Category: Travel Stories

Mostly these are written for friends and family.

The LeMay car museums in Tacoma

by philg

It’s Father’s Day. For those handful of American men who have any control over their kids’ lives, a suggestion….

If you’re anywhere near Tacoma, Washington and haven’t been carjacked yet (Tacoma is “safer than 1% of U.S. cities), the LeMay car museums are well worth a stop. The primary one is near the Almond Roca factory in Tacoma proper and styles itself “America’s Car Museum”.

We were there for a special American Supercar exhibition, in which the Corvette and Ford GT were featured prominently.

Here’s an astonishing 1000 hp Oldsmobile:

GM loaned the museum the C8 Corvette test mule:

Those who loved physics class will appreciate this 1923 Lincoln, the first car to drive over the doomed Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940:

If you need a last-minute art idea for America’s 250th:

Thanks to Harold LeMay’s fortune built hauling garbage, the museum has magnificent examples from every era of the automobile, a 1906 Cadillac, for example:

A 1930 Duesenberg:

A wartime Chevrolet:

A 1954 Chevrolet wagon that would be awesome to own with retrofit A/C:

If Greta Thunberg hadn’t segued into pro-Hamas activism, this would be the perfect 100 mpg car for her, from aircraft engineer Jim Bede:

In order to skip out on Tacoma’s reputation for violent crime, we stayed in the new development of Point Ruston, a bit to the northwest. Fortunately for Florida real estate values, the breakdown of order in the West Coast cities is still in evidence. A CVS in the moderately-rich area locks up the precious laundry detergent:

Immigration has resulted in a random assortment of humans with conflicting cultural and religious values. Below, Muslims complying with Islamic dress codes are juxtaposed with (1) a pet dog (haram), and (2) a female rollerblader shamelessly displaying her bare midriff:

Our good fortune with the weather and Mount Rainier views continued:

The counter-serve taco place has a trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag to which customers can pay their respects prior to ordering, an example of Rainbow-first Retail (examples from Bozeman, Montana).

We’re informed that Floridians are stupid. The hyperintelligent progressives of Tacoma, however, need to be reminded to close the water tap after filling a cup at the ice cream shop:

The coffee shop nearby has a complete Righteous Boomer No Kings Rally Starter Kit:

The fridge magnets for sale during morning coffee include one that situates anti-Trump protest in the context of Martin Niemöller-level heroism (which makes sense since The Reverend Niemöller hated Jews almost as much as today’s progressives and actually voted for the Nazi Party three times!):

Although the residents of western Washington State are surrounded by neighbors who are in obvious need of assistance, e.g., due to being unhoused, their political energies go into parading around in front of each other to show how much they hate what Donald Trump is doing 3,000+ miles away in D.C. Here’s the reading material provided at the coffee shop:

The next morning we hit the LeMay Collections at Marymount, a less-glitzy venue in south Tacoma. This shouldn’t be skipped! We opted for a docent tour, which included a ride in a Ford Model T and a visit to a massive car warehouse that is normally off-limits.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if Stellantis brought back the AMC Pacer?

The Collections includes a large exhibit on the Elon Musk of the 1940s, Preston Tucker. Promoting the public sale of stock in an unprofitable company whose products were delayed did not make Tucker a trillionaire, however, but got him prosecuted and shut down by the U.S. government. Tucker beat the rap, but the company was killed. Tucker’s design had a lot of safety features that would gradually appear in mass-market cars over the subsequent 30 years. The museum explains that the original design even included seatbelts but that they were removed due to a fear that the public would infer that the car was more dangeorus than existing designs. One design goal was that the engine and transmission could be removed and a loaner engine/transmission swapped in. This would take less than one hour and would enable repairs to be done offline.

How much fun would it be to have this Edsel station wagon? Our docent reminded us that Edsel Ford shouldn’t be associated with business failure, despite the lack of success of the Edsel cars that were introduced after his death. It was Edsel who twisted his dad’s arm into adding the Model A to Ford’s product line as an alternative to the Model T, which Henry Ford considered to be ideal.

The Collections has far more cars than the downtown museum and they don’t always get a lot of room for display and walking around:

There are a lot of gems, however, and the place is well worth 2 hours. You’ll learn about at least a dozen car brands that you hadn’t previously known existed. Below, I learned about an entire class of car that I hadn’t heard of, the “cyclecar“. 14 hp out to be enough for anybody, as Bill Gates famously never said.

Just imagine how much surplus oil we’d have if people did most of their errands in a modern version. Even with 1913 technology, this machine supposedly achieved 40 mpg at 40 mph (more than enough speed to get around Seattle and, in fact, even 15 mph was overkill during a lot of our time on I-5).

