Rick’s Rants and Raves

I got to fly on JetBlue for the first time this weekend. JetBlue has LCD screens on the backs of the headrests so that everyone can watch their own TV channel. I thought this would be uber cool, and I was eagerly waiting to get to my seat so I could channel surf and find something to kill the nearly two hour flight time.

I found it very interesting that in the 30 or so channels, I couldn’t find anything I wanted to watch. I finally realized that the reason I don’t watch (much) TV at home is because there isn’t much interesting on. I had assumed it was because I was so busy that I barely had time to sit down. But even when I have time (strapped in, screen in front of me), I chose to read over watch.

Even though I didn’t watch the TV channels, I did enjoy the “channel” that showed our flight path as we traveled, along with speed and altitude. That was very interesting to me. The first half of the flight we were around 34,000 feet and 550 mph. Then we hit some turbulence over eastern NY state, and the pilot kicked us up to 600 mph. Incidentally, the Boston airport tarmac is at 5 feet above sea level–not really a surprise given that it is in the harbor, but I thought it was really cool that the altimeter was that accurate.

In addition to reading, and watching the map, I also enjoyed trying to figure out what a persons channel choice said about them. I could easily see 30 screens from my seat, and I liked to imagine that I knew a little bit about the people sitting in front of those screens by their choice of entertainment. It was kind of like sitting in a bunch folks living rooms for two hours without talking with them. The majority of folks were either watching the Simpsons, Daredevil, or sports.

And then there was the poor guy sitting next to me. He was watching Daredevil when he wasn’t covering his face, or rocking back and forth in his seat. He was terrified. TERRIFIED! I’ve flown a decent bit and I’ve never seen anyone more than slightly nervous. I felt really bad for this guy–he was rocking, shaking, trying deep breathing, constantly fidgeting, covering his eyes, holding his mouth, shaking his knees. I wanted to console him, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Once we were on the ground, I made small talk with him, hoping to ease any embarrassment he felt. Turns out he was in Columbus for a wedding (not his own) and was now returning home. I asked about stuff to do in Boston, which he was happy to tell me about. He calmed down pretty quickly on the ground, but I felt badly for him nonetheless.

Sailboat rentals: $20/hour for a sunfish, $45/hour for a flying scot
Sailing lessons: $35/hour for one person, $50/hour for two (includes the price of the boat).
Lesson: for only 5 dollars more, I can pay an instructor to take Anne and me on a boat ride. Sweet.

Bocce is not lawn bowling. Theo and I played bocce and were told that we were playing on a bowling lawn and that our bocce balls might damage it. “Lawn bowling is a more sophisticated game.”

$250 for camp for two kids works out to $5/hour for “babysitting”.

Taking pictures of bats is challenging, at best.

A freshly charged set of AA NIMH batteries lasted almost the whole week in the camera, taking about 200 pictures. When the “low battery” indicator comes on for rechargeables, it really means “Change them now!”–3 minutes of video shooting later and they died.

We spent approximately $170 for food for 5 people for the week.

Sunset over Chautauqua is very nice from the Miller Bell tower pier.

Very few people at Chautauqua have ever heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I did my best to evangelize.

Alcohol is now being sold at a couple of the resaurants on the grounds. However, there is no bar service.

Chipmunks are cute.

Purple martins will noisily attack a hawk. And chase it away. And dive-bomb it.

Our kids are now old enough to go to the playground unattended.

The house we are staying in has adult bikes we can borrow any time. We don’t need to take our own, just the kids’.

Communication is the key to a successful marriage.