassinations in the murder of Julius Cesar, but it's about this time every year that I start to feel, you know, not so manly? Especially here in West Chester, the Philly 'Burbs, the whole Northeastern, Mid Atlantic States part of the USA.

But Andy, how can that be? I know I know, as strange as it seems, it is sadly the truth. About this time of year every year is the annual event known as "March Madness". It is the time where tall young men, supposed scholar athletes, gather together in squeaky sneakers, wife beaters and baggy shorts and bounce a basketball around until through the process of elimination, one team will emerge victorious as the NCAA champions of Basketball. At least that's my understanding of it.

Where I lose my manhood street cred, is in that, well, here it goes, I don't fucking care about College Basketball! I don't know the teams, I don't know the players, I don't know the coaches, I don't know who won last night, who's playing today, who's playing tomorrow, and I just, don't, care.

The thing of it is, my fellow men, seemingly most of them, obsess over March Madness. I mean they know everything about it, from the big, strategic aspects of things like picking who will go into what bracket and why, down to the tiniest of minutiae. And there in lies the problem. Men communicate in a certain language that's not meant to be easily interpreted by other people. The other people being women of course. Women, and maybe nerds and theater majors perhaps. Now I will readily admit that I fall into the nerd category in some respect, but I will say that I'm mostly in the manly world than in the nerdy world.

Speaking of nerds, it always struck me as funny the disdain that some of these sports obsessed guys have for the nerd obsessed guys, be they the sci-fi fantasy types and the society for creative anachronism types, when in fact that same childlike obsession skill set is present in both types of guys. For a funny read on this, check out this article written in The Onion.

So when it happens that for whatever reason that two men who are strangers to each other have to communicate, they usually speak in the language of March Madness. As if this was some sort of universal language where no matter what our differences in age, culture, income and socio-economic standing, we will have this common ground of analysing why one group of college age kids will do better than another group of college age kids in placing a ball in a basket.

When this happens to me it makes me feel like a freaking immigrant, like someone has come up to me and started babbling something completely incomprehensible, and I have to sheepishly answer "eh, sorry, no speeky di engleesh"

The question before me is, should I make an effort to speak the language? Should I force myself to be in a self imposed exile from the manly community, or should I start paying attention to the sports pages and CNN/SI and ESPN.com and should I create a fantasy league and on and on and on with all the things that men seem to do? Look, I want to get promoted at work, I need to schmooze with my bosses, I want to have a social life that involves men standing around in the opposite corner from our women on a backyard deck over a smoking outdoor grill full of bloody red meats drinking ice cold beers while we discuss the finer points of the"violence as comedy" in the Three Stooges shorts, but it seems part of that is going to have to include getting brushed up on all this March Madness crap.

Anybody else feel this way, or is it just me? Oh and "Go Villanova Wildcats!" or something....

Sorry it's been so long!

2009-03-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I really want to blog about something, but I didn't want to jump back into blogging without saying something about the absence which I feared might take away from what I want to blog about, so I felt it important to have its own entry.

Sorry it's been so long! I have a laptop that has for all intents and purposes given up the ghost, and I've sunk too much into it in repairs to make it worth while to continue with it, so I'm working on getting a new lap top. In the mean time, I'm blogging to you from the basement of arod138 World Headquarters in the Greentree building of West Chester, Pennsylvania. We have here kind of a rec room/office center/gym, (we also seem to have a Spanish Evangelical Christian Church in our basement for some reason) and so obviously we have a computer that has internet access on a first come first served basis.

So with all this going on, plus working like crazy (thank God, knock on wood and all that I even have a job) what with tax season and a self clearing conversion, I haven't had time to get down to the basement and convert my thoughts to electrons.

I'll get that laptop pretty soon, and I'll start to blog more frequently, you have my word!

The Day the Music Died 50 years ago this week

2009-02-05T17:21:00.000-08:00

With the cold weather around West Chester and flying on my mind this week, I'm often thinking to myself when I hear an unseen airplane overhead, "Geeze, who's out flying in this weather? It's definitely zero/zero conditions, I wouldn't fly with all the IFR and deicing fluid and radar in the world." Well, turns out, 50 years ago this week, somebody did decide to fly in some crappy weather, and that was the pilot of a Beechcraft Bonanza B-35 V-tail, and his famous passengers, J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, Richy Valens, and Buddy Holly.

We all saw "La Bamba" with Lou Diamond Philips, probably fewer of us saw "The Buddy Holly Story" with.....Gary Busey???....(did you know he got nominated for an Academy Award for his role in that movie? Yea, hard to imagine now I know) and we've all....at one time in our lives, when really drunk, stood with arms draped over the shoulders of our best buddies, drinks of Whiskey or Rye in our hands, sang, "The Day the Music Died" by Don McLean. Don't even say you never did....

Anyway...I often wondered about the "decision chain" that lead up to that crash, it's a fascinating thing when analyzing aviation accidents, (which of course doesn't make you morbid, it makes you a better pilot) it's rarely one single catastrophic mistake or failure, but a series of tiny little errors that lead to the big one. We often say to ourselves it can never happen to us, but don't be to sure. Especially if Alcohol is entered into the equation. Watch the first 2:44 of this video, to see what our friends from the Great White North "The Kids in the Hall" think what might have happened that fateful night in Iowa, the day...........the mu......sic.......died

Consider this my blog tip of my hat to Dr Zibbs, who always manages to integrate topical relevance to You Tube videos with biting, satirical comedy that's first rate!

42 is the new 72 and 32

2009-02-01T13:55:00.000-08:00

I've got to say, after over a week of snow and temps in the teens, (I won't go into windchill, it always seemed so subjective, "with the wind chill it will "feel" like 5 below", well excuse me, I'm from Florida, so it "feels" like 0 Kelvin, ok?) on a day with sunny blue skies and 40 degrees, being outside is like enjoying a spring day in the 70's (the temperature, not the polyester puke producing decade)

So that's exactly what I did, I got up, late....(another weird night's sleep of going to bed at 11:00 PM, waking up at 1:30 AM, taking a Tylenol PM, and waking again at 10:30 AM) but made my way to Penn's Table for breakfast. (No sign of a recession going on there, packed, had to wait for a stool at the counter)

Then I had been meaning to buy the latest album by Blues Traveler "North Hollywood Shootout" so I went across the street to the Mad Platter to pick it up. It's pretty good, but I'm biased. On another musical review note, I finally got Ben Folds latest work, "Way to Normal". My opinion, not so good. A shocker review I know, given the kind of drooling fan of his that I am, but it seems he's working out his 3rd divorce on this album, and well, I guess I'm not in the same place at the moment where he is in life, so I have a hard time relating to the music on this album .