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Sitka, Alaska Public Library

by philg

What do the taxpayers of Sitka, Alaska get at their local public libary? Here’s a report from a May 2026 visit.

(Alaska has no state income, estate, or sales tax, but residents of Sitka pay property tax and also a sales tax of 6 percent (summer) or 5 percent (winter).)

It’s a beautiful waterfront building with awesome-by-pathetic-US-standards free WiFI:

A bulletin board with community announcements greets visitors:

(The Juneteeth celebration will likely resemble an Ibram Xolani Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers) book club because we didn’t see a single African American local or visitor during our day in Sitka. Even the Labrador Retriever who protected us from brown bears on the Totem Trail was yellow rather than Black (the Lab’s owner appeared to be white).)

Featured books by the front door:

A featured book in the kids’ section:

(So far the locals don’t seem to have followed the leader into wearing hijab.)

Here’s a book that was flagged as new in the kids’ section. It says “Inspired by the childhood of Dolores Huerta”. Ms. Huerta was recently featured in the New York Times, e.g., with “‘We’re Just Seen as Sex Objects’: Dolores Huerta’s Years in the U.F.W.” (“The co-founder of the United Farm Workers talked about her relationship with Cesar Chavez, and the night he raped her.”) and “Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years”.

The library loans out gear and games:

The teen section reminds kids in Alaska that climate change will ruin their lives unless they follow the lead of Indian-born environmental journalist Meera Subramanian and become climate activists. (Thought experiment: Suppose that both Phoenix, Arizona and Sitka, Alaska became 10 degrees warmer. Would that make real estate in Sitka more valuable or less valuable?)

The book could perhaps use an update. Climate Change Alarmists now demand cheap oil and complain about gas prices being, in nominal dollars, nearly as high as they were in 2022, but the book praises those who obstructed the Dakota Access Pipeline. The book celebrates Tonopah-style concentrated solar power, apparently disagreeing with Popular Mechanics that “The $1 Billion Solar Plant Is an Obsolete, Expensive Flop” (2020). See also “Solar plant on I-15 near its end, shutting off in 2026, officials say” (2025) regarding the Ivanpah dream.

Teens are also reminded that “the perfect family” does not include any white people:

Circling back to the adult section, some books that the librarians chose to feature:

The book on “How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City” is interesting. The New York Times tells us that Black New Yorkers haven’t been replaced by Asians and the Latinx. It is just that New York City now has fewer Black residents and more Asian/Latinx immigrant residents (e.g., see “Why Black Families Are Leaving New York, and What It Means for the City” (2023)). The book explains that the non-replacement of Blacks by Latinx has “saved” cities.

If you’re in Sitka, don’t forget that Rainbow Storytime (pre-K through 5th grade), from the above poster of Pride events, is happening today at 10:30 am Alaska time. Storytime raises a question. The library is funded by taxpayers and, therefore, we have to assume that the majority of taxpayers support whatever the library does. Outside of San Francisco or Massachusetts, though, how many of us have heard a parent say “I am taking my child to the Rainbow Storytime at the library now”?

Speaking of Massachusetts, it seems that the Boston Public Library is hosting 19 drag queen story hours this month. Here are a couple of examples tagged for children of various ages:

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Seattle Trip Report (minus Seattle per se), Part III

by philg

If you want to delight a modern child, take him/her/zir/them to the “Six Seven” restaurant next to the Norwegian cruise pier:

We sailed away from Seattle on May 22, 2026 under the kind of weather that makes summer tourists say “I’d love to live here.” Note Mount Rainier (14,410′ high) in the background:

The weather was even better for our return on June 1, 2026:

We returned and picked up a minivan at a downtown Hertz office, which turned out to save about 30 percent compared to renting at the airport due to reduced taxes. What happens when Yokohama and Chrysler engineers intersect with graduates of the U.S. education system?

(The door placard says that the tires should be at 36 psi.)

Let’s see how many readers recognize this engineering textbook regarding appropriate tire pressure:

At first I thought it was only because the tires were soft, so I took it into the Texaco station next to the Flamingo and had the tires pumped up to fifty pounds each – which alarmed the attendant, until I explained that these were “experimental” tires.

But fifty pounds each didn’t help the cornering, so I swent back a few hours later and told him I wanted to try seventy five. He shook his head nervously. “Not me,” he said, handing me the air hgose. “Here. They’re your tires. You do it.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “You think they can’t take seventy-five?”

He nodded, moving away as I stooped to deal with the left front. “You’re damn right,” he said. “Those tires want twenty eight in the front and thirty two in the rear. Hell, fifty’s dangerous, but seventy five is crazy. They’ll explode!”

