M&M Travel the Globe - or at least to Italy

This last May, Marcia and I took at trip to Europe. Unfortunately, it felt like every Tom, Dick and Harriet did the same! I mean, there was a *@#& load of people crowding around. Oh well, what's one to expect these days. Anyway, here's a few snapshots...

Marcia posing in front of a model Eifel tower in Kansas - nah, not really. It's for real, we're in gay Pariee.











Lazy North Americans not equipped with resilient footwear, must have technology. Segway Tours of Paris - when the instructor let go of this gal's Segway, she proceeded to drive head first into the building behind her. I was laughing so hard, I couldn't hold the camera still enough to take an action shot.





Did I mention the cost of the taking a "la crap" in a public restroom? Well the Parisians have an answer for this... find a tree and do your duty. Real nice.














I called ahead to let them know I was coming to Italy. They're really on the ball over there. They actually put my name on one of their buildings in my honor. How thoughtful.
















Here's The Brusasco Castle. A quaint 17th century B&B listed on the Agri-Tours of Europe. Marcia and I are sitting in the Roman bath parlor above the castle grounds. Mind you, the bath parlor hasn't seen the likes of my handiwork for over 3 centuries. It's destined to be remodeled (at an undisclosed future date), but I told the curator; "a coat of paint and it'll look like new".






This is Masamiliano, the Brusasco castle's curator, and his wife. They were so nice to Marcia and me. He took most of his afternoon off to drive us around, toured us throughout the buildings, provided espresso and one of the best features of this part of the world, wine.

















Did I mention the wine...





















... and the crazy things it makes you do!









Like buying cheap Italian ties thinking "almost elderly" can be cool. Maybe a Vespa? What a Guido...















Or even crazier stuff;
"Hey Marcia, nice Arafat impression!"










More later...

Another $$Big$$ project

After many years of "sitting on my hands" or more appropriately waiting while I worked my butt off thinking I was "General Contractor" material, we finally packed up our hangar queen and sent it off to sunny Idaho to be restored.

If this airplane restoration goes anything like my remodeling prowess, then I should be bankrupt by the end of 2008!

The airplane is being restored by Skyline Aircraft Maintenance in Nampa, ID. My buddy John Romeo operates Owyhee Air out of Nampa and turned me on to these gents. Interestingly enough, one of the sheet-metal guys that works for Skyline has intimate knowledge of this airplane. He had helped do a major modification (upgraded the cockpit with newer controls and avionics) when it was based in Alaska. My, it's a small world.

I'm just keeping my fingers crossed and hope they keep finding more dead dinosaurs buried somewhere, preferably other than the Middle-East. But maybe I should be careful what I wish for - what would the world be like with radical Presbyterians, Lutherans, or, or... Mormons? Hmm, well, maybe - we're already there.

Ah heck, you only go around once, then you come back as as slug.

Check it out. Packing up N58SD

Adding on

Had the framers (Brian and Bob) come over the other weekend and bump out our kitchen wall a whole 2 feet! These guys are my favorites. Bob is over 60 and still getting up a 5 in the morning, working six days a week with a bright and humorous spin on life. Brian, the human tablesaw, with both brain and brawn whips out framing origami in a flash. No framing nail guns with these guys.. all by hand.

Demolish and Destroy

No, this isn't one of those "bunker buster" shots from Iraq, it's our upstairs after we unleashed a crew of four (4) Hondurans on our house.

Demolish.. yes they did. KIA: two (2) antique light fixtures, dishwasher and our cool 50's era sink. Not to mention our morale!!

Long busy winter..

Yep, it took us a while. The basement is almost finished (still don't have the doors painted and hung). But we sure enjoy sleeping in a bedroom that doesn't have walls with large chunks of sheetrock missing accented by exposed plumbing and electrical wires.

Here's a sample. It's a before-and-after shot of the basement fireplace..

Before



After

Back Yard Patio

Finally, something has taken on a finished form.

Before



After

Little bit of Brusasco history

Ah, those were the days... I was Captain of the grand ship Wasco II (actually a 36' oak hull tugboat) at the ripe old age of 15. My brother Peter, with nothing more than compressed air hosed to a faceplate, a weightbelt, overalls & boots, would dive to the bottom of the Willamette and Yamhill rivers looking for sunken logs, dead bodies and whatever peaked his interest. We would suck the logs from the bottom, lash them to a catamaran barge made from two wooden cruise-liner type lifeboats and tow them to Newberg Oregon. There we had a Chevy V-8 powered boom-winch which we used to drag the logs ashore. Dad (in the picture above) or my brother would cut the logs small enough to be loaded to our short-haul log truck and then drive the load to the mill up a very steeeeeep hill. Some logs were as long as a rail car (as you can see in this picture). Others were as much as 6 feet in diameter. The logs were used for pulp to make paper. All from the darks of the deep - mind you, never, ever where you would find ME! I left that to my fearless brother.

Nonno Brusasco's Seafarer's Article

Cramped Throne Quarters

Take it from the Japanese, they know how make use of limited space. According to my sources, over 60% of Japanese households have this "Washlet" feature. They own more of these than microwaves!

Gotta put one in the new basement "necessary" room.