Travels With Tom-Tom

My wife and I went up to Chattanooga last week. I didn’t need a GPS to get there, but I took it with me anyway, since I planned a little side trip on our way home.

I got my GPS about three years ago, and on my first trip using it we wound up on a farmer’s field instead of at our hotel, so I have never completely trusted the unit. However, I used the GPS last year on my Northwest trip, and it performed beautifully.

Then I used it again this year on my trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and on my trip to Hells Canyon in Oregon. Again it did a good job of getting me around.

So when I decided to route us across Tennessee and North Carolina and down into the mountains of Northern Georgia, I figured it would get us there okay.

Well, it proved me wrong, and it made an approximate 5-hour trip into a 9-hour odyssey.

When I programmed the trip from Chattanooga to Tallulah Falls in, the GPS unit wanted to route me down to Atlanta on I-75, then up I-85 and I-985 to get there. Now, that might have been the shortest route time wise, but what fun was that? I wanted to see the wild country.

I took a more direct route across the mountains. Well, that was a big mistake.

Do you recall the movie Deliverance with Burt Reynolds and John Voigt? Well, we weren’t by the Caloosahachie River, but the Ocoee River looks like the one they used in the movie. Thank God we didn’t have any breakdowns, but we sure did get lost a few times. I kept looking for the snaggle-toothed hillbilly and the banjo playin’ kid.

First, I had to go “off route” to get the GPS to recalculate. Fortunately, my GPS doesn’t have that annoying voice that says, “ree-calc-u-lating.” Second, Judy can’t stand the voice commands anyway, so she mutes the sound.

Even so, once we went off route, the GPS screen kept pointing arrows at me to reverse direction. When it finally did a reroute to conform to the direction we were headed, it still didn’t like my choices, and continued to give me updates.

At one crossroads I turned the way the GPS directed, and was immediately off the map. We wound up executing three loops around the same roads before we got back on the right track according to the GPS. Then we went off route again on an open stretch of road—try that one—and finally pulled over at a gas station and general store in a little crossroads called Brasstown.

There was what appeared to be a dead possum hanging by its tail over the door, so Judy refused to go in with me. Come to think of it, I don’t know what possessed me to go in myself. I think the gas pumps were the old-fashioned crank type. There was one of those large mouth jars on the counter with some pink hardboiled eggs in it, too—probably pickled years ago.

I took my maps in with me and asked the owner for directions to Tallulah Falls. Of course, he had no idea where that was, so I showed him on the Georgia map—we were in North Carolina, by the way. He then gave me some directions, which his wife wrote down for me, based on one of their “Sunday trips in the country”. (What the heck did he think Brasstown is?)

It won’t make any sense, but the fellow got into some homespun tale about his last trip to “that state below Georgia.” I started to volunteer the state’s name, Florida, but he said his wife does not allow him to use the “f-word” so he refers to it only as “the state below Georgia”—I swear I didn’t make that up. Needless to say, I didn’t ask why.

Well, we got back under way and after several more near misses, including seeing a sign at another crossroad pointing to “Brasstown” after we had made two turns already, we arrived at the town of Clayton. GA. That was where we finally picked up the correct route down to Tallulah Falls. It took four-and-a-half hours to go the 170 miles from Chattanooga, and we got to our destination at about 1:30 in the afternoon.>

Tallulah Falls was a nice place to visit and we even went on to another waterfall that is on the campus of Toccoa Falls College in Toccoa, Georgia. Even that was an adventure—I had to walk through the college bookstore and out a back door to get to the waterfall—but we made it home to Augusta late in the afternoon.

What could have been an easy 5-hour drive from Chattanooga to Augusta became a full day of driving and used just about a full tank of gas. But what a fun trip it was! I took lots of pictures, too.

On Borrowed Time

I got another one of those Power Point slide show presentations this week that gave advice to senior citizens on how to enjoy the autumn of their lives. I read it, even though I’ve seen the same or similar messages many times. And I once again mentally nodded in agreement with the message.

