I am Soooooo Mad!

I just really can not post today! I can not believe those bozo's at People Magazine snubbed me yet again! People's Sexiest Men Alive 2007

Now I am glad Matt won it, he has long been one of my favorites and I think we all know how I feel about Matt McConaughey but I did not even make the top 100!

Can you believe this? Have they not seen my finely honed keyboard muscles rippling manfully beneath my forearms as I type? Have they not seen my wrist watch with the slide rule built into the bezel? Have they not seen my uber cool flashlight/laser/stylus pen? (Thanks again Erika!) Have they not seen my guitar!?

What is the world coming too? No way I don't even get mentioned! The fix is in I tell you!

I mean I have not been so mad since "Smokey and the Bandit" was snubbed, SNUBBED I tell you, by the Oscar committee!

Holidays are great!

I went to the gym today and the place was deserted! So first off I got a good parking spot.

I mean a good part of my usual workout is the walk to the entrance from the wilderness parking spots that are left by the time I get there in the evenings. The parking is so far out sometimes I have to throw a live chicken out the truck window to distract the wolves so I can safely get out of the truck and start the hike for the entrance.

Anyway, it was great today! Not only did I not have to wait for any of my usual machines I did not even have to reset them as I rotated through them doing my 3 sets as they were all still set since no one else had used them between my sets. Wow. It was a very fast workout! Hooray for holidays!

Well, I should not say that, New Years is coming soon and then the gym will be packed full of NYPs immediately thereafter. You know, New Years People? (Pronounced NIPS) I mean in January the place looks like an Alaskan stream during salmon spawning season what with all the squirming NYPs flying through the air trying to get to a machine. For the month of January just forget about getting a treadmill let alone a good one.

People really do this?

Holy tamoli! Playing a guitar is HARD.

I broke out my little "Fun with Guitars" book. I like it because it assumes nothing. Here is how you hold a guitar, here is how you hold a pick. This is how you tune the guitar.

Hey, so far so good! The first 6 pages of the book were cake. No problem-o! I am gonna be a rock star in no time! Then suddenly we hit the dreaded page 7, "Our first chord".


I look at the picture, it's simple enough right? Three fingers three strings. What could possibly go wrong? Holy crap! It's like playing "twister" with your fingers! "Right hand Blue, left foot orange" Oh man, with a little stretching I can put the correct three fingers on the correct three strings in the correct three frets and then I strum. One cat howled and the other cat started trying to jump out the closed window so something clearly was not right. Oh, you don't just touch the strings you have to push down on them and do it HARD. Ok, got it, strum, that still does not sound right? Oh, now some fingers are lightly touching some strings I should not be touching making them dead.

I am telling you it is HARD to push down hard enough on the right strings in the right places and NOT touch any of the wrong strings! It takes a good ten minutes to get my fingers juuuuust right to get a clean chord.

So after an hour, with a little concentration I can handle page 7! Page 8 is a little song I can play just by holding that one chord and plucking a single string in the right order. It did not sound like much to me but it must have been a pretty good song because the cats joined in and yowled along. They were also rolling back and forth on the floor while they sang. I guess that is how cats dance?

So after one afternoon of practice I can make a chord with maybe 10 seconds to get my fingers in juuuuuuust the right places. Man those three fingertips are throbbing and there are some muscles in the top of my hand that I never knew existed before that ache but by golly I can kinda play a chord and a pretty bad song composed of one note and one chord. Woot!

So the next day I am ready for page 9.



What? You have GOT to be kidding right? From one side of the fingerboard to the other? Holy crap? What kind of freakish hand do you need to be able to do THIS? At first I just can not do it. I stretch and stretch trying to get my fingers all the way across that board AND push down hard AND not touch any other string. I keep trying though and eventually I can make a G7 chord. My fingertips are throbbing, I have a muscle twitch in a FINGER but by golly I can make a very bad G7!

So I look at the bottom of page 9. It's the same song from page 8 but now it has two chords. What? I am supposed to do two different chords in the same song? It takes me a long time to get my fingers positioned right to make one chord, how in the hell am I supposed to change chords between strums? Impossible. Human fingers simply can not do this stuff.

I have always admired musicians. Now I stand in awe of them. How can you possibly push that hard that precisely and change your finger positions that fast?

