Sean and Louise and their travels in Odyssey

I want to direct those of you who aspire to a more mobile lifestyle to the blog of Sean Welsh and Louise Horner, who have been full-timing it in their Neoplan Spaceliner bus for the last several years.





You can read all about them at http://ourodyssey.us/



Sean and Louise worked the hurricane relief circuit in New Oleans and wound up doing some flood relief work up on the East Coast soon thereafter. Following that they meandered down into the Copper Canyon region of Mexico where their bus was first loaded onto a railroad car and then later loaded onto a ferry for the ride over to Baja. Currently they are in the Pacific Northwest having some work done.


They are motorcyclists (Odyssey has been reconfigured to carry two motorcycles internally) and enjoy spending their leisure time hangin' on Mexican beaches, so right there they are fine people as far as I am concerned.

A word about their bus - Odyssey is a very rare Neoplan Spaceliner. Neoplan is a German manufacturer that once had an assembly plant in Colorado. Most of the Neoplan production in the USA was for more conventional buses but the Spaceliner is a high powered over-the-road bus meant to be a deluxe first-class bus for German service. It's not quite a double-decker so think more in terms of the Spaceliner as being more of a deck and 3/4's. Typical layouts of the Spaceliners had the driver and a stewardess in a compartment in the low front of the bus and the passengers were upstairs. In Sean's converted Spaceliner the front window glass offers an unobstructed view because the driver's compartment is sealed off and directly below the living space.

The Spaceliner is a bus that has intrigued me for years. When the time came to start planning our transition to full-time RV'ing we looked at a couple of them but just felt that, as beautiful as they are they are simply too exotic and too high maintenenace for our purposes. Beautiful buses however, and it's wonderful to see Sean and Louise step up to the plate and accept the challenge. They have done well reconditioning and maintaining Odyssey.

Enjoy Sean and Louise's blog. They certainly keep themselves busy and are living what would seem to be the ideal lifestyle for folks with a wandering soul.

This and that - thoughts on charities

This is the doormat outside our RV. You can tell that sick minds are at work here.

Jollymon writes "What is your charitable foundation?"

Send those cards and letters to the Old Pirates Retirement Home folks, care of ... And mark the comment line with "rum fund".

No, seriously ... please don't. I am reminded that the recently deceased Louis Wolfson, a major financial patron here in Jacksonville, went to the klink after he sold unregistered securities. Securities which he had dutifully reported to the Feds in the first place. And that his "charitable contributions" in the 60's lead to the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas.

As we all know, no good deed goes unpunished.

I have this vision of seeing my name in the local newspaper. And not in a good way.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I actually have looked into a couple of charitable things that we could do to help out, but so far nothing has quite meshed.

Back about a decade ago Yours Truly was pretty active with the Red Cross as a Disaster Volunteer. Now don't get me wrong - I think that overall the Red Cross does a pretty fair job - but I just didn't feel like the Red Cross was dramatic enough for my tastes, let's put it that-a-way.

The Lovely Ms. Deborah has been active in local church food kitchens for the last few years. They feed the down and out, and the group that she has been working with has a small group home for folks who are recovering from various addictions.

Part of our reasoning behind getting the Bluebird Wanderlodge is that the big old steel bus is just that - a big old solid bus with a relatively huge generator and equally huge holding tanks for drinking water and non-drinking stuff, if'n you get my drift. We are trying to get geared up to go somewhere if needed.

I think that it's fair to say that the events in New Orleans of a few years ago were a wake up call for many of us. That natural disaster was more than a mere inconvenience or a mere couple of days without power. That was a life-threatening debacle of massive proportions that has become a national shame. And just as FEMA was woefully unprepared, those of us who would have liked to have volunteered were not really prepared either.

So that was part of the thought behind reconditioning the old Wanderlodge, rather than buying that fancy Winnebago that we looked at once upon a time. The one with the slideouts, and the fancy interior, and the beautiful exterior, and the ... oh never mind. That one. You get the picture.

Moving forward, one of my personal inspirations when it comes to the local charitable scene is Bill Wharton, a/k/a The Sauceboss. If you are a Jimmy Buffett fan then you have likely heard of Bill. He's Jimmy's inspiration for the Buffett's tune "I Will Play For Gumbo."



