Gig Harbor scooter riders on a maxi-scooter:

Getting around Gig Harbor on a scooter is fun. . .the scenic harbor, the views from the hills, the open air smell of the forest all contribute to an exciting ride.

Would be Gig Harbor scooter riders should take note. Helmets are required in Washington State. Insurance is not required. A motorcycle license endorsement is required even if you ride a scooter.

An exception is the small 49 cc engine scooters that don’t require a driver’s license motorcycle endorsement to be used on public streets. Scooter engines larger than 49 cc require a driver’s license endorsement. If you ride in Gig Harbor, the hilly areas will be challenging on anything smaller than 150 cc engine. And for two adults, a 250 cc engine size is a recommended minimum size engine.

Getting the endorsement requires both a written and a practical test be taken. For more information on getting licensed for a scooter, visit the Department of Licensing

The DOL treats scooters the same as motorcycles. Scooter safety is important enough that Washington State will pay half of your state approved motorcycle safety training course.

A 250 cc engine can reach freeway speed and more. . .but for high speed riding a heavier bike is recommended. More scooter information can be found at: Gig Harbor Scooters

Gig Harbor City Life | No Comments »

Money sloshes around the world economy like water in a bath tub.
In the 1970’s we saw “oil shortages” and the Federal Reserve responded by increasing interest rates.

None-the-less, prices went up on everything, especially home prices.

In order to keep the economy from dying of shock after the Sept 11 attacks on the World Trade Towers, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates.
In response, with more money let loose into the economy, property prices went up.

But wait a minute. What happened to oil prices?
Oil prices were out of balance with property values.
Oil prices fell behind property values - in a kind of reverse process of the 70’s and 80’s events.

Oil prices are now catching up to the inflated wealth of home values.
And as oil prices head upward, inflation will follow.
Will the sub-prime mess evaporate as housing prices head upward with inflation.
I’m guessing “yes”!

My advice? Hang on to your ipod, put some money down on real estate and take an extra job - we’re in for a wild economic ride!

Everything Considered | No Comments »

The single most criminally insane thing the U.S. government has endorsed is farming to produce fuel for energy.

Growing food crops for fuel is wrong. Crops to fuel - what a neat idea? Fuel to burn? Crops to burn?

Dear reader, there are already people in the world going hungry. And more are feeling the impact caused by crops-for-fuel farming.

The demand for fertilizer has sky-rocketed (and so has the cost). Food prices are on the rise both because of increased farming cost and fuel costs.

But isn’t the thought of burning our farm products seems insane?
And once the agriculture industry and farm lobby get dependent on food-for-fuel, they will cry blue crocodile tears to congress to not stop the cash crop.

We should stop the crops-for-fuel programs right now.
Enough of this insanity!

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“You get the government you deserve” is a common observation.
In the case of Iraq, fewer people died under the regime of Saddam Hussein than under the U.S. led democracy.

According to the U.S. translator that stayed with and accompanied Saddam during his last months in captivity, Saddam was worried that his country would degenerate into civil war without his governance.

It seems that Saddam had it right. He knew his countrymen and he knew what it took to maintain law and order. His rule of an iron fist and death to many protected to greater populace from degenerating into what is Iraq today.

Its obvious to me that Iraqis have been handed a golden opportunity by the U.S. - an opportunity to establish a free Democratic society. But the Iraq leadership cannot reach agreement. There is no leadership.

The way out of this mess for the U.S. is to set up another “strong man” to govern the country - someone like Saddam Hussein who will ruthlessly seek out opposition and eliminate those who would oppose him.

The U.S. certainly doesn’t have the stomach for that kind of obedience training. We don’t even understand it or know how to accomplish it. And we don’t have the patience or understanding to maintain a two hundred year presence in Iraq.

