MorseBlog

This past week Vicki came out for a week long visit. This would no doubt be her last visit to Oregon for some time. We visited with some friends from Lattice the Kendricks and our previous boss Clement Lee and his wife Mary. Both evenings were really nice. They are all such great people. This past sunday Vicki and I were invited by Keith Westrum, a friend at work who had arranged the Mt Adams climb last summer, to go snowshoeing on Mt Hood. We have had a lot of snow in the Cascades this year and it had been some time since I had been snowshoeing. Vicki had barely heard of snowshoeing. So we drive out with some friends of Keith's (Glen and Christi and Brian). Hire some snowshoes and drive up to Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood. The parking lot is at 6000ft. It was 25 degrees F and there was a 20 mph wind blowing. Fortunately Vicki and I brought warm enough clothes. In the parking lot the snow depth was apparent as seen below. The snow was really deep! We then strapped on the snowshoes an...

> This Christmas I decided to go to the UK. I came to this decision for a number of reasons. I would be able to spend more time with Redington due to the way visitation schedule requires a full 3 days of recovery for him before his school resumes. I would be able to spend time with Vicki and meet her parents. And I had little surprise for Vicki. I flew to Heathrow via Chicago on the 23rd of December and arrived on the 24th at about 7:00AM. Vicki drove out from Bath (red star on the left) to pick me up. She then drove us up to Bedford to pick up Redington. (The star on the map just north of London.) We then proceeded to Vicki's parents house in North Yorkshire. They live in a small town called Kirkbymoorside. Kirk is the Viking word for church so the town is the church by the side of the moor. (Kirkbymoorside is the red star at the top of the map.) We had a long drive to catch up with news of each other. Redington had amazingly gotten bigger (5'9") since I saw him in Oct...

While in the UK over Christmas Redington , Vicki, and I took a day trip to Portsmouth home of the Royal Navy Museum. The object of the visit was to see the HMS Victory dry docked there. The Victory was Admiral Horatio Nelson's flagship during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Redington and I had read the Horatio Hornblower series together and so were big fans of this fictional series based on the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic wars. This is the Royal Navy dockyard where the Victory is dry-docked as seen from Google Earth. Here we are posing outside the Victory. It has 104 guns of 12, 16 and 32 pounds. It carries 6000 sq yard of sail and sailed as fast as 12 knots one of the fastest ships of its day. The Victory was built using the wood of 8000 oak trees of a size and age unavailable in the UK today. The ballast consisted of pig iron and shingle (gravel). The powder magazine stored 3 tons of gun powder. The magazine is lined with copper sheeting to fight static electricity and plaster...