We all live on borrowed time, but it becomes clearer and shorter as we get into our 60s and 70s. Myself, I’ve been on borrowed time for over thirty years. I was diagnosed with coronary artery disease in September of 1980. My cardiologist scheduled me for a coronary bypass, which he performed in October of that year. That was the beginning of a long line of hospitalizations and procedures for me.

I had a massive coronary infarction (heart attack) while staying at a hotel in Frederick, Maryland on the day after Christmas in 2005. I was transported by ambulance to a local hospital and then by helicopter to Washington Medical Center, where a team preformed a balloon angioplasty. I suspect that I “died” several times that night, but they brought me back.

I could trace my “borrowed timeline” even further back to 1941, when I was two-years-old. At that time, I was down for a nap in my second floor bedroom, but I stood up in my crib and somehow wound up falling out of the window, landing headfirst on the concrete driveway below.

I suffered a fractured skull, and the doctor who treated me in the hospital said that the only thing that saved my life was the window screen. I landed on that screen and apparently that narrow cushion of air was enough to break my fall before I hit the pavement.

There are probably not very many people who can recount the times they were at the brink of death and were brought back to enjoy many more years of quality life. For me, I don’t recall that early incident—we seem to lose most memories prior to age five—but I can remember in detail the two other times when I was a heartbeat away from eternity.

When the Jehovah’s Witnesses come to my door and ask if I’ve been born again, I can honestly say, “Yes, I have.” It has a different meaning from what they infer, but it does shorten the conversation.

One thing my experiences have sharpened is my appreciation for doing whatever I can do. Call it my bucket list if you want—I borrowed that from the recent movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan freeman--but I try to experience lots of what I love, and one of those is travel.

I don’t mind telling you that when I took my solo trip across America to Seattle and back last year, I fully expected it to be my last trip. Because of that attitude, I really worked as many places and sights into the itinerary as I could. In the fifteen days I was on the road, I visited about 40 places, and it was a tremendously rewarding trip.

Since that trip in June of 2009, I’ve taken five more trips. The last one this past week, when my wife and I went to Chattanooga to finally see the attractions that we had seen advertised on barns and billboards most of our lives—Rock City and Ruby Falls. (They were both worth the trip and the admission fees, as was the third one, the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway)

Most of you have been able to vicariously share my travels by way of my daily journals, and I will probably continue to write and send them out. However, I want to encourage you to get out there and make your own bucket list.. As I said at the outset, we are all on borrowed time, so whatever it is that “floats your boat” by all means do it!

American Exceptionalism

A miracle took place recently while the world watched. In Chile, 33 miners, trapped in a collapse that occurred way back in August, were rescued and reunited with their loved ones. Live television coverage was provided during the final stages of the rescue operation, but little was said in Washington about the near tragedy.

I wanted to write a column about the Chilean mine rescue, but another writer said it better than I could have. Therefore, I’m going to publish her column in lieu of my own meager efforts to memorialize those who played so important a part in the ”Miracle in Chile.”

While the White House may not believe in American exceptionalism, I do. And I'm thinking there's a whole bunch of people in Chile that would agree.

Regarding the mine rescue, did you know: The guy that designed the rescue module was a NASA Engineer? The Drill was made by Schramm Inc. from Pennsylvania? The Drill Bits were made by Center Rock, Inc. located in Berlin, Pennsylvania?

The lead driller Jeff Hart and his team are from Denver, Colorado. They are on loan from the US Military in Afghanistan where they are drilling water wells for our Forward Operating Bases. He spent the next 33 days on his feet, operating the drill that finally provided a way out Saturday for 33 trapped miners. "You have to feel through your feet what the drill is doing; it's a vibration you get so that you know what's happening," explained Hart.

Hart was called in from Afghanistan, "simply because he's the best" at drilling larger holes with the T130's wide-diameter drill bits, Stefanic said.