So after my musical purchase, I made my way to Carlino's, the closest thing WC has to a supermarket. It's a great place, for all your catering needs as well as fresh vegetables or pasta!
I was going to maybe pick up a nice steak, as recommended by mom, as she wanted me to treat myself to a nice steak for my birthday. Oh, did I mention today is my birthday?

Yes....it is......oh, thanks.....oh nothing, I'll just watch the Superbowl, and hope for a wardrobe malfunction....oh Bruce Springsteen is playing the half time show? Oh then forget the malfunction thing then...
(Imaginary conversation with the person who finds out today is my birthday)

Anyway....they only stock steaks during the summer months, for all your outdoor grilling needs. So as I made my way back to my perch above Gay and High, I noticed some clearly insane

people gathering on the corner of Market and Church, so I took photos of them. Turns out they were "runners" running in a "5K". I'll have to check out Wikipedia later to find out the deal on that.

Actually, at 42, I may join them. I find myself feeling pretty good lately, and you know living in the USA is not a bad thing. I'm reading, "Why We Hate Us" to understand why we who live in this country are so unhappy, what with the material riches, education, access to information, Disneyland on both coasts, and the myriad of other things we've got going for us. If I figure it out, I'll let you know.

On second thought, there are plenty of other blogs you can go to read up on that. I'll just keep it to the things going around here, and keeping a smile on my face. (Which isn't as easy as it looks!)

Saturday Night in West Chester

2009-01-24T21:30:00.000-08:00

If you are going to live on the corner of Gay and High Street, you pretty much get to the point where you can tune out the sirens of cop cars, fire trucks and ambulances, especially on weekend nights. I mean, it's not like living in Manhattan or anything, but count on hearing a lot of noise between 11:00 p.m. and 2:30 a.m. Good thing I'm usually up either watching SNL or cartoons on Adult Swim, so it rarely wakes me up. Well, sometimes I crash out early, and if I get waken up by the street noise, forget going back to sleep for the next few hours. Did you know there are many ways to buy real estate for no money down? I do, thanks to my erratic sleep patterns.

So, what was the deal with this tonight at 12:30 a.m.? Who knows...some Axe slathered, spikey haired douche with 'roid rage says something about his fake boobed girlfriend to some other Axe slathered, spikey haired douche with 'roid rage and the next thing you know every cop on the night shift converges on the joint to sort things out.

Happens every weekend.

Do I care? Look, I like living in a town with night life, heck I can't complain, it would be like building my house at the end of the thresh hold of 09R at O'Hare and then complaining about the jet noise. Still, is a little civility not in order? Greater minds than mine have contemplated the issue, so there's not much I can add.

There's going to come a point, where I'm going to want to live in quieter neighborhood, you know, when I have the whole wife and kid action, maybe even out of the town all together, but not yet, I'm not ready (I mean I'm ready for the whole wife and kid thing) to give up the convenience of town, the charm, and yes....all the pretty lights.....

There there, West Chester, it's gonna be alright...

2009-01-19T14:03:00.000-08:00

First all, Happy New Year!

So I got lucky again! What are the odds that for the second time this season, the one day it snows in town I've got the day off? I got to walk around town, get a few errands done since after all I patronize (you know,the good kind of patronize) all the local businesses in town, and snap a few pictures. A quiet blanket of snow envelopes town on this Monday after the Eagles NFC loss, as if to comfort those who's entire identity is intertwined with the fate of a professional sports team. I imagine the conversation at work will be around what could have been, but life will go on.

After all, tomorrow, at 12:00 PM, it all changes right? In my world, things have been changing for a while, and I've got to be thankful that in some respects, the change has been manageable. Compared to what is happening to my friends and former colleagues at Merrill Lynch, my situation seems pretty well stable, knock on wood.

I guess I'm saying change is incremental and perpetual as opposed to huge paradigm shifts that occur overnight. Sure, there are some things that change things instantly, "I'm pregnant", "We're going to let you go", "Grandma's dead", but the best kind of change is the kind we initiate ourselves. When we're ready for change, we change. Nobody can push you into change, but we can be inspired to change. The onus is still on us to change, but there are some certainly inspiring people out there that can show the way. Be it Martin Luther King Jr, Mahatma Gandhi, Barrack Obama, John McCain, Lance Armstrong or Neil Armstrong, we all need to find something that inspires us to change. You may even want to look in the mirror for inspiration to change, there's no better role model than ourselves...don't you think?

West Chester Old Fashioned Christmas

2008-12-05T18:53:00.000-08:00

Editor's note-This is not a scene from the 1983 movie "A Christmas Story", this "moment" actually happened tonight!

When I first moved to West Chester, I remember sitting in my apartment at night and my TV being drowned out by the surprising sounds of Marching Bands under my window. I've gotten much better at the whole advanced noticed thing, so this year, my 3rd year here, I was much better prepared to watch and of course now, blog about this year's Christmas festivities.

The thing about this place, (and I've mentioned it before) is the diversity, right? In addition to the previously aforementioned marching bands, there were the school dance ensembles, cub scouts, classic car clubs, classic FARM TRACTOR clubs, and what I thought was really cool, a group of Chinese traditional dressed drummers from Falun Dong, (I'm pretty sure it was Dong, not Gong, the spiritual practitioners that for some reason the Chinese Communist Government beats up on a lot, but also the Russian Club from West Chester University featuring Ded Moroz (Russian Santa Claus) and his Grand daughter Snegurochka,

and finally the Bolivian Folkloric Dance group Caporales San Simon

Then as if all the holiday good feelings from the parade weren't enough, I went to the Chester County Historical Society's Auditorium to listen to the Pennsylvania Academy of Performing Arts Chamber Choir sing some traditional Christmas Carols in English, German, Latin and Russian. I remember as a kid, my mom got the entire family tickets to see Handel's Messiah at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Center in Orlando. We didn't last 20 minutes. God bless my Mom for trying to class up a pack of wild boys, but when you are 11 or 12 years old, you can't possibly appreciate let alone hold still for anything artsy fartsy. I tell you what a difference 30 years makes. This group of talented singers really could fill the room with that classic angelic sound, and if I wasn't so macho a guy, that and I'm emotionally damaged, I would have wept.