Bill's an excellent blues musician and part of his schtick is that he prepares a pot of gumbo for the crowd at his shows as he peddles hot sauce. Good food, hot sauce, and blues - that's a tough act to follow.

Bill also founded a Tallahassee-based charity called Planet Gumbo - http://planetgumbo.org/ - that feeds the less fortunate. But they don't just feed 'em the same old gruel - no Sirree! Planet Gumbo prepares good food and Bill performs for free at homeless shelters around the nation, bringing a little hope and joy.

There is just something about Bill's approach that appeals to me. Back in my Red Cross days we would regularly pick up a load of 150-300 Hardee's cheeseburgers and drag them out to sites where we had to feed folks. And nothing quite says "we're in a world of hurt" like a cold Hardee's burger.

Anywho, Deb and I have kicked around organizing a group to prepare food during disasters. What we have had in mind was possibly getting together with some of the local biker groups and preparing food for their events. That way we could develop a group of folks who were skilled at preparing food for a group, out in the open, with portable equipment, and the monies that would be raised would go into a fund to pay for food and travel expenses the next time that a major disaster (and disasters Down Here always mean hurricanes) struck.

That's the theory at any rate.

For the biker functions we had looked at getting some sort of portable bar-b-que equipment. Everyone loves a good bar-b-que. But that plan breaks down somewhat when you start to look at the logisitcs of moving all of that stuff into a disaster site. The volume of folks that you can serve is severely limited, largely because the best bar-b-ques take hours and hours to cook properly. And the really large bar-b-que trailers that are adequate to the task aren't exactly cheap, let me tell ya Brother.

Then you get into issues with not having refrigeration at a disaster location, and having your meats trucked in. Pretty soon you wind up looking at a pretty fair sized logistical operation when you factor in moving our bus for living space for volunteers, using a second truck to move a bar-b-que trailer, and then a third truck might be needed to move and/or store refrigerated meats.

Simplicity is one of the charms of Bill Wharton's gumbo. Gumbo is healthy, warm, and tasty. It's also relatively simple to make in quantity. And the ingredients are cheap.

Not to say that The Ingredients, which is the name of Bill's band, are cheap or anything. That's beside the point.

We used our current and rather modest cookin' equipment last year when Bill Wharton was in town and put on a gumbo cookin' contest. We have also used the same equipment for the last few years to grill burgers and so forth at the International Speedway in Daytona Beach during some of the motorcycle races. Those gigs raised money for the motorcycle club and those monies by and large were contributed to charities.

No matter how you slice it, cooking decent food for 60 to 100 folks can be a lot of work. And I have to commend Ms. Deborah for organizing those events and cookin' the chow.

For most of last year and into the foreseeable next several months the disaster relief cookin' project is going to be on the back burner as we concentrate on careers, writing, and some maintenance projects. But if there is anyone out there who wants to talk, seriously, about doing a disaster relief-oriented project to prepare tasty food then I'd be interersted in talkin'. And you know where you can find me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--PirateJohn--

http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com/ (the *NEW* blog)

http://www.piratejohn.com/ (my website)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HumourList/ (the infamous joke list)

Enjoy!

Sunday's bonus joke

OK, so I've been a bit slack this week. Hopefully this will help make up for my slackness (is that a word?).

And if you are engaged in a weekend project right about now, you can surely relate.

Tools and their proper uses...

DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your soda pop across the room, splattering it against that freshly-stained heirloom piece you were drying.

WIRE WHEEL: Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned guitar calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, "Yeou sheeeet...."

ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age.

SKIL SAW: A portable cutting tool used to make studs too short.

PLIERS: Used to round off bolt heads. Sometimes used in the creation of blood-blisters. The most often tool used by all women.

BELT SANDER: An electric sanding tool commonly used to convert minor touch-up jobs into major refinishing jobs.

HACKSAW: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

VISE-GRIPS: Generally used after pliers to completely round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

WELDING GLOVES: Heavy duty leather gloves used to prolong the conduction of intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for lighting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub you want the bearing race out of.