I shook my head and kept filling the left front. “I told you,” I said, “Sandoz laboratories designed these tires. They’re special. I could load them up to a hundred.

We made it to Boeing’s Future of Flight Museum and factory tour in Everett, Washington. This is the facility created to build the 747 and it has also manufactured the 767, 777, and 787 (the latter now made exclusively in South Carolina, free of the union labor strikes that have characterized operations in Washington State).

At the museum we learned that engineering and precision manufacturing is beyond the capability of modern white males:

As with Intel, diversity is the key to profits, though an all-female team would also yield spectacular business success:

The museum features “the first female African-American astronaut in space”, a person who had nothing to do with Boeing or its products:

No photos are allowed on the factory tour!

We departed Boeing and inched our way through mid-day traffic jams to the LeMay Car Museum in Tacoma, which will be covered in a separate post. We came back to Seattle a week later via Bainbridge Island.

The state agency that runs the ferry system promotes, in their Bainbridge Island terminal, the following:

  • Juneteenth (we saw exactly zero Black people on Bainbridge Island)
  • a Pride event with “drag performances” and an “expanded kids area”
  • a film about a Bainbridge Island resident who flowered into womanhood at age 61

The state agency officially practices “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, which would be illegal under Florida state law:

The ferry system’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive dream is to convert all of these ferries into floating Teslas, but the original budget of $4 billion isn’t going to come close to covering it in our Jones Act world where U.S. shipyards must build everything (NPR). So far they’ve got… 1 hybrid, the Wenatchee, and we were on it.

It was a perfect, albeit windy/choppy day:

We then drove past marijuana store billboards to get to the Museum of Flight (separate post). (Every town in Washington State, no matter how small, seemed to have at least one marijuana store. These were deemed “essential” by Covidcrats and stayed open while (non-essential) schools were closed for 18 months. #Science)

We met local friends for dinner at Din Tai Fung near Sea-Tac, served by a masked non-Asian waiter, and then roamed the Westfield mall, which is simultaneously rich in Islamic immigrants, masked white people, and Pride (sign below from Nordstrom):

I can’t figure out what people who live in Seattle have in common. Seattle is supposedly home to about 30,000 Somalis. Most of our Uber drivers were from Eritrea (10 percent of Eritrean migrants to the U.S. have chosen this cloudy/rainy city). Only about half of Eritreans are Muslim, and AI says that the majority of Seattle Eritreans are Coptic Christians. Maybe they at least share a language with the Somalis? No. In fact, Eritreans may not share a language with Eritreans: “Eritrea has nine national languages which are Tigrinya, Tigre, Afar, Beja, Bilen, Kunama, Nara, and Saho.” (Wikipedia) The religion of white people in Seattle proper seems to be hatred of Donald Trump and Israel and celebration of 2SLGBTQQIA+. Maybe the Islamic immigrants can get on board with the former, but will they join in practicing Rainbow Flagism?

(If we broaden the geographical area a little, we get to “Bellingham man” Rahmanullah Lakanwal. He was a successful Islamic Afghan in the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with two wives and a variety of children. Using the same thought process as that used by people who adopt 100 cats (see Is U.S. immigration policy a form of animal hoarding?) we brought him to live in Bellingham, Washington, just north of seattle. He had to unload one of his wives, never got a job, and eventually killed some National Guardsmen in D.C. At all times he and his wife and five children were supported by U.S. taxpayers. Why does a Christian immigrant from Eritrea want to pay taxes to support a Muslim immigrant from Afghanistan such as Rahmanullah Lakanwal? What would the taxpayer and the recipient of the free house, free food, free health care, Obamaphone, etc. have in common that would make the relationship sensible?)

Like all of our other trips around Seattle, getting to the airport at mid-day on a Wednesday involved fighting through epic traffic.

The only thing missing was Elon Musk talking about human population collapse.

A family of Scientists chose to mask 2/3 members while designating 1/3 to pick up germs in the airport and on the flight that can later be transmitted in a shared hotel room to the other two.

Delta failed to get with the Pride program and was still promoting AANHPI Month (May!) on its seatback TVs.

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Seattle Trip Report (minus Seattle per se), Part II

by philg

Next stop on the Seattle Trip was the Asian Art Museum, $18 for admission or $0 if you have organized your life as an economist would predict: “This program provides free admission for up to five people. In-person verification of SNAP, EBT, or WIC card is required.”

One of my favorite exhibits: a local Scientist wearing a protective anti-COVID mask over a full beard. Six years after coronapanic, he/she/ze/they couldn’t find a job with less exposure to the potentially-infected public?

(We saw quite a few indoor and outdoor maskers, but it was rare to find one with as lush a beard underneath the mask.)

Next stop: the Seattle Japanese Garden.