The best thing about the parade is the feelings of nostalgia it evokes, and the funny thing is, it's not like I ever experienced anything like it before. Unless you count watching A Charlie Brown Christmas and A Christmas Story on TV, suburban Central Florida doesn't lend itself towards making any great memories about Christmas time. No parades that I could walk to at night in 30 degree weather, no hot apple cider, no trees who only weeks before had been multi colored hues of red, orange, yellow and brown.

If I ever leave West Chester, I got a feeling I'll have some pretty good memories of my time here.

PS, if anyone was going to see Santa arrive by Helicopter at the American Helicopter Museum, let me know if it happens, according to the email I got from the FAA, a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) is in effect for 30 miles around Philadelphia, seems President Bush is in town for the Army-Navy game, so General Aviation is pretty much grounded. And on that note, GO ARMY, BEAT NAVY! (If I cared about a bunch of future officers hitting each other)

West Chester Winter Wonderland

2008-11-21T09:43:00.000-08:00

Waking up to 3 inches of snow in mid November, knowing you don't have to work that day? Man life is good!

West Chester Veterans Day Parade

2008-11-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

You've heard it before right? On the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month, the guns fell silent, thus ending World War I, the war to end all wars.

Well, that didn't exactly happen, (end war I mean) but we've celebrated Armistice day, now Veterans Day, ever since.

So once again, I have personal proof as to one of the myriad of reasons why living in West Chester is so dang cool. Sunday West Chester celebrated Veterans Day by having veterans, their supporters, loved ones, some restored military vehicles, and marching bands march down Gay Street to the Borough hall and the Garden of Honor for speeches and to lay a wreath to honor all those that served.

Note: Sarcastic statement follows....

"What's wrong people, couldn't make it downtown to show your appreciation? You could pour on to the streets for the Phillies win, you could stand in line for hours to vote, which I appreciate believe me, but couldn't come out and wave and smile and say thank you to someone who served you? No? Really? Not even 15 minutes? Too busy? Oh ok, that's cool, whatever...."

Note: Sarcastic statement ends.....

SOME people made it out, and that was pretty cool. Our recently victorious and deservedly so representative from the 156th district Barbara McIlvaine-Smith led the way, and I don't know, I just kind of get goosebumps and my eyes well up when I see people making an effort to thank the troops.

Actually, it's historically been a low key event, and in the interest of full disclosure I only stumbled across it last year, but I'm hoping that in coming years more and more people know about it, more military vehicles will come, maybe more military units can make it, heck dream big, how about a fly by of some WWII warbirds or helicopters or the Blue Angels or something?

I barely consider myself a Veteran, maybe because I've never been shot at, (well, actually I was shot at, but that was essentially a friendly fire incident, and a whole other story) and unless being in Hokkaido, Japan for an exercise for 2 weeks in January 1989, and spending the night at Guantanamo Bay counts, or flying in circles below the 24th parallel, I really am in awe of those who served in harms way.

This is why again, I must reiterate, how much I like living in West Chester, because of the diversity of the community, because of the deep respect for the past, while at the same time an eye on the future, this place really can't be beat.

Let's show the love next year though ok? Sad thing is that some Veterans of WWII are dying at a rate of 1000 a day, and we're still creating Veterans every day, so let's not forget them eh?

Philly's win World Series, West Chester erupts into chaos, (sort of)

2008-10-29T19:18:00.001-07:00

It started slowly at first, and built up and up, and now it's a big crowd at the corner of High and Gay Streets, loud cheering and car horns honking.

Thank God I don't work tomorrow, what with the noise and all, although I do have a root canal scheduled, hopefully that will seem more pleasurable in comparison to the craziness at the moment...

Did I mention I'm a curmudgeon?

Blues Traveler in West Chester

2008-10-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

I'd write a much longer post, but I wanted to do this while the memories were still fresh, and besides I'm sure the ringing in my ears won't go away for a while.

I'm a big fan of Blues Traveler, not an obsessive fan to the degree I am with Barenaked Ladies or Ben Folds, but I do enjoy their music, and own several albums, so even though it's a school night, and I went by myself, I still wanted to check them out at West Chester's newest venue, "The Note"

I'll give you the briefest of reviews, since it's going to biased because I'm a fan and all, but man were they good! Set started at exactly 9:30, so that meant only standing around for about 20 minutes, and I was right up front! I'd figure there was about 200 people there, very intimate setting for a jam band. They played songs from the new album "North Hollywood Shootout" and they were catchy songs for having never heard them before. They reached into their complete catalogue, and had the obligatory extended improvisation jams. They played until Midnight, so for 25 Bucks for 2.5 hours of music, it was well worth it!

You know I love it when a band plays their hits of course, but I really love it when a band that's well known and yet feels comfortable in their own skin by playing cover songs. The Devil Went Down to Georgia by Charlie Daniels Band, Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes, and I Want You to Want Me, by Cheap Trick. Hearing them played live, sung by John Popper, man it was cool! (Especially since all these songs are already on my iPod) As if some of Blues Traveler's hits like Hook and Runaround aren't sing along enough, those covers were great additions to an evening of loud rocking blues rock music!

Bam Margera was there, and he looked like a very proud papa watching them play at his place, and I don't want to spoil the surprise for my brother Joe who met John Popper when he was assigned to Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar in 2006, but to drop a hint, Oscar says hi, and one of us, (either Joe or I) "rocks", if John Popper is to be believed.

Update: Red Baron Costume Photos Found!

2008-10-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

Real quick, my brother Joe who walked off with the family photo albums when he left home at least scanned everything and sent me the only two photos of me in existence looking like a complete dork. (Ok, truth be told, there are tons of photos of me looking like a dork out there, who am I kidding?)

I don't remember being disappointed that I couldn't have a store bought costume, but I did want a more authentic flying helmet than a paper bag over my head and my dad's work goggles, but I have to admit, it worked!

