What it is, cats and kittens! I know I’m posting late for Fat Tuesday, but I made this hell-of-tasty Chicken Sauce Piquant dish for work’s Mardi Gras luncheon last night, and I had to make sure it was a winner before I went public with it.

ben’s chicken sauce piquant

ingredients

• 4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1/2 cup + 4 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 chopped onion
• 2 chopped green bell peppers
• 2 tablespoons minced jalapenos (more or less to your taste)
• 4 regular cans of diced tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons of minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons thyme
• 2 tablespoons oregano
• 6 bay leaves
• 2 quarts of chicken stock (either from liquid stock or bouillion cubes)
• salt
• creole seasoning to taste
• crushed red pepper to taste
• fresh ground pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons parsley

Step one: Make the chicken

Put the 4-6 chicken breasts, 2 quarts of chicken stock, 1tbsp thyme, 1tbsp garlic, 1tbsp oregano and 3 bay leaves into a large pot.
Bring to a boil, and then simmer over low heat for an hour, or until chicken juices run clear.
After the chicken is done, remove the breasts from the stock, and shred roughly with a fork.

Step two: Make the sauce piquant

In a sautee pan, heat the 4 tbsps of olive oil over high heat.
Add the onions, green pepper, jalapenos, garlic, thyme and oregano.
Season with salt and pepper to taste (I prefer the pepper).
Saute for two minutes, or at least until the onions turn clear.
Stir in tomatoes, bay leaves, Creole seasoning to taste, pinch of crushed red pepper and 1 quart of the remaining stock.
Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes.
Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
Remove from heat and transfer this mixture to a blender and drizzle the 1/2 cup of oil into the mix while it’s running.
Transfer to crock-pot or whatever vessel you choose and stir in parsley and chicken.

Voila!

I loosely based this on an Emeril recipe for sauce piquant, but despite my loathing for that guy, I did think in my head “BLAM!” as I threw in the jalapenos. Note: yes, I know he says BAM, but BLAM is much more awesome.

Man, so much good music this year! All this good music coupled with IndieTorrents have led to a banner year of me listening to good music. With all the hype and stuff about BitTorrent and the busts that have occurred as of late, I’ll tell you that A) IndieTorrents deals only with non-RIAA artists, and B) I spend a good deal of money on artists that I like. IndieTorrents has spurred me to buy many more CDs from artists that I would never have heard of. So, stick that in your lawsuit-happy pipe and smoke it, RIAA.

In other news, Pitchfork seems to have really taken off this year. Complete with industry scandal (their balance sheet was apparently leaked to the public), wide-acclaim and their own determined band of detractors. The good news is that people are talking about them, and they remain one of the few bastions of real, no-kid-glove-wearing music journalism. Yeah, sure, they can be real dicks and give an album I really liked a 2.0 out of 10, but that sort of opinionated music review gets me thinking about why I like the music so much. To quote Jack Nicholson’s Joker: “This town needs an enema!“, and Pitchfork has provided as much.

So, without further ado, my top 10-ish albums that I heard for the first time this year (in no particular order):

• Neutral Milk Hotel – In an Aeroplane Over The Sea

  

  From an earlier post: The circuitous route by which Neutral Milk Hotel caught my ear is really only a small facet of the strange story of Jeff Mangum’s short career with his Neutral Milk Hotel band. In an Aeroplane… was released in 1998 to critical acclaim and then he essentially fell off the face of the earth. Much like the sudden rise subsequent disappearance of the band, both albums (this one and the first “On Avery Island”) are noisy, powerful and ultimately deep and terribly sad. There is part of me that wants to hear more and part of me that revels in the hope that music like that is never made again.