So after two afternoons my fingers tips hurt enough I can't use the remote with my left hand and I can barely make two chords. I am pretty depressed. I am thinking I should have bought drums instead. At least they are big. "Ugh, Rob can hit big circle. Circle go bang! Bang good! Rob like go bang!" Yeah, that may be about my speed!

Then I remember back when I bought my first PC and how I had to hunt and peck and it took a long time to type one sentence. Then I look at my fingers fly over the keyboard now. It took a while but I learned the keyboard. Of course with a keyboard you only have to push one key at a time but you can't hit two and the keys are actually the size of your fingers instead of little threads. So I realised that while this will be much harder than learning to type that I can learn.

The biggest question at this point is how much will the kitties have to suffer before I learn?

I wanna do what?

I love music and I have ALWAYS wanted to play a musical instrument. I seem to have zero aptitude for it though. My fourth grade music teacher was the last one NOT to throw her hands up in exasperation trying to teach me to play.

Well for about the last year or so I kept getting the itch to learn guitar. I kept thinking about how much I have done with my hands over the years. I used to do very precise work in aircraft parts fabrication. I built my own plane from scratch, I learned to type at a better than average level so by golly I should be able to learn to play a guitar, right?

So Wednesday night I got the impulse and I went to a local music store and bought a guitar! I was not sure how this latest experiment in music was going to work out so I did not want to plunk down the big bucks right off. The salesman was a little deaf to that showed me a $5,000 guitar first. I was like, oh no, no! So then he showed me a $2,400 guitar and I laughed at him and said, "Dude, you are not getting this! I am buying a first car for a teenager and you keep showing me Ferrari's. Where in the heck are the beat up old Hyundai's? How about a rusted out Pinto? That is what I am looking for here."

Once got the idea we had to go into the back area of the store! :)

They had three guitars under $200 back there. The one for $199 was a good name brand and the wood was very pretty. I liked it. The second one was a Mexican flag guitar and I was like no, not my style amigo. He laughed and said "Oh hey, I forgot, we have a American flag one here too."

So he dug out this "Buck Owens" special and I kinda chuckled but he said this flag one was $99 and it includes a strap that is a heck of a deal. He went ahead and played it a little. He was surprised, he said it had a really good sound quality and he was really surprised that such a cheap guitar sounded so good.

I said I liked like the $200 one better and handed it to him. So he started playing it. He was really amazed now because the name brand one did not sound nearly as good as the tacky one. He switched guitars a few times I could hear the difference too. So I figured, man I am a nerdy redneck, when did I start caring about how things look? Performance is what counts and this tacky thing performs better at half the price. Hell we were made for each other.



Man is that tacky or what? Even the strap is red white and blue! It is hard on the eyes. It's like the old batman series though, it's so schlocky it is starting to grow on me.

Picture Tagged!

Andie over at "Sweet. Southern. Spirited." put up some pictures of her self from high school.

She challenged me to do the same so here we go. The only catch is I only have three pictures of me on my laptop. I was 19 in the first two so that is almost high school, right?



This is my wedding picture with the other half cropped out.

(any picture can be clicked for a larger version but I don't recommend it on this one,it was scanned in from an 8 X 10. The other two are snapshots and are more manageable)



Never fear though, here is a picture with me and the former Mrs. My oh my, she sure was a knockout wasn't she? Oh and how I LOVED that 80's hair- big and layered just like Farrah Faucet! It's a shame she was just so mean and angry all the time (I seem to have that effect on women :) ) Also be sure to notice that even though we have been married for a very short time in this photo that I have already assumed the proper head down, eyes averted posture in her presence! I'm a quick learner ya know! ;)



This one was taken when I was 24 maybe 25 on a great motorcycle camping trip in the Ouachita (wash-i-ta) mountains. This is the first picture I know of where I have a moustache. I still have the caterpillar but I have been thinking about getting rid of the facial fur lately. Change is hard though.

There ya go Andie, didn't think I had the guts huh? :)

Now... who do I tag in return? Hmmmmm.

Bureaucracy

On a pilot’s forum a friend of mine, Judy P. was really having a hard time understanding some of the federal regulations and why she had to do certain useless paperwork. Even though this particular exchange is about the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) in particular it really does apply to all government  bureaucracies.

In her exasperation she ended one of her posts with the following line:

“I'm sorry but my PhD is doing me no good understanding this.”