I think in later years my mom would say that when she worked on it, my Dad thought it was a dumb idea, but when I was so happy with it, and that it won the most original prize, he shut up about it.

It's really no wonder I got all into Airplanes, why I got to fly as an Aircrewman in the Army, why I'm perennially getting my pilot's license. I didn't stand a chance...

West Chester Halloween Parade

2008-10-24T06:59:00.000-07:00

Clearly, the Angel on this guy's shoulder is nowhere to be found.

Man did I luck out yesterday. I had to help staff a booth at a Job Fair at 30th Street Station yesterday, so I got to go straight home rather than stop by the office at the end of the day. That put me in West Chester long before the street closures associated with the big West Chester Halloween Parade last night. In years past I've been stuck in the office, and then when after a long day, when all I want to do is go home, I'd be flummoxed by detours and the almost impossible traffic and the lack of parking spaces left in the Mosteller Garage, "MY garage!"

The sudden influx of parents escorting their costumed kids, pushing strollers, giant SUV's in the parking garage used to tork me off, but no longer. I signed up for the "Connect CTY" service, a system where the borough can send you a recorded message to your phone, an email, and a Text Message to let you know of events in town and the street closures that go with it. Before I signed up for this, I would have to rely on me noticing those little white signs tied to the lamp posts around town saying that this was going to be a no parking zone on a certain date. Now, I can be completely oblivious to the world around me until I get a message from the Borough Manager himself, Ernie McNeely!

So, with plenty of time to get out of the my costume (a suit), I got to walk around the staging areas for the parade. I got to tell you, in a nutshell, the homemade costumes, will always be cooler than the store bought ones. Admittedly, there have been great advancements in store bought costumes since the ones that were available when I was a kid in the 1970's, you remember, a Batman costume would have a PICTURE of Batman on the front, and a plastic mask with the slits cut out for the eyes and mouth which if you'll ask Hank Venture, you couldn't stop yourself from sticking your tongue out of it, only to cut it, which of course was maddening.....

Something else that hasn't changed, little girls are usually very cute as princesses and fairies, while little boys continue to choose gore and violence as themes for costumes. Pirates, Cowboys, Horror characters, anything with blood, a gun, sword, or light saber. I was the Red Baron once, if I can find a photo of it I'll have to scan it and post it somewhere, my mom built an entire Fokker Dr.1 Triplane out of Chicken wire that I could actually put on to make it look like actually in the cockpit of the airplane while I walked around. I think I won a prize as "Most Original" at a Halloween parade in Canoga Park, California circa 1973. (Thanks Mom!)

All in all, it was a great evening, kids, families, the weather cooperated by not being too cold or any rain, just another reason why living in West Chester is so great. Next up, John Young's final Guerrilla Drive In for the season, Blues Traveler playing at Bam Margera's "The Note", the Veteran's Day Parade, and then the Christmas Parade.

Did I mention I like living here!

You see, this is why we can't have nice things

2008-10-14T17:52:00.001-07:00

Dead Tree Down
Originally uploaded by arod138

You know, the tree was already dead, I'm pretty sure it died shortly after being planted when they replaced the sidewalk with the ubiquitous and quaint red bricks we have around town, but still....come on, someone's got to come along and prove their manhood by splitting the tree in half?

Sheesh....I remember my first beer.....

RotorFest!

2008-10-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

Did you here the distinctive "Whop Whop Whop" of those Huey's big ,thick rotor blades slapping their way through the air over West Chester this weekend?

I love the smell of fried dough and Turkey legs in the afternoon....

No, it was not Lt. Colonel Kilgore with the Ride of the Valkyries blaring out of speakers coming to take over downtown because let's face it, "Charlie don't surf", (Or in the case of West Chester, skateboard.) It was the sounds of RotorFest! The annual October celebration of everything whirlybird at our hometown airport, Brandywine Airport OQN.

I went last year with my brother Joe, in fact right after getting to ride in a Hughes 500 a la T.C. from Magnum P.I., I took him to the Philly Airport so he could get to Europe on his way to Afghanistan for 6 months via Norway and Oberamergau, Germany to get up to speed on how NATO troops make their coffee or some such training...

This year was just as nice as last year, perfect blue skies, absolutely still air, sunny and neither hot nor cold, just absolutely perfect. It seems like I just went last year RotorFest as if it was yesterday, I tell you I'm not happy with the rate of speed life is moving these days. I think someone needs to check the planet's Tachometer, I'm sure we're doing more RPM's lately then we were back in the 70's and 80's. To hell with Global Warming, I say Global Speeding is more of a threat! At least to me anyway.

I took a lot of photos on my little Nikon Coolpix, you know I'm pretty happy with it, and it seems to be robust enough with features that I will be able to do some cool things with it, if I can have the attention span longer than that of a gnat to read the instruction manual. I'll put a lot of the stuff either on my Flickr account or on my You Tube account.

Which brings me to the nerd factor at airshows. You know there are comic book nerds, sci fi nerds, Renaissance fair nerds, D and D nerds, (if you don't know what that is, you're not a nerd), but I think one of the more obscure kind of nerds is the war nerds, and their various subsets. The Civil War reinactor carries a great deal of respect among the mainstream population, but less so the others that obsess over the minutia of military details. Again it's absolutely true that there are a lot of non nerds out there that know the difference between a P-51 Mustang and a B-17, and I attribute that to the fact that there are a lot of people who's grandpa flew them during the war, but fewer people who know the difference between a B-17F and a B-17G (answer: Chin Turret) DOH!

The key here is, at least for me, is to avoid the temptation to put on a T-shirt with some airplane on it and perhaps worse, in addition to maybe having a telephoto zoom lens camera dangling around my neck, a handheld aviation band scanner sticking out of the pocket of a pair of size 46 cargo shorts. (Don't be that guy, Don't be that guy, I mutter to myself)

When I was in the Army Reserves, I got to fly only one time with our aircraft to an airshow in Fort Meyers. We didn't normally do the airshow circuit because of the clandestine nature of our work, so we did our missions in obscurity. This time though, it was right after Desert Storm, so I had a lot of people thanking me for my service. It was sort of awkward because I sat out the war at the Presidio of Monterey, California. (If you are going to miss a war, that's the place to do it) Still it was cool, because I had been that nerdy kid who knew what every airplane on the ramp was, and then later as a Teenager, the pimply faced kid in a Civil Air Patrol uniform standing some sort of guard duty next to some warbird while the millionaire pilot/owner hung out eating hot dogs in the VIP tent hobnobbing with the Blue Angels.

