Bambi Vs. Bumper

 

Last time, I wrote about my road trip from Northern California to Phoenix. I got to see a lot of beautiful scenery and interesting things all along the way. Amongst the cactus and creosote bush’s that dotted the roadside, something was missing. It took me a while to put my finger on it, but then I figured it out. Deer.

   I don’t mean Bambi and his family frolicking in the distance, but rather Bambi and his deer friends scattered along the medians and shoulders of the highway in various states of decay.

     I’m not celebrating the death of our furry woodland friends, just making an observation that the deer carcasses that litter the roadways here in the Midwest were lacking in the desert.

     Anyone who’s does much driving on the rural highways has certainly seen what remains of the battles between car and deer. While the cars do end up with sizeable scars, they tend to survive. The deer rarely do. Such was the case at 2:30am a few weeks ago when a large doe challenged my Grand Am to a death match. The result? Grand Am 1, deer 0.

   I was the last of my immediate family to have end up hitting a deer. In 20 years of driving I’ve hit or been hit by 3 different cars, several cats, opossums, raccoons, groundhogs, squirrels, birds, bunnies and about 20,000,000 bugs. Despite numerous attempts to attack my car, I’ve successfully avoided even the slightest scuffle with a buck or doe, until now.

     Previous attempts by the tasty animals to get in my way were foiled by their glowing eyes or the fact that they were standing right by the edge of the road. This made them easy to spot and easy to avoid.

  Once last winter as I drove down 49 just north of Paulding, OH, I looked out the window and there was a deer running right beside me on the passenger side– weird.  But the kamikaze attack I was the target of came without warning and without options. One second I’m driving down the road at a speed acceptable to local law enforcement, the next Debbie the Daredevil Deer is bouncing off my hood and doing summersaults through they sky.

     For technique, I gave her a 9 because she was really sneaky. For style an 8 for the incredible amount of time she was in the air. I couldn’t, however grade her dismount because she disappeared. Once I’d stopped the car and walked back to the scene of the attack, she was gone. I’m assuming she may have made it a few yards and then did what most of us would do if we just got hit by a car going 60(ish). I’ll never know for sure.

     Please don’t think I think it’s funny that the deer got hit and hurt and most likely died. I think it’s a shame that it happened.

     A shame not nearly as big as the animals death but no less important to the story is what happened to me afterwards.

     I first inspected the damage to the car, checked for leaking fluids and cut tires. Once I determined that it was drivable, I called the insurance company and got the “get my car fixed” ball rolling. Once that was done I headed with crumpled hood, shattered grill and missing headlight towards Kentucky.

     The next day I took the car to the shop and went to get my rental. That’s when things went south.

     I waited my turn at the counter and told them who I was and they told me they’d have my car right out and added that I was lucky because it was their last one.  A few moments later out they came with my car and I wanted to cry. Sitting out front waiting for me was a Dodge PT Cruiser. Let me say quickly that if you own a PT Cruiser I have nothing against you or even your choice of cars– to each his own. I however, have despised that car since it was launched. I can’t tell you why I hate it, only that I do.

     So now while I wait for my car to be repaired I do so behind the wheel of an underpowered over-hyped Mexico built “American” car.

     Maybe if a deer hits it I can get a better one.

 

Life in the Passing Lane

 

       I’ve given up trying to figure out how many miles I’ve driven on my treks back and forth to Kentucky, and with the price of gas I’m afraid to try and calculate how much future trips will cost. One recent road trip that didn’t cost me anything was last week when I drove from Fremont, CA (between San Jose and San Francisco) to Phoenix. It was a 750 mile jaunt from the mountains of Northern California, through the urban sprawl (and traffic crawl) of Los Angeles, finishing with a long stretch through the High Deserts of California and Arizona. All told it took about 10 hours, 42 gallons of gas, 2 bags of Combos, 3 bottles of soda, a pack of cigarettes and only one stop to pee.