The surrounding arboretum has a gift shop explaining how to garden while Black:

We saw Islamic immigrants in hijabs and burqas, various Asians, and a lot of white people in the Arboretum, but none of the Black girls featured in the book that was for sale.

Next stop: the Ice Box Arcade, which answers the question “How do you keep the local progressives from vandalizing a $15,000 Harry Potter pinball machine, tainted by J.K. Rowling’s stubborn Science-denying insistence that there is a difference between men and women?”

Answer: tell them that the quarters placed into the machine will go to support a Rainbow Flagism nonprofit organization. The collection, which is wonderfully well-maintained, includes a rare James Bond retro machine from Stern:

The standard James Bond modern Stern series is Sean Connery-only. This retro machine is enhanced with Roger Moore and “Daniel Craig says he goes to gay bars to avoid fights at straight venues” (Guardian; if you live with a woman see if you can make “I need to go to the bathhouse every three nights because our water pressure at home isn’t good enough” work?).

Contrary to what you might have read, Seattle progressives most definitely did not set up a 16′-high statute of Lenin on a street corner (you can enjoy some Halal food at Sinbad Express while visiting).

Back to our hotel neighborhood, the pub requires that you pass the sacred Rainbow Flag (but not trans-enhanced?) before entering (this was taken in May, not June/Pride):

CVS keeps my beloved Dawn and Bounty securely locked up:

An awesome playground next to the Norwegian cruise ship pier:

I’ll cover our return to Seattle from the Alaska cruise in a follow-up post.

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Seattle Trip Report (minus Seattle per se), Part I

by philg

Our precious children apparently cannot be exposed to reality and, therefore, our trip to Seattle skipped the parts of Seattle that have made the news recently. We stayed at an elite Courtyard by Marriott next to Lake Union in hopes of avoiding some of Seattle’s, um, more colorful characters.

Stickers on lamp posts by the hotel:

We went for breakfast to a Halal bagel shop, Toasted. According to the web site, the owners of the shop selling a baked item created by Polish Jews are “Murat from Istanbul and Jaafar from Iraq” (this isn’t cultural appropriation?). The merch sales at the shop help pay to increase the number of immigrants in the U.S., an odd thing for Seattleites to support in my opinion given that we were never able to complete one trip anywhere near the city without getting stuck in horrific traffic. Even a trip from Sea-Tac to downtown aat 11:30 pm on a weeknight was delayed because the Uber driver couldn’t reach us through the horrific traffic at the airport. The average resident of Seattle loses 87 hours per year to traffic jams (source), equivalent to two weeks of full-time work and, therefore, if the country weren’t as jammed, he/she/ze/they could presumably take an additional two weeks of vacation and still be just as productive.

Speaking of immigrants, one stated reason for filling the U.S. with low-skill migrants is to provide cheap labor for enterprises such as the above bagel shop and, also, for Uber and Lyft drivers who won’t mind spending hours in traffic jams. We already know that AI is coming for those driving jobs. How long will it be before an Optimus-style robot can do at least half of the work in the bagel shop?

Next stop: Museum of History and Industry. It’s $25 to enter, but free to anyone who presents an EBT card (which never expires because, apparently, hardly anyone ever gets off EBT/SNAP). The museum can also be free for the Latinx:

The Open Doors program works with organizations that serve communities who have historically been excluded from museum spaces. These communities include, but are not limited to, Black, Native American, Latinx, Pacific Islander, Asian, refugee, immigrant, LGBTQ+, people with disabilities, and people with low and/or no-income.

Through this program, organizations or community groups can reserve a free group visit, or receive admission passes to be distributed to their participants for use on their own schedule.

An 1889 tugboat is parked out front:

We’re informed that almost any woman who holds a job in 2026 is a “trailblazer” and “breaker of the glass ceiling”. It turns out that Seattle had a female mayor for about four years starting in 1924:

(Too bad we can’t get her back to implement my neo-Prohibition schemes!)

The museum reminds us that World War II wasn’t a time of maximum racial sensitive here in the U.S.: “Salvage Scrap to Blast the Jap”.

There’s a reasonably comprehensive history of Boeing and its founder, William Boeing. Left out: Mr. Boeing’s history as the developer of real estate with a race-based restriction. For electrical engineers, the reminder that Fluke has been based in the Seattle area for most of its life would warm the EEs’ hearts if they had hearts:

AI enthusiasts will appreciate Seattle-style AI (Microsoft Bob):

Perhaps explaining the low birth rate among native-born Democrats, the gift shop reminds those passionate about abortion care that pregnancy is unhappy news:

The book section puts Gay Seattle and a pro-Hamas work right next to each other:

(This would become a recurring theme throughout Washington State, i.e., simultaneous advocacy for 2SLGBTQQIA+ and Hamas-ruled “Palestine”.)

