Contacts didn't work out

In fact, they didn't even last two days. I either need a new pair or need to give up on them entirely. And I think I might have given myself pinkeye. I had thought since I changed the solution out with moderate frequency and washed my RGP's, I should be good to go. We'll chalk that one up on the list of "seemed like a good idea at the time" ideas.

Back to trying contacts

And this could be a big thing for me.

How can something as simple as a pair of contact lenses make a big difference, you ask? Because I see so much better with them. With eyeglasses, my corrected vision is 20/40 to 20/50, which is just bad enough that they don't recommend I get a driver's license. with my RGP (hard) contact lenses, my corrected visual acuity jumps to 20/30 to 20/40 which is okay to drive.

I tried RGP contacts from July 2007 to July 2008, and eventually gave up on them; I couldn't ever seem to wear them for more than 8 hours in a day despite all the eye-rinses for allergies I tried, and despite impeccable proper care and handling of the lenses. They were also expensive, $100 per lens to replace, compared to $40 for a pair of eyeglasses through zennioptical.com....so i finally just said screw it, and put my RGP's into storage. I've still been maintaining the lenses, every one or two months I would clean the lenses, change out the storage cases with new solution, etcetera, to keep them maintained properly.

So, today I got a wild hair and decided to pull them out of mothballs and give them a try.

I need to go by my original wearing schedule which is something to the effect of:

Day 1: 3-4 hours
Day 2: 4-6 hours
Day 3: 6-8 hours
Day 4: 8-10 hours
Day 5: 10-12 hours
Day 6: 12-14 hours
Day 7 14+ Hours (all day wear)

They sure aren't as uncomfortable as the first time I tried wearing them. The thing with RGP's is that they aren't instantly comfortable like soft lenses are, you need a few days to get used to the feel of the hard plastic rubbing on the inside of your eyelids. But I am finding them only slightly uncomfortable at the moment, and I love how well I can see with them compared to eyeglasses. We will see how things progress, I would love to be able to get my eyesight under control enough to be able to finally get a driver's license. At 25 years old it will be long overdue.

"Back to Reality"

On the final leg of my trip home (Minneapolis/St Paul to Los Angeles International) I was sitting on the Boeing 757-200 jetting my way off into the sunset yesterday evening when I overheard a quick exchange between two passengers making small talk, that I could totally relate with:

Passenger A: "So, are you from Minnesota?"
Passenger B: "No, I live in California. I spent the last week in North Dakota; I was visiting home. Now It's back to reality for me."

I was struck by the way she worded that. She lives in California, but her home is North Dakota.

That sort of explains how I feel...now, family members reading this blog, don't get upset, I mean no disrespect in this, but after graduating from university in the midwest I've been feeling a sort of gravitational pull trying to bring me back "home". Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, doesn't matter which state, really....I am attracted by the slower country lifestyle, the lack of crime, the friendliness of the people, the wholesome lifestyle out there...contrast that to the California rat-race, the hustle and bustle of the people who have no time for even so much as a smile and a nod in passing to acknowledge one another...The crime, the gangs, the state government in shambles...I could go on and on.

I feel like while my reality is that I live in California, my heart is in the midwest somewhere wandering around in a cornfield, confused. Okay that's a terrible metaphor, but after spending 8 days in Sioux City I am starting to think more and more about seriously looking for work out there. I don't know for sure yet, I need to do a lot more soul-searching.

But for now, it's "Back to Reality" for me. My Iowa trip is over with, and now I need to unpack suitcases, wash clothes, sort through a pile of bills, catch up on to-do lists around here, and figure out which direction I want to steer my life. No pressure, though.

It was a great trip for me, refreshing for the soul to see all my old friends again, and even meet some new ones (Mary, Mancy, Julie, Josh, I'm looking in your direction!) I had a great time and didn't want to leave. Oh, how I hated to leave!

Congratulations Chad and Mary Benson!

They did it!

The ceremony was very nice, and the reception was killer! I had a great time, even though I have never sweat so much in my life. By the time the ceremony STARTED, I needed a shower. By the time the ceremony and post-game photos were taken, and the reception started, i all but decided Randall's Tux shop is going to end up burning my outfit because I sweat all the way through my undershirt, shirt, vest, AND coat!@ Holy crap!