     It was an interesting drive that offered a lot of beautiful scenery and a drive down memory lane. I was stationed in the California desert for 4 years, and my two oldest sons were born there. While the base I was stationed at was too far out of the way to add to my route, many of the areas I drove through were familiar cities and towns that I had visited while I lived out there from 98 to 2002. I had been to California twice last year for shoots, but never had time to wander far from where I was working. This time however work dictated a drive from our plant in Fremont to the Toyota proving grounds at an undisclosed location near Phoenix. I was excited about the drive and just the same, not looking forward to spending so much time behind the wheel. The drive was painless though, as the scenery flashed by and changed gradually as the miles rolled on the odometer.

     A few hours into my drive, I was reminded of one of the things about California that I didn’t miss: LA traffic. While I was stationed over an hour from Los Angeles, I ventured there just often enough to know that it wasn’t anywhere I’d want to live. I don’t know exactly what it is about that city that bugs me, but something does. While I’m sure the traffic was a good part of it, DC traffic is no better and I’d choose to move back there long before I’d elect to reside in LA.

     I quickly grew tired of the tortoise like pace of the cars and trucks around me, but luckily I didn’t have to suffer long. As the traffic broke open and I guided my rented wheels onto “the 10”, I was quickly reintroduced to one of my favorite things about California– speed. Once you hit the desert, the speed limit jumps to 75, which isn’t too bad. Many of the folks out there however find that a speed about 35mph fast is a much more efficient pace. I was happy to oblige the cars and trucks around me as we sped up to speeds I only get to see on NASCAR tracks back home. Believe it or not, 110 miles an hour doesn’t feel that fast. It also must not seem that fast to the state troopers out there because one was parked on the side of the road in an apparent speed trap. When I saw him I quickly dropped to a seemingly slow-motion 85. (I’ve found that most highway patrolmen will tolerate 10 miles an hour over the limit as long as you’re on a 4 lane highway and seem to have your vehicle under control.) The rest of the 100MPH+ pack kept up their pace, seemingly daring the officer to try and stop them. He looked in their direction but seemed unfazed.

    Once I was out of radar / laser range, I kicked it back up and enjoyed the speed while I could. As the sun started setting and the road grew a bit more windy the ebb and flow of the traffic slowed as well. 

    Looking back at the speeds we got up to, it makes me laugh a bit when I think back to all those high-speed chases you see on the evening news. The one’s in LA are even more comical in the way the reporter stresses the fact that “this case has reached speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour”. It’s comical because when traffic is moving on the highways in and around LA, 100MPH is hardly a shocking speed.

     At one point, just outside Palm Springs, I pulled off the freeway, broke out the video camera and set it up on the passenger side of the mid-sized SUV I’d been captaining. I pointed it out the windshield and hit the record button. The battery and hard drive lasted the remainder of the trip surprisingly enough, resulting in a 4+ hour long clip of the trip from mid day to sun set as I wound though the desert. When I got to the hotel, I took the footage and sped it up about 2000% and set it to music. I can now relive a portion of my trip in about 3 minutes. While it’s fun to watch the trip in fast forward, it was one that I’m glad I got to enjoy at a more normal  speed.

 here’s the video…

 

432,000

 

That’s how many inches above the round I am right now, on my way from  Detroit to San Francisco for another trip. Flying is not something I enjoy or dread really, it’s just something I do for work. I’ve become accustomed to the security procedures over the years and have learned to dress comfortably and for quick passage, not necessarily for appearance. 

    As an example, I’m currently sitting in the middle seat, (26B to be specific) wearing a t-shirt, jogging pants and loose tennis shoes. I’m not going to win any fashion awards, but for being crammed in between two strangers on a 5 hour flight, I’m relatively comfortable. That is aside from  having to type like a T-rex, with my elbows glued to my sides. Were I to have worried about how I looked and worn jeans and a button up shirt, I think I’d be finding myself quite a bit less comfy.

    I was the first in my row to board the plane, and sat for quite a while in the middle seat waiting to see who I’d be setting between. It’s a horrible thing really, analyzing people as they come down the aisle wondering if they are your “seatmates”. Being crammed next to someone (or two someone’s in my case) for a few hours really isn’t that big of a deal, it sure can seem like it. It’s must be something like what the bride and groom of an arranged marriage go through, just with shorter consequences.