A University of Washington book on the subject of how immigrant plants “compete for space with native plants”, marketed to residents of a migrant-rich city with an “affordable housing crisis”:

A couple of books on how to walk in the woods while not being a white male:

A book on how to be gay and Asian at the same time:

Some items relating to righteousness in general:

Although the museum’s collection of historical photos shows men designing, building, and flying airplanes, the gift shop reminds us that building airplanes was a primarily female activity during World War II:

(ChatGPT says that the majority of workers were men and that the vast majority of highly skilled jobs in aircraft production, e.g., machinists, were held by men (probably over 90 percent).)

From the museum, we headed to Capitol Hill, which is where I had a 2019 epiphany: Is LGBTQIA the most popular social justice cause because it does not require giving money? Diversity is our strength, but if you think that All Lives Matter rather than Black Lives Matter, “Don’t Come In”:

Note that the above photo including a trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag was taken on May 21, i.e., pre-Pride. Speaking of Pride, the local bank wants customers to pay their respects to Rainbow Flagism before engaging in any business:

Let’s hope that they have fat bank accounts because gasoline throughout Washington State was about 1.5X the cost of what we pay in Florida ($6.20/gallon was the most common price at name-brand stations):

To be continued…

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Seattle’s Museum of Flight

by philg

Happy IPO Day to SpaceX, which its investors presumably hope will be the future of space travel. Via this post, we can also look at the past of space travel.

Most air and space museums, including the Smithsonian, are primarily about showing artifacts and make little attempt to educate visitors. Seattle’s Museum of Flight is a notable exception and, thus, could easily occupy a nerdy family for a day. Here are some snapshots from an early June 2026 visit.

The SR-71, the world’s fastest airplane and one that reached the edge of space (85,000′), with the world’s slowest, Gossamer Albatross II, ironically placed just above it (in real life, the Albatross II flew mostly at 5-15′ in order to take advantage of ground effect).

How did the SR-71’s engines, designed for slower aircraft, function? A sign explains:

Maintenance might not be simple…

Notice that there is an aircraft on top of the SR-71. This is thoroughly explained (also sadly, since Roy Torick was killed in testing for the D-21B drone):

How about the camera? The museum displays the 30-inch Itek lens:

The Museum avoids American chauvinism, pointing out that modern rocketry was developed independently in three countries and that, before Goddard, there was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in Russia.

(There is a big section on the Apollo program and the role of Boeing, and companies later acquired by Boeing, building equipment for it, but the photos aren’t too exciting.)

The World War II exhibit gives reasonable space to allied and enemy aircraft, e.g., a Yakovlev and a Nakajima:

Equal space is accorded to female pilots who ferried aircraft over friendly skies and male pilots who flew in combat. Nancy Nordhoff Dunnam served in the U.S. between February 1944 and December 1944, most of which was spent in training. She lived until 2017. Richard Bong spent about two years in combat in the Pacific, shooting down 28 heavily armed Japanese planes, and died in 1945 while helping to bring the U.S. military into the jet age.

Were there any male pilots in WWII who did the same jobs as these heroic females, i.e., ferrying airplanes? ChatGPT:

In the U.S., aircraft ferrying was run mainly through the Army Air Forces Ferrying Command, later part of the Air Transport Command (ATC). Its Ferrying Division delivered newly built aircraft from factories to training bases and ports of embarkation. That system used AAF military pilots, civilian pilots, airline pilots, and women pilots including WAFS/WASP. The Air Force history page for the Twenty-Second Air Force says the Domestic Wing/Ferrying Division moved newly produced aircraft using “AAF pilots, civilian pilots, and women pilots” from the WAFS/WASP. The male civilian pilots came from several pools: airline pilots, commercial/private pilots, bush pilots, air-taxi pilots, crop dusters, business pilots, and pleasure pilots. … 27 male pilots per female pilot.

So… the gender that did 27/28ths of the work gets no credit in the museum. Congress and President Obama awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009 to the civilian female pilots. Did the civilian male pilots who performed similar jobs get a similar honor? ChatGPT says “no”.

The Museum’s outdoor-but-covered exhibits include most of Boeing’s greatest hits, including the 747, an Air Force One 707, a 787, a B-17, and a B-29.

The 727 on display is accompanied by a D.B. Cooper sign:

There is a sobering Vietnam memorial, displaying a beautiful B-52 and also reminding us of the cost of war, nothing that we lost 10,000 aircraft in the war.