Standing before the levers, pressure meters and gauges on the T130's control panel, Hart and the rest of the team faced many challenges in drilling the shaft. At one point, the drill struck a metal support beam in the poorly mapped mine, shattering its hammers. Fresh equipment had to be flown in from the United States and progress was delayed for days as powerful magnets were lowered to pull out the pieces.

The mine's veins of gold and copper ran through quartzite with a high level of abrasive silica, rock so tough that it took all their expertise to keep the drill's hammers from curving off in unwanted directions. "It was horrible," said Center Rock President Brandon Fisher, exhausted after hardly sleeping during the effort.

Fisher, Stefanic and Hart called it the most difficult hole they had ever drilled, because of the lives at stake.

"If you're drilling for oil and you lose the hole, it's different. This time there's people down below," Stefanic said.

"We ruined some bits, worked through the problems as a team, and broke through," Hart said. "I'm very happy now."

Miners' relatives crowded around Hart on Saturday, hugging and posing for pictures with him as he walked down from the rescue operation into the tent camp where families had anxiously followed his work.

"He's become the hero of the day," said Dayana Olivares, whose friend Carlos Bugueno (wa)s one of the miners stuck below.

In a different day and age, Jeff Hart would be the most famous American in our country right now. He would be honored at the White House. Schoolchildren would learn of his skill and heroism. But because Jeff Hart works in an industry currently being demonized by (insert name for the clowns currently running our country) more people in Chile will celebrate this symbol of American greatness than in America itself.
- Michelle Malkin

Did you know these facts? I didn’t.

When Decency Ends

Rush Limbaugh made an issue of a column written by David Brooks in the New York Times yesterday, so I read the column myself to see what gave him cause to make such a fuss about it. Limbaugh thought it was shallow and nonsensical.

After reading Mr. Brooks’ column, The Flock Comedies, I decided to revise my own column for this week. I had one all ready to go, but this subject has been on my mind for a while, especially after I viewed a couple of sitcoms that featured a similar theme. That theme was masturbation.

I am not writing this from a religious standpoint, and those of you who know me well are aware that I am anything but a religious person. No, I’m opining over the lack of decency we are seeing these days on TV and in the other media.

Perhaps you’ll call me a prude, but I don’t think that discussion of masturbation between mixed sex groups—or for that matter, between same sex groups—is appropriate, realistic or the least bit funny. In other than a sex education class, or a psychiatrist’s office, I don’t think it is a topic for conversation. Period!

I won’t dignify the shows by naming them, but the topic was not only talked about openly by the loving couple, but also by their co-workers and other close friends. Of course there was the usual canned laugh track to make it appear to be comical. I guess that if you put a laugh track on a non-humorous, unrealistic conversation enough times, some people are going to believe it really is funny.

Well, I for one, don’t! I think it is a symptom of the degradation of our society that we can take a private and personal matter and make it seem to be an everyday topic around the drink cooler or in the bar or restaurant.

I don’t want you to misinterpret me. I am not naïve, and I’m not waging war against the act, only against the portrayal of it as a topic for sitcom humor. If that makes me a prude, then so be it. It still bothers me to hear people use foul language in mixed company, too.

When decency ends, respect ends with it, and we have little enough respect for each other as it is without exacerbating the lack of it.

You might want to read The Flock Comedies in the New York Times 10/21 edition for yourself. I obviously made a connection with it.

Asian Stinkbugs

I was up in Maryland last weekend, and I was introduced to a phenomenon that we don’t yet have here in Georgia. However, on doing some research, I found that it has spread across the most of the northern United States. It is what we have to call a pestilence, because it is a huge infestation of bugs.

The big news lately is the spread of bedbugs, but that is not what I am referencing. No, I found the Asian stinkbug, more commonly known as the brown marmorated stinkbug. They are, as the old saying goes, “thick as flies” up there.

