What A Freakin' Nightmare!

My father-in-law came up from Florida, arriving last night to be here for Thanksgiving and his twin son's 60th birthday celebration this weekend. His visit is a surprise and they won't find out he is here until Thursday at the family gathering. For now he is staying at our house incognito.

I have only been involved in long distance holiday travel once. In 2004, my wife and I drove to Florida to be with my wife's parents for Christmas. We took two days to make the trip down and two days back. It was effortless to travel and spent the days with the folks and The Mouse (long before it went woke). My father-in-law flew up, arriving late last night with a scheduled arrival time of 10:45 PM. My wife asked me to go get him so she could get the house ready. I had done some Thanksgiving meal advance food prep and got everything ready for work today before leaving the house about 9:45 PM, so it shouldn't be a problem. Or so I thought. I arrived at the standby cell phone parking lot about 9:35 PM where the lot was full to capacity. That should have been my first warning what was about to come. Oh well, I went across RT. 75 to the bowling alley lot and waited there for his phone call to pick him up.

Normally, travel in and out of Bradley is smooth. It was now 11:37 PM and he still hasn't called. My plan was to try and call him and if he didn't answer, head over to the arrival area to see if I could find him wandering around. He answered and told me he just got his bag and was heading outside. I told him I was on my way.

The short drive over to the arrival area was total gridlock. Traffic coming across from the left getting off I-91 and RT. 20 would run the light and jam the intersection, and I watched my traffic signal in the distance cycle several times with nowhere for traffic in my lane to go. All of a sudden it started to move and as I got closer I saw why. Airport security was not letting people stop to wait to pickup passengers but was making them go around again. Oh yeah? I don't think so. I called The Old Man back and told him to start walking down the sidewalk facing traffic so I could stop as soon as I saw him. Another couple of hundred feet of crawling and there he was. A female airport security guard was blowing her whistle and waving her lighted wand for me to move, but I ignored her, stopped my truck, jumped out and grabbed his bags while he got in the cab. It was now about 10 minutes until midnight but I got him and now we had to get out of the airport. There were state troopers waving cars through the crosswalk stop signs where there were no pedestrians so traffic could keep moving. Relief came when we hit the entrance ramp for RT. 20.

As we left the airport he told me what happened. There was a problem with the plane at the departure gate in Orlando. After the plane was fully loaded and they were going to depart, some piece of equipment on the plane was malfunctioning and a technician would have to come out and replace it. Whatever it was it didn't take the plane out of service and they got their push back from the gate 45 minutes late. The ride home was uneventful, except for the surprise patch of black ice I hit on a bridge on a state road that made my truck briefly slide sideways but not out of control. We got home and tried to be quiet because my wife had already turned in, but of course the dogs went nuts and woke her up. The Old Man got ready to turn in and I got to bed about 12:45 AM. I was up at 04:30 AM for work. A nap or early to bunk tonight will get me caught up on sleep. Luckily he will not be going back to Florida for a couple of weeks, well after the holiday travel rush.

A happy and blessed Thanksgiving to all.

So Much Winning

 

 

Jack Smith files to drop all J6 charges against Donald Trump

 

Suck it, all you TDS sufferers!

Waz Happenin'

The stretch of unseasonably warm and unusually dry weather since September 1st is finally over with a rainstorm that dropped 2 3/8" on my area ending yesterday. The wild fire danger is back to normal levels and there is more rain with the possibility of snow showers later this week. I am on a 24 hour shift today and have a wheel bearing replacement job for my Tundra on the schedule for tomorrow. I have all the parts and equipment ready to go and hopefully the fight to get everything apart won't take all frickin' day. Reassembly should be relatively easy. I have had my bullet press set up to do a run of 9mm for several days, but haven't had the uninterrupted dedicated time to load at least 200 maybe more. I had to change the die turret and the shell plate carrier disc. Taking it all apart to do that makes it easy to lube everything, but I have to readjust the timing for the shell plate rotation. I definitely need more range time with my new G17, and practicing mag swaps and reloads on the PCC-9. The reloading press will stay set up for 9mm. I have had my battle rattle all set up and handy since before the election not knowing how things would turn out and the possible resulting psychosis making people stupid. Thankfully it just hangs in the gun closet not needed.

Although blog posting has been light, I am constantly on X shit poasting and trolling LIBTURDS and anti-gun hoplophobes. It's easy to do from my phone while watching TV or other mindless activities. Blog posting requires me to be at a PC which makes it easier to add photos and videos. Since Elon Musk fired all the snowflakes that would scrutinize and flag posts for arbitrary rule violations, I haven't even gotten a warning for some of the brutal crap I have posted. Feel free to peruse my profile and timeline to read my ramblings.

Dear Klamlala....

 

And to all the Kommiecticut Demo-Commies that got re-elected to Congress...

You have been rendered hobbled and useless, so sit down and shut the fuck up!

Tears of Sadness, Tears of Joy

Yes, I shed a few of both at a Patriot Guard mission this morning for a veteran with no family to claim his remains. Sadness because this poor soul had no one on the entire planet that came forward to collect his remains. Joy because of the incredible honor it was to stand a graveside flag line with my brothers and sisters of the Patriot Guard in his honor in place of family. From the mission notice:

"Patriot Guard and Associates;

Sadly, we have been requested to stand a Flag Line for Mark White, US Navy and who is unfortunately, an unclaimed Veteran with no family.

We do not have any further information on this Hero but we do know there is no family and students from Xavier High School will serve as pallbearers."

Xavier High School is an all boys Catholic institution. Six smartly dressed students in school uniform jackets and ties were there with a male advisor.

Little is known about Mark's service. His DD214 is blank except his E-3 pay grade. A theory was raised that he may have died during basic, but no one really knows.

I showed up in time for the 9:15 staging in the CT State Veterans Cemetery with over 20 fellow P.G.R. members. The Navy Honor Guard and state military rifle team arrived next. The boys from Xavier arrived as well as 10 people from the general public that heard about this burial. We assembled our flag line near the freshly opened grave and were in place when the hearse arrived. There was no clergy to perform religious services. The military rendered honors and the folded flag was presented to one of our P.G.R. members, who then laid it on top of the casket. The funeral director closed out the ceremonies with a very nice prepared speech, and individually thanked the different groups in attendance. The entire proceedings took 18 minutes.

That worked out well for me, because there was a P.G.R. mission in MA with staging at 12:30. I would have time to run home and let the dogs out before heading to Agawam. I arrived early giving me time to down a snack and a good drink of cold water. I always carry ice cold water on my bike in one of these:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a Swiss Army cargo strap attached to the inside of the bike's trunk to keep it upright and out of the way. The water stays cold all day long.

The service was scheduled for 2 PM and we were done before 2:30. I made the rounds visiting the 5 family graves that includes my parents and headed towards home and lunch. My usual lunch spot in that area is Chick-Fil-A and I got to try the new Honey Pimento chicken sandwich. I recommend the spicy version. SO GOOD! The rest of the ride home included a gas fill up and was uneventful.