WHITWORTH SOCKETS: Once used for working on older British cars and motorcycles, they are now used mainly for impersonating that 9/16" socket you've been searching for the last 45 minutes.

TABLE SAW: A large stationary power tool commonly used to launch wood projectiles for testing wall integrity.

HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after you have installed your new brake shoes, trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.

EIGHT-FOOT LONG YELLOW PINE 2X4: Used for levering an automobile upward off of a trapped hydraulic jack handle.

TWEEZERS: A tool for removing wood splinters and wire wheel wires. E-Z OUT BOLT AND

STUD EXTRACTOR: A tool, ten times harder than any known drill bit, that snaps neatly off in bolt holes thereby ending any possible future use.

RADIAL ARM SAW: A large stationary power saw primarily used by most shops to scare neophytes into choosing another line of work.

TWO-TON ENGINE HOIST: A tool for testing the maximum tensile strength of everything you forgot to disconnect.

CRAFTSMAN 1/2 x 24-INCH SCREWDRIVER: A very large pry bar that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end opposite the handle.

AVIATION METAL SNIPS: See hacksaw.

TROUBLE LIGHT: The home mechanic's own tanning booth. Sometimes called a drop light, it is a good source of vitamin D, "the sunshine vitamin," which is not otherwise found under cars at night. Health benefits aside, its main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at about the same rate that 105mm howitzer shells might be used during, say, the first few hours of the Battle of the Bulge. More often dark than light, its name is somewhat misleading.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the vacuum seals under lids and for opening old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splashing oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip out Phillips screw heads. Women excel at using this tool.

STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER: A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws.

AIR COMPRESSOR: A machine that takes energy produced in a coal-burning power plant 200 miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a Chicago Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty bolts which were last over tightened 30 years ago by someone at Ford, and instantly rounds off their heads. Also used to quickly snap off lug nuts.

PRY BAR: A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50 cent part.

HOSE CUTTER: A tool used to make hoses too short.

HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent to the object we are trying to hit. Women primarily use it to make gaping holes in walls when hanging pictures.

MECHANIC'S KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on contents such as seats, vinyl records, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines, refund checks, and rubber or plastic parts. Especially useful for slicing work clothes, but only while in use.

DAMMMMIT TOOL: Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the garage while yelling "DAMMMMMIT" at the top of your lungs. It is also, most often, the next tool that you will need!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--PirateJohn--
http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com/ (the *NEW* blog)
http://www.piratejohn.com/ (my website)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HumourList/ (the infamous joke list)

Enjoy!

Cold, colder, and turkey derricks

(A photo of Alton Brown and his turkey. For more detail on Alton and his turkey derrick see the bottom of the post.)











I appreciate the flood of emails that I received regarding the folks who live next to our workshop. Yesterday was unexpectedly warm and so we thought that they were getting a reprieve. After dark I was finishing up some work at the shop (thank you Buddy for dropping by and changing motorcycle tires for me!) and noticed that they had candles. So we went to bed thinking that all was well.

This morning, however, Jacksonville was greeted by record cold temperatures as the Canadian weather did indeed finally get here. For those of you who live Up North 32 degree temps don't sound like much but Down Here many people don't even own winter coats.

So I'm going to try and drop in on them tonight and see how they are doing. If they haven't already moved out, that is. The city is opening shelters and I know that they have relatives across the St. John's River but as I mentioned in my previous post, when you don't have transportation and you don't have a phone (we had been letting them use our cell phones) and you don't have a radio nor a TV then any services that the City is offering might as well be on Mars.

A couple of folks have said - rightfully so - that my neighbors need to help themselves. And I am not going to disagree with that position at all. I don't think they live a particularly stellar lifestyle yet I don't see them as being crackheads or alkys either. My read is that they are just some poor black folks who are really down on their luck and between jobs.

But even the worst alky or crackhead doesn't deserve to freeze to death in my book.

In this case I simply don't want to judge. Freezing to death or starving to death is an awfully high penalty to pay for the crime of being slack. *IF* they are slack, and I don't see that at all. Just old and worn out.

