The
Oregon International Air Show was this
past weekend and it was pretty cool. Since Jenn and I live near the
airport, we get a pretty decent view of the show just by sitting on our
front porch, so we popped some chairs out there and watched the Blue
Angels literally fly down our street.
(The photo is from the Blue Angels web site, but the view looks almost
identical from our house.)
After the air show, since we were outside anyway, we decided to do some
much-needed garage cleaning. We “inherited” a lot of stuff when we
moved into our house because my parents moved into a condo about the
same time. Stuff like two big boxes of slug and snail bait. Bottles
and cans of substances I don’t think they’ve actually manufactured in my
lifetime. Time to get rid of it. So we gathered all of that stuff up
into a couple of boxes and prepared it to go to the chemical disposal
facility. (Gotta dispose of that stuff in a safe manner!)
Oh, and I can’t remember the last time I used a hand saw, but somehow I
have three. Fine, I’ll keep one, but the other two went to the
Goodwill donation truck along with the four spare hose nozzles and other
redundant implements.
We also made a Home Depot run to get some boxes and such to better
organize the things we decided to keep. Net result - we’ve reclaimed
the garage. You can swim in the space in there. We didn’t even get
through all of it, either - I can see where we can do some additional
optimization and reclaim even more of the space in there.
Why? We’ve been wanting to get bikes for some time now, but the garage
has been so jam-packed there was nowhere to put them. Now that we’ve
reduced the amount of crap in there, I can see some storage
opportunities for those babies. You know when the last time I rode a
bike was? Neither do I. It’s time to get back out there.
Oh, before I forget - Sunday we went to see The Bourne
Ultimatum
with a couple of Jenn’s friends, Angela and Keaka (cool people). We
left during the Sunday showing of the Blue Angels, figuring we’d beat
the traffic. Not so - traffic was worse than ever. Why? The ridiculous
freeloading morons who decided to park along the side of the road so
they could watch the show. It wasn’t just a few cars - there were so
many cars lined up on the freeway it was like they had pulled over for
an emergency vehicle and just decided not to drive again. Motorhomes
pulled off into fields adjacent to the freeway and dropped anchor. Cars
lined up like it was a drive-in movie, pulling off the road with their
rear ends in the ditch.
Now, I’m glad that they pulled off the road rather than trying to drive
and watch at the same time. (We passed a totalled car that was pretty
obviously the result of the driver trying to watch and drive at the same
time.) But I feel pretty strongly that if you’re going to watch the
show, maybe you should go pay your $20 and support the show. I
realize it sounds sort of hypocritical considering I parked my butt out
on my front porch, but then, the airport has a noise easement over my
house for this sort of thing, so I kind of feel like my property taxes
already go to support these things. My house is the one the pilot’s
going to crash into if he goes
down.
You people parking on the side of the freeway? You were on the way to
the store and decided to get a free show. That’s bullshit. Either keep
driving or go get a ticket, you freeloader.