My answer:

Judy, Judy, Judy,

That is to be expected. Unless your PhD is in "Liberal Arts" there was probably some extended stream of logical thought required to receive it.

A bureaucracy abhors logical thought. Logic is the anathema of bureaucratic design. Logic is an abomination before the gods of bureaucracy.

A bureau is where people incapable of logical thought end up when they can't get a job anywhere else and the welfare runs out. Thus we achieve a fully equalitarian society where the least capable members of a society suddenly get to make the rules thereby achieving a society of perfectly equal inefficiency.

If for some odd reason you really want to understand the process may I recommend large doses of LSD? About the time the curtains start to melt and drip and you are wondering if Martha Stewart knows how to get curtain stain out of the carpet you can achieve a moment of infinite clarity where the inner workings of government agencies will suddenly snap into focus! (This is also a good time to look at your income tax return. Suddenly Schedule C makes perfect sense! Far out man!)

Now if harsh mind altering chemicals are not your style I understand. Please be aware that similar results can be obtained in a purely organic, environmentally friendly way by suspending yourself in the air by ropes attached to hooks inserted under the skin of your back. If you can get some friends to sit around and play bongos I understand that helps too. After about 12 hours or so of dangling by your skin you will be able to ask the spirits to explain the inner workings of modern government to you.

I personally prefer the time tested methodology of simply muttering "freaking gummint morons" under my breath and filling out my forms like a good little sheep. Yes, it is the coward’s way and I'm not proud but I do maintain a semblance of sanity that way. One must pick one's battles.

No, I'm not bitter. Why do you ask?

Random Thoughts...

1) I drive a hybrid. It had a recall on a little electrical component. That component is under the battery though so the dealership is having a hard time figuring out how to get the 450 pound (204 kg) battery with no handles out. In the meantime I have a loaner. It's funny, I sorta forgot you have to turn the key and HOLD it until the engine starts in a "normal" car. In mine I just turn the key real quick and let go just to tell the car "I'm ready to drive now" then it starts and stops the engine whenever it feels like it.

On a related note, when I first bought the hybrid every time the engine would shut down I would cuss and throw it into neutral. That was long habit from years of driving clunkers where the engine would die all the time and had to be restarted in neutral.

2) I cheated on my diet this weekend. I had hash browns with breakfast. :(

I have not had any potato since July. I rediscovered the fact that a potato is the most astounding and wonderful of foods! Oh and when you shred it up and fry it in butter it is the very nectar of the gods! Mmmmm, crunchy on the outside, warm and gooey on the inside and just brimming with starchy goodness! Now I feel like a heroin junkie jonesing for another fix! I keep flashing back to that golden brown crispy succulence.

Oh look! There is my dog Toby! He died when I was in 6th grade! It's good to see you boy! What? Charlize Theron called, she has read my blog and can't wait to marry me? Wow! Sandra Bullock is going to fight her for me? Oh man this is so cool! That must be why I am so sweaty and shaking?

Oh crap, the potato withdrawal hallucinations have already started!

What was I thinking?

How in the heck did I think my camera was a perfect example of the conflict between my inner nerd and my inner redneck? Granted it was a good example but perfect?

Melek telling the tale of her car held together with primer made me think of the true perfect example of how my high tech and redneck halves conflict.

I built a plane a few years ago. It was a very futuristic swept wing "backwards" airplane with uber cool gull wing doors. All it really lacked was a cool DANGER emblem!



(Click any picture for a larger version)

It had a 540 cubic inch (8.85 liter) fuel injected engine with a custom throttle body and forced air induction system I had designed and built myself. This was driving a very high tech carbon fiber composite propeller I had ordered from Germany.



I had all these great plans about all leather bucket seats, suede headliners, excellent carpeting and the coolest paint job around.

Then I ran out of money and patientce, so I ended up flying for a year with the barest of essentials. I covered the seat frames with foam then bought four slip over seat covers from Wal-mart, you know, the ones intended to hide the tattered original covering on your seats? I was not hiding the covering that WAS the covering! :)



The interior was just bare ugly fiberglass and the outside was all in primer! But just look at that cool 16 channel digital engine monitor. Mmmmmmm.



Look at that glorious white primer! Hey, I did splurge on epoxy based white primer instead of the normal one part grey primer! Unlike the former Melek-mobile water would not hurt the epoxy based primer so maybe, just maybe I am not such a big redneck after all?