I finally got to see an airshow from the other side of the rope, and I didn't feel like a tool wannabe walking around in a flight suit. I also got to see the kind of kids I was, not the ADD kid spinning himself around and babbling incoherently running up and down the length of the airplane shouting "eheheheheheh, take that mom, ehehehehehe, take that dad, send me to a psychiatrist will you? Take that Doctor Sally Wexler!!" (Get the reference?)

No I was the kid that silently observed everything in quiet awe. I would wait my turn to talk to the pilot to ask some clever question, mainly so I could get the compliment of being such a smart kid.

God I was and still am a nerd.....

WC Chili Cook Off vs Philly Sports teams

2008-10-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

Maybe I got there late, but it seemed like a light turn out for West Chester's 6th Annual Chili Cook off. Don't get me wrong, the air was filled with spices and aromas, plenty of people about, and my salivary glands were working overtime as I walked down the street, but I began to think about it and wondered if West Chester was suffering from some kind of Street Festival Burnout Syndrome? (Hereby to be known from now on as SFBS, terminology copyright 2008 Arod138 Heavy Industries, all rights reserved)

In the last month we've had a Swinging Thursday street festival and the West Chester Restaurant Festival, so did the Chili Cook off suffer because we've kind of been overdoing the whole festival thing lately, or what? You can only do a few of these things before people start to take them for granted, right?

Then I thought about what might have been a factor, which was while all this ground beef, beans, onions, tomatoes were simmering along, there was an Eagles-Redskins game going on, and the 4th game of the National League Championship Series being played, the Phillies vs the Brewers.

Having moved here to S.E. Pennsylvania from parts unnamed with a, let's just say, a less ingrained sports culture, it didn't take me long to figure out that people here like their local sports teams. That, and the fact that people here, especially in West Chester, and especially after the bars close at 2 in the morning, that people here have absolutely no problem spelling the word "Eagles"....at the top of their lungs, while drunk...jerks....

Again, I'm absolutely supportive of any event the town throws that allows me the gluttonous opportunity to stand in line eating a funnel cake while waiting in line to order a hot dog, but come on what is the answer to this dilemma?

Because in the fall, between High School Football on Friday nights, Penn State Football on Saturday afternoons, (I actually had someone at work tell me that they could never work Saturdays like I have to sometimes because of College Football, and from the looks of the kid, it's not like he was a key player or anything, but I digest, er, digress) NFL football on Sunday afternoons, who the heck is going to show up to these things? Do we need to cram more of these festivals in during the summer?

At least it didn't rain today, it was a really nice day to intake far more calories in a few hours than I will have burned....in a week. Oh, and Phillies won, Eagles lost.

A blast from the past...and the future....of ROCK!

2008-09-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

I had promised myself that I would try to keep this blog to the doings and transpirings going on here in beautiful West Chester, but I really wanted to share this little bit of Pop gold, so I thought about it for a while and came up with a tenuous but otherwise legitimate link between this and West Chester, so follow me on this one ok?

I was driving back to West Chester (that's my link) from a weekend in New York City, when I stumbled across a pretty cool radio station, WRXP 101.9 that had a pretty good mix of music.

Now look, just like in Logan's Run, I think I got to a certain point in life where I've kind of gotten myself killed off when it comes to knowing what's cool in music anymore. I'm only tangentially aware of a plethora of shaggy haired and skinny Salvation Army clothing wearing hipsters that are passing for what is Rock and Roll these days, and my assumption is that what Athens, Georgia was to Rock in the 80's and Seattle was to Rock in the 90's, it seems Brooklyn, New York is where this current crop of Rock saviors are coming from.

I had kind of tuned out the DJ and what he saying as he went into his spiel about this next band, but when they started playing, I was shocked! The sound sounds like a mix of Tom Petty, Husker Du, Buffalo Tom and Bruce Springsteen. "This was new Rock music?" I asked myself. "If it is, this was pretty good stuff with great lyrics and hooks."

The song was Sequestered in Memphis, the band was The Hold Steady.

I vowed that when I got back to West Chester I'd check them out. I had assumed that they would look like any of the other legions of Emo shoe gazers I seem to see playing on Saturday Night Live, but they were a bit different, they looked kind of like, I don't know, me! (Here we go again with the projection, read my post about BNL)

I definitely bought a couple of their songs right away from iTunes, and was searching for some videos of them on You Tube when I stumbled across this absolute gem.

Honestly, I'm not sure it gets any better that. I'm a cynical 41 year old curmudgeon these days, and don't impress easily but I have to make a concerted effort to not spill over in hyperbole how great I think this synergy is. The Hold Steady playing their new song, but synced up to the house band of the Muppet Show, Electric Mayhem in the video. And all this was created by some random internet guy with 8 hours on his hands not even like, you know, professional!

Anyway, that's all I wanted to share, I just thought it was pretty cool!

Oh by the way, on a completely unrelated note, if anybody still doesn't think that Oprah is a kingmaker, have her put on Suze Orman and watch our call volume at work go through the roof!

The Evil Midnight Bomber what bombs at Midnight

2008-09-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

"So he says to me, you gotta do something smart, baby, something big! He says you want to be a supervillain, right, and I go yeah baby, yeah yeah! What do I gotta do? He says you got bombs, blow up the Comet Club, it's packed with superheroes…you'll go down in supervillain history and I go Yeah baby 'cause I'm the Evil Midnight Bomber what Bombs at Midnight!!! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!"

Let me start off by saying....I really don't need this. Honestly, lately, my life has been hard enough. The stock market sucks, work is stressing me the hell out, my love life has taken one bizarre turn after the other, a part of one of my back molars broke off, and my back, I don't know what I did to my back, but I must have pulled something or pinched something but I was finding it damn hard to move for about 3 days. I've also done a crappy job staying in touch with friends and family since I've been so bummed lately.

Now this.

Bomb found at parking garage

I'm going to work this morning, and as you know my commute starts off by taking the old school elevator down to the first floor of my building, turning the corner to walk the 20 steps down Prescott Alley, into the parking garage, and then either into my car or on the scooter and off to work. What was I met with when I approached the garage? A cop, and yellow crime scene tape.