The reception was a blast, and afterwords, dan and laura and I went out to Perkins for a couple more hours together one last time before I fly home.

Finally starting to unwind from the day, 2am and I'm happy to say all's well. I'm exhausted though. Tomorrow I fly back home, as much as I hate to leave. I have a lot of packing to do before then, but hopefully I will have time. I kind of wanted to do it all tonight so I can have tomorrow to spend with people, but right now I'm gonna crash.

Congrats to Chad and Mary!

Clay Pigeons

In lieu of a bona-fide bachelor/stagg party, we all decided to go out this morning and shoot clay pigeons. I've never fired a shotgun before so should be fun. But what i'm looking forward to most is being the unofficial outing photographer. Chad has put all his lenses at my disposal, which makes it feel like Christmas for me.

In other news, the bride's sister, brother-in-law and other good friend came into town yesterday; Now there are either 9 or 10 people crashing at this house; all sharing a single restroom! Wow! I got up at 7:30 after going to bed around 3:45am, just so I could hope to find the bathroom free and grab a shower before anyone else. My efforts were a success. Now I'm ready to crash for awile.

Today we also pick up the Tux's and have our rehersal, rehersal dinner, and they also said that we can go in and start decorating the reception hall this evening if we wish. normally they only let you in the day of, but they don't have it booked so gave us the all clear.

my trusty Optoma HD65 video projector will be playing the video slideshow during the reception, so that is one small way for me to help out. Chad and mary are both teachers so i have found myself wanting to help, but being mroe or less unneeded, as they have simply gone down their organized to-do lists and knocked off the items one-by-one. Very organized.

Sioux City, IA

Chad and I went walking around downtown Sioux City, he with his Rebel XT body and Canon EF 70-200mm F/2.8L IS, and I with my XTi body and kit lens.....here's a few of the sights I saw:








It was both relaxing and fun! Having a great time. Wish I had more time to blog, but I'm having too much fun! Enjoy.

Gonna see dan and laura today

I guess my last post did make it to the site afterall. Anyway today we're gonna get to see dan and laura! I saw them back in april for a day but it will be good to see them again. They'll also be down here for the wedding. So that's my update for the day. enjoy!

Yes, I made it

Hit the ground running in sioux city and didn't have much idle time to think about updating....I am here in one piece, the flights went well, and now I am.going to bed!

Sent From My Verizon Wireless Blackberry (TM)

At msp

Don't know it my last post made it to the site or not...touched down at MSP a little after 6am local time...sioux city flight departs at 9:03am...meaning I board in 20-30 minutes

Sent From My Verizon Wireless Blackberry (TM)

Made it to MSP

Was a long and boring flight. Now I have 1.5 hrs to kill before the puddle jumper down to SUX (yes, that really is what they assigned sioux gateway for its call letters!

Almost Time!

Well, folks, my flight boards in 5 minutes...not looking forward to the 3.5 hour flight...

Sent From My Verizon Wireless Blackberry (TM)

Just arrived at LAX

Woo hoo, I'm here sitting at my gate a full 2 hrs early!

Funny story about checking in....it was utter chaos and I didn't know where to go so I stopped an agent to ask directions....she somehow mistook me for a late arrival and wisked me around the line right to the front...I WASN'T ABOUT TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT!

On My Way!

...Sort of. Currently en route to LAX...ETA, about 2 hrs.

Sent From My Verizon Wireless Blackberry (TM)

Holy Crap!

Great job the American Education System did me....I just learned something today I probably should have known since grade school.



Did you know that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both Died on July 4, 1826? From what I gather, Adams had vowed to outlive Jefferson; his final words were, "Thomas Jefferson Survives". What he didn't know was that Jefferson himself had passed away only hours earlier. Both men, principal to the founding of our country, both champions of our independence (while Jefferson was the man who penned most of the document, Adams was the one who went before the continental congress and gave it the "hard sell"), died on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. I'll be damned if that ain't downright patriotic.