• Interpol – Antics

  
  

  I’ve made a couple posts about Interpol in the past, mostly in regards to their breakout “Turn on the Bright Lights” album from 2002. After a long wait in 2003 (and through most of 2004), they released “Antics”. With “Turn on…”, the album grew on me with each listen, eventually becoming one of my favorite albums of 2003 and it still reminds me of the cold, dark winter of 2002/2003. “Antics” hit me in a similar way, but different and better. Interpol doesn’t shy away from their tight, rythmic ways on “Antics”, but do make many growing steps on this album. Whereas once I thought “Turn on…” would be my favorite Interpol album, “Antics” has supplanted it. “Slow Hands” the obvious favorite on the album shines (as much as these black-clad dudes can), and Carlos D.’s bass playing makes me want to shake my ass while Paul Bank’s dark vocals make me want to don black-on-black suits and sit in the corner. It’s like hipster goth music, and I love it.

• Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Master and Everyone / I See A Darkness

  
  

  My fandom of Will Oldham (Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s alter-ego) started when I first heard Palace Music’s “Viva Lost Blues” some two years ago. The ragged vocals and broken-down guitar paired with superb lyrics hit a chord with me somehow, and I never stopped listening. Bonnie Mr. Oldham has never been shy about releasing material, and he has a raft of it under various names. So, when I kept hearing about this Bonnie “Prince” Billy album called “Master and Everyone” I had to check it out. The ragged vocals of the Palace Music days were gone, and replaced with smooth (by Oldham standards) vocals and gracious harmonies. Lyrically, he’s as tight (maybe tighter) than ever. “The Way” gets me every time. Also recommended: I See A Darkness, also by the Bonnie “Prince”, and perhaps an even better album that “Master”.

• Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose

  

  If you would have told me January 1, 2004 that I would have selected a Loretta Lynn album in my “Best Music I Heard This Year” list, I would have dismissed you like a fifth grade class on the last day of classes. But leave it to Mr. Jack White of the White Stripes to pull together a young band to back Mrs. Lynn and crank out this awesome record. However, you can’t give Jack all the credit here — Loretta Lynn has never been afraid of controversy or “pushing the envelope,” and suffice it to say that she might be a little cracked in the head. Sometimes the best of them are, and she certainly doesn’t disappoint or go too far out of her boundaries. She still sings songs about Butcher Holler, her mommy and hating on hussies, but with Jack’s raw production and a shitkicking band behind her she sounds way ahead of the country curve. Take a lesson, Nashville.

• DJ Danger Mouse – The Grey Album

  

  I’ve never, ever listened to a bit of Jay-Z. I’ll freely admit that. I have, however, like the good little white suburban kid that I am/was say that I listened to the Beatles’ White Album quite a bit. At first, I didn’t understand what all the hype was about DJ Danger Mouse’s mixing of the two albums. I had easily dismissed Jay-Z as just another rapper, and thought that this might just be some half-assed attempt at party mixing. Oh, how wrong I was. After a couple of listens, I came to the realization that this rocked, and HARD. Jay-Z’s tight lyrical stylings with the often beat-heavy semi-psychedelia of the White Album mingled nicely and brought new light to both albums. Some folks said it was just fluff, and some said it was the coming of some sort of new style. As per the usual, I can’t fall into either camp there — this isn’t bad enough to consider just fluff, but it’s no White Album by itself. It is, however, a fantastic album that should draw fans of both genres together. It’s just so damned fun and invigorating. Few albums I can turn to regardless of mood or time of day.

• Devendra Banhart – Rejoicing in the Hands

  

  How to explain Devendra Banhart… I don’t know if it can be done through words alone. He’s got sort of that Eddie-Vedder-in-his-later-years thing going on with a touch of Will-Oldham-country-dirt but with a light and supple touch of Sufjan Stevens on the guitar. I could attempt to put together any number of hipster name-drops to make a reasonable sculpture of Banhart, but the proof is in the listening. He’s nearly 4 years younger than I, but writes and plays like a man twice his age.

• TV on the Radio – Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes

  

  TV on the Radio blends electronica, tape loops and even a smattering of a capella to make sonorous, infectious rap-inspired rock. Rock might not be the right word here — perhaps jams is the better word. They hit the scene this year with their debut, and if the new single “New Health Rock” is any indication, there are good things coming from TV on the Radio.

