Category Archives: Unfiled

Via Alan comes this video that is worth watching.  I’ll wait.

Every last one of those things is blatantly visible.  Some of the very young may not get the ice age problem discussed at the beginning so I am going to explain it because I remember it quite well.

When I was in about fifth grade during one of my classes they started pushing a lot of this environmental conservation crap.  The scare at the time was we were all going to freeze to death.  Seriously, I’m not joking, I’m not kidding.  17 years ago I was being instructed in how the horrors of civilization is going to create an ice age that freezes humanity.

When I came home from school and started telling this to my parents, they being the inquisitive type who were interested in what drivel the public school system was teaching their little child, my dad promptly explained that there was more going on.  Not only did he explain it, he found a book that addressed every single one of the “facts” I was being taught in my classes.  It was an eye opener to say the least as I read it.  Then when not even 10 years later I started hearing how we were all going to boil to death I realized what was going on.

Environmentalism is nothing more than modern day religion.  They use fear and guilt to control people, carbon credits are nothing more than a modern day penance.  Tell me, who produces a carbon credit and how?  Think about that long and hard.  It’s a way to funnel money and nothing more.

The lesson of all of this is the following, when someone is claiming the world is going to end if we don’t do “X”, inspect long and hard to figure out how they benefit from “X”.

So I drove home last night instead of today like I originally planned.  Currently the 30 gigs of pictures and video are being copied over to the file server so I can start writing up more detailed posts on this stuff.

First another quick note, the post I had previously on the 354 crash has just been updated.  I found video from their GoPro camera showing the wreck in the first person.  So go look at the end again if you want to check it out.

I got a nice video of a run on my safety boat from just below the time zone bridge back up to where we were stationed above the 9-11 rapid.

You can see there was a few times I stopped paying attention to the video camera and focused on taking the hits.  My whole body was a shock absorber.  I was standing and holding onto a rail within the cabin.  Here’s the view from up on the bridge.

So as for the trip home, here a few snippets in video form.  All that work and I didn’t get video of the end.  At the same time, trying to get video of the end could have easily given me up.

Now I’m going to go cook dinner.  I plan on resuming the count tomorrow night.  We’ll see what happens though because I need to clean up and pack up for Boomershoot.

So some of the drivers who’s main rigs were incapacitated modified some sport jet boats with roll cages to race today.  On the first leg we went from three to one boat.

It sank.  Thankfully it didn’t obstruct the course, though they did successfully pull it out tonight.  Here’s some of the pictures.

There were some other things comm related to today’s activities, but I am too pissed too talk about.  Praise in public, chastise in private.  The associated party will probably be hearing about it.  I was doubly pissed when I was informed that there wasn’t going to be a debrief about today’s communications.  I left my beefs and comments with three of the hams at the potluck with instructions to deliver the memo.

To give you an idea of how pissed off I am about it, I was damn near ready to pack it in and drive home tonight.  My job is safety, it is actually the job of everyone on my boat.  As stated in the safety meeting, ultimately flags are left to the discretion of the boat captain.  Someone on the shore thought he knew better what was going on, never mind the person not visible in the boat.  Never mind this is around the corner from the start and from the experience of the crew there are not flags at the start line to inform a boat it is starting under caution.  This individual who was not aware of what was going on felt it right for him to alter the flags and communicate while there was emergency traffic.  He then felt it necessary to also yell at the boat and crew with a bull horn while they were trying to do their job.

I and people like me are not here to risk life and limb, we am here to protect life and property.  If that means delaying the start until we get what we discover to be a stalled boat and safety boat off the course so be it.  As a note the navigator wasn’t visible to the safety boat as it approached.  Safety is first, and if the people I am working with can’t understand that I will not be participating again.  Most seem to understand that, but there are a few who don’t.  There was no reason to endanger that race boat or safety boat as no other boats had started and the accident was at the start line. If it had been at boat two the caution would have been more understandable.

If anyone associated with the World’s Jet Boat Races would like to talk to me about what happened, feel free to contact me.  I listened to it unfold on the radio and was a little annoyed, after I got filled in by the EMT and boat captain I became all out pissed.  So I’m going to hit the bar for a beer with the EMTs.  Today was a crap day, and the above wasn’t the only screw up, boat dispatch for the sinking boat was handled less than optimally as well. 

So here I am in BFE Idaho, in a small town that is a blink of an eye as you drive through.  I have been open carrying for the most part unless I am wearing my coat or am wearing my staff shirt.

As I’m standing there talking with a couple hams an officer comes up looking for another officer, who actually happens to be a ham.  We start getting the info for who he’s looking for and I notice he looks at my right hip a couple times.  Immediately my brain locks on the cue.  Currently I’m not worried at all, I’m surrounded by people I know, many of whom are also currently carrying concealed weapons. It just so happens that I’m just the one who doesn’t give a crap about someone being upset by seeing me with a gun.