A notable omission from the plaques of names of men who were held as POWs: Robert L. Stirm. AP:

Stirm, a decorated pilot, was serving with the 333rd Tactical Fighter Squadron based in Thailand in 1967. During a bombing mission over North Vietnam that Oct. 27, his F-105 Thunderchief was hit and he was shot three times while parachuting. He was captured immediately upon landing.

He was held captive for 1,966 days in five different POW camps in Hanoi and North Vietnam, including the notorious “Hanoi Hilton,” known for torturing and starving its captives, primarily American pilots shot down during bombing raids. Its most famous prisoner was the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, who also was shot down in 1967.

Stirm became famous for this photo of his family welcoming him home:

As Wikipedia notes, however, the principal welcome that he received was being sued for divorce, under the nation’s then-new no-fault divorce laws, by the wife who’d been having sex with various new friends while the pilot was held prisoner. She obtained the house and car that he’d purchased, a child support revenue stream, and 43 percent of his military pension for her service on the home front (maybe her name should be on the wall as the person who made the greater sacrifice during the Vietnam War? A judge decided that fairness required that she receive the majority of the money that Robert L. Stirm was paid during his USAF career (only 43 percent of the pension, but she got 100 percent of his pay while he was a POW)).

Circling back to the interior, the museum shows a seemingly crazy rescue apparatus for pulling downed pilots out of the jungle (now “rainforest”) by helicopter:

What about compliance with the Washington State religion? Employees at the front desk are fully masked:

The museum costs $29 to enter or $3 if you’ve been wise enough to get an EBT card for SNAP or have any other evidence of being on “any form of government or public assistance”:

Anyone on what used to be called “welfare” can also get a family membership for $29 that includes an unlimited number of children and grandchildren for one year (normally $140).

As one turns away from the masked ticket agents (6+ years after coronapanic they haven’t been able to find a job that won’t expose them to tens of thousands of potentially infected humans every year?), the gift shop reminds visitors to “Celebrate Pride”:

The front desk near the outdoor section displays the sacred Rainbow Flag along with a U.S. Navy flag.

Although Seattle is an oasis of tolerance amidst a country full of haters, the Museum has had to set up a segregated “All Gender Restroom” separated from the main restrooms.

The gift shop also reminds us that aircraft are primarily designed, built, and flown by people who identify as “women”:

Let’s close by reminding ourselves just how much of the aviation industry was once controlled by Bill Boeing. The United Aircraft and Transport Corporation owned Boeing, Pratt, and United Airlines, among other companies, until it was broken up the U.S. government in 1934. It would be interesting to imagine an alternative history in which the vertically integrated company had stayed together. For one thing, founder Bill Boeing might have stayed in aviation instead of devoting his time to horses and racially restricted real estate development (Mr. Boeing agreed with future Harvard research that diversity makes a community worse, not better).

Finally, the 140 mph (supposedly!) Taylor Aerocar and the SR-71:

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Peak Land Acknowledgement at Glacier Bay National Park

by philg

A substantial portion of the Glacier Bay National Park official brochure is devoted to acknowledging that the Connecticut-sized park is the “homeland” for the Huna Tlingit Indians:

The Native Americans enjoyed life in their village within what is today Glacier Bay prior to the eponymous glacier expanding all the way into the ocean:

Due to President Calvin Coolidge’s designation of the bay as a “national monument” in 1925 (Wikipedia), the natives were forever cut off from residing in their Connecticut-sized homeland.

Given that it is a violation of federal law for an Indian to return what the acknowledger says is “home”, is it fair to call this Peak Land Acknowledgement?

Note that if we ever did give Glacier Bay back to the Native Alaskans they would immediately become insanely rich. The National Park Service disdains filthy lucre and therefore imposes a two-ship-per-day limit while charging an absurdly low $8/passenger fee (i.e., about what a cruise passenger might pay for a drink at the onboard Starbucks). Each ship parks itself in front of the headline glacier for only about one hour and, therefore, given the number of hours of daylight in the summer, it would be trivial to increase the number of ships to accommodate nearly all of the 1.7 million passengers who visit Juneau each year. The Indians could hike the price to $60 per passenger, the standard fee for a seat at specialty dining, and thus harvest about $100 million per year for doing almost nothing.

(Currently most of the profit from the land is extracted by Princess, Holland, and Norwegian because these are the major cruise lines that have long-term contracts with the National Park Service. I.e., the U.S. Treasury gets almost nothing and the government cronies get nearly all of the profit that is obtainable from the park. (The itineraries that include Glacier Bay can support higher prices even though the cost to the cruise line is no higher.))

A present-day Glacier Bay village of 2,000+ passengers on Holland America, owned since 1989 by Florida-based Carnival, which was founded by Ted Arison, a Palestinian born in Tel Aviv, Palestine.