My first thought was, "Jumper". I know things are bad, but when I was kid, I passed a similar scene in Winter Park, at the old Langford Hotel, where somebody did a swan dive from the 6th floor. When I asked the cop if I could get my car, he asked me where it was, (in the corner of the second deck) and he said, "Yea you better get it, because that's right above where the suspicious package is, but keep that under your hat."

Oh God.

You know, with Lehman Brothers going belly up, Mother Merrill getting bought by BoA, (as a side note, I got more than a little Schadenfraud going on as a former laid off Merrill Lynch employee) I was more concerned about getting to work knowing it was going to be a rough day, so I was really thinking that was more important to get to work than worry about some stupid hoax. It never occurred to me for a second that it was real.

Turns out, this area has been plagued for a few years by "The Suburban Bomber" who the FBI at one time thought might have been Nick Berg, I mean who knew?

At this point, I can only laugh. Turns out it was the real deal, and we're lucky it was diffused, and who knows what could have happened to my scooter, my car or, um, oh yea, me!

That's why the only way I can deal with it, since I've had a pretty lousy track record of coping lately is make fun of it, and what better way than by associate it with the ridiculously insane, Dennis Hopper-ish sounding mad man than The Evil Midnight Bomber what bombs at Midnight?

Life is ludicrous as it is, so best to take care of yourself, not take life to seriously, and as bad as it is sometimes, it could always be worse. God it could be infinitely better, but best to take what you got and not raise a fuss.

A friend of the devil.....

2008-09-04T18:22:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post, I was down in the basement on the treadmill, and of course I got the whole iPod/Nike thing going, you know, the wireless transmitter I put in my Brookes running shoe (I took an Exacto knife to cut the rubber foam to drop it in there as opposed to buying a special Nike shoe with the indentation already built in) that sends a signal to a receiver hooked up to the iPod that tells me my pace and distance covered. I did 2 miles, (I'm not going to say I ran or walked, I'm too embarrassed. Oh damn, I guess that kind of gives it away huh?) and the last song that came up was "Friend of the Devil" by the Grateful Dead. (Q. What did the one Deadhead say to the other Deadhead when they ran out of pot? A. "This music sucks!")

I do like them though, when I was studying at DLI at the Presidio of Monterey, in the beautiful barracks, (I almost hate to call them barracks, they were more like 2 man suites with a great sunset view over Monterey and Pacific Grove) there was only one radio station I could pick up on my clock radio, and that was KPIG 107.5 FM, Freedom California. They played a pretty eclectic mix that included Hank Williams Sr. AND The Grateful Dead among others, so that's what turned me on to them. KPIG streams from the web, you should check it out, the playlist is amazing!

Anyway, sorry for getting off track, but as I'm coming up on the elevator after my work out, the sounds of the Dead are ringing in my ears. Thing of it was though, I had my ear buds out, so was the song literally stuck in my head? Before my workout, I went out onto Gay Street again, and it was another "Swinging Thursday", with the vendors, and the Politicos, and the bands. (Read about it in one of my older posts.) Last month was disco, this month the bands were an Irish Folk Rock band (Think U2 and Dave Matthews) and a Classic Rock outfit. As I walked into my apartment, I turned down the TV, opened a window, and sure enough, the band playing on the street was playing "Friend of the Devil"!

Ok so maybe it wasn't that much of a fluke, after all, on my iPod there are at least 5 Grateful Dead songs, and that band outside of merry old hippies probably have more than a few Grateful Dead and Van Morrison songs in their repertoire, so it was a coincidence that in fact was pretty likely. But, considering there are almost 400 songs on my iPod and I happened to be within earshot of the band playing the song at that moment, it was a kind of a cool thing that happened, no?

Look, I made you a car!

2008-08-31T15:58:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been to Rockefeller Center in New York City? It's a must see place, especially around Christmas time, if for nothing else but to see the Christmas Tree. (Or Holiday tree, or whatever the PC name for it is) I really dig the art and style inside the building. Now I'm not an art critic, nor an art major, but I assume it's of the Art Deco movement of the 1930's. Lots of streamlining, and a lot of industrial imagery. Shirtless muscle bound men with hammers banging on steel to make buildings and Zeppelins and Trains, strong jawed women with sheaths of wheat bundled in their arms. I assume the motif is aimed more at the Ayn Rand, glory of capitalism aesthetic since the patrons of all this art were the Rockefeller family versus the same kind of art work done by the Soviets called Socialist Realism. (Not to be confused with the style exampled by Diego Rivera's "Social Realism" in case you were wondering.) Having been in both Rockefeller Center and the Metro stations of Moscow I can tell you both styles are a lot alike. Either way, it's amazing that we managed to be so optimistic during the depression, but maybe it was more of a unique opportunity in the history of the world where the rich could afford the labor and talents of thousands of gifted but out of work artists and to paraphrase Max Bialystok , "since they had it, they flaunted it."

So once again, I'm on the Scooter in West Chester, and there was this place on Gay Street that sold Futons to the off campus college types and the 41 year old studio apartment dweller losers like myself. Anyway, they moved, and I guess the building is being remodeled and in the course of this remodeling was revealed this very nice retro looking hint as to what used to be in the building, Turner Motors Mercedes-Benz of West Chester. Now for the local townies, maybe they remember when it used to be a car dealership, but I don't, being a newbie and all. The best part of this revelation is this relief that is exactly of the same kind of thing you see in New York City. I'm sure a smarter person than I can tell me what the significance of the two people are, (oh that's Detroiticus, Greek God of automobile manufacturing, and that's Smartshoppera, Goddess of wise automobile buyers.) but regardless, I'm hoping somebody saves it and puts up somewhere where all of us in town can enjoy it.

All this got me thinking about the latest architectural marvel in town. When I look at the new Chester County Courthouse, I think to myself, "God bless 'em, they tried", but it really doesn't have much of a personality. Sure they went with some Roman Columns at the entrance, but you know, it's the little things, those details and flourishes, that usually have nothing to do with the engineering of a building that are often what really makes a building something special.