Here's a neat obituary I found on google image search:


If the image is blurry click it to view the original size.
images used without permission.

Congratulations, Chad!

On July 24th, 2009, Chad will be signing his life aw---I mean Getting MARRIED!

He's back home in Iowa now after spending the last few years in China teaching for a Canadian academy in Dalian. I don't know how he dealt with the culture clash, the language barrier, and all that accompanies living in a foreign land, but he did it! And now he's done with it!

I haven't seen Chad since April 2007, and in just about a week, I'm gonna be boarding a redeye flight to head out there and catch up with one of my best friends and celebrate his wedding!

So here's a shout-out to you, Chad, can't wait to see you, and to finally meet Mary!

Remembering United Flight 232

On the afternoon of July 19^th, 1989, 285 passengers boarded United Airlines flight 232 at Denver’s Stapleton International airport, heading for Chicago. It was “Children’s Day” at United. Under this promotional travel deal, kids could fly for only $.01 with the purchase of an adult ticket. Unbeknownst to everyone, flight 232 was to be anything but an ordinary flight.

Commanding the Chicago-bound aircraft was Captain Al Haynes (left), accompanied by First Officer Bill Records, and Flight Engineer Dudley Dvorak. Eight flight attendants brought the total passengers and crew aboard the DC-10 aircraft to 296. Because of the “Children’s Day” deal, 52 of the passengers were children (an unusually high number), many traveling alone.

The flight departed Denver at 2:09 PM, and began its journey to Chicago. The weather was beautiful, the skies clear, and it was shaping up to be an uneventful flight. (A United DC-10 much like that of flight 232, is pictured at right.)

However, at 3:16 PM, shortly after crossing the border into Iowa, all hell broke loose. At a cruising altitude of 37,000 ft, the aircraft was violently rocked by an explosion from the rear of the plane. After shutting down the failed #2 engine (located above the tail of the plane) which had virtually disintegrated, Records and Haynes soon discovered that the hydraulic pressure was quickly dropping on all three redundant hydraulic control systems. All three systems rapidly lost all pressure, leaving the pilots with no way to steer the massive aircraft. With no control over the flaps, ailerons, rudder, and elevators, the only way the cockpit crew was able to gain any control over the aircraft at all was to use a method of steering called "differential thrust", wherein by throttling up on one engine and down on the other they could gradually change the direction of the aircraft, and by accelerating or decelerating they could cause the plane to ascend or descend.

Dennis Fitch, a DC-10 flight instructor for United, was heading home aboard flight 232 as a passenger, and upon realizing the peril the flight was in, quickly offered his assistance to the flight crew, and took command of the throttles. The plane was able to make wide right turns, but could not very easily go left. Additionally, the craft began a series of ascents and descents, known as phugoid cycles, much like a roller-coaster. The flight instructor had to proactively accelerate and decelerate the engines thrust in attempts to counteract this phenomenon.

For nearly 45 minutes the crew maneuvered the plane in a series of wide right-turns using the engines as a crude form of steering. Emergency crews were dispatched to Sioux City’s Gateway airport, a small regional airport nearby, as the plane’s crew did their best to maneuver the craft for an approach, all the while dumping fuel to lighten the craft and provide less combustibility in the event of a fire upon landing.

Flight attendants instructed passengers on the safety protocols, which included how to brace for impact, and, most chillingly, United protocol at the time called for parents to place so-called “lap children” on the floor of the cabin below their feet.

Amazingly, by 4:00 PM, the captain and his crew had successfully executed enough right-hand turns to put the craft in line for a final approach to runway 22 at Sioux Gateway. That particular runway had been closed for some time, and was about 1/3 shorter than the 9,000 ft runway they had hoped for. The crew could not slow the plane without causing it to fall from the sky, so with an open field at the end of the runway, 22 would have to do.

In the final seconds of the approach, UA-232 began an uncontrollable heave to the right, and at 4:00 PM and 16 seconds, the flight touched down at the start of the runway, right-wing first, sheering off the wing and the nose of the craft, releasing fuel and causing the craft to slide off-course to a fiery stop, finally coming to rest in the middle of a cornfield. Rescue personnel rushed to the scene, transporting injured passengers to local area hospitals.