I hate to pick on Asia, but it appears that the bedbugs and the Asian stinkbugs both came from Asia, probably hitching a ride on clothing or other goods being shipped to the United States. I can’t believe that it was a planned and purposeful invasion, but it certainly does present some huge problems at a time when it is the last thing we need.



In case you have never seen one of these critters, this is what they look like. They are about 1/2 –inch long, and unfortunately, they have wings. They are good fliers.

While the bedbugs will bite you and might carry disease (unproven, so far) the stinkbug is just a pest, and I guess it produces a noxious odor, which gives it its name. I didn’t get a chance, thank God, to experience the “stink,” but I was assailed by the little monsters with their hooked feet that cling to clothing and skin. Believe me, they are nasty.

The spread of the stinkbugs is as insidious as that of the bedbug. Both are able to hide in cars and clothing. They are both very prolific, and can reproduce in short cycles, so even if you don’t have any infestation yet, you can expect one shortly. I suspect we helped by driving back here in our minivan. We found two stinkers in the car on the way home, so who knows how many more were along for the ride?

The reason I am relating this to you at all is that there are apparently some treatments you can use to rid yourself of the brown marmorated stinkbug. While temperatures above 130 degrees can kill the bedbug, the stinkbugs are susceptible to soapy water and some chemicals. I won’t even attempt to tell you which ones, or how to treat for them, but you can do some research on Yahoo, or Google, or Bing to learn the best methods.

You had better be prepared, because it looks like the stinkbugs are coming, and they are up in Maryland by the millions.

Smoking and Health Isses

I’m going to start this column with a disclaimer: I do not advocate, nor do I encourage smoking. I know from personal experience that it is easy to become addicted and difficult to break the addiction. Probably the reason for that is that it is both habit and addiction. You have to break both the addiction to nicotine and the habit of oral stimulus to succeed.

Further, I have no conclusive proof for what I believe to be true of smoking. Maybe the federal government should use some of those boondoggle grants to fund a study on the topic. Lord knows, they fund enough other goofy studies.

Okay, enough on that… Here is the “Kline Theory on the Cessation of Smoking and the Onset of health Issues.”

Those of us who have smoked cigarettes for any length of time and in any quantity of a-pack-a-day or more, and have subsequently quit smoking, have developed health problems within a year or so of quitting. I find that disturbing, and I attribute it to immune system breakdown that follows the cessation. (Examples to follow) Therefore, I postulate that there is a correlation between the two, and that either:
1. Nicotine addiction stimulates the immune system, or
2. Nicotine withdrawal suppresses the immune system.
Either way, it is almost a sure thing that a person who smoked and then quits will suffer some debilitating health problems shortly thereafter. These range from arthritis to cardio-vascular disease, to—the reason you quit in the first place—cancer. There may be others, but those are the ones I know about.

I quit smoking due to an eight-week seminar held by SmokeEnders, an entity that might no longer exist. That was on March 6, 1980. In September of 1980 I suffered chest pains and was hospitalized and catheterized. The diagnosis was coronary artery disease. I have had a coronary artery bypass, six angioplasties and two stents, a ICD/pacemaker implant and a coronary ablation in the thirty years since that event.

It would take too much space and open too many old wounds to detail the rest of the cases of people I know, or knew, who quit smoking only to be plagued by health issues a short time later. However, there are over a dozen instances I can think of where the two were directly related. Some have resulted in continued disability, while others were fatal.

The key factor in my theorizing about the causal effect of quitting smoking and the onset of disease is that I cannot think of a single case where a smoker I know gave up the habit and didn’t develop some health issues. You might conjecture that maybe they got that way due to age alone, but even younger quitters seem to have the syndrome, if I can call it a syndrome.

Think about the people you know who also have been smokers and quit, only to get sick soon afterwards of an apparently unrelated cause. It isn’t always cancer that is caused by smoking, you know. That and emphysema are only the culprits the American Cancer Society targets.