Anywho, I have been very touched by the concern shown by several readers of this blog.

~~~

We had our own little electrical trauma this morning. We moved the Wanderlodge to another park last night. Everything was going well until this morning. As I was packing the silver motorcycle to ride to work (yes, I am still riding in 35 degree weather!) I heard the frickin' irritating sounds of my 'puter uninterruptible power supplies going off inside the motorcoach. Which could only mean one thing. Our electrical power had died.

The Bluebird has gas heat but ... duh ... we've never used it. Never had to. It just simply doesn't get that cold in Florida and in the scheme of priorities refurbishing the A/C for our tropical travels comes up first on list. We had agreed to soldier through this winter with small auxillary heaters for now.

And we have discovered that one of the joys of RV living is knowing what you can - and cannot - run off of a 30amp or a 50amp circuit. Or, for that matter, a 30amp line and a Pirated add'l 30amp line at the vacant space next to you. Not like I'd ever try something like that or anything.

For instance, our RV will run 3 air conditioning units on a 50amp circuit but that 4th unit will pop a breaker.

And 2 electric space heaters plus the factory electric heater in the bathroom plus the hot water heater are about all that you can get out of 50amps before something goes out.

One 30amp line will only run half the electical stuff inside the coach so you either need to choose between your refrigerator or your hot water heater, because they are on separate circuits. And from what I have heard you might as well forget about running the bus A/C units.

With a pair of 30amp lines we have almost the same power as you do with a single 50amp circuit. Even though it's not supposed to work that way. (Our coach was one of the first built on this plan and had the bedroom remodeled once so it's not quite the spec as printed in the original typewritten manuals).

Never mind the "old RV park with old wiring" factor. At our last park we shorted out half of the 50amp circuit and wound up using - with the permission of the management, believe it or not - the 50amp hookup at the space next to us.

Exciting stuff, right?

And just for the record (and for those three gearheads that have actually read this far) we carry a ton of extra cables and extension cords and poo tank fittings because we are geared up for disaster relief and Mexican travels. If it can be humanly connected, we'll find a way to do it.

So no electrical power in this weather means ... frosty housecats, let's put it that way. I guess the upside to freezing the cats to death is that would eliminate their fleas, but somehow that seems to be a bit drastic.

Anyway, the Ace Maintenance Man and Yours Truly pretty quickly determined that the problem wasn't in the yards and yards of wiring, switches, circuit breakers, and relays inside the bus but rather the RV park's power pedestal had gone kaput. Running on the diesel generator we had power (and heat!) but while the blasted thing puts out enough electricity to run a small ship, it's of that vintage where it's noisy and smokes like a cigar afficianado's convention. So we likely didn't make any new friends with the neighbors this morning as we ran the old Perkins diesel generator.

At least they shouldn't have any mosquitos for awhile.

(As an aside, if you want to know why the Brits lost their auto industry, just ask me about a Perkins diesel. Every other diesel that I know of has simple screw-on fuel filters that are disposable. On a Perkins you have about 9 parts and washers and gaskets that need to be aligned to get the disposable filter element to fit properly. And then bleeding the fuel lines is about a 2 day job whereas on a CAT diesel the job is done with a simple plunger mechanism that you pump by hand. I am always reminded that some British tanks used a 12 cylinder Perkins diesel. I suspect that the concept of a civilized tea break comes into play because they need to take a pause to repair and tune those monsters in the middle of a battle every so often.)

As I sit here in my WARM office writing this the RV park is supposed to have an electrician on the way to look at things. Wish us luck.

~~~

I wish that I had found this in time for Turkey Day and Christmas. Still, as it says (in Latin) on the bottom of my business checks, "better late than never."

Have you ever eaten fried turkey? Mmmmmm good! But the process isn't for the faint of heart. In fact, it can be downright dangerous.

Check out Alton Brown's website at http://www.altonbrown.com/ for Alton's .PDF download showing you how to construct his "turkey derrick." Basically using simple household materials and a ladder, the turkey derrick allows you to SAFELY manage your turkey in a pot of boiling oil. Ingenious!