Maybe since the days of cheap immigrant labor are long over, ( I mean cheap, artisan labor, mustachioed Italian men with chisels) it's not in any body's budget to have these little do-dads on buildings anymore. Well, if we don't care how future generations will look on us, let us at least have the sense to preserve what generations past managed to crank out even during our darkest days.

Riding Around West Chester

2008-08-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

Today's weather in West Chester was awesome. I know the word awesome is used way too much these days, it almost cheapens the word somehow when it's used for every slightly better than good thing, but really, mid August, 85 degrees, blue skies, low humidity? If I closed my eyes and imagine that the Pacific Ocean is just down the hill, it's like it's Carmel, California or something. Sure there are a lot of other sensory inputs missing, like the barking of the sea lions, and that musky salt air smell, but driving through tree lined streets of nice homes, quaint shops, hipsters and wealthy folks, it's like you'd expect to see Clint Eastwood walking his dog while he contemplates going to get an ice cream. (Yea, kind of weird imagery there, but he's not always shooting punks you know.)

When the weather is this nice, I think of flying. I really need to get on my horse and finish this pilot's license thing. Joe is about a 2 hour flight away by Cessna 172 in Norfolk, and I've always wanted to fly out to Rick Kohberger's compound near Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania. (That's not a typo, there is a town off of I-80 in central PA called Jersey Shore.) So to torture myself, I went out to Brandywine airport, (you know the one that had a little excitement a couple of weeks ago) and watch planes in the pattern do touch and goes. I got a few good photos, like the one of this absolutely beautiful T-28 Trojan,

some planes taking off and landing,

and of course the Helicopters in front of the American Helicopter Museum.

After about an hour of this, I hopped back on the scooter, but before I left the airport I managed to take one more photo, I couldn't resist.

Back in West Chester proper, I'm fooling around with my new Nikon Coolpix S550, and decided to take a few small movies so I can upload my first official videos on You Tube. I just held the camera close to my chest with my left hand, my right hand on the throttle. Probably not the safest thing in the world to do, but until I can build a mount for my helmet for the camera, it was an interesting experiment.

Before I went home though, I wanted to check out this new business on High Street. Imagine you're in that classic scenario, you need to get your hands on some high end Olive Oil, but it needs to be within walking distance. Well, West Chester now has A Taste of Olive, where you can get extra virgin Olive Oils from around the world.....On Tap! You go in, and you can taste them BEFORE you buy. I couldn't walk out without buying a bottle of some Olive Oil from Italy, now if I could only figure out what to cook.

All in all, a pretty good day in West Chester.

Another Swinging Thursday

2008-08-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

Well, it's the first Thursday of a Summer month, so that means that 1/2 of Gay Street gets closed down to traffic to set up tents along the street for local merchants to sell their wares or tout their agendas. The air is filled with the lingering aroma of fried dough and BBQ Turkey legs, yet the Renaissance Faire is a couple of months away still. The sounds of R&B and Disco have the older and younger generations swaying to the beats of the live band. Young couples insist on negotiating the throngs of people with their seemingly self propelled, All Terrain, 4 Wheel drive strollers with the independent suspension, air bags, (and if I had my way, ejector seats. I mean really how cool would it be, prior to an impending collision, the sun shade blows off the top of the stroller, a rocket fires, and little Josh gets propelled 50 feet in the air, to be brought down gently by parachute? Am I the only one who thinks about that kind of thing? OK fine, whatever.)

I gather that the point of even having these things the first part of every month during the summer is to attract people, or in the case of the people who work in the town, keep people in the downtown area which helps the local businesses by extending the hours they can make money. Nothing wrong with that. The interesting part of these events is that they have brought out people with nothing to sell but ideas. The Chester County Young Democrats are out there, and so are the Young Republicans. In previous First Thursdays the Freethought Society of Philadelphia(a pro Atheist group) had a booth, and Amnesty International was there today.

Now I normally don't mind the fact that I have to kind of go out of my way in a crowd of people to avoid the "Free Spinal Alignment Check Booth" to keep from having someone put a sales brochure in my hand, but I guess I kind of skived out about having to avoid eye contact with someone who is earnestly and eagerly awaiting an opportunity to tell me why I should vote for somebody, or not vote for somebody, or why God doesn't exist, or how waterbording is terrible, or whatever it is. I don't think for a minute that they don't have a right to be there, au contraire, that's what I love about this town, the free exchange of thoughts and ideas in the public square, does it get any more American than that? Heck we even have protesters and counter-protesters dutifully show up like clock work, rain or shine, on the corner of High and Market at 11:00 am on Saturdays to hold up signs for an hour.

I guess I don't have an answer really, I mean I want all the little businesses to do well in this town, because that's what makes the quality of life living here so awesome. I also want people to be able to spout off whatever it is they believe in public, because I believe its a lot harder to spew venom and be so vitriolic like people will be on a blog then when you see these people in person and realize they are just that, people, kind, smiling, enthusiastic people who believe in a cause, against the war or for the troops, for tax cuts or for helping the less fortunate.

At the end of the day though, I'd like to just get my Funnel Cake and Turkey Leg in peace.

Aircraft Accident Update

2008-07-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

Turns out Carb heat is probably not the problem! This aircraft is a brand new Eclipse 500 , a "VLJ" (Very Light Jet), a 6 seater, and an airplane that could be the future of air travel, under the concept of "Air Taxi", where for the price of the equivalent of a 1st Class commercial airline ticket, you could fly from your local airport to anywhere you want to go.

Now not to scare anybody, but the FAA recently grounded all Eclipse 500's until an Airworthiness Directive was complied with, as this was issued related to a throttle control problem incident upon landing at Chicago's Midway airport.

I'm not going to contemplate further what could have happened, I'm not with the FAA or the NTSB, I'm only a 100 hour student pilot and a former 1000 hour US Army Aircrewman, but suffice to say, the aircraft seems intact, the pilot walked away, and all is good.

Photo courtesy of Chopper 10, NBC 10 WCAU Philadelphia.

Aircraft Accident at Brandywine Airport

2008-07-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

Whenever you see a local news helicopter hovering perfectly 800 feet over one spot, it's usually not a good sign, especially if it's over a highway, but really super especially bad if it's over an airport.