   As this person and that made their way toward my seat I silently judged them as desirable or undesireable seatmates. This was a purely unintentional exercise mind you. This only seems to happen when I’m in the middle seat. When I’m in an aisle or window seat, I could care less who plops besode me, but being in the middle seat there are space issues. You can’t lean away from anyone on either side, so you’re stuck with what ever the ticket agent gave you to deal with. So as folks meanered between the seats, cramming oversized bags into undersized overhead bins, I was still all alone. I kept glancing at the people moving onto the plane, hoping that the folks in 26A and 26C somehow decided at the last minute that they didn’t really want to go to San Francisco.

As they filled the plane, people of all shapes and sizes made their way in my direction. There were a few people I hoped were not being seated by me. One was a guy with a huge to-go box from an airport restaurant in one hand and two carry-on bags in the other. He was talking loadly and seemed like the kind of guy that would be annoying to be around. Then there was the two older ladies– they were talking loudly and complaining to each other about EVERYTHING back in the terminal. I certainly didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of their conversation for the next 1,200 miles.  In the end, I was flanked by two people who are quietly doing their thing while I quietly do mine. Not bad— not as good as an empty row would have been, but not bad.

 

Mac Attack

CRAP! So I’m trying to update to the latest version of Final Cut (6.0.2 from 6.0.1) so I can edit some sweet XDcam EX NASCAR footage from Daytona, and I befall such a series of calamities that the thought of the Mac v. PC ads makes me want to throw my G5 at that smug little Warren Cheswick.  I know it’s all crash inspired rage on my part, but still… after spending years on both PCs and Macs I have learned one important lesson. Mac’s crash too…  A LOT!

  The problem truly isn’t the Mac’s fault this time. It’s the fact that since my employer has yet to see fit to allow our “Bad Apples” to join the network with the 50,000 PCs it has online, none of our software gets automatically updated. Soooo… when we find the need to update one piece of software, we get to spend the day downloading every patch and update and reference file Apple has released in the past so many months. Talk about fun.

     It started with the simple download and (attempted) installation of the FCP update . Easy enough. Launch the installer and here comes a message. What? I can’t install this until I’ve upgraded Quicktime? Fine. Back to the PC and download the QT update. Go to install that and another message: Update your OS. DAMN! Fine. back to the PC, download the OSX update, install it. Phew.. it worked! Now lets do QT. Worked like a charm. Finally, I can upgrade Final Cut. Nope. Now it tells me I need to update ProApps. That took two downloads and installs- as the second install is wrapping up I get the freakin’ black curtain of doom. Double crap! Go to reboot the system and all I get is a black screen with lots of unintelligble text on it. One of the only discernible words is “panic”. Nice.

     It’s now 8pm. I normally leave work at 5. Not happy am I. After several failed attempts to get the system to do something besides nothing, I loaded the OS disc into the drive to get it to boot from the DVD. Mr. Mac had different plans however. Once the disc stated to spin up, it shattered; just like Mythbusters said it wouldn’t… ever. But it did. It went in as a solid disc and came out in several jaged pieces. Now I get to learn how to disassemble a G5.

     Once I got the DVD drive removed, taken apart, cleaned out, put back together and the Mac reassembled, I loaded it with a new OS disc and restarted the machine. It comes to life, accepts the new OS install, and I’m back in business- sort of. It’s now 9:30 and I’ve had enough.

 6am the next morning I arrive with neither bright eyes or a bushy tail. Today I get to install a bunch more updates to bring the OS from the disc current as well as reinstall a bunch of software, including the latest version of Final Cut which I almost had completed installation on nearly 24 hours ago. My day is just chock full of frivolity.

   It’s almost 1am and I have everything reinstalled and working, save the Fibre Channel controller. I can finally open the XDcam footage from NASCAR and am beginning to think I might be actually coming close to the point where I’m just around the corner from being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, once I get the Fibre Channel fixed, I get to start the upgrade process on our other editing machine…