Below is a video of the crash, synced to the last seconds of voices on the CVR:

Amazingly, thanks to the heroism of those commanding the craft, and the quick response of the area rescue personnel, 189 people were saved from the doomed flight. 111 people died, mostly due to the multiple impacts of the fuselage as it came to rest, and smoke inhalation. Of the 52 children aboard (four of whom were lap children), 11, including one lap-child, lost their lives.

“Luck”? “Providence”?

It was only through an extraordinary confluence of events that nearly 2/3 of the passengers survived what was, at the time, the 7^th worst airplane crash in United States’ history.

Some call it luck, some call it “God”, but it is undeniable that so many things fell into place at just the right time, that it increased the survival odds exponentially.

Said Captain Haynes in a later interview, “I'm not a very religious individual, but so many things fell into place for us that a lot of people do credit it to luck, and some would call it God's will…some would call it something else. . . so whatever anybody wants to call it is fine, that's why I call it luck. I don't want to step on anybody's toes.”

Some of the factors he attributes to the relative success of the crash-landing include:

• The incident occurred during daylight hours
• The crash happened during a shift-change at both major medical centers in Sioux City, so there were two full staffs of doctors and nurses on-hand to care for the injured.
• Sioux Gateway airport is also the home of the Iowa Air National Guard, who was on base that day, lending an additional 285 trained personnel to lead the rescue effort. That particular day, a Wednesday, just happened to be the one day of the week the base was fully staffed.
• Dennis Fitch, a United DC-10 instructor deadheading home aboard the flight, was able to take some of the load off the pilots by controlling the engine thrusters while they manned other controlls during the crisis.
• In 1987, only two years earlier, Sioux City had staged a disaster drill to plan what to do in the event a widebody aircraft were to make an emergency crash-landing at Sioux Gateway airport. Because of that drill, conducted on Runway 22, the very same retired runway that flight 232 would later crash-land on, Sioux City’s emergency crews were at a level of readiness unmatched by other airport towns at the time.
• The weather also "just happened to be" perfect. Cpt. Haynes has said numerous times that any turbulence whatsoever would have caused them to completely lose control of the flight, which would surely have led to a catastrophic loss of the entire flight. This was actually somewhat uncharacteristic of a late summer afternoon in Northwest Iowa. Exactly one year later in 1990, when they visited Sioux City for the first anniversary memorial of the flight, Sioux Gateway airport was covered in black thunderstorms.
  

Later, when the flight data from Flight 232 was loaded into a simulator, according to avweb, “not one of the 57 crews they tested in the simulator could control the airplane all the way to the ground.”

Final Thoughts:

July 19, 2009, just 13 days from now, marks the 20^th anniversary of this spectacularly frightening ordeal that gave the sleepy town of Sioux City its fifteen minutes of fame. In 11 days, just 48 hrs shy of that 20th anniversary, when I touch down at Sioux Gateway airport to attend my best friend’s wedding, you can bet your life that I’ll hold the memories of the 111 people who died at that airport in my heart, and say a prayer for their families, who no-doubt will also be thinking about the loved-ones they lost so many years ago. I'm proud to have even the most tangential relationship with the siouxland community, having spent four years in the area going to school. In fact, if any readers know of any jobs in Northwest Iowa, throw me an email, as I would really love to beat the pavement out of California the first chance I get.

Web Resources:
Interview with Al Haynes
Wikipedia
Aviation Safety network
Airdisaster.com
Hayes' Speech at Edward's AFB, May 1991

Additional Web Videos Of Interest:

Air Investigations: United Airlines Flight 232 (45 Mins)



55 minute Documentary: Leaving The Earth (About Denny Fitch. VERY moving)



History Channel: Disaster - The Unflyable Plane
Pt 1:


Pt 2:


Pt 3:

Hello World.

First post, woo hoo!

I don't know what I plan to use this blog for at present, but I have been thinking of some things lately that I thought might be suited for a blog....I'm working on something right now that I hope to post later tonight or tomorrow, so stay tuned.