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Starlink on Norwegian Cruise Line

by philg

Celebrity tarnishes the Starlink brand by advertising “Starlink” and delivering 1990s Internet speeds (see Celebrity Starlink Wi-Fi Internet (3 Mbps at $1,000 per month)). What was it like on Norwegian during a recent Alaska trip (on the Norwegian Joy)? Similar pricing, but 100 Mbits down and 10 up:

Mid-afternoon on a sea day:

Perhaps they’re throttling uploads to 10 Mbps because it was never fast to upload photos to Dropbox. However, downloads perhaps run at a speed related to the number of users online and active.

Latency means that web pages feel slower even than on our ghetto-class Xfinity cable at home, but the bandwidth is there for streaming addicts.

What if you need to connect an IoT device, old Kindle, or something else for which the Norwegian web-based portal won’t work? A Windows 11 PC is capable of broadcasting a mobile WiFi hotspot to multiple additional devices even with just one WiFi adapter. (This also works for using a laptop and phone at the same time or sharing among family members.)

Separately, Norwegian might be the ultimate nightmare for a progressive. It was co-founded by an Israeli (Ted Arison, “third-generation sabra” born in Tel Aviv in the “Palestine” days, who later founded Carnival, which also own Cunard, Costa, and a bunch of others, with financing from Israeli-Bostonian Meshulam Riklis). If Jewish-Israeli foundation weren’t bad enough, the modern company was built by private equity (Apollo, founded and run by three American Jews)!

How’s the ship? I’ll cover that in a separate post. Derek Zoolander would probably say that it is suitable for ants and needs to be at least three times bigger.

Loosely related… “Apollo snubs Mamdani, picks Texas tech hotspot for second US HQ” (New York Post).

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An actual skier goes to Aspen to ski

by philg

Lifestyles of the Rich and Not-so-famous… a 50-year-old friend who is a good skier reported to our chat group from Aspen. What does it cost to spend a week with the elite? For two parents and two adult children in a rented 2BR timeshare, the basic cost (airfare plus lodging) for mid-March was about $15,000 thanks to his wife, a business genius. If a mere mortal were to arrange this it would be $30,000. “St Regis nearby is $2400 a night, which is not the peak rate.” Note that this trip was booked before the ski season started, so the prices don’t reflect that fact that Colorado had no snow this year.

  • To save time, the family’s tickets were straight into the Aspen airport.
  • Tailwinds too strong for a landing in Aspen, so they are diverting to Grand Junction – that is a 2-3 hour drive
  • 20kt gusting 30
  • These small mountainous airports are bad news
  • And that is why I prefer SLC to all of them
  • But [wife] was hell bent on “trying out Aspen”
  • I have to say the turbulence right now is like on the Katana [Diamond DA20, a paper airplane, basically, in its response to wind]
  • Given the 3:30am wake up call, this trip is going to be a hoot now
  • They will need multiple buses to send this plane full of skiers with their gear
  • My friend used to vacation in Aspen all the time and I remember that he got stuck here because of the weather at least twice. Planes depart SLC pretty much in any weather. One time he was in Aspen with his kids for four days waiting for a flight. Couldn’t get a car rental because everything was rented, car services were all booked.
  • Just arrived in our hotel. 4 hours after landing
  • A guy told [wife] that we were lucky we got to grand junction; People were arriving in Ubers without their bags from Denver

(I personally would have booked a flight into Denver (“mile-high”), spent a night or two adjusting to higher altitude, and then proceeded 3.5 hours by car up to Aspen, 8,000′ above sea level.)

What’s the experience?

  • Aspen is about stopping to ski early because your salesman at David Yurman called you because your diamonds were ready for pick up
  • they definitely do have snow on slopes, just not as much as usual. Better than a good day on the East Coast
  • Ikon passes were $5k for 4 people [lift tickets]
  • [wife] is raving about the Franke coffee machine [in the condo]
  • Skiing is ok. Not as bad as we thought it would be. Icy at the bottom. Not crowded.
  • It is kind of a small mountain. Snowmass and Buttermilk are nearby but require a shuttle
  • I think I know who likes it: it is guys whose wives don’t ski
  • So they are bored in all other locations. Here they can go shopping or sit in restaurants. If you have a wife who doesn’t ski and bitches at you, then she will drive you nuts in Utah.
  • Women are visibly prettier.
  • too few slopes. They arent bad but Snowbird is a lot better
  • [daughter] just ran for 40 minutes at her usual pace here and said that it was noticeably harder because of the altitude

How about the elites?