What the heck am I saying?!

If I could have thought of a way to use red rags for gas caps without them blowing off on the take off run I would have done it just for the effect!

Hey, as long as you are doing 200 mph (322 kph) who the heck cares what it looks like? Nothing epitomizes "redneck" more than that concept! Hmmmmm, in fact, as I think about it, on this project nerdyness was only a means by which to achieve perfect redneckedness.

Whoa, that's totaly deep! Suddenly I feel the need to meditate. Hey, rednecks can meditate!

New Product Idea!

In my laser pen post I mentioned that the most horrible of all presents from a male perspective is underwear.

I also mentioned that a DANGER sticker could make even the lamest of gifts very cool from the male perspective. So continuing that line of thought I decided that a brilliant new product should be male under wear with big DANGER emblems! Yeah, that would be cool!



For boys underwear the DANGER emblem could be in the back. "Ah, isn't that cute?"

For men's underwear the emblem would be in the front. "Oooo la la!" I tell you, no male ego could possibly resist! (Hmmmm, upon further review the mans size could go either way, eh?)

So now those oh so serious people who just insist on giving lame but practical gifts can do so and the males in your life will still think you are cool and funny! It's win-win I tell you. Oooooo, I am gonna make a million off of this one! :)

Now a question for the audience; Did this idea come from my nerdy half or my redneck half? What do you think?

Veteran's day weekend.

Well, being a geek I am normally vaugly uncomfortable with strangers in the house.

The mother and aunt of my room mate Erika came to visit for the long weekend. However, I hit it off with them right off and had a wonderful time!

Since they (and the roomie) are from Toronto I did have to work on my Canadian-American translation skills. This weekend I discovered that a serviette (sp?) is Canadian for Napkin and a Carburetor has nothing to do with a car, its a garbage disposal! Veteran's day is Remembrance day up north and they had Thanksgiving a month ago!

In Canada they buy little cloth flowers from veterans for Remembrance day and pin them to their clothing. I have blanked on the name of the little flowers right now. I like that tradition though, I would like to see that one spread here.

Erika has been living in America long enough now to have shaken off most of her accent but her visiting family had the most delightful accents and they threw in plenty of the requisite "eh?'s" at the end of sentences! To me the accent sounded like a blend of Massachusetts and Wisconsin accents. That soft A sound of Mass. with some of the Wisconsin Scandinavian overtones. It was wonderful! There is a melody, a rhythm to the speech that is really fun to behold as well.

If they had any thoughts on my Texas accent they did not share them but it had to sound odd to them?

(BTW, if an American is from America shouldn't a Canadian be from Canadia?)

Anyway, as much as I dread having strangers in the house and having my normal routine broken on Monday morning when Erika was back at work and her relatives were gone I was a little sad. I had grown used to chatter and the light hearted liveliness that had prevailed in the house over the weekend. The contrast made the returning silence in the house that much louder.

It's Nerd-a-riffic!

It is even geektastic!

My house mate gave me the most awesomely geeky gift! (after Michelle's devastating critique of men with room mates I have adapted the more man-friendly term house mate! Domestic partnership is actually the most accurately descriptive term but that one seems to give people funny ideas)

I have scored mondo geek points at work with my new gift. I am once again rising to alpha-geek status in the nerdy herd (sadly, no mating privileges are attached to this type of alpha status)

Check it out! She gave me a PEN.



Oh not just any old any old pen. This is a pen Sean Connery would be proud to own! Note the two buttons on the upper right side. We will get to that in a minute.

With this pen when you the twist the shank one way you get a normal old ink pen...



However, if you twist the tip the OTHER way you get a PDA stylus! No more fumbling around looking for the stupid plastic pen that is SUPPOSED to be attached to the PDA, it's right in your pocket! In a perfect world, while in a meeting, your arch rival geek seeking to score points would see you about to write on your PDA with a 'normal' pen and would say aloud, "Hey, you can't use a pen on your PDA!" Then you could casually demonstrate your nerdy superiority with your pen stylus! Mmmmmmm, can you feel the nerdy juices starting to flow yet?



But wait there is more!! Remember those two buttons? Well one of them is a flashlight! There is flash photography involved here so it does not look like much of a light but I used it to fetch the trash cans from the curb and it will nicely light the area in front of you while are walking! Ohhh yeah! {shudder} That's the stuff!