There are two ways to get out of Iraq.
One is to pull a Vietnam type of withdrawal. . .and watch Iraq dissolve into a U.S. hating enemy - probably under control of Iran through a religious insanity group of armed militants. Those militants would have a huge oil economy with which to develop and train groups to attack the U.S. from the inside. . .like a few bombs in local shopping malls just before Christmas.

The second way is for the U.S. to find and set up a strong man - like Norieaga or Saddam. . .someone who will take control of the country under the guise of elected leadership and then later become a dictator.

The U.S. needs to position itself militarily to protect “our” strategic interests in Iraq - namely the oil production and supply facilities. We need to turn a blind eye to the dictator and his methods of population control.

George Bush, Cheney et. al. made decisions based on typical American thinking - that everyone wants freedom and democracy. Big mistake, that.

Whatever their thinking, we are left with a mess. Either we should prepare for the really long haul, give up, or provide the type of government that the Iraqi people deserve.

Everything Considered | No Comments »

In the above photo, a delivery truck missed his turn for Home Depot in Gig Harbor North. He attempted to make the second turn at the roundabout. He had only one chance and couldn’t back up - to small and tight an area for that. We witnessed the rear tires ride over the curb and blow-out when they hit the cities stumble blocks.

A bigger roundabout would have prevented that problem.

Even worse is the roundabout that devours the unsuspecting truck driver if they proceed past the Home Depot turn off toward Peacock Hill road.

There are no warning signs for large trucks going down Borgen Blvd. The pip-squeek roundabout at Peacock forces damage upon anyone attempting to drive a big rig through them.

Witness this unhappy, and stuck, driver - it looks like he can make it.

Until we look at the back end. He was stuck. Eventually he just drove over the scraggly metal sign post. The last I saw, the metal sign was wrapped around his rear axle being dragged down Borgen Blvd.

I hear tell that the same sort of thing happens down at the Point Fosdick Drive roundabout. Life in Gig Harbor is a hoot.

Gig Harbor City Life | No Comments »

Rating: Adult *****

An orphaned infant, an innocent midwife and her ordinary family get swept up in London’s organized Russian crime family secret.

Threat, mystery, drama, thriller, violence, sex and nudity interweave to create a plot that captures and fascinates the adult viewer. This movie is not for kids even though star Viggo Mortensen is perhaps best known as Aragorn in “Lord of the Rings” and “Hidalgo”. Mortensen is a true character actor and this film is, perhaps, his best to date.
Put this film on your “A” list.

Rated: R
Film Critic rates this as 5 of 5

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A labor and delivery nurse, shaken from the experience, told me about a woman that came to her hospital to delivery a baby. Her husband accompanied her and it was expected to be a normal delivery.

The baby delivered okay but the woman developed uncontrollable bleeding from the uterus. She was rushed into intensive care and a full battery of drugs and emergency actions were taken to stop the bleeding.
Still, she bled to death. The father went home a single dad and a widower.

The danger of child-birth, ever present, has accompanied women throughout history.
There are physical dangers and pain that women face when they have children.

The inherent dangers of child birth are recognized. And the bonding between a man and woman are encouraged through the institution of marriage. Human history supports marriage as a special privilege between a man and a woman.

The dictates of biology are inescapable. Pain, death of the woman, the child or both are possible outcomes.
Yet “marriage” seems to have morphed into something else in today’s world.

The special reward of “marriage” for a man and a woman has degraded to a simple reward between any two beings with feelings for each other. In particular, the homosexual group believes that marriage should extend it’s privilege to something other than a man and a woman.

The religious right would call it “God’s law”. Biology doesn’t care. Humanity does.
The risk for a woman bearing a child will always be the same, as it has throughout history.
The reward will be what society chooses.

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Our Rating: Family *****

“This is a film about human relationships” said the film’s director Zhang Yimou. The human relationships come across loud and clear even though the language involves Chinese, Japanese and translators.

This unique and powerful film’s story line has a benign beginning that quickly moves into one man’s journey to mend a broken relationship with his dying son. His journey from Japan to China leads to unexpected relationships. Every human on the globe can understand the humanity portrayed in “Riding Along”.

