After the trip out to Mt. Hood, I had to pack some of my things and fly out to Kansas for my next job. I had my mom drop me off and I flew out to Minneapolis where my connecting flight got delayed by an hour and a half. By the time I arrived in Kansas City it was past midnight. After recovering my luggage, I made my way over to the rental office to pick up my car. I had reserved a “midsized” car/Mazda6 or equivalent. When I walked out to my car, I was shocked to see a teeny egg-shaped car that didn’t even have a trunk! It was TEENY! I figured there had to be a mistake. I walked to the desk and talked to the attendants to correct my rental. The first representative tried to play it off like the car “WAS” a midsized car. I looked out there and the car had no trunk! It was the size of a subcompact! Thankfully, a lady behind the counter was helpful and told me that it was the largest car they had at the time. She offered another car, but it was about the same size, and didn’t even have an Aux port. I wasn’t happy, but there wasn’t much I could do. The lady told me that if I were to return that weekend, I could switch it out for a better vehicle. It was already around 12:30am, I had more than an hour drive to my hotel, and I had to be up at 6am for work. I took the teeny foil wrapped roller-skate out on the highway, and had a white knuckled drive to Topeka. The wind was blowing around so much, and the car could have only weighed several hundred pounds. It was like driving a ping-pong ball through a wind tunnel. I managed to get to the hotel, check in, and fall asleep around 1:45.
At work, it was rather apparent that things were going pretty slow, and I wouldn’t be very busy. I managed to catch up with expense reports and other things throughout the day. There were a few great lightning storms that came rolling through, but I wasn’t able to snag any photos of the strikes with my new camera due to all the strikes were occurring during daylight hours. There was far too much light for long term exposures. I had the idea of making a lightning sensor that would trigger my camera’s shutter upon a sudden change in light. That occupied some of my time in getting that circuit all set up with my camera’s shutter sync cable port.
That weekend I headed out to Kansas City again to deal with Hertz rental. I turned in the little egg-car and thankfully the same lady was there behind the desk. Unfortunately, I counted over 14 people swarming the front desk. There were only two attendants, and there were two groups of people ignoring any sort of line or organized cue list for customers. The closest group was about 4 people, possibly a family, but definitely requiring two vehicles by the size of them. The second group fluctuated by a dozen or so black people who all seemed to have something to say. As soon as one person got upset, it set off a chain reaction of loud yelling, and mob-like gestures. I would hate to have been one of the attendants because I could think of nothing more satisfying than revving up a gasoline powered weed whacker, and going nuts in that crowd of uncontrollable retards. After waiting about 20 minutes at the front of the line, finally the familiar lady recognized me and frantically gestured me over. We talked for a bit and she was quite thankful to have someone whom she could converse to without fear of losing tempers. She showed her appreciation by hooking me up with a beautiful , brand new Mazda6. It was so new in fact that as I was taking it out of the rental center, I noticed that it didn’t have any license plates. Front or back. I asked the guy at the gate if that was alright, and he told me to go back and get a different car. After such an ordeal just to get such a sweet car, I didn’t want to turn around and go through another bunch of shenanigans and risk getting another teeny car. I explained the circumstances to the attendant there at the gate, and he gave me someone’s card who to call if I did get pulled over. I was happy with it, and I blasted on out of there.
I headed north to Minneapolis. The first bit was stressful with slow traffic and several dozen miles of construction. It was a long drive, but my Zune pumped out music and audiobooks which made for better travel. The Mazda6 flew down the road and was sooo much smoother than the previous car. I arrived to visit Jaime and we hung out and watched some Arrested Development. The next morning we went out to sightsee in Minneapolis. Later we had some yummy Thai food for dinner. The next day was Conference and the weather was great for a walk around the parks there. I then left for the long trip back to Topeka where I had some work to catch up on.
The weekend after I decided I would exchange my taboo plateless rental in for something that I didn’t have to consistently dodge the fuzz with. The people at Hertz gave me a brand new RAV4 in place of my current rental. I then took it up to Omaha to visit Grandma and Grandpa Layman. I showed up that evening and was able to take some photos around and catch up some with them. I later visited Darrel who was having some issues with his motherboard and hard disks. I then got back to the Layman’s and went to bed. The next day I went to church with them and visited some of the people in their ward. That evening Jerry and Marry came over for dinner. Shortly after their visit, I packed my things and started on my way back to Topeka. The next week was really slow at work, and I felt as though I really wasn’t needed anymore. We finished up our job ahead of schedule, and I was able to snag a flight back home before the weekend. I ran some last minute errands and got on a plane after dropping off the car. No sooner had I stepped off the plane when I got a voicemail from my boss telling me to simply drive down to Illinois for an emergency job for a week. I had to call him up and inform him that I was currently in Washington. Since I was pretty darn hungry after not eating anything but airplane peanuts, I took my mom out to eat BBQ ribs.
Friday Brent brought down my KTM and we hit some trails and the track out near Ravensdale. It was a little wet, but the sun came out for a brief while. Dustin’s brother was out visiting, so he was able to ride with us that day. On Saturday we went out to Emma’s place and went off exploring near the Green River Gorge. Breanna accompanied our group as we went about. Later the skies opened up and we got dumped on, and we sought shelter under some pine trees. We checked out a neat little abandoned resort by some scenic areas along the river.
Soon after the weekend I had to hop on a plane and head on out to Illinois for a quick job. It was extremely dirty, tiresome, and uncomfortable. Thankfully we were able to complete the job in the week we had planned on, and I was able to make my flight that I had scheduled. The rental car I was driving was really slick. Nissan Altima with the CVT. I really liked it. I hated Illinois with all their bogus toll booths. Really annoying. I’m sorry, I don’t usually drive around with $8 in quarters and change with me. Completely ridiculous.
I got back home after my job and still haven’t decided to clean out some of my dirty clothes which are saturated in ultra-fine fly-ash. I spent some time playing around with a time delay circuit and a sonic trigger attached to a modified camera flash. It would flash around 1/30,000 of a second, and allows for doing some fun high speed photography. A few nights of creativity led to some rather interesting photos. A few days after my return, I got a phone call with a concerned official asking about the report my coworker and I had submitted. Apparently I was “assigned” to write another report without my knowledge. Therefore, I had to spend another few days to iron all that out. That weekend however was Yuka and Dan’s wedding, not to mention the bachelor party prior. I had requested those days off, and the report would simply have to wait. The bachelor party was fun, and I even won 3rd place in the go-cart racing! Yuka’s wedding was great, and it was nice to see old friends again. During that week I was also able to head on out to Whidbey Island and fly my glider out by Ft. Ebey. The updrafts were extremely strong, and I was having difficulty keeping my plane DOWN. I inserted about 4-5 marble sized rocks into the canopy to act as a ballast. That helped significantly. While I was flying I met some guy from Canada who was flying his gliders. His planes were far better equipped for the strong winds, and were traveling with ease. He accidentally sliced my plane in half when he zipped past. He was nice enough to help me fix it and get it flying again. Three immature bald eagles were flying around eyeing my plane since it resembles a bird so much. Therefore, when I had some time later on I had to finish my new project that looks like a red-tailed hawk.
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