Oh but it just keeps getting better! Then we have the laser pointer. Oh NOTHING scores nerdy points like having your OWN laser pointer when you want to oh so coolly point out the mistakes of your arch rival during HIS presentation! Mmmmmmmm that's good stuff.

Again, the flash does dim things but this one has range. After my recent special forces operation to laser designate the trash cans out by the curb allowing Jack Bower's strike team to home in on them I was actually able to lase things up to 75 meters away and I am sure it will go further.



But now, for the piece de resistance! Oooooooo, the STICKER! Folks, it is that gift buying time of year again and if you are buying something for ANY male remember this little gift of insight I am about to bestow on you...



Anything that has a red DANGER sticker on it is wayyyyyy cool! Folks, you could take a Beany Baby or a cute little dolly and put a big red DANGER sticker on it and it instantly scores mondo man points!

You could even give that most dreaded of male presents, clothing (ick!) up to and including the absolute worst man present EVER, mens underwear but if you put the word DANGER on them then everything is suddenly very cool!

You simply can not go wrong with anything that says DANGER!

Do I have the coolest house mate or what?

The real truth!

Hey guys my nerdy half has been way over represented here and the redneck half is becoming very petulant. Nobody and I mean NOBODY wants a petulant redneck around! So here is a post from him…

Have any of you heard of the 911 Truth group? They contend that all the events of 911 were really all just part of a government plot. The government flew automated but empty airliners into buildings that were already pre-rigged with explosives so that they would come down in a controlled detonation. Those people must REALLY be onto something because one of the greatest intellectuals of our time, Rosie O'Donnell believes it too.

The theory is the government did all this so they could start a war with Iraq and get cheap oil. (So, how is that "cheap oil" thing working out anyway?)

So as my mind was stunned by the incredibly evil genius of the all powerful US Government plans I began to wonder, what other major events in history were started with staged events?

I mean the Spanish-American war started because one of our best battleships, The USS Maine , mysteriously blew up in Havana Harbor (then a Spanish colony) Could that have been faked too just so we could "liberate" the Philippines from Spain and get cheap bananas, rubber and later on cheap hookers for US Sailors at Subic bay? Hmmmmmm?

Maybe, but there was no video back then so it's hard to say now what caused the USS Maine to explode then.

However, I think I have just discovered that WWII was all started under false pretenses!

Exactly 13 months (number 13! Huh? Huh?!) to the DAY before WWII started the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapsed. It was a very new and large steel suspension bridge. They said the wind did it but c'mon, we all know the wind does not just blow down steel bridges! Resonance my beat red butt! How stupid do they think we are!

Look at this video. If you are too bored you can skip ahead to the 3:00 minute mark.



Did you see those little puffs of smoke just before it collapsed? Those were the explosive devices! I swear, look again!!

Oh how you people have been blinded by the governments lies!

Did you know there were no Jews on the bridge that day?! Uh huh! You heard me! The Israeli Government warned them all to stay home that day! Yeah, yeah, I know, Israel did not even exist in 1940. That's the official story but we all know better right?

In a rare collaboration of those ancient evil organizations, The Tri-Lateral commission and the Stone Masons, the secret Israeli Council of Elders had already been created. The covert government was hidden beneath the reflecting pool in Washington DC.

Oh and now you are going to tell me that the secret hidden Israeli government could not effectively communicate with all Jews any where on Earth at any time to warn them away from the doomed bridge, yeah right! The Washington Monument is not just a big phallic symbol! Nope, it is also a really big antennae for their global communications system communicating directly into the chips implanted in each Jew while being circumcised! (thus leading to the common belief that men think with their thing)

That poor dog in that car was actually the governments patsy that set off the explosives! FDR was holding her puppies hostage and was going to kill them unless she did the job! That is why she refused to be rescued! She sacrificed herself in a fit of motherly devotion! A very sad tale.

All of this scheming by the government was just a pretext to start an illegal and immoral war to get cheap cars and cheap electronics from Japan. Google it!

There *was* a book detailing exactly how the government pulled all this off but the government forced Amazon to take it off their website! Evil bastards!

Roosevelt, you sick puppy killing genius you! Why, you were so twisted and sick I would not even be surprised to find out you were really confined to a wheel chair and you just FAKED being able to walk!

