I want some coffee!

Road trip! (photo by Quintin Gellar) How many times must I have asked that as a child? Yikes! Must have driven my parents nuts. Makes it sound like I hated long road trips but the opposite is actually the case: I loved exploring the world by driving.  We were a family hooked on travel by car. No doubt motivated in part by gas rationing during WW-II. Even as a very young child sitting in the back seat I enjoyed the passing scenery. Besides, a Sunday drive often meant we were going to get at least one meal out at a restaurant: "Are we there yet?" Wartime Reminiscences. The truth is I loved it when we went on those drives or went on a summer vacation. After WW-II when gas rationing went away we would go for a long drive on Sunday. Lots of post-war families did that... "the Sunday drive". But a Sunday drive for our family often involved hundreds of miles! But that was post war. Gas was rationed during WW-II. Most cars were left parked and just sat. If the owner had en...

I should quit and accept my academic losses but as usual I have yet another "oh btw...", this time related to the Northrop 'flying wing'. Apparently Northrop isn't done with its involvement in the 'flying wing' concept. Northrop-Grumman Corp has a current contract to design and build aircraft for a flying wing variant of a bomber which uses the flying wing (sort of) configuration. The plane is the B-21 which is pictured below. Note this is not an X (eXperimental) variant which would have been designated XB-21. The contract includes production of 40 - 80 aircraft.   Northrop-Grumman B-21 prototype. Not the 'boomerang' configuration I think of when I think of a 'flying wing', but it meets the essential criteria. The B-21 surface configuration is intended to minimize radar reflection to make weapons-tracking of the bomber more difficult. To my eye this photo is of a smallish plane. The published specs, however, say the bomber in these photos h...

I graduated 6 Dec 1960 with a BS degree in aeronautical engineering from a small private school in Inglewood, California named at the time Northrop Institute of Technology (NIT). Originally named Northrop Aeronautical Institute it became NIT when they were approved by the state of California to offer a BS degree instead of a diploma; that was in 1959. The beginnings, however, are not what they might seem. The school was founded by John K Northrop, the same guy who in 1939 founded Northrop Aircraft and was also the creator of that company's 'flying wing' prototype pictured below. John K Northrop (rt) and test pilot Moye Stephens I've always felt good about my time at that school and the quality of the education I received. And I could point to others in the aircraft and defense industries who were shining examples of what was good about NAI & NIT. Sometime in probably mid-1991 I learned from a co-worker at Lockheed Missiles & Space Co. that the engineering school...

... a dust storm hit us without warning.    Well this was a first for us in 15-1/2 years. We often see dust devils on the valley floor of San Pedro Valley, but this is the first time we've had the ugly reality of what it's like to live in the Phoenix area. That metropolitan city gets one or more every year and it's downright ugly. Our version was a little tame by their standards but nasty none the less.    The pic below was taken by someone here in the park- I don't know their name to give them credit. My own pic was nothing more than a dusty sky. A dust storm that hit us here in the park a few days ago.   But they have the real deal down in Chandler, AZ. I would not want to have been there for this event! Aerial photo of a dust storm in Chandler, AZ (Phoenix area) on 24 Aug 2025 Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I managed a couple 'typical' sunrise and sunset photos of what we enjoy here at SKP Saguaro Co-op. Sunrise over the Dragoon range (hidden by the trees). A ...

I'm not sure I qualify for using this not-very-kind title. I was not the top of my class in anything science or arts related, but I do enjoy techie subjects. These days my tech efforts are limited to too much detail about roasting coffee. In the past that also included brewing coffee. Over the last couple years I've accepted that I keep doing things the same way cuz I like what I'm tasting and I don't want to change anything. The Admiral's tolerance for this 'same-ness' has proven to be remarkable! For perhaps the last 2 years I have been buying green (unroasted) beans - what we coffee nerds call 'greens' - from Coffee Bean Corral in Jackson, Mississippi . These organic (!) greens are sourced from the state of Chiapas in Mexico. Chiapas is the most southern state in Mexico and it is also (at upper elevations) a coffee growing region. I gave it a try a few years ago and decided it was good enough I didn't care to keep experimenting to find somethi...

 ... but no follow through!   We seem to be getting a lot of this: what looks like the promise of some moisture but no follow-through. This is a shot roughly Southwest from our site. The 'threatening' clouds seemed to promise moisture but no joy! And 'moisture'? A phrase I picked up from relatives who were cattle ranchers in Wyoming. Al Smith insisted they didn't get 'rain', they got 'moisture'. I guess because it came in such limited amounts the term 'rain' overstated the actual results. Maybe. I guess.  We are plodding our way thru August in expectation of cooler days to come in September. Or at least that's what history tells us to expect. Monsoons are essentially non-existent this year. We get a tiny sprinkle and that's it. This year we had just over 0.5" of rain in July where we would expect about 1.5" in a 'proper' monsoon season. The reason? Neither  ' La Niña ' nor ' El Ni ñ o ' currents are e...

... but only a little bit. Close to sunset looking due South from our lot in SKP Saguaro Co-op. We had a bit of rain before I took the shot above. It cleaned the skies to the South of our park and left us with nice blue colors ahead of sunset. And the RV with the giant BandAid on it? A visitor to the park who had a right of way dispute with a permanent concrete structure in (I think they said) Tucson. They're still waiting for the repair guy to get started. An aside that perhaps no one but me seems to have noticed: as I type this on 18 July 2025 we have about 102 leaseholders in the park. Compared to say 2019, by July that number would typically be down to 50-60 and would hit a low of about 45 in mid-August. A lot has changed in RVer's travel-lives since the start of the COVID pandemic.