Cocktail Shaker Adventures

Several years ago a couple of friends of mine gave me a cocktail shaker as a gift. We celebrated it the proper way, with a cocktail party where I learned how to make Tequila Sunrises, Cosmopolitans, Martinis and a few other drinks. Since then I usually use it for my occasional (well, more like weekly) Martini.

The cocktail shaker is a classic one, with three parts like in the picture below. For reasons I will never know, one day I found the parts welded together. No matter how much force I applied, I was unable to take them apart. Granted, I am not the strongest man in the world but all my attempts to pry the three pieces apart failed. Turning one into three became my quest and my adventure.

My first attempt was the traditional run the tap hot and let the water pour on the lid. That didn't work, not even after holding it under the tap for five minutes; the three were still one.

My second attempt was a soaking marathon. Filled some tupperware with water, stuck the shaker inside and let it lie there for a whole week, hoping that whatever had glued the parts together would dissolve. When the week was over it was back to the hot water tap with the same result as the first attempt.

Heat and water didn't solve it, so my next step was cold. I stuck the shaker in the fridge overnight and in the morning it was back to the tap. Same result as before, the three were still one.

It was time for drastic, maybe even foolhardy, measures. I filled a pan with water, put it on the stove and stuck the shaker inside, holding it underwater with a wooden spoon. After a few minutes I heard a loud bang and declared partial success: the two halves were separated, though the lid was still attached. The one had become two.

Given the power of boiling water, I decided it was time for one last attempt at separating the lid from the body. Back into the freezer it went, for what was supposed to be a few hours but turned out to be a few days because I completely forgot about it. So, when I remembered, I put another pan with water on the stove and set it to boil.  Got the top half out of the freezer,  grabbed it with oven mittens and stuck the lid in the boiling water. After a minute or so I took it out, dried it with a paper towel and gave it a good twist. Miracle of miracles, the lid came out and the one were again three.

Of course I celebrated this success with a Martini.

Weekend in Monterrey

Sharon and I decided we needed a break from all that is happening around us and booked a weekend at a nice hotel in Monterrey. Sharon got us a suite at the Claremont, a nice room with a balcony and with a nice ocean view. I couldn't wait to get there.

The plan was to leave around 2 pm on Friday, but of course things never work out the way they should. The night before our trip the washer decided to break in the way washers usually break, by overflowing and making our upstairs carpet very, very wet. This meant I spent most of the evening using towels to try and mop up as much water as I could, not very successfully.  Friday I returned home from work with a brand new carpet steam cleaner and used it to soak up the water. It worked beautifully and after a couple of hours of pushing it around I was able to downgrade the carpet's state from "swamp" to "damp."

So by 3:30 we were on the road and after an uneventful trip arrived at our hotel. The front desk person showed us to a very nice suite, including HDTVs in the living room and bedroom, a fireplace and a plush otter on our bed. For a change, the HDTV actually came with HD programming something I had not experienced before in the hotel room. And the view? Well, the picture below shows the view from our room:

And, for the sake of symmetry, this is a picture of our room from the view (our room was the sunny corner on the top floor):

We started our evening by sitting in the patio and enjoying our drinks: a virgin Mary for Sharon and a vodka martini for me. It was a little nippy, but they had outdoor heaters and a fire pit, and we felt downright cozy. Hunger got the best of us eventually and we headed down Cannery Row looking for a place to eat. Ended up at a pleasant family restaurant where I had the jambalaya and Sharon had the stuffed mushrooms.

Saturday we took advantage of the good weather and went down to Carmel to wander around the downtown area. Melissa, our faithful GPS, got us there safely and we spent some time window shopping and ended up doing our favorite activity, hanging out at a coffee shop. Sharon enjoyed a nice cup of coffee and I had what was possibly the worst iced tea ever made.

After that it was time for the obligatory scenic 17-mile drive. I was surprised that I actually had to pay almost ten bucks for the privilege, but did it anyway and enjoyed the experience. We took the inner route, but eventually detoured towards the coast and stopped at Bird Rock to enjoy the waves breaking against the shore. Bird Rock, by the way, has its name because that little rock has dozens of sea lions on it. At least that was the case when we were there.

Then it was back to the hotel so Sharon could get some rest. As for me, I decided to wander around Cannery Row to see what the stores had to offer. The fish and otter-themed souvenirs,  the John Steinbeck memorabilia I can understand; the Elvis stuff, not as much.