• The Black Keys – Rubber Factory

  

  Ah, The Black Keys. I’ve made a couple posts about these boys from Akron, Ohio. They released “Rubber Factory” this year, after opening up in 2002 with “The Big Come Up”, which indeed was a big come-up for them. I saw them in 2003 opening for Sleater-Kinney promoting their “Thickfreakness” album, which I thought was a lackluster sophomore effort. “Rubber Factory”, however, proved me completely wrong by rocking their asses off. These two guys are students of the real folk blues — having studied by playing with some of the best real blues performers. They even passed up a number of offers to defect from their current label, Fat Possum, to larger, likely more lucrative deals. I’ll agree that Stevie Ray Vaughan might have brought the blues back to the forefront in the 80′s, but people like the The Black Keys keep them alive.

• Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand

  

  I first heard Franz Ferdinand on WOXY some months back with their first quirky single, “Darts of Pleasure”. Later on, it was “Take Me Out”, then “Matinee”, and then “Michael”. While listening to these singles months-apart, I hadn’t quite acquired my taste for Franz Ferdinand. I had had other favorites over the span of my relationship with Franz, but by the time “Matinee” (one of the strongest tracks on an album of strong tracks) rolled around, I realized “Hey — wait a minute. Each of these songs has been equally awesome! Maybe the whole album is like this!” Purchased at ear X-tacy sometime during the fall, it was true. Franz Ferdinand, this band which I had a mere monthly fancy with had come home to roost at last. They throw down the new-wave tinged hook-laden rock like no other Scots I know. Expect good things.

• Sufjan Stevens – Greetings from Michigan / Seven Swans

  
  

  By all accounts, Sufjan Stevens should have been on this list last year, if I had listened to Jackson last year about Greetings From Michigan. Sufjan Stevens is a unique and productive talent in the US indie scene — a gifted musician and songwriter who changes his style up a bit on each of his albums. Greetings from Michigan is his epic love-song to the state of Michigan, and Seven Swans is a decidedly different record with a definite spiritual core. It’s hard to say which I like more, I guess it depends on my mood. Greetings has “Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)”, a callout to the crumbling crown city of Michigan, which is both interesting in subject and in song. Seven Swans has “The Dress Looks Nice on You”, which reminds me of Kelly so much — not only because of the lyrics, but because of the Casio-style breakdown later in the song. Both albums I first listened to this year, so they get my double-vote. Further: Sufjan’s annual Christmas albums are fantastic turns on holiday standards.

File Under: How Did I Miss These?

• Mos Def – Black on Both Sides
• Elvis Costello – My Aim Is True
• Kentucky Moutain Music Collection (7 disc set)

File Under: It was good, but c’mon people

• The Arcade Fire – Funeral

  Pitchfork appears to be to blame for the explosion of this album. It gets a 9.7 rating and everyone is hopping up and down excited like the Pixies got back together (they did, and people did hop up and down). I’ve got this album, I’ve listened to it, and I do like it quite a bit, but not to the point that every indie hipster has put it on the top of their list! I refuse to slag the album, because it’s certainly not slag-worthy, but what the hell people.

File Under: Bemused Adoration

• Brian Wilson – SMiLE

  Pet Sounds is easily in my top ten of all time. SMiLE is Brian Wilson’s long, long, long awaited release of the long, long, long awaited and long-shelved Beach Boys album. I listened to it, and it is a masterful work, but not something that I felt deserved the heaps and heaps of rave reviews heaped upon it. I love the guy just as much as the next Beach Boys fan, but he didn’t shit gold folks. The album is playful, introspective, truly independent and a really interesting listen, though. It’s worth finding out.

File Under: Haters Ball

• The Darkness – Permission to Land

  This album is so ridiculous, it is awesome. If David Bowie had grown up in the eighties, you know this is what Ziggy Stardust would have ended up like. It’s over-the-top, profanity-laced (get your hands offa my woman, mother-chicken!), and pulls out 80s heavy-metal tricks like so many rabbits from so many hats. It’s my filthy music indulgence of the year, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. So why all the hate, haters? Can you not handle it? Is the rock too much? It is awesome and deep down inside, you know it.