I don't have much info, my scooter commute takes me past the Brandywine Airport every day now, and they closed the road so I couldn't see, but there were a lot of cops and firemen, but no real sense of urgency that I could tell. Much more likely than a crash on final would be that this was another case of an aborted take off that went wrong, with a pilot going for the option of putting on the breaks and rolling off the end of Runway 27, rather than struggle to get airborne and having a problem getting over 202.

I'll go past it tomorrow, this is the 2nd time this is happened this year, but with this being a 3,347 foot long runway, and with the heat in July, pilots have to remember to take into consideration air density. The heat means wings have a harder time creating lift. Then with the humidity, there is a lot of moisture in the air, so one needs to be aware of Carburetor ice, so pilots have to have the carb heat on, (but this robs power) and you've got to make sure the mixture of air and fuel is not as rich you normally would have it.

With the price of fuel being pretty high, people are not getting the stick time they should to be in proficient in these conditions. Add the fact that most people don't fly during the winter, there are a lot of rusty pilots out there. If you haven't flown in a while go up with an instructor to knock the rust off, and then be safe and enjoy flying!

The Countdown begins....Goodbye Mosteller Garage, Hello ???

2008-07-24T18:11:00.000-07:00

I participated in my first civic anything, which was a public discussion of the plans for the demolition of the old Mosteller Garage, to be replaced by what I assume will be called, the New Mosteller Garage. There were some cool pictures of Parking Garages built already around the country to serve as an example of what we as a town could have built, including the "award winning" Bicentennial Garage on South High Street. (Can you imagine what the award ceremony is like for the organization that recognizes great parking garages? I wonder if there is a red carpet and after parties)

Anyway, it was pretty cool, there seemed to be some confusion about the potential demand for spaces in the new garage, what with Jurors coming to serve in the courthouse going to the new Justice Center parking garage, and with the YMCA moving to Airport Road, no more people in Spandex. Seriously though, it seems like the only time I have a hard time finding a parking space is when I'm coming home from work, and there are many ghosts and pirates and princesses and their parents pushing strollers on their way to the Halloween and Christmas parades. That said, since it is my home garage, I'd like to park my car and scooter there on a Friday night, and come back to them without having the bow ties on my Chevy ripped off, or my scooter lying on it's side. (The first thing happened, the second thing hasn't happened yet, knock on wood)

It was also pretty cool to see the movers and shakers of West Chester, Jim Jones was there, of WCJim.com, as he is the Ward 6 councilperson. He introduced me to Cassandra Jones, my Ward 2 councilperson. I was very warmly greeted and asked to come back to more meetings, which I will for sure, because the longer I live in the Dub-C, the more I like it. Years ago I had always wanted to live in a hipster town ever since I visited my friends in Seattle and Portland. I kind of almost did when I lived in Salt Lake City, I took a step back to Suburbia when I lived in Denver, and Bensalem and Croyden, but I really feel like a combination of luck and more luck finds me here, and I'm not going anywhere, even if it means that we are looking at 14 months starting in April of 2009 of me being without my easy parking deal.

Update on the Great West Chester Blackout

2008-07-24T18:06:00.000-07:00

The power came back on at 2:45 AM, so as I slept comfortably at the Microtel Inn, my Air Conditioning, lights, and TV came back on and ran all day until I got home at 7:30 PM that night. So much for saving a couple of bucks, but at least I slept well!

Where were you during the great West Chester Blackout of 2008?

2008-07-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

Ok, it started off like any other morning, the desire to get rid of the Diet Pepsi I drank right before I fell asleep the night before is essentially my internal alarm clock, so like every morning, I answered nature's call, came back to the futon, and turned on the TV to flip back and forth between the local channels and CNBC, to see how the market futures were looking to gauge what kind of day I could potentially have. Well, at around 6:00 AM or so, I got my answer, but not from TV. I'm sitting there, when suddenly, a deliberate sounding "Boof" (not boom) reverberated through the apartment, the TV went dark, my 100 Mbps Internet stopped, and the air conditioner, the lovely, lovely air conditioner spooled down like a Pratt and Whitney turbofan and made it's customary death gurgle as the condensed water settled into it's reservoir.

I know I paid my power bill, I'm sure I did!

I peaked my head out of my apartment, and the hallway was brightly lit. Hmmmm, a diesel motor grinding along was the only sound I heard. I went back to my dimly lit apartment as the morning sunlight filtered in giving me enough to work with in order to shower, and when I finished, dressed, and stepped out of my apartment again about 1/2 hour later, I walked around the corner of the hallway where I could peak out onto the crossroads of Gay and High Street. Sure enough, the stoplights were out, and there was already a portable stop sign on the street and people were self managing the intersection as best they could.

Oh well, not much I could do, I'll go to work, I'm sure the power will be back on when I get home from work 11 hours later, right? HA!

I got home, parked the scooter, and with it still being daylight, it was hard to determine if the power was on, but I heard that distinctive growl of that diesel generator, so that didn't bode well. As I turned the corner, through Prescott Alley onto High Street was a fleet of Peco Energy trucks, and a bunch of big men in orange hardhats looking down a hole in the sidewalk.

Damn, power's out, but at least I know I paid my bill...but this looks like it could take a while.

Then there is a note on the door to the entrance of my building. According to the note, the property manager said it's a "Very serious problem....and we just have to make the best of it."

Word on the street from my fellow Greentree denizens was that we were looking at sometime between 2 and 4 AM.

Well, screw that, I'm going to a hotel.

The idea of sitting in a dark apartment, from 8:00 PM until 7:00 AM tomorrow, with no TV, Internet and lovely, lovely air conditioning gave me a sense of absolute dread. So, as we speak, I'm sitting in an Ice Cold room at the Microtel suites on 202 and Matlack Street. I've got cable TV, (Basic cable, but still) and I've got Internet so I can post this blog!

Now I could probably go into a lengthy dissertation about crumbling infrastructure, American demand for more and more power, given that when the power cables were laid around the Greentree Building in 1929 there was no such thing as Air Conditioning, Computers, High Def TV's and etcetera etcetera, but I'll spare everyone my comments on what's obvious. Still, it's 2008, is the price of having the quality of life I have living in a cool downtown area where I can walk to the Dry Cleaner, the drug store, the Post Office, the Barber, the coffee shop and the brewpub, the occasional 24 hour power outage every couple of years?

Yea, I'll pay it...and my power bill......