NorthWORST At It Again

If there's one airline I could choose to avoid at all costs, it's Northwest. NWA has to be the most unreliable, worst airline in the industry. I'm not sure it will change much with the Delta merger, but it certainly can't get much worse. The planes are old, out of date and have more quirks than a 45-year old dressing up to play Laire.

Naturally, my 9:15 p.m. flight Monday night was delayed more than 2.5 hours due to a mechanical issue. I'm all for getting to my destination safely, but a little organization and at minimum a half-assed effort from the NorthWORST staff would be appreciated. At 4 p.m. I noticed the same flight number out of Columbus was delayed. In my two-hour pre-flight e-mail notice, NWA said on time. Not so much. If you know the plane is having an issue, come up with a contingency plan to find an identical plane, at your airline's largest hub no less, and transfer passengers and baggage immediately. It was the last flight of the night and planes were sitting everywhere. It doesn't take a high IQ to figure that out. After waiting 2 hours they finally made the brilliant decision to switch us on to an idle plane across the airport.

What it meant for me was arriving in San Diego at 1:55 a.m. PST. The flight was good all things considered, if not a little hot. Everybody complained about how warm the plane was, but no flight attendant could managed to turn the thermostat knob to the left. Besides that, not too bad considering the delay. I guess it's to be expected. It's flying the friendly skies on the worst airline in business with planes that want the 70s back. I got home to Murrieta at 3:15 a.m. after driving through some seriously dense fog in the mountains ... 100 feet of visibility. I got up for work at 6 a.m. and the day that felt like two was just getting started.

I made a drive through the Santa Anas and Cleveland National Forest at 8 a.m. on the Ortega Highway, which can really test your nerves when you are buzzing on caffeine and little sleep. I successfully made it to my business meeting in Orange County right on time at 9:30. After a few hours discussing the industry and feeling pretty good for hardly any shut-eye, I zipped back to Murrieta using the 91, now free of morning traffic. By the time I got back to the office it was 2 p.m. and time to drive 40 miles north in our KTM Sprinter van to Milestone MX to break in several motocross media ATVs.

Before I knew it the clock was ticking past 5 p.m. and I was putting in some hard laps aboard our all-new 450 SX ATV. The exercise and motos were good and it gave me a needed boost of energy for the 40-mile drive home. I got hung-up in traffic on "the" 60 so the drive ended up taking me an 1 hour 15 minutes. I've learned freeways are always referred to as "the" 15 or "the" 405 here. I'm not sure why, they just are. Next up, Taco Bell and a 25-minute wait for two soft tacos! Not ideal on limited energy. I can officially say that particular location has lost any future business from me. By the time I ate and caught up with Tracy I was crashing hard. I probably beat my grandma to bed when I fell asleep at 8:30.

The biggest news, I finally moved in a new couch today over lunch. I'm pretty "stoked" to dump the college futon and sit on some real furniture. No cable or Internet yet. It's become a game of how long I can hold out!

Where have I been and where am I going?

It's been a hectic week-plus since my last post. Moving to SoCal has changed my routine and it's actually added more work to my plate. Now that I'm within several miles of all the ATV and dirt bike media, I'm kept busy preparing for media tests or attending several, especially in December. It's a great change of pace getting out of the office, but it keeps the days in the office really busy.

Last weekend I headed down to Mission Beach and hung out with Derek and Chad Prull. For my ATV friends, don't be confused he's not the Chad Prull who finished second at the Baja 1000 last weekend. A group of 7 of us headed out to Canes Bar and Grill to watch an 80s hair band and the bar was absolutely packed. Naturally, four of us dressed up in 80s garb to put us in the mood. I was rocking a 1-Up Nintendo T-shirt, headband and wrist band, but Derek took the win with a jean jacket, cut-off jean shorts and an AC/DC T-shirt. There were a decent amount of people rocking 80s gear at the bar so it made for a fun time.

On Sunday we headed over to a local pub to watch the Vikes spank the Jags over some Bloddy Mary's. On my way home to Murrieta later that night I realized I'm getting too old to hang with the younger crowd. I was completely whipped. Staying out late when your used to going to bed before 10 takes a lot out of you.

On my way to San Diego my truck had some hesitation and acceleration issues and the CEL came on flashing. I noticed my truck was idling rougher for the last several months and CEL came on briefly while I was still in Ohio. The dealer in Ohio took care of a needed transmission service and recommended replacing the PCV valve and thermostat. I found it hard to believe those items were the cause of the CEL. I took care of those items on my own, saving $400 from their rip-off price hike. Seriously, $225 for a $7 thermostat and $175 to literally plug in a new PCV valve into the valve cover ... a job that takes 1 minute and 30 seconds.

Updating those items didn't cure the issue, and I figured it wouldn't. I took it to the Rancho Ford and Lincoln Mercury dealer yesterday in Temecula and it was definitely the best I've ever been treated at a Ford dealership. They fit the truck in to their schedule without an appointment, diagnosed it as a bad No. 8 igntion coil and spark plug and I was on my way. That diagnosis is what my dad and I figured it was, but I didn't have time to play a guessing game on what cylinder it was as I have a flight today at 2:15 back in San Diego. It's the fourth bad coil my truck has had. I'd say this is highly unacceptable but, from my understanding, it's just the 2001 model year F150 that has these issues. Neat!