Bravo! to Zhang Yimou.

Rated: PG
English Subtitles
Film Critic rates this as 5 of 5

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Whilst I have no personal knowledge of this affair, the company has made the news.
Check this link: NEWS STORY
And a Google search for “jaguar sales gig harbor” produced this result: About Jaguar Services and this one: Their website

Anyone looking for a job?

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It use to be said that pneumona was an old man’s friend when it came to dying. This was because pneumonia was relatively quick and painless. Today it is a different story.

Medical technology can wring the last drop of life out of the human body. I know because I’ve watched my 87-year-old father with tubes shoved into every orifice, his blood filtered, arterial punctures, sedation, x-rays and blood drawn daily. The intubation tube causes a continuous gag reflex and scars the larynx.

The frustration of an old man with failing hearing and eyesight with a tube down his throat is that he cannot not talk and express his last wishes.

We thought that having an Advance Health Care Directive with power of attorney would prevent this sort of thing. Little did we know that the restrictions on communication with our dad would prevent us from knowing his wishes. What we found was that his hearing aids were removed (body temperature is taken from the ear now) and his glasses were removed (tubes over the ear and through the nose prevent glasses) and a tube down his throat prevents speech.

We’ve watched our dad age. . .no catastrophic illnesses. . .just slow gradual deterioration. He was fully cognizant of his condition and had no wish to resist. Vision almost gone, hearing still barely working (he hasn’t heard a bird sing in over thirty years) both hips replaced and worn out again, most of his friends and workmates passed away, wife passed away and kids grown and in pursuit of their own lives - for our dad life was good but worn and faded at the end.

All of our life stories have the same ending. The way the ending is written is important though. For my dad it was a good life. He lived at home and took care of himself until the last few weeks.

Pneumonia was his last illness. . .we got him to the hospital and the next day they moved him to the intensive care unit. He needed intubation to continue breathing. When I arrived he was fully cognizant but sedated. When I said “Hi Dad!” he opened his eyes and looked at me.

Then, with distinct movement of his eyes and head, he looked to the left at the stand of plasma bags and meds, then a sharp glance at the tubes at the head of the bed, then a another distinct glance at the breathing machine on the right.
Finally, a last look directly into my eyes with a slight raise of his eyebrows.

I know immediately what he was telling me. “Get this stuff off me.” His hands were restrained because he had already tried to remove the breathing tube. I felt like the bad son because I knew his wishes and I could not carry them out.

The Advanced Health Care Directive said that that family and doctors should discontinue life support if efforts were deemed futile after three months. It was a standard Health Care Directive and no specific provisions were made for specific wishes and possibilities.

And so we watched as doctors fought to overcome each biological technicality over a course of ten days. By the tenth day dad’s left eye was fully dilated and did not constrict. His mouth sagged and never closed. He stared straight ahead and was barely responsive. “Hi Dad!” produced no results.

The doctor said that one more kidney dialysis treatment would bring kidney function back, or closer to normal. They seemed to ignore the obvious neurological problem that occurred. It was if the medical team was intent on winning individual battles while the war engulfed them.

The worn old man, even though cured of the pneumonia, could not withstand ten days of assault by modern medicine. His biology crashed and on the tenth day he was free of the plastic snakes and needle sharp fangs.

Dad’s release was a relief for him. But for me, I will forever carry the feeling of letting him down at the last. Even though we thought we were prepared, we were not. In this instance, the Advanced Health Care Directive was of no value.

It is, however, a lesson to study. Advanced Health Care Directives have provisions where one can give very specific directives. Perhaps specifying one’s age and treatment options, one’s remaining capabilities, neurological capacity and other remaining functions the directive can give doctors milestones by which to determine when to quit the battle.

Knowing what I know now, I will do things differently for myself. We all get a turn at this event. Hopefully, I will approach it with grace and calm.

Personal Notes | 1 Comment »