Hot Dogging in Urgup

hot-dogged, hot-dog·ging, hot-dogs Slang To perform daring stunts or ostentatious manuevers.  The next day, two of these balloons collide and the upper balloon tears a hole in the lower balloon. In the crash 3 die and 22 are injured. This confirms my impression of a general cavalier disregard for safety and prudent separation.. 

Mrs. Phred took almost all these pictures. I was paralysed with fear and afraid to move from the centre of the gondola, which I had both arms wrapped around and no hands free for the camera.

There are 90 to 100 balloons flying over Cappadocia this morning. Each balloon holds 12 to 25 tourists. Our young Turkish pilot is skimming the gondola along though this narrow valley of pointy rocks. He's bumping other balloons in what he calls his "morning kiss" and staying mostly inches away from  (and often below) the surrounding  terrain.

The balloon in the picture above resulted in a number of injuries, broken bones and three fatalities. It happened the morning after my flight when this blog was already written and published.

230 years ago, in 1783, a chicken, a sheep and a rooster made the first ascent in a hot air balloon. King Louis XVI thought it would be a good idea to use condemned criminals as the first human pilots, but Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis Francois d'Arlandes got him to change his mind and let them try it out with animals. When the chicken came back alive, they decided to try it themselves. They lit up a disgusting mix of burning straw and stinking manure in an attached burning pot and off they went.

They landed in a French vineyard, and while the farmers were debating whether to immediately surrender or first make a half-hearted pitchfork charge, the two pilots had the wit and foresight to produce bottles of champagne, a tradition which continues unabated to the present day.

Here the young Turkish Hot Dog pilot makes a balloon bumping a ''morning kiss". Later, after landing the gondola precisely on a waiting trailer, he produces a bottle of champagne and twelve glasses.

We spend almost an hour skimming the  "Chimneys" in the valley, often just inches from the strange eroded lava formations

They ballooned here 334 days last year. The scenic rock formations make this place either the number 1 or 2 place to balloon in the world, depending on what you Google..

Cappadocia is considered perhaps the best place in the world to take a hot air balloon ride. Today about 2,000 tourists took a daybreak  ride. Tomorrow three of them do not make it back alive.

Later, after the long flight at low altitude down the valley,  we shoot up to an altitude 2100 meters (I think, or maybe feet) to try to catch winds that will bring us down in the right place.

The balloons below heading for the strange rocks.

Landing....

Further West on 66

Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada

We took our RV into Kingman Ford to get the dash air-conditioner looked at before heading to Death Valley. The Service adviser has good news and bad news. The bad news is that the failed compressor hose is a Fleetwood part, so he can't help me. The good news is that there is no charge for the diagnosis.



We pull out of Kingman, heading West on I-40, and pull over on an Interstate exit to Google Fleetwood dealers. Eventually we find one in Las Vegas and make an appointment for today.


After a series of wrong turns in the desert, we find ourselves again on Historic Route 66 heading for Bullhead City, a lucky break.


The route begins with 20 miles of desert valley. We come to a mountain range and stop at "Cool Springs" to get cold drinks and ask about the sign that warns us not to take a vehicle over 40 feet in length though the mountain passes.


The proprietor of "Cool Springs" has an incredible collection of photos of wrecked semis and motor homes that failed to negotiate the hairpin turns leading to Oatman. He says we should be ok if we take the hairpins wide. He tells us about a man who stopped for advice but didn't know how to drive an RV. He tried to stay in his own lane an dropped his rear wheels and towed jeep into a gulley, blocking the highway completely for days.

It's a really lovely drive with grand vistas and lots of chollo cactus. Hard to believe that this was once the main route west and east from Chicago to Los Angeles. There are many working and abandoned mines along the drive. We pull off at a the 3,500 foot pass to take some pictures.


Oatman is a surprise. As we pull into town, the road is completely blocked by the High Noon gunfight. Jackasses and people fill the street. I can't back up so I turn off the RV in the middle of the street and send Mrs. Phred up to take pictures. Eventually, the crowd breaks up and we ease though town at one mph, waiting patiently for the feral jackasses to amble off the dusty road.


We pull into a Lake Mead campground about 4PM. The main slide won't extend. I review the documentation that came with the RV, but the part about the slides is missing. Eventually I find the relays. The slide that works clicks and has a green light that comes on when you push the button. The other relay is dead. I try replacing the fuse, but no luck. Mrs. Phred points out that the relay cannon plug is cock-eyed.. When I push it in the slide goes out.