The evening was not that good. It was raining and Sharon was not feeling well, so I had dinner by myself at the hotel restaurant. The musician was Brazilian, the waiters attentive and the food undercooked. The merlot I had with dinner was very nice, though.

Sunday was aquarium day. Sharon and I like the aquarium and don't go there often enough. The last time we were there it was for sea horses, this time it was flamingos. It was a small exhibit, intended to get us thinking about global warming (I dislike the name "climate change", seems like we are not willing to face the problem straight on), but enjoyable all the same. And I did get to see them feed the penguins and sharks, the otters, the octopuses and several of my old friends. Sharon is right: if we didn't live so far away it would have been very nice to volunteer there.

Then it was time to go back home. I gambled on 101 being a better choice and lost: a traffic accident near Gilroy made it take 30 minutes for us to cover 4 miles. But then again, I was not in a hurry to get home as I knew that there was a damp carpet waiting for me. Luckily, it turned out that the weekend had taken care of the rest of the carpet drying and I did not see any obvious water damage, so I declared operation carpet-cleaning a success.

And thus ended  the weekend.

Dragging My Tail

About a month ago I finished my instrument rating. I was thinking of taking some time off before my next flying adventure, but decided life is too short, so tailwheel time it is. For those who don't know, planes can be classified in two categories: those that drag their tails on the ground, and those that don't. They all fly the same, but takeoffs, landings and taxiing is different enough between the two types that the FAA decided you need training and an endorsement in your logbook from a qualified instructor to fly the former.

The first step was to talk to my instructor and get a recommendation for a book. He lent me "The Compleat Taildragger," and I read it in about a week. It was actually quite good at explaining what was different from the planes I usually fly and why it was different. It was also a little scary, with its list of all the things that could go wrong. I started wondering if it was worth the effort, but decided that if other pilots can master tailwheel flying, so can I.

The plane I chose to learn to fly in is one of my club's Citabrias. Quite  a different plane from what I've been flying lately, it had only two seats and a joystick instead of a yoke. The instrument panel is somewhat limited too: no attitude indicator, directional gyro or vertical speed indicator.  Add to that the fact that it's body is covered in canvas instead of metal and I had a distinct feeling I was back to flying like in the "good old times."

I met my instructor at the club and he showed me how to prepare the plane for flying. We spent some time discussing the maneuvers we were going to perform and how the plane would behave differently than I was used to. One interesting tidbit was that there wasn't enough space for us and my flight bag, so we ended leaving it behind, locked inside a safety box.

Then it was time for us to limber up and learn to bend in new and original ways in order to get inside the plane. Bend we did, and eventually I found myself in the front seat looking over the nose cowling. I was impressed that I could actually see over the nose and would not need to do S-turns in order to taxi.

Starting the plane was different too: no keys were necessary; all I had to do was press a button. Press the button I did, the engine started and off we went to the warm up area with me holding the joystick back. Taxiing was ok, but I have to say that holding the joystick was an effort. Apparently one side benefit of flying these planes is that it will help me build upper arm strength.

My instructor did the takeoff and we were on our way to the practice area where we did the usual maneuvers in order to get familiarized with the plane's handling: steep turns, slow flight, and stalls. The plane does indeed fly like other planes, though requiring somewhat more right rudder than I'm used to. Working with the joystick was "natural" like my instructor said it would be and performing the maneuvers was straightforward.

After that we went to Tracy airport to practice our landings. My instructor did the first one, with me accompanying him so as to get a feel for attitude and behavior. The next three were mine and they were somewhat bouncy and definitely not smooth, but the plane was able to take off again so, according to the laws of aviation, they were great landings. And after that we went back to Palo Alto where I got my first tailwheel entry on my logbook.

My impressions of flying the Citabria? It does require judicious use of the rudder pedals and the level flying attitude has the nose lower than I expected. The joystick is easy to use, but good trimming is essential if you want to give your arms a rest. Having some of the switches I need behind me was strange, but I had no trouble adjusting to that. As for the instruments, I thought I would miss the directional gyro, but I was wrong: the vertical speed indicator was the one I kept pining for.

All in all it was a good workout and I had a blast. I look forward to my next lesson in a couple of weeks.