With blizzard-like conditions, sub-zero windchills, 1/4 mile visibility, and 2-4 inches of snow forecast, we’ve got the recipe for a tasty pre-winter weather treat! Unfortunately, the weather outside is frightful because some people still have some place to go. For example: Mykala is alone in Saint Paul waiting to pick her parents up from the airport. They’ve been delayed and rerouted to Iowa — I hope everything works out A-O.K. In the meantime, I’ll be here wrapping presents, thinking about taking an indoor run, and eagerly anticipating Christmas tomorrow. Perhaps Mykala and I will even play a digital game of Scrabble in which she’ll spell auditors on a triple word score with a 50 point bonus for using all 7 letters. We will see.
Merry day before Christmas, everyone! I hope your plans for the holiday involve metric tons of fun and eggnog.
The large front windshield lets you see everyone and everything. And in this car, what you see is everyone staring back at you: Aptera’s three-wheeler attracted more attention than anything we’ve ever driven—anything. People will roll down their windows at every stoplight and want to know what this weirdly futuristic thing is. If you’re parked, they swarm the car.
This Typ-1 e really is one of the coolest looking cars I have ever seen — and a lot of that is because there’s form, function, safety, affordability, and novelty all in one package. Nicest touch: a solar panel on the roof to trickle charge and moderate summer heat build-up.
I live in a building owned by Mint Properties LLC, which has really great attention to detail in addition to a high speed re:fixing any apartmental issues. I’ve put them into my phone as “Have a Mint.” You know, like haveamint.com…
Gimli Glider is the nickname of an Air Canada aircraft which was involved in an infamous aviation incident. On 23 July 1983, a Boeing 767-200 jet, Air Canada Flight 143, ran completely out of fuel at 41,000 feet (12,000m) altitude, about halfway through its flight from Montreal to Edmonton. The crew was able to glide the aircraft safely to an emergency landing at Gimli Industrial Park Airport, a former airbase at Gimli, Manitoba.
The subsequent investigation revealed corporate failures and a chain of minor human errors which combined to defeat built-in safeguards, deceiving Captain Robert Pearson into accepting an aircraft that should never have been flown. In addition, fuel loading was miscalculated through misunderstanding of the recently adopted metric system.
Can you imagine Pearson addressing the passengers? “The sound you are hearing is silence… and it is due, in large part, to the engines of the aircraft not running. It appears as though we have run out of fuel.” The things he went through, though, to get the thing safely landed are pretty unbelievable:
While they attempted to restart the engine and communicate with controllers in Winnipeg for an emergency landing, the warning system sounded again, this time with a long “bong” that no one present could recall having heard before. This was the “all engines out” sound, an event that was never simulated during training. Seconds later, most of the instrument panels in the cockpit went blank as the right side engine also stopped, and the 767 lost all power.
I think “terrifying” is a pretty good description. The story gets better:
The pilots immediately searched their emergency checklist for the section on flying the aircraft with both engines inoperative, only to find that no such section existed. However, Captain Pearson was an experienced glider pilot. This gave him familiarity with some flying techniques almost never used by commercial pilots. He realized that, in order to reduce their rate of descent as much as possible, he needed to fly the 767 at a speed known as the “best glide ratio speed”. He flew the aircraft at 220 knots (407 km/h), his best guess as to this airspeed.
Read the rest of the Wikipedia article for the amazing conclusion, wherein the aircraft skids to a stop in order to miss running down crowds at an auto racing track.
The Foo Fighter’s latest single, ‘The Pretender’, off of their newest album “Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace,” is one hell of a song. I use “hell” here instead of my standard “heck” because this is rock, and rock music deserved profanities in descriptions of it. So, give ‘The Pretender’ a listen. If you don’t get it the first time, give it another try or two. You’ll come around.
But the events of April 14, 2004, changed everything. That day, Corporal Dunham and his men were in the town of Karabilah, near the Syrian border, when they received reports that insurgents had ambushed a marine convoy. Corporal Dunham and his men boarded Humvees and headed toward the area, where they spotted a convoy of cars filled with Iraqis fleeing, according to various accounts.
The patrol led by Corporal Dunham stopped the Iraqi convoy and began inspecting the vehicles for weapons. As Corporal Dunham inspected one vehicle, a man jumped out and grabbed him by the throat. Two other marines ran over to subdue the attacker, who dropped a grenade, according to the accounts. It was then that Corporal Dunham made a fateful decision: he threw his Kevlar helmet and held it down over the grenade. He died a few days later from his wounds .
Dunham posthumously received the Medal of Honor, which is “the nation’s highest military award.” He was the same age I am now.