The right turn signal on the towed Toyota stopped working. I put the voltmeter on the wires going back from the RV jack and see no signal. Probably there is a break in the wire. They get a lot of abuse.


This is a lovely place with multi-colored sandstone mountains and islands coming down to a huge blue lake. I'm saving the pictures for another day. We'll probably drop off the RV early and wander Las Vegas today.

Another Perfect Day

Up at 4 AM to check E-mail,  delete spam and dress....a drive to the gym at 5 :30 to do ten repetitions of weight lifts on five weight machines..... I go  around the machines three times and wipe down whatever was touched.... I have the place to myself....skipped the pool today...

At 8:30 I play two sets of tennis with Mrs. Phred....  The scores are 6-0, 6-1....Tomorrow I am sure i will finally win a set.... We play on a public hard court. ...I  figured out how to reserve a clay court at the country club and put in a request for a court next Tuesday and Thursday....we'll see...

Then on to an AA meeting at 11....during the drive there "Dear Prudence" by the Grateful Dead comes up on the phone and plays over the car radio....I turn it all the way up.....Later I play the 11:41 minute version 5 more times...brilliance ...We went to a free concert by Jerry in 1966 at the Golden Gate park in San Francisco...Timothy Leary was there too...and the Hell's Angels...Love was in the air...it was a wave of drugs and love that broke somewhere on the mountains to the east a few years later....we all became teachers, cops, CPAs and stockbrokers....and grandparents....

I haven't had any alcohol for five months...I wake up early these days feeling charged...my weight has dropped 20 pounds and my doctor took me off three of my blood pressure medications...I'm in a cloud of feelgood...

Back home I made a big pot of chili....I like to add a bottle of picante sauce, two pounds of ground Italian Sausage, two chopped and sauteed onions, three cans of kidney beans and three cans of diced tomatoes....good stuff....you can do the picante and sausage hot or mild....I do mild for Mrs. Phred.

Later I write this blog and listen to more Jerry Garcia on Amazon Prime Music....saw three Amazon delivery vans being trucked down I-95 on the 11 hour drive from Raleigh to Sarasota yesterday...what a Juggernaut ....could it become a singularity?

Tonight we'll watch 4 or 5 episodes from the 1995 season of NYPD Blue...the World Trade Center Towers are still there...police brutality and compassion go hand in hand on the series...it lasts 12 years...

What a day....perfect...

....

M. T. Liggett, American Folk Artist

Mullinville, Kansas

We wake up in Wichita, Kansas at 6 AM and set out for Mullinville (Population maybe 300) about 100 miles west on State Road 400.

We saw M. T. Liggett's work there seven years ago cruising across Kansas listening to a great FM rock station out of Dodge City.I've never been satisfied with the pictures I took of his work back then, so I decided to drive 500 miles out of the way and try once again.

We hit the Mullinville junction of State roads 400 and 54 and get detoured down 54. Mrs. Phred suggests immediately parking in the Mullinville truck stop, but I insist on continuing down 54 twelve miles, up county road 39 four miles and back east 8 miles on closed road 400. There we run into a total road closure. I suggest walking to Mullinville the next four miles and back in 100 degree heat, but Mrs. Phred is having none of it.

I eventually agree to unhook the Honda, do a U-turn and return 20 miles to the Mullinville truck stop. Mrs. Phred says that I always eventually do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities.

We stop for breakfast at the truck stop and I ask the waitress if she knows M. T. Liggett. She says he comes in mostly for coffee. She says if he likes you he makes you a heart, if he doesn't he might make an ugly sculpture and put your name on it....she has four hearts.It's a small town. She says his doctor doesn't want him to work anymore...

I went back just now to look at my 2008 blog about M. T. Liggett. It's interesting that out of hundreds of sculptures that I seem to have selected many of the same ones...maybe those are the ones that seem very powerful to me?

This time I take 170 pictures. I try to compose them properly and use Picasa to crop them. Obviously a blog with that many pictures wouldn't work well so I pick only16...not enough...you should go and look yourself before all this original genius rusts away....this guy makes Picasso look a little unoriginal and repetitive...

"Evolution is wrong," declares another of his signs. "Only a miracle from the Almighty could have created the moronic dumbasses on the Kansas State Board of Education." - See more at: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11212#sthash.kdUBr0R6.dpuf

"Evolution is wrong," declares another of his signs. "Only a miracle from the Almighty could have created the moronic dumbasses on the Kansas State Board of Education." - See more at: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11212#sthash.kdUBr0R6.dpuf

There is an article on Roadside America about Mr. Liggett.

