Thoughts On A Sunday

We attempted to get the spare propeller mounted on the boat, to no avail. We had to work around some of the nastier milfoil – a foreign water plant that has caused problems in the lakes in New Hampshire for some time – and had to keep an eye on passing boats in case they came a little too close to where we were working.

It turns out that one of the spare parts we had wasn't the right one, making it impossible to mount the prop. In fact, we had to have The Boat lifted out of the water when our first attempts failed.

Discretion being the better part of valor, I decided to leave it up to the pros and let them deal with the parts mismatch. I was told that everything should be squared away by tomorrow and The Boat will be back in its slip when the work is done.

Now all that will be left to do is pick up a new set of spares – prop, line cutter, spinner cone, and main prop bolt – and this time keep them on the boat.

I've damaged props, bent props, and even lost the sacrificial magnesium ring anode that damaged a prop when it came apart, but in all my years on the water, this is the first time I've ever lost a prop.

Well, there's a first time for everything.

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As an aside, Cap'n Dave from TowBoatU.S. - the fellow that towed us in after we lost the prop - was surprised to find out that the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout was a 1993 model. He thought is was a lot newer than that. I guess the previous owners and I have managed to keep it in tip-top shape. I just hope I can keep it that way.

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Paul over at Wizbang has pulled the plug. As he explains it, “It just ain't fun any more.” As happens with bloggers from time to time, he burned out. The final straw was the pissing contest that was foisted upon him by Ace. In any case he had enough.

We're gonna miss you, Paul.

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Doug at GraniteGrok links to an editorial in Germany's De Welt that lambastes Europe's cowardice when it comes to fighting the war on terror. Doug post also includes the English translation for those of us out there who don't speak German.

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Mudge tells this story, one he witnessed himself. So this is a mostly true story.

In a grocery store the term 'Service Desk' is most often an oxymoron. My visit there today was worth all the time I have squandered there in the past.

There was a woman, mature but not old, in front of me at the desk. She had a cartload of groceries, but she was at the desk to use her debit card to get cash. The clerk, a young cutie pie, was explaining that the automatic tellers would not dispense cash in excess of change for bills deposited.

Customer- " You ought to post signs to tell people, if they want cash besides their change they have to go to a cashier."

Clerk- "We do recommend that if you want extra cash you should go to a line with a cashier."

Customer- "Recommend? I didn't see any signs.”

Clerk- "We don't need them. We go over the rules all the time in our cashier training sessions."

Customer- "How would I know that?"

Clerk- "I'm recommending it now. It's our rule."

This exchange went on for some time with no progress until the customer went away muttering and shaking her head. Then the cutie pie came to me, with my gray hair and weird beard.

Clerk- "Its a shame. Some old folks just can't understand our modern world."

Actually the exchange went on for an extended period and I would have been annoyed if I weren't struggling not to laugh out loud.

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At first I though it was just me. But after asking a number of other local residents I realized that my observations were not in error.

For quite some time a small number of the summer residents here in the Lakes Region would fly in to the local airport on their business jets on Fridays and jet out again late Sunday afternoon. Over the years the number was pretty stable – less than a dozen, all told. But this year the number has doubled, with the number of jets park on the ramp at the airport far larger than it used to be.

I don't know who these folks are, but you know they must be doing well if they have a $35 million business jet sitting on the tarmac, waiting to take them to and from their summer 'cottages'.

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John Stossel again takes aim at the education lobby, skewering 'studies' that supposedly show that public schools are just as good as private schools when it comes to educating our kids.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where biz jets have found a new home, summer folks are trying to jam as much summer vacation as they can into the next four weeks, and where my poor boat is sitting on dry land waiting for repair....