After a brief attempt to pull his partner up on the ham frequencies since his PD repeater failed the conversation goes something like this. (Officer’s words, my words)

Can I get you to untuck your shirt and cover up your sidearm?

Any particular reason? Open carry is still legal in Idaho right?

Yes, it is legal, but a lot of people have noticed (him) and it is making some of them uncomfortable.  I like that you’re carrying and I appreciate that you’re carrying, I just want to put people at ease.

(At this point I untuck again choose your battles wisely.)

Thanks.

A couple different observations.  First, out of all the time I have been carrying, no one has really said anything to me about it.  I know some people it does make them uncomfortable but how is this for a comparison?

Officer, that man over there is carrying a gun. I don’t like that and can you do anything about it?

Versus:

Officer, that man over there is black.  I don’t like him being here and can you do anything about it?

What I was doing is perfectly legal and overall if people were noticing, he was just getting tired of having to calm the sheep.  In that case I sympathize.  I did discover though that the Sherriff for Idaho County is more of a FUD in that he doesn’t want people open carrying in cities when you drill down into it.  So couple that with what happened while I was carrying in town we are starting to see a possible narrative.

I will give the officer the benefit of the doubt for two reasons.  First he was civil and respectful.  He wasn’t in a “respect my authoritah” mode.  Secondly covering up created a new problem.  Technically without a permit wouldn’t be able to conceal carry.  He never asked to see my permit, even after switching to concealed carry.

Everyone I talked to that wasn’t there got a total laugh out of it though.  It’s freaking rural Idaho, everyone around here is carrying a gun!  I got the officers name but didn’t record it immediately there after.

Overall it was an interesting experience, doubly so for rural Idaho.  I have heard stories of Moscow PD abusing open carriers, but Riggins isn’t exactly huge.

So after getting through all that, here’s a race picture.

Sadly I clipped the nose off the boat otherwise that would have been one bad ass picture.  This boat is currently the only remaining turbine and the worlds leader.

So I caravanned to Riggins last night with a bunch of EMTs while pulling the trailer. This created one small problem, the trailer where I had been staying wasn’t coming down till today.

Never fear though because the “Risk Manager”, read that as the EMT coordinator, made sure me and my other friends were taken care of. She put us up in the EMT shack which has it’s serious benefits. The biggest of which is a shower and wi-fi. So I had nothing much to do today other than help the EMTs set up a tent in the future.

So when I got back this afternoon and after a much needed nap I finally broke out my computer. I got my SDCard problem straightened out.

Here’s a short quick update from Tuesday on the Snake River. Boat 354 wrecked and wrecked hard. He wrecked as I called him out passing the check point. Thankfully someone else got pictures. We spent the next bit working on clearing the scene while warning other drivers. Boat 11 did a great job and got the boat off the course and out of the rapids. This was the same exact location where TMW acquired her story on Monday.  That’s that boat above.  He was the time leader and he was smokin’ fast… was being the operative word.  So what happened?  This:

Note I didn’t take that picture, if it was a bit wider you would see me on a boat behind him down stream on the left of the frame.  He looks like he just got some air, which he did.  But that which goes up must come down, and well landing was a bit hard.  Here’s something mid sequence that shows how bad he hit.

In the following pictures you can see he completely goes under water.  The wife got pictures close up of the damage after he returned to Hell’s Gate.  The boat was no longer structurally sound.  The big bummer is he came all the way from New Zealand, however the racers are working on making sure he will be able to run something even though it’s not his own boat here at Riggins.  When I get my hands on the damage pictures I’ll post them.  Suffice it to say, they both got very lucky.  Yeah I admit it’s neat to see it from the impressive forces of nature stand point, but I don’t want to see anyone hurt.  That’s why I’m here.

I’m off to another safety meeting and getting my boat assignment for the next two days.  I’ll try and get another post up tonight.

A big BZ to Mark Sharley on those photos.

Came home to get a shower tonight after getting soaked on the water today.  I am working on getting pictures copied, I left my SD card reader with the guy I’m staying with on the road.  So I’m trying to use my built in SD card reader which appears to dislike SDHC cards.

So a quick recap in text form with pictures hopefully coming here soon.  After this I’m redoing my laptop it needs it.  I do have some pics from my phone however so I’ll fill with those in the mean time.

Yesterday was uneventful.  I discovered the most awesome gas station in the world exists in St. Maries Idaho. 

Looks normal right?  Check out the back part of the inside.

I had no problem getting along with the locals up there.