Flying and talking.

Oh yeah, that reminds me!

On the very first flying trip I took with the family after I got my pilots license it turns out I said something stupid again.

Summer time in Texas makes for a lot of thermal activity. Flying through rising and sinking air can make for a rough ride. Another thing that can make a rough ride is the wind. Just like moving water hitting rocks in a stream and making white water, moving air hitting buildings and trees, etc make for turbulent rough air.

For our first trip as a family we were going to my in-laws. It is an 8+ hour drive and in my first plane it’s a 3 hour flight (I have a faster plane now and its only two hours now) My wife was terrified of flying. Her only incentive to get into this plane was to cut 6 hours off the trip to see her family. Of course, my then 10 year old son can not WAIT to get into the plane. He thought this was going to be way cool!

So we left at 6:00 Am on Saturday morning. It was cool and the wind was dead calm. As we departed the ride was like a canoe on a glassy pond or like a Cadillac on new asphalt; Smooooooth. My ex was digging it! The ride was so smooth she wondered what she was ever afraid of.

The plan was to do the same thing Sunday morning, leave by at least 9:00 am so we would get back to Dallas before it got too hot and the winds started kicking up.

But oh no! The in-laws made a breakfast spread fit for two kings and the coffee and the talk, talk, talk went on and on. I kept saying, "Honey we got to go, it's going to get hot and rough, I don't mind but you wont like it at all!"
"Just one more cup of coffee dear", and the gab-fest continued.

We did not get off the ground until 1:00 PM. That put us in Dallas at 4:00, the hottest time of the day. It was like 109 degrees and the wind was HOWLING at 25+ plus miles per hour. In the very small plane I had then the ride was comparable to off roading or white water rafting. It was ROUGH.

Predictably, the ex is terrified, she is sitting in the center of the back seat holding the grab handles above each door for dear life. Here eyes were closed and occasionally she would even whimper in fear. Meanwhile, my son, up in the front seat with me, is having a pretty good time. "Weeeee! Hit another bump Dad!"

We finally arrive at the home airport, it's almost over! I lined up with the runway and started descending to the runway for landing. I hit an updraft. A big mass of rising hot air. I am trying to go down and this is lifting me up. It's a glider pilots dream but I want down! I put in all the flaps (air brakes for all intents and purposes) and brought the engine back to complete idle but I still am not going down and the runway is getting closer. I am going to be too high and too close to make a landing.

This is where pilot training kind of bit me. Again, in training we are always talking out loud. If my instructor was sitting beside me he can see we are too high and too close and he is wondering if I know it. So I would say it when I realize it so he knows that I know.

This is a pretty standard situation. It happens all the time, you just put the power back in circle around and set up to land again- its called a "go around". As pilots we are told over and over again to never push a bad set up, just go around and set up again.

Anyone remember that Southwest Airlines flight that ran off the end of the runway in Chicago a few years ago? This was exactly the situation they were in. Too high and too close but instead of going around they pushed it and then they were going to fast to stop before the end of the runway.

So, as I am looking down seeing that we are too high and too close I decided that we were not going to make a landing on this setup. So talking to my "instructor" I said out loud, "We are not going to make it." and got ready to go around. Which I dreaded because everyone including me was ready to end this rough ride.

Maybe ten seconds go by and my inner self says to me, "Hey stupid, what words did you just say out loud? Did you just tell your terrified wife "We are not going to make it"?"
"Uh", I replied to myself, "Well yes, I did say those words but it should be obvious what I meant. Besides, they probably did not even hear me."
"Oh really? Why don't you take a look and see?"

So I looked over at my then 10 year old son in the seat next to me and I will never forget his big blue eyes looking up at me in complete terror! Oh, yeah, he heard me. So if the one who has not been scared is now terrified because of my big mouth what does the already terrified one in the back seat look like?

I look back and she had one arm looped though the handhold, both feet are braced against the back seats and she has one hand over her eyes. She may even be making peace with her God. I'm not sure.

OK Rob, pull your foot out of you mouth now! "No, no, no guys! That is not what I meant! We are fine, we are safe, we are just not going to make a landing this time around! It's OK I swear!"
And we did make a nice easy landing after all.

On the bright side, on all future trips, we always got out before it got hot! I never ever heard "Just one more cup of coffee" again.