  • Very few non whites. [quoting wife] “I just saw my first Asian just now. She was with a white dude, so the type that wants to be white”. Racism and stereotyping are rampant here
  • You have people dressed in furs on the top of the mountain – they actually dress up and go up there with their shopping bags
  • [wife] grabbed our skis from the valet and some woman in the elevator looked at her and said “why are you moving your own stuff…?” Implying that bell staff is supposed to bring it all to our room. We are clearly not used to the luxury lifestyle. These time shares are all run like hotels.
  • You should see some of the houses being built on the hills here. Like the Hamptons
  • Speaking of well-to-do people… Aspen sucks overall. all these dressed up people get old pretty quickly. restaurants are very nice but that’s the only advantage. after i ski all day, i really want to just be in bed or order in. we ordered in twice already.

Getting back home:

  • Aspen airport doesn’t disappoint on departure. We have been sitting on the ground for an hour because of “quite a few arrivals”
  • Embraer is being thrown around by rising air like a Diamond Katana
  • Honestly, I think Aspen is beyond overrated

Final answer?

[wife] might disagree but I think Aspen sucks. Definitely not for you guys. Since you don’t dress up in furs and blow $1k for dinner “to see and be seen”. I was moderately connected to these people and still am to some extent as you saw from my friend’s photos for example, but I don’t go to their parties, which are boring as f*ck. Regarding skiing Aspen is overall inferior to Utah and Vail. Not because all runs suck – there are a few good ones, but overall it is way too small. It is for a green/blue run crowd and has some harder ones so that experienced people can feel that the vacation didn’t totally suck. It is mostly about the town. This is literally it. I think one can cover this entire map in one day of skiing.

What if you wanted to live with dignity in Aspen? “A Robert A.M. Stern-Designed Home on Aspen’s Red Mountain Asks $70 Million” (WSJ):

Frederic “Rick” Bourke, the co-founder of the Dooney & Bourke accessories brand, is putting his Robert A.M. Stern-designed home in Aspen, Colo., on the market for $70 million.

Completed around 1993, the roughly 11,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom house is built horizontally along a rock face on Red Mountain, with tawny-beige stucco walls set atop a native sandstone base.

Bourke acquired the roughly 3.5-acre Aspen property in the late 1980s. The lot sits high on Red Mountain, about 800 feet above downtown. He asked Stern to design a family home there.

[from the big house to The Big House] Bourke’s neighbor in Aspen was businessman Viktor Kozeny. In 2009, Bourke was convicted of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for engaging in a scheme with Kozeny to bribe Azerbaijan government officials. Bourke spent almost a year in prison starting in 2013.

Here’s the VFR chart for the airport, a 8440′ and surrounded by mountains high enough that the FAA says not to fly below 14,600′ (you could still hit a mountain, though, with an altimeter reading of 14,600′ in the winter because the Earth’s atmosphere contracts in the cold and the true altitude is lower than what is indicated):

Airlines have a custom RNAV (RNP) N Runway 15 that supposedly takes them down to about 540′ above the runway before they need to be able to look out the window and see. The lowest approach available to general aviation, including the elites in their private jets, requires the pilots to see the runway when 2100′ above it (up to 91 knots approach speed; Cessna or Cirrus) or 2400′ above (91-120 knots; a lot of rabble-class bizjets) or 3200′ above (121-140 knots; the Big Iron for the Big Shots). This is actually more restrictive than ordinary visual (VFR) flying, which can be done with a ceiling of 1000′.

(In the plate below, notice that the approach features a second localizer that isn’t associated with any runway. This provides guidance for the missed approach. Imagine the consequences, especially in the pre-GPS days, of the obvious mistake of failing to switch the frequency or of forgetting how to use the back course of a localizer, something that the typical instrument-rated pilot might do in training and then never again.)

There’s also a GPS approach that has similar minimums for jets:

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Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas

by philg

As Women’s History Month comes to a close, let’s look at a February visit to the Pinball Hall of Fame, on the Strip in Las Vegas.

This is essentially a big warehouse filled with old arcade games, indifferently maintained and many powered off. That said, it is a large enough collection that there are probably some playable games within that you’ve never seen and never played.

Here’s a supersized Flintstones machine from 1994 that is better as a concept than as a game:

A prototype machine for squirrel-hating golden retrievers… Goin’ Nuts:

Speaking of hate and haters…

Those who appreciate fruit crate art will like this 2015 retro Stern Whoa Nellie!

Machines are priced at whatever their original price was, e.g., some as low as 25 cents and quite a few at 50 or 75 cents per play.

Let’s close with a 1995 Gottlieb Strikes ‘N Spares machine, dressed up in Big Lebowski garb.

Tip: Get there right when it opens if you want to be able to hear the machines’ callouts and music clearly. Don’t be put off by the surly ladies who run the place! (I’m not sure why they’re there because one of them said that she didn’t like pinball and never played any of the machines.)

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