Maximum Overdrive

The moving truck arrived today and took up most of the street.

Behind door #3...

Where's Waldo?

"They cut it out and gave me a bag of poison to kill it"

Bah tells us about his stromal tumor  ....again....

Good-bye Ol' Friend

Heather gives a hug good-bye to her faithful 1990 4-Runner which was her first car and had almost 250,000 miles on it.  She donated it to the local NPR station.

Last Day with Air Rescue

So last Sunday was my last day with the Sheriff's Air Rescue Helicopter. It's been by far the most enjoyable thing about Southern California for me. The last call of my career was a stranded hiker on Mt.Baldy. She was too fatigued to walk out and had spent and unplanned night on the mountain. She required our services to hoist her out with the helicopter. I got the entire thing on my helmet cam (thanks Garrett!). The above is the clip of us going up to the helicopter together. Not sure if people dangle much from helicopters in Idaho, but I'll have to look into it....

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What is it?

Han Solo frozen in carbonite?? Nope. That's Cellball. And she's a girl!

Anyone got a siphon?

Ian went to Baja this past weekend for the Baja 500 again.  Nothing exciting medically, but there's always a good story when returning from Baja.  The other helicopter ran out of gas...not while in flight though.  They were low on fuel and had stopped at one of the two designated fuel stops out in the desert (the helicopter company posted two fuel trucks along the course so helicopters didn't have to fly all the way back to Ensenada for fuel).  Somehow the fuel at this stop had become tainted with some water and thus bad.  They found this out when another helicopter was revving up to take off and it "flamed out" (the turbine flame burns out due to the water).  So the fuel was unusable and there were quickly 3 or 4 helicopters there for fuel and non had enough to escape back to Ensenada.  We were nearby the other fuel stop and dusk was 2 hours away.  We pulled out the seats and loaded a 50 gallon barrel of Jet A and fuel pump into the back of our helicopter and they flew it out to the stranded helicopters.  They left me on the ground (I didn't mind not sitting next to 50 gallons of fuel) and then came back to get me.

The funny thing was the other helicopter had a patient with them (some dehydrated racer).  While they were grounded at the bum fuel stop, the racer spotted his team driving by on the highway and flagged them down.  He got a ride home with them, but not before they got several tanks of diesel from the small town for the helicopters (helicopters and planes which normally use Jet A can use diesel for brief periods in a pinch without harming the engine).