And Brown, besides being an avid motorcyclist and a regular on the Food Channel, is downright funny. So I encourage y'all to check out his stuff.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


--PirateJohn--


http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com/ (the *NEW* blog)


http://www.piratejohn.com/ (my website)


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HumourList/ (the infamous joke list)





Enjoy!

Happy 2008!

Greetings!

I trust that everyone had a safe and happy Christmas and New Year's celebration.

Kick back, and fix yourself a Bloody Mary. 2008 may well be the best year of our lives. So let's chat a bit.

We are camped out at the workshop, testing out new 'puters and new audiovisual stuff in the RV, and admiring the hardwood floor that we have finally (almost) gotten finished. We've been working on this frickin' floor since the Thanksgiving holidays and it's finally time to kick back and admire the handiwork.

Cats are well behaved {har, har, har} and healthy, and we hit two parties last night wherein you could just feel the good vibes and tell that everyone was genuinely your pal.

Right now I have more writing projects going on than I can shake the proverbial stick at, and myself and other partners are discussing some really interesting collaborative ventures in a couple of fields. The reality of being an entrepreneur is two-fold: 1) for every idea that gells into something that makes money you will sift through hundreds of ideas that don't go anywhere, and that's just the nature of the beast, and 2) as my Momma always said, "Don't give up the day job!"

The RV lifestyle is suiting us well. This is something that I wished that I had done maybe 5-10 years earlier, but the reality is that if I had purchased an RV back then I wouldn't have experienced my Third Perfect House. And the Third Perfect House was the one that finally convinced me that, as wonderful as it was (plenty of garage and workshop space, swimming pool, private offices, fancy vaulted ceiling, and a kitchen to kill for), that it was keeping me from doing what I always wanted to do. Which was to cut some ties to The Perfect City and my Perfect Circle of Friends and to travel.

Things sound awfully good, don't they?

I'm worried.

Here in Jacksonville, Florida the nighttime temps are supposed to get into the 25 degree range for a few days.

And here at our workshop on the Southside we have discovered that the couple in the little concrete block house just outside our fenced in workshop compound doesn't have any utilities. No heat, and no water. Not having any money available for deposits will do that to ya.

A few days ago the lady that lived there asked me if I could spare 50 cents so that she could buy a small bag of potato chips for dinner. I gave her $1 and saw her the next morning eating a bag of chips so I assume that she wasn't joking.

I'm not quite sure what we can do. I did ask the landlord if we could run an extension cord over to them for a few days and the response was ... well ... unprintable here. And I'll print quite a bit on this blog, trust me. So you get the picture.

Now, I have seen plenty of houses in rural Mexico that didn't have glass in the window openings because the owners hadn't saved enough to buy glass.

And I have seen similar things in Appalachia as I was growing up as a kid in Kentucky.

But in an era when we have billionaires competing to see who can build the largest yacht on the planet (think in terms of 450 feet, incidentally), and when the wealth of this planet has spread to the point where the wealthiest man is a Mexican gent (Carlos Slim, who controls the phone system down there) and reportedly there are as many families with middle class incomes in China as there are in the USA, I find it hard to imagine what it must be like to not have heat. Or food, for that matter, here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Did you realize that the Iraqi Constitution provides for health care to all Iraqi citizens? "Article 31: "Every citizen has the right to health care. The state takes care of public health and provide the means of prevention and treatment by building different types of hospitals and medical institutions."

You tax dollars are paying for that m'friend. And I don't want to take that away from the Iraqis, because, after all, what they have is more of the international norm than what we have, which is basically zero health care if you are uninsured.

Did you realize that an employer in Mexico has to provide health care to their employees? In fact, generally speaking, the employer is responsible for the employee from pretty much the time that the employee leaves the house to the time that he or she returns. In an article that I was reading in one of my truckin' periodicals the Hyundai plant in Tijuana, which is producing trailers for, among others, FedEx, is providing shuttle bus services and a full-time physician for their employees.

Contrast that to the negotiations that the UAW have going on with the auto makers which will inevitably require the UAW to give back many of their members' health and retirement benefits.

What's the point, you ask?