In Summation…

So, what did I learn this year? Well, you can mix up catchy bass-heavy new-wavy riffage with emo-style navel-gazing lyrics and turn out a great record (Interpol, and to a lesser extent Franz Ferdinand). Also, there is nothing wrong with indie-rock singer-songwriters with a little old-timey flair (Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Sufjan Stevens, Devendra Banhart). There is a lot of rap that I haven’t listened to, but should (Jay-Z, De La Soul, Mos Def, etc.), and some that might be in decline if you believe what you read (Beastie Boys). There are many things I learned this year in music, but as per the usual, I learned that a little music leg-work is well worth it in the end.

After 2003′s nearly-non-stop White Stripes love-fest, I felt this year turned it down a notch in regards to my listening habits. Maybe it’s been happening for the last couple of years, but maybe it’s just a sign of the times. My younger musical haunts of Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine have given way to softer, perhaps more sophisticated things such Sufjan Stevens and Will Oldham. This year brought more old-timey music to my ears, and made me reconsider my stance on religiously-inspired music. There is still a lot of shitty religious music, but some of it — the more naked the better — is real gold. Is it me? Is it the world? I’ve still got a taste for the rock, no doubt (Neutral Milk Hotel, Sonic Youth), but things that used to suit me don’t suit as well any more. My tastes continue to change, and I look forward to more music in the new-year.

By the way, my previous “music years in review”, can be found here (sorta), here and here.

For a while now, I’ve been mulling the idea of registering a couple of new domains for my own personal use. FUZZROLL.COM is one that you folks might have heard of, and I have duly registered it today. Also, I’ve been thinking for a while now that THELOCUST.ORG is a little tired and really doesn’t suit me like it used to. It’s a bit of a pain to spell and half the time when I tell someone to go to “thelocust.org”, they inevitably leave of “the”. I don’t know why — they just do. In any case, I was looking for a shorter, more phonetic name and found BENTO.US (.org, .com and .net were taken). I don’t have any plans at the moment to abandon THELOCUST.ORG, so don’t get all afearin’. I’m not sure what I’ll do with BENTO.ORG just yet, so stay tuned on that front. I also registered BENWILSON.ORG, which will most likely become a portfolio/resume site for me. I’ve had a 80% finished portfolio thing I whipped up a while back, and that will probably go there.

So, in short, keep an eye out. Developments might be underway.

12 hours and 4 houses later, Kelly and I have returned home exhausted and both sad and happy that Christmas is over for this year. We had a great time at each house and are glad that we got to see everyone. Many presents were exchanged, though the I’m glad to know that we not only gave gifts to the Angel Tree program this year, but also helped out Hunter with his “Books for Caritas Kids” thing at B&N. It feels better to give back to those who have so little, and books are often the perfect gift.

Tomorrow we plan on doing nothing save for meeting the long-lost and far-flung friends at Wick’s Pizza on Baxter.

Merry Christmas all, and to all a good night.

Kelly and I managed to hack our way out of our driveway this afternoon, after sleeping until about noonish. This snow was an interesting one, as the initial layer (5 or 6 inches) were of sleet, the size and granularity of a snow-cone. The last 2 or 3 inches were of powdery regular snow. This combination allowed one to actually walk on the snow without it caving it around your feet, which in itself is pretty cool, but trying to shovel that stuff was a two person job! Kelly would break up the snow with a spade and I would shovel it off the drive. All in all, I estimate we shovelled somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 cubic feet of snow today.

After about 2 hours of that, we retired in-side and promptly took naps. Arising about 5ish, we headed out to get me some new gloves (and to survey the quality of our roads), get a bite to eat and get some cocoa. All were done in a timely fashion, and as you can see in the middle photo above, some folks don’t respect mother nature. Or, perhaps, got real drunk and slid down a 15 foot tall embankment into a drainage ditch. We, however, stayed inside the ruts and managed to get out and back with no troubles.

Now to watch Return of the King and quaff cocoa!

More photos in the 2004.12.22 – Snowstorm gallery.

It is straight-up snowstormin‘ here in Louisville and the 2004.12.22 – Snowstorm gallery is evidence there of.

