June 28, 2006
Sometime interesting things come across:
Thought you might find this interesting.
Artists Rendering of the USS New York
With a year to go before it even touches the water, the Navy’s amphibious assault ship USS New York has already made history. It was built with 24 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center.
USS New York is about 45 percent complete and should be ready for launch in mid-2007. Katrina disrupted construction when it pounded the Gulf Coast last summer, but the 684-foot vessel escaped serious damage, and workers were back at the yard near New Orleans two weeks after the storm.
It is the fifth in a new class of warship – designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft.
“It would be fitting if the first mission this ship would go on is to make sure that bin Laden is taken out, his terrorist organization is taken out,” said Glenn Clement, a paint foreman. “He came in through the back door and knocked our towers down and (the New York) is coming right through the front door, and we want them to know that.”
Steel from the World Trade Center was melted down in a foundry in Amite, La., to cast the ship’s bow section. When it was poured into the molds on Sept. 9, 2003, “those big rough steelworkers treated it with total reverence,” recalled Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing, who was there. “It was a spiritual moment for everybody there.”
Junior Chavers, foundry operations manager, said that when the trade center steel first arrived, he touched it with his hand and the “hair on my neck stood up.”
“It had a big meaning to it for all of us,” he said. “They knocked us down. They can’t keep us down. We’re going to be back.”
The ship’s motto? – ‘Never Forget‘
More info:
April and May went by so fast! I have been very busy with work, in the month of May I put in 370 hours of billable time almost 100 hours a week!
I now have the record for work, 1370 hours so far this year.
June 13, 2006
On May 22 I stopped in this little store/restaurant in Kaplan, Louisiana:
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Kaplan is out in the middle of nowhere (huge farmlands) between I10 and the gulf:
They had the best food I had had in a long time.
Out in this area are miles of rice paddies. In the spring when it starts getting warm, the farmers drain the fields and plant rice seeds. When the plants get 6 inches tall they flood the fields again and leave them flooded until time to harvest. In the fall, they harvest the rice with a machine that cuts the stocks to 6 inches above the ground.
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The farmers then flood the fields to 18 inches and set out crawfish traps:
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During the spring when it had became hot, the crawfish had burrowed under the mud; now in the fall, when it gets cooler and the water is present, they come out of the mud and spawn. The crawfish grow fast and eat the leftover rice and 6 inch stalks. They also love fish, so the farmers put fish into the traps. The traps are just like lobster traps, a hole in the side ramped down so when the crawfish get in they cannot find their way out. The kids motor about in their flat bottom boats and pick up the traps full of crawfish.
In the spring, the crawfish burrow down out of sight, the rice is planted, and the cycle starts again – crawfish in the winter, rice in the summer, what a great symbiosis!
My next trip was to Denver!!
Some pictures from that trip:
The Rocky Mountains
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A Big Horned Sheep – Mike from Colorado had never seen one up this close!
An elk
A deer
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Buffalo
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Kayakers
A harmless Bull Snake
A Marmut up on top of the mountain, they have burrows up there above the tree line!
It was chilly up there, 36°F
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Weekend trip weather:
Amy and Darren’s weather:
Dad and Betty’s weather:
Susan and Al’s weather:
David’ and jeans weather:
Donald and jeanne’s weather:
Daniel and candy’s weather:
Heather and michael’s weather:
Rod and jill’s weather:
See you in Florida : 2006!
| 2006 | Darrell & Marilyn | 1998 | John’s Boat |
| 2007 | Dan & Candy | 2002 | |
| 2008 | Sue and Al | 2005 | David and Jean’s Housewarming party, Pocomoonshine Lake, Princeton, Maine |
| 2009 | John | ||
| 2010 | Donald | ||