Two legs were run without any real activity.  I hooked up a equipment trailer and hauled it through scenic Idaho for the administration. Got into Lewiston and had a long meeting for boat assignments.  I got a call last night that the EMT I was with was going to join us for the rest of the races.  He hopped in my truck at 0615 this morning for the ride up.

There were a few interesting stories which will be expanded on later.  My wife handled a very bad situation today quite well.  I will let her tell that story.  I’m glad to say she did me quite proud with how she handled it.

There was another incident however that I can go into now. 

In the middle of the race I catch over .54 simplex that there is someone in the parking lot of Heller Bar threatening to ticket everyone who doesn’t have some pass.  Most of the staff (all volunteer mind you) that are on the upstream leg are parked there.  How we discover this is he harassed the shore station who stationed there and intimidated them into moving.  So we lost our backup communications in Heller Bar because someone felt like getting his “Authoritah On”.  It is discovered this is an individual for WADFW and he then harassed the Communications Director’s wife as she attempted to make a sandwich (I was unaware of this slight until later that night at dinner).  Attempts at the time to get this official’s name fail.  He disappears and is obviously irritated.

We finish up the races and head back down stream.  I discover that I do not have a ticket but thankfully a warning basically saying, “Next time I give you a ticket.”

I pack up the truck and the three of us head out and back to Hell’s Gate for the comms debrief.  As I drive back I pass a DFW truck that then pulls out behind me.  Immediately I go, “Oh, was that who I think it was?”  My EMT who heard the BS earlier says, “I think it was.”  I pull over and let him pass and immediately take pursuit.  At this point I’m not sure of who he is so I start in on the radio.  The license plate was copied earlier but was not immediately available for our comparison.  It is confirmed that it was DFW.  I think, “Well how many of those ass hats can there be in this area on a Monday.” 

At this point I decide I’m going to need to make contact.  I stay on his ass, my copilot, another ham who rode up with me takes a couple pics to make sure we have a copy of his license plate for comparison later.  I don’t know how tight assed this guy is going to be so I want to collect my own pool of info to try and verify later if need be.

We blow past a 35 MPH sign and he continues doing 45MPH.  I stay right up with him.  About a half mile down the road he pulls over and I pull over right behind him.  Well what happens next was recorded, on a public road, for my own protection depending on the attitude of the officer.  There are reasons I don’t trust cops and it’s a real shame that’s the case.  I also know that series has been seen by many officers, some of which really dislike it.    So like the light being shined on the corrupt and nasty in their profession, other’s dislike it, for what reason I don’t know.

I will say the officer was polite and cordial when I talked to him, but he has seriously rubbed a couple people the wrong way.  Here is the card.

The two guys with me and myself are reasonably sure that the main reason I got the info was because I took the initiative.  Once I was at his door he was stuck, he couldn’t just run off.  The other communications people were quite happy with my ability to extract the information.  The person I was talking to on the radio said, “Don’t do anything stupid, I’m not bailing you out of jail.”

One suspicion is he is friends with people who dislike the jet boat races and he is attempting to discourage the volunteers who make it happen.  If not that, it’s a push to make a bunch of revenue on people who are working as staff.

As you can see, as annoyed as I am, I can keep my cool when necessary.  I have been informed that Bob Dice’s information is heading to the correct people to make sure stuff gets taken care of.

Overall it makes me wonder why some departments such as the sheriff, fire department, and ems was more than willing to work with us.  How much so?  We had officers on safety boats, and there was a ham on the sheriff’s boat and fire boat.

That is today’s lesson.  We have a special repeater in place for the safety communications.  Can you guess where one became none?

That’s right the repeater crapped out towards the end of the third leg.   We however resulted to other methods and continued communications without serious interruption.

I ended up stepping in a hole that quite literally went to my hip.  From the knee down ended up submerged in water and mud.  Well, I had a spare pair of boots and a pants in my pack.  Two became one.

I had three radios with me, but one proved less than useful given the communications plan.  Three became two.

So yes folk, plan on crap breaking, things going down, and just plain bad things happening.  I got back started working on this blog post while trying to copy the pictures from today.  Well my computer screwed the pooch and attempted to kill the SD card.  It is recovering as I type this.

Last night was interesting in that I had a boat assignment, but no boat.  It was a repeat of last August all over again.  I was not the most enthused.  I got a boat though we got everything hashed out and I was able to meet up on the ramp and get on station.

I lucked out that my station didn’t need to really do any traffic handling since there was a repeater.  Other stations were calling out when boats passed so my life became a simple task of take pictures and track which boats went by.

As we moved towards the third leg the wind picked up and we knew it was going to make it interesting for the boats.  Well it did. The wind almost shoved a boat into a tree stump in the currently very high river.  I do have a nice picture of it but it currently is going through the recovery process.  So no pictures for you tonight.