So, what’s the moral of the story? I don’t want to leave you with no hope for smokers you might know, or for yourself, if you are a smoker. Here is the remainder of my theory: If you are a smoker, or you know someone who is, and you haven’t developed a long-time, heavy habit, by all means quit. I don’t think it applies to the casual smoker. If longevity and high use are established, then I recommend that you don’t quit altogether, but cut your usage to fewer than a pack per day. Find a substitute that works equally well to suppress your addiction and your habit.

Of course, the best prevention is not to ever get started with smoking. I sure wish I hadn’t.

The Proposed Transaction Tax

I always try to avoid politics and religion in my columns, but every so often there is a collision between one of those topics and another subject, which I want to address. This is one of those instances, so I will warn you up front that there is a political aspect to this column. Therefore, those of you whom I know would be offended are invited to stop here and go on to something more pleasing to you.

However, if you have read this far, I want to warn you that everyone will be impacted by the legislation in a very negative way, and you really should learn about it before it becomes the law of the land. If we are to stop its passage, we need every concerned citizen to join the cause.

There has been a lot of traffic on the e-mail circuit about a proposed 1% transaction tax that Congress is likely to pass in the “lame duck” session between November and January. Some claim that the transaction tax is just a rumor, an urban legend to scare people into voting out the present majority.

I would agree with that assessment if I didn’t have living proof that the Speaker of the House was questioned about it publicly, and stated (her exact words), “I think the idea still has great merit.” My proof? http://tinyurl.com/24dn5ud. Some things you can fake, but this isn’t one of those.

The latest message I received has a final line that I assume is the opinion of one of the forwarders. “Some will say aw its just 1%… Remember that once they pass it they can raise it at will.”

I strongly disagree with that statement. A 1% tax on every single transaction is HUGE.

First of all, every dollar that passes through your possession is two transactions, one to earn it and one to spend it. And that is only your tax. The entity that gives you the money, whether by check, cash, or direct deposit is also taxed at 1%. The entity that you give the money to is also taxed at 1%. So every dollar is actually taxed at 4% each time it is transferred to you and from you.

It is a fact of business life that the employee or consumer ultimately pays the business tax through less income or higher fees, so we have to double the tax every time you transact any business whether it is income or expense.

Here is an example of how much that 1% tax can grow:

You receive a payment of $1,000 from your employer. From that amount, $10 is deducted from you and another $10 is deducted from your employer—2 transactions.
You only have a net of $990. It is also probable that your actual pay should have been $10 higher, but your employer passed the transaction tax on to you in lost wages.

You deposit the $990 in your checking account. You only get credit for $980.10—that is, if your bank will eat the $9.90 tax they have to pay. If they don’t, your checking account will show a deposit of $971.20.

Are you following me so far?

You later decide to make an ATM withdrawal of $200. Well, you get the full $200, but your checking account shows a withdrawal of $204—that is, if the bank doesn’t charge ATM fees.

You write a check for $120 to the cable provider. Your account is depleted by $121.20. The cable company has probably already added the transaction tax to your bill, so you actually got billed $1.20 more for your service than you would have otherwise paid.

I could go on and on with this, but I think I can summarize your transaction taxes on that $1,000 earned income after you only spent $320 of it.

Let’s see, you lost $20 when you got paid, another $18.80 when you deposited the money, still another $4 when you used the ATM, and $2.40 when you paid your cable bill. That adds up to $45.20. By my reckoning, that means that you paid a transaction tax of 4.52%, and you still have bills to pay and food, gas, clothing and other staples to buy.

Do you see where this is going?

It is completely possible that your transaction tax on that $1,000 could be as high as the number of transactions make it, possible exceeding 10%. And none of that is deductible on your income tax forms. Oh yes, it also does nothing to reduce your income tax and payroll tax that is deducted from the wages to get that $1,000 in the first place.

"Now, tell me again that it is “only 1%.”

(Welcome to the Tea Party)