Sunday, July 19, 2009

The Starship Sforza







Why do dogs stick their heads out of the car window? I'm pretty sure I've always known but I really liked this answer...

"Nobody really knows," says Dr. James A. Serpell, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, "but we could hazard some good guesses. They can get their senses into the smells. And dogs really like speed. They like to feel the wind in their fur, the same reason that dogs enjoy running just for fun. They run because they enjoy the sensation of traveling fast, and I think they get the same kick out of sticking their nose out of the car window, feeling the speed, and watching the landscape rush past."

Shortly after making the photo of Noah launching himself out of the pool I received a call from Georgia that our van had thrown the Serpentine Belt. We knew this could happen because it was diagnosed by our friend Lisa's son, Jeremy. We had plans on getting it fixed. Now we were for all intensive purposes...stuck in Fallon. And to make things even more interesting we needed to replace the crankshaft pulley or harmonic balancer. Harmonic balancer? This sounded familiar to me. Familiar in a Star Trek sort of way, e.g., warp drive, dilithium crystals, and the port necelle. See post 54. On Friday Lisa's husband Theron got under the hood of the van and worked some mechanically magically enabling us to get back on the road and homeward bound Saturday morning. Hence my dog like behavior as we headed out of town, homeward bound. Thanks Theron, you're better than Scotty any day! We spent the rest of the day turning a eight hour 447 mile trip into 16 hours, 620 miles and multiple stops.

We visited our good friend James Ku in Reno who turned us on to a great breakfast at funky little place called the Squeeze In. James and I commiserated over the current state of newspapers, both vowing to survive...in some fashion.

We stopped to dip our toes in Lake Tahoe at Sand Harbor State Park not far from where we were married 27 years ago.

Hunger, gasoline and a driver seat swap found Noah and Domenick goofing on an English Telephone booth in Bishop.

And in the finals hours of the day we were treated to nature's own light show as a passing storm struck lightening on the desert floor off in the distance. For all of you photo geeks...I was pushing the envelope on the Nikon D3. Here's the data: Lightening photo shoot at 1/10 sec, f/2.8, 6400 ISO with a 14mm.

It was one of the best vacations we've ever had. The memories we revisited, the places we revisited and best of all the time we spent with our friends Lisa and Theron.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hey Rick,
It was a delight to join the Sforzas on some of your "best vacation". You
are all wonderfully goofy ! Where's
Whitney (in school/working?)
Love to all, HUgh