Fred Hill - R.I.P.

I met Fred a year ago shortly after we moved into our new home.  He was in the garage working on a woodworking project.  I introduced myself and we talked for a few minutes.  I immediately liked Fred.  While he was obviously older than me, he had bright eyes and a high energy level.  I felt I had known him for years.  Then I noticed model airplanes hanging in his garage.  From that moment, we bonded.

Over the year we chatted often, usually in his garage while he worked.  He told me about his career in the Navy as a firefighter and his lifelong interest in model airplanes.  I showed him my drone and my model airplanes wrecked in the move and waiting to be put back together.  He built a shelf for me for my huge freestanding kitchen cabinet I bought at Habitat.  We went to his 90th birthday party and gave him a micro quadcopter like the one I flew inside of our house.

Fred suffered a serious illness months ago and I visited him in the hospital and in a nursing home.  I told him I expected to see him working in the garage again very soon.  But I didn’t really expect it.

After four weeks, he was home and one morning the garage door was open and Fred was working on a project.  I was so excited.

But his illness took over again.  I visited him in the hospital and he was his old enthusiastic self.  Then he came home under hospice care and enjoyed his final days at home with his family.

Fred, I’ll miss you.

Seasoned Man

stevelem117@gmail.com

Transportation Safety

Last month we discussed the horrific train wreck in Pennsylvania.  We wondered whether we should avoid train travel in the future.  I ventured that trains are the safest mode of transportation while Aloma thought that commercial air travel was the safest.

We were both right.  I goggled transportation safety and got the following results:

Deaths per billion Miles

Trains .2

Buses .5

Airplanes .5

Cars 4.0

Space Shuttle 7.0

Ferries 20.0

Bicycles 35.0

Walking 41.0

Motorcycles 125.0

One article I  read had airplanes safer than trains.  I assume the numbers were international as I can’t remember any deaths from ferries in the US.

I now have a dilemna.  I can’t catch a train or airplane to Harris Teeter.  The space shuttle isn’t available and walking is too dangerous, so I’ll have to drive.  Maybe when global warming is in full swing and the coast line is closer, I can take a ferry.

Seasoned Man

stevelem117@gmail.com

Cutting Back

We visited our daughters near New Orleans two weeks ago.  Mary, our youngest, announced that her family had cut back on the number of pets.  She said the gerbil had died as well as her five, sweet white rats.  She relocated to her vet the small rodents that climbed on everything and glided like flying squirrels.  The flightless geese imprinted on her and starting attacking everyone else, including her daughters, Julia and Anna.  The geese are now on a farm.

Okay, they’ve cut back.  I took inventory on what’s left.  Two cats.  One stays inside and the other roams through the doggie door.  Two dogs.  One is a jumper so they put chicken wire above their fence.  Pretty Girl, a bird bigger than a parakeet but smaller than a parrot, seems to rule the family and the rest of the pets.  Then at a remote barn Julia rides Gwava, her beautiful horse.  Dixie is the latest addition, a miniature horse no bigger than a German Sheppard.  Dixie is being trained as a hospital horse.

Mary, you cut back, but you still have enough pets for three or four families.

We enjoyed our visit at Mary’s home, especially being accepted by all of the pets.

Seasoned Man

stevelem117@gmail.com