This past weekend, I joined a couple other of my RC soaring friends from LASS, and headed down to Wilson, North Carolina for the 2004 East Coast HLG Festival. Recently I picked up well-used discus-launched glider from a club mate, and by gum I was going to compete this year! Below is a recounted of this weekend wherein I managed to win my first trophy for soaring, a third place in the “sportsman” class competition. Click on “read more” to see the full story…

note: Yeah, I know I didn’t take any photos. I managed to mess up and delete a bunch, but luckily Peter Jensen should be posting a big bunch very soon.

{more}

David Gruneisen wrote:
> How did it go?

It went very well!

We stopped off in Raleigh on Friday to see Bruce’s buddy who has a 10,000 gallon saltwater aquarium in his house in the suburbs — AMAZING! He apparently had some calamity a couple months back involving his aquarium maintainer dumping a shitload of tap water into his tank while he was on vacation, so there was algae all over the place. Not that a layperson like I would really even notice such things, but it was clear he was professionally ashamed. His “pump room” was quite impressive. We later went to a local ale-house/sports bar thing for dinner. He spoke of dive trips to the Great Barrier Reef, Indonesia and the Phillipines.

We drove on down to Wilson, N.C. to the hotel, checked in and made some last-minute repairs.

Saturday morning we arrive bright and early at the field, which was bordered by a harvested cotton field on the left and rear, and soybeans on the right, with a treeline off in the distance if you stood facing forward. It was around 50 degrees, but the air was pretty still. I put my plane together to trim it out in this nice air, grab my frequency pin off the board, and after a couple of launches, I began getting radio interference! From about 10-15 feet she takes an inverted nose-dive into the ground. The boom has cracked near the fuselage! Oh no! I turn around to find that he who shot me down was none other than Phil Barnes — the maker of the wings that Bruce and I (and many others) fly on. Phil (as he would show later) is a terribly helpful guy, and immediately starts helping me repair with some carbon. Luckily, the cracks are just longitudinal cracks, and the repair goes smoothly.

The other competitors have begun to arrive for the 9AM pilots meeting, and shortly the contest gets underway. They make the announcement that they will be giving away 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places trophies for “sportsman” class entrants as well! Cool. There turned out to be 10 sportsman entrants, most of which hadn’t flown an HLG contest yet. There are 26 pilots, and there are going to be 12 rounds (8 Saturday, 4 on Sunday) with 3 heats of about 9 pilots a piece. Each round is a different “task”. The first round task was “Total time – 2 minute flights max”, and scoring is always how many seconds you were “in flight”. So there is a possible 600 points per round. However, with the 2 minute max flight time, a little time will be wasted in the transition from landing to re-launch (or “relight” as it is known). Bruce claims the the good people can do it in around 2 seconds, so optimally you could see something like 594 seconds being scored. Each heat is scored individually (called “man-on-man” style, so the person (or people) with the top score(s) in each heat get 1000 points, and everyone else is prorated from that score. This is helpful because the lift comes and goes quite often in a contest, so it wouldn’t be fair to the folks in later/earlier heats. So anyway, I managed to score 964 points out of 1000, meaning I did 96.4% as well as the top scorers in my heat.

The next round was 5 longest flights, 2 minutes max. You could launch as many times as you wanted, and the top 5 counted towards your total. You could fly OVER 2 minutes, but you’d only get 2 minutes worth of points. Towards the end of the round, with about 1:30 to go, and lift in the air, I managed to cartwheel my plane a little, and the boom re-broke in the same area we had fixed! Bummer!

Now it’s got a small radial crack in it, so I go and get MORE uni-directional carbon from Phil, re-wrap that area, apply it with thin CA and kicker to harden, then I put some .75oz fiberglass cloth on it and CA/kicker it, and then wrap that area with some kevlar fishing line, and more CA/kicker! By god, if it breaks now, it won’t be from lack of trying. Unfortunately, I had to stay out of round 3 (five 3-minute flights), and drew a zero for that round. Lunch was up next, and I finished up my repairs and had the tastiest of NC BBQ for lunch. I finished up lunch and tested out my repairs. I throw easy at first, and then as hard as I can. Looks GREAT! WTF! One of my wing servos has decided to start messing up! What the hell? Ah well, I had been flying my beater wing anyway. I had fixed up another wing (one of Bruce’s cast offs), and it had two good servos in it, thankfully. It was nice and clean (compared to the beater), and I was getting better hang times and launches out of it. The fourth round (Three 3-minute flights and 1 one-minute flight in any order) comes, and I roar out of the gate with 966.9 points! I was one of only 8 of the pilots to score above 900 in that round. Woo-hoo. I’m back, baby! The repair manages to stick together for the rest of the day, and I’m pretty happy.

Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, Brian Kopke has been flying and timing along with me, and his Art Hobby Hyper DL is just getting punished! First he breaks the throwing peg out of the wing, which we quickly repaired with CA and carbon fiber, and then another break in the rudder, and another, etc, etc. He manages to patch it all back together, and flies in every round, battling through adversity! For a plane he had never flown before Saturday (his first soaring contest), he’s doing just fine, and really making the effort.

Oh, Phil later tells me that if send Denny (who assembles the XP4 DLGs, like I fly) my address, he’ll send me a new wing. Denny also tells me he has some leftover pods as well, so I’m going to end up with some loot out of the whole deal. My whole rig really isn’t worth a new wing anyway, so that goes to show you how supportive these guys are.

The first day comes to an end, some Negro Modelos are passed around, and some guys throw together their Pocket Combat Wings (http://www.edgerc.com/pcw.htm) and start trying to limbo under the tents near the pits, flying no more than six feet away from me as I sit in a camp chair. Many crashes ensue, with much hilarity. Then someone whips out a Pocket Combat wing with a CD-ROM motor on it. HOLY SHIT. Pure unlimited vertical performance on this little wing. It was INSANE. BAT-SHIT INSANE. The motor winding kit is something like $20 but he can crank out 38,000 RPMs and pulls 10 amps out of an 850mah LiPo 3-cell pack. It was CRANKING. The Pocket Combat Wings were no slouches either, but they certainly didn’t have the vertical performance of that wing w/ the CD-ROM motor. Later hilarity ensued as Phil Barnes lowered the tent they were flying under, causing the pilot to lose the plane into a large (50 ft) holly tree. Phil, again feeling bad (“I break it, I fix it!”) bounds up this holly tree and shakes the wing down. He might be a plane-wrecker, but he’s a generous and nice one at that :)

We ate at the most bizarre restaurant in which I have ever eaten that night. It’s called “Griff’s Steak Barn”. It doesn’t actually look like a barn, in fact I think it may have been a bank at some point. The waiters are all dressed in black and white, and they have a wood-paneled coat-check and little butter mints on the counter and a nice marble foyer, but the rest of the restaurant reminds me of that bizarre “Friendly’s” place that used to be in Oxmoor mall. It’s all sort of this wild steamboat sort of decoration, with a room that appears to have been a vault at some point. It feels very old, but with many, many coats of paint. We were filed past many, many rooms and put into one in the rear. There was an Ale8One sign above the door with their old slogan “It Glorifies!”. It was strange. The steak was shitty and undercooked for medium-rare. It was just strange.

Sunday came, and we headed back out to the field to complete the remaining four rounds. It was cool and VERY calm, and some guys are taking advantage of the time to trim their planes in the deadest of dead air. Phil Barnes gets 2 minutes 5 seconds in dead air, and his launches are SUPER high. Bruce trims his plane and gets a little over 2 minutes after about 4 flights with successively more and more up elevator. Me, I was only managing 1:10s or 1:20s or so. Trimming is done, and the pilot meeting is held, and then the rain comes! I’ve never flown in the rain before, but safe to say this foam wings with the porous kevlar skins start taking on some water here and there, and my balsa tail surfaces are probably getting a little heavy. The first round is a real meat-grinder. It’s a “ladder” task of 1:10, 1:20, 1:30, 1:40, 1:50, and 2:00 minute flights you HAVE to make at least the first flight to move onto the second. So, if you have a 1:05 flight, SORRY! You had to make at least 70 seconds to move onto the 80 second task. I managed to eek out a 1:10 and 1:20, by the 1:30 flight, I was just too heavy, and there was so little lift. This is truly were the launch-height comes in REAL handy.