Here in the USA we have gotten so wrapped up in cutting services to the poorest of our people that we have lost perspective. Other nations are taking care of their citizens. We are basically the only industrialized nation without any form of health care for our poorest. And to my way of thinking nothing is a more fundamental human right than to avoid freezing to death. Or to avoid starving to death for that matter. Particularly in a nation such as ours that prides itself on our wealth and our humanity.

Something is seriously out of whack here.

As our #1 resolution for 2008 we need to consider our weakest. Those folks without basic necessities. Those folks in frail health. Those folks who could benefit from a helping hand.

Let's all count our blessings. If we have heat and a 'puter in front of us, then we literally may be doing better than the family down the road. Or across town.

The next time that some panhandler asks for money look them in the eye. Don't shy away from them. You can quickly tell the genuinely down and out from the shiftless. But no matter how you slice things, these people are someone's son and daughter. And they are our neighbors.

But for the grace of God go you and I.

Here's to hoping for the very best for you and yours - and your neighbors for that matter - in 2008.

John Kay and Steppenwolf

I was looking at the Steppenwolf web site ( http://www.steppenwolf.com/ ) and was saddened to see that John Kay has appearantly decided to retire from music and to stop touring.

2007 was the last year of their big international tour and if you have seen Steppenwolf in recent years you likely knew that John Kay and the band seemed to be everywhere, worldwide, during most of the year. They were certainly popular during Bike Week and other big motorcycle events.

John writes on his web site that he and his wife intend to travel during 2008 and be part of a charitable foundation that they established some years ago.

Kay and the original lineup for Steppenwolf have a really entertaining history incidentally. Kay was born in 1944. His father and mother were German, and Kay's father was killed in the fighting on the Russian front a month before he was born. Kay's mother took the infant John Kay into what would become East Germany and was forced to flee 4 years later as the Communists took over.

Making his way to Canada, John was asked to sing for a new band, The Sparrows, that had included members of another local band called the Mynah Birds. Two of the Mynah Bird members that didn't make the cut to the new band were an AWOL US soldier named Ricky Matthews, who would later change his name to {drum roll here} Rick James, and an underappreciated musician in a non-singing, non-writing role named Neil Young. It's a small world indeed.

Here's wishing John Kay a well-deserved retirement and thanks for some really good memories. And I guess that the moral is that we need to get out there and see our musical giants that inspire us so. 'cause they ain't gonna be around forever.

_________________

--PirateJohn--

http://www.piratejohn.com/

Where did I put those damned reading glasses?

Now that I have slightly passed the half-century point, I have to admit that some aspects of old age are starting to catch up with me. Specifically, I can no longer see as well as I used to.

More to the point, I have gotten to where lately I have had to walk around the office all the time with a pair of cheap reading glasses on my nose. That sucks.

I wear contact lenses and have for years, perhaps over 30 years. My vision can be adjusted to where it’s better than 20/20 at a distance, but it has become difficult to read without reading glasses.

A few years ago an optometrist suggested that I try bifocal contact lenses and I hated them. But today, as I write this, I am reluctantly trying them again and discovering that while my distance vision isn’t as sharp with the bifocal lenses, that I can once again read without reading glasses.

I think that the solution is going to be to get a prescription for both the standard lens and a set of bifocal lens, and change them as conditions require. In other words, my normal lens is going to be the bifocal ones, but when I plan a day (or multiple days) of motorcycling or driving I am going to switch back to the standard lens.

Interestingly enough, the way that the optician does this only one eye, the dominant eye, actually gets a bifocal contact. The other eye, the not-so-dominant one, has to make do with a standard lens.

As I told a friend, the military could send me to Afghanistan. My distance vision is great and I’d make a helluva sniper, if I would just lay off the coffee. The only problem is that I’d need reading glasses to load my rifle. Bummer.

Anyway, this is just another chapter in the “Better Living and Aging Gracefully Thanks to Technology” files. I frankly didn’t realize that bifocal contact lenses were readily available, but they seem to be nothing special these days.

--PirateJohn--
http://pyratejohn.blogspot.com/ (the *NEW* blog)
http://www.PirateJohn.com (my website)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HumourList/ (the infamous joke list)

Enjoy!