Marie Selby Botanical Garden

Sarasota, Florida

So... Joe the Plumber is running for Congress in Ohio. My cousin is Danny the Electrician. Here's what Danny had to say about Greece, "They can't print their own money? What were they thinking?" I'd like to see him in charge of the Federal Reserve...

Carolyn (AKA sunshinecruiser) came to visit us this week. She was fun. We went to lunch on the beach at O'Leary's and then to the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. We know her from social networking, specifically the "Women's RV Forum" of which Mrs. Phred is a member.

Somehow the botanical gardens brought back old memories of Japan, 20 years after the war. I'm reading "The Last Great Victory" which deals with Japan in July/August of 1945. There were a lot of "ultras" who wanted to fight to the death and derail the surrender and attempted very disorganized  multiple uncoordinated coup d' e'tauhs at the very end after the bombs were dropped...I visited Japan about 30 times from 1965 to 1968 in support of moving stuff from here to there. It was before they exploded into consumer goods and way before they crashed and burned with a huge real estate bubble.

In 1965 we stayed overnight in a hotel near the Tachikawa air force base. The Red Guards would fly red balloons at the end of the runway to complicate the landing. There were a couple of crashed and burned transports at the end of the runway. I gave my flight suits to the hotel maids to wash. They washed them with fibreglass curtains which created a very itchy situation. I have always wondered if that was deliberate.

The military exchange rate back then was 360 yen to a dollar, while the free market rate was 180 yen. Now a dollar will buy about 70 yen. I bought a 150CC Honda motorcycle, brand new, for $150. We flew it back in an empty C-124. I was very impressed with it's quality which included a little tool kit under the seat.Another time I bought something called a Hibaci Pot which was like a very heavy ceramic barbeque smoker. 

Once we took off from Tachikawa and passed by beautiful Mount Fuji. As we got out to sea, all the engines started to misfire. We aborted and returned to Japan. It turned out that each engine had 32 spark plugs and 16 cylinders. All of the spark plugs were only in finger tight and they had all begun to fall out of the engines.

The C-124 had the largest piston driven engines ever placed on any aircraft. The same engine was also used on the postwar B-36 bomber.

I went in for my 12th of my 20 radiation treatments today. The doctor says that I might be feeling fatigued but I'm not feeling it. It's 83 degrees again today. The sky is blue with pretty puffy white clouds. The air smells really fine...

Someone left a bunch of  strawberries on our doorsteps today. I chopped up half of them, added some sugar and put them in the freezer.Strawberry shortcake in the future...