"In 1989, Liggett  began creating metal sculptures.   He uses a plasma arc cutter and an arc welder to turn old farm equipment, car parts, road signs, and any other odd bits of iron he can lay his hands on, into fantastic characters which adorn his property, on the side of Route 400 just west of town.  Most of Liggett's sculptures are brightly painted, and many have moving parts that spin and flash in the hot Kansas sun."

Hillary Clinton is, "Our Jack-Booted Eva Braun,” Mr. and Mrs. Clinton caricatures are labeled, “Pothead” and “Porkadolf”. Mrs. Clinton is done up with swastikas.

As you drive around Mullinville, you see Liggett's work everywhere....rust never sleeps...

He’s got one that equates Waco with Auschwitz. Janet Reno has her head stuffed up her butt. A right wing Republican has his thumb in the same position. Halliburton is represented by a dark pig’s head.

"Evolution is wrong," declares another of his signs. "Only a miracle from the Almighty could have created the moronic dumbasses on the Kansas State Board of Education." - See more at: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11212#sthash.kdUBr0R6.dpuf

It’s tough to figure out Liggett’s political position. He seems equally pissed by just about everything and everyone, especially politicians.

Lots of the “totems” are devoted to M.T.’s old girlfriends, who he has immortalised in junk. You have to wonder about his relationships with neighbours. My money says he doesn’t much care much what other people think.

. "Evolution is wrong," declares another of his signs. "Only a miracle from the Almighty could have created the moronic dumbasses on the Kansas State Board of Education."
Putting aside intent, is M.T
- See more at: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/11212#sthash.YV7antR2.dpuf

At times Liggett's neighbors have not been pleased with his work....however,  he has made Mullinville famous.

Lots of hearts... Here is a video about the artist....check U-tube for many more....

Stuff in the Backyard

We're proud of our gators in Florida and protect them if we can. This week they ate a woman, a German Shepard and took a big chunk out of a horse's flank. I guess it's the mating season and they get more aggressive this time of year. The twelve-footer below swims by most days. The gardeners feed him parts of their lunch....yesterday he leaped out of the water and came down on a hapless fish like a fox on a mouse burrow.

Theists are humans who believe in a God or gods. Spiritualism is the state of being concerned with the human spirit. A Venn diagram of all humans might show two overlapping circles. Some humans would be in both circles, some in one or the other and still others fall outside both circles The Universe appears to us to be a strange, complex, wondrous and ultimately incomprehensible place. How did it get here? How big is it? How many stars are there? Why do I exist? These are human questions. Our answers have increased greatly in complexity over the centuries..

Perhaps our brains lack the necessary processing power for science to provide any ultimate answers. We have only slightly evolved cognitive abilities compared with other animals on this thing we call a planet. Our brains are very tiny meat computers. We may not have the necessary intelligence to even ask the right questions, let alone understand the answers. Our DNA is only one percent different than that of chimpanzees. A chimpanzee can use boxes and sticks to reach high bananas. A chimp would be stumped at the problem of ordering delivery of bananas from Whole Foods over the Internet. Understanding own existence is probably further from our own limited abilities than we are from the talents of the smartest chimps.

Our very existence seems incredibly improbable. We are each the product of one sperm and one egg out of billions of sperm produced by a father and tens of thousands of eggs from our mother.. That run of astounding luck goes back in an unbroken chain perhaps 4 billion years. Luck seems to define life. What are the odds of a habitable environment on a rock just the right distance from the right type of star? Many humans find comforting answers to their questions about existence in theism. That is understandable and deserves our respect in all its many forms. Buddha the Great Spirit? Plausible.

A sergeant asked me for my religious preference 55 years ago so that he could make my first set of dog-tags. I told him I was an Existentialist. He asked me to spell it. Existentialists believe that the nature of man is essentially plastic, and that humans are capable of fantastic extremes of good and evil. A human can choose to be a Doctor Mengele in a concentration camp, a Mother Teresa in a hospital in Africa or a volunteer in an Ebola ward. Existentialists believe that human have the freedom to make choices about their behaviour. They believe that honesty and authenticity are of paramount importance and that each human should strive to live a life that reflects credit on human existence.

Precepts of good and evil come from the Judeo-Christian tradition for many Existentialists. Some Existentialists are theists and some are not. There are good and bad, practicing and non-practicing Existentialists. Martin Heidegger was a leading Existential German philosopher who later became a Nazi. So it goes.