I finished out the other three rounds with respectable sportsman-class scores of a 717, 700 and a 698 (I’m consistently mediocre!)

At lunch they had a raffle for a JR-6102 radio, a Taboo DLG kit, and an XP-4 DLG kit, along with some servos and a couple of Allegro carbon tailbooms from tailbooms.com. The radio actually goes to contest director Dick Proseus, and the two kits go to two others whom I don’t remember. Both Bruce and Brian get some tailbooms, and I get two worthless raffle tickets :)

Then the top six out of the whole bunch fly in 3 fly-off rounds. Phil Barnes is in first place leading Bruce in second by about 100 points. The contest director, Dick Proseus makes it into the finals, but shortly before the fly-offs, he and Phil Barnes have a mid-air 6 feet off the ground, which knocks Dick’s elevator clean off! He quickly runs back to get another plane, and returns shortly. I time for Bruce, and to tell you the truth, I was a bit nervous! I mean, I’ve got to act like the eyes in the back of the head of the Nat’l champ here, and make sure I don’t mess up the timing. All of the fly-off tasks were limited-throw tasks, like 5 longest flights, 2 minute max, max five throws. Phil and Bruce duked it out for top honors, neither giving an inch. Adam “Red” Weston (past-maker of the Red Herring, and who now makes the Maple Leaf Encore DLG), who flew in from Seattle makes a good charge from fourth place into third with some daring flying.

In the end, Bruce only managed to make up 6 points on Phil, who ended up winning the contest. Red Weston managed to take in 3rd place by winning two of the 3 fly-off rounds, Dick Proseus made 4 places, reformed sloper Spencer Lisenby came in 5th, and Shane Spikler ended up in 6th.

So, as far as the “sportsman” class goes, Adam Propst gets first with 9526 points, Charles Frey had 8709 points and I have 8137 points for third. If only I hadn’t dropped that third round!It was a pretty high-scoring round for all involved, I think the average was around 900 points. So maybe I would have at 9037 points, who knows! In any case, I’m crazy happy about attending the contest, and am looking forward to many more in my future. I got a nice big glass mug etched with the LSF logo, and “DESS HLG 2004″ on it and a 3rd place ribbon.

We made a hasty retreat after the contest ended (about 3:30), and it took us about 9 1/2 hours to get back home. Whew. Lots of fun, lots of great people, and a big learning experience. Yee-haw!

For today is my 26th birthday. Yayay! I have received well-wishes via voice mail on two different systems, via the Internet (link), in person, and in the form of lemon tarts!

Kelly ran her first-ever triathlon today. Each year since 1981, the E. P. Tom Sawyer State Park Triathlon has been run (not surprisingly) at lovely E. P. Tom Saywer Park. The first leg is the swim, which was 800 meters. The registration required an estimation of how fast you could swim this to “seed” you and give you a start time. Kelly said “24 minutes”. What she actually did in the pool this morning was something closer to 15 or 16 minutes! Crazy. She was passing people left and right.

After the swim is a 14 mile bike ride, and Kelly’s toughest leg, at least she thought it would be. Turns out she was wrong on that, too! She finished that in just about an hour, with no mishaps, spills, or terrible accidents causing her feet to be permanently trapped in her toe-clips.

The final leg was a 5k (3.1 mile) run, which she completed smiling and “feeling great”. Total time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Not bad for her first ever! She’s hyped for future triathlons. “I wish I would have started this stuff sooner,” she says.

Needless to say, I’m terribly proud of my lil’ Kelly. Despite all her fears, she really kicked ass out there today. If you’d like to see pictures, I suggest you check the 2004.08.07 – Triathlon gallery.

Dear readers, I have changes up the styles a little bit. The new “default” theme is what used to be the “blue” theme. And the old “default” is now the “simple” theme.

What? You didn’t even know you could change the theme for the site? Why sure you can, doodarino! Look for the THEME dropdown list and choose one. Dependent on the theme you have chosen, this should be on the left or the bottom of the page.