As for today, I'm off to Minneapolis to spend time with Tracy, family, friends and turkey. I'll miss my mom's mashed potatos this year, but I guess I'll just have to wait until Christmas. We are on a rotating holiday schedule on the Vogtman side, which means this year we celebrate Christmas at my parents' house. Next year it's Thanksgiving. It works out well when extended family get on the schedule. My bro-in-law, sister and sister-in-law and brother can spend time with their families and not feel rushed to be everywhere on one day. Not to mention it's going to save me some money now that I live in SoCal.

Well, off to San Diego for my 2:15 flight. Tracy and I are meeting up with friends tonight and tomorrow we look forward to stuffing our faces. You have to love American traditions. Eat, drink, eat some more, drink some more and watch football. Sounds good to me.

My First Earthquake

I experienced my first earthquake at 4:30 a.m. this morning. We've adjusted our work hours at KTM to be from 6:15 a.m. to 3:15 p.m., so it has disrupted my sleep pattern on work nights. I seem to wake up around 4:15 before falling back asleep until 5:15 or so to get up for work.

Today, I was in and out of sleep when I felt the mattress jiggle. I thought I was just having some really cool realistic dream until I heard we had a 4.1 magnitude earthquake at 4:35 a.m. this morning. I heard the news on the way to work, so it reassured me that I'm not completely losing my mind.

Anyways, it was pretty neat to experience the quake. The bed rumbled for 10 or 15 seconds and then I fell back to sleep. I thought the scale below best represented what I felt. The difference between a 4.1 and a 7.1 doesn't sound like much when related to magnitude, but when it is related to tons of TNT for the Seismic Energy, you really understand how huge of a difference it is. 1,000 tons of TNT vs. 32 million tons!

Richter     TNT for Seismic    Example
Magnitude      Energy Yield    (approximate)

-1.5                6 ounces   Breaking a rock on a lab table
1.0               30 pounds   Large Blast at a Construction Site
1.5              320 pounds
2.0                1 ton      Large Quarry or Mine Blast
2.5              4.6 tons
3.0               29 tons
3.5               73 tons 
4.0            1,000 tons     Small Nuclear Weapon
4.5            5,100 tons     Average Tornado (total energy)
5.0           32,000 tons
5.5           80,000 tons     Little Skull Mtn., NV Quake, 1992
6.0        1 million tons     Double Spring Flat, NV Quake, 1994
6.5        5 million tons     Northridge, CA Quake, 1994
7.0       32 million tons     Hyogo-Ken Nanbu, Japan Quake, 1995; Largest Thermonuclear Weapon
7.5      160 million tons     Landers, CA Quake, 1992
8.0        1 billion tons     San Francisco, CA Quake, 1906
8.5        5 billion tons     Anchorage, AK Quake, 1964
9.0       32 billion tons     Chilean Quake, 1960
10.0       1 trillion tons     (San-Andreas type fault circling Earth)
12.0     160 trillion tons     (Fault Earth in half through center,
                             OR Earth's daily receipt of solar energy)

Fun Weekend

Tracy made the visit to Murrieta for a long weekend and it was good to finally be back together again after being apart 5 weeks. Now we look forward to Thanksgiving when I come home for five days.

Finally, after much delay and indecision, we bought a couch and ottoman for the apartment at Ashley Furniture. I'd describe it for you, but I'd rather you visit and tell us what you think in person.

Other than that, we took it easy and went to La Jolla beach on Saturday for a walk and to watch the sunset. It was 80 degrees and it turned out to be significantly warmer than Sunday.

On Sunday, we visited Derek and watched the Vikes eek out a W against the Pack. Finally, Childress! We also hit up this sketchy corner mexican stand / restaurant for lunch and it turned out to be really good. The best thing was it cost us $11 for two full meals. Not bad.

I'm still looking in to getting cable and Internet at the apartment ... shooting for next week. Until then, I'll be sporadic with my posts.

Halloween

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I'm still waiting to get Internet at my apartment and until then my posts will be a little brief.

I had a fun weekend down in San Diego for Halloween. I dressed up as a 70s stock car driver helmet and all and managed to keep the lid on the whole night Friday. We went to Pacific Beach and bar hopped before cabbing it back to Derek and Chad's place. On Saturday, we watched that disappointing Gopher football game and tried to forget about it with some fattening KFC.

Besides that, we hung out and played some Wii and took it easy on Saturday. I stuck around for the Vikes game on Sunday because, you guessed it, I don't have cable at my apartment yet. We went to Junior Seau's restaurant and watched the game over a bloody Mary.

The last two days at work I've been busy in training on our new Husaberg bike. What I'm quickly learning is tearing apart an engine is easy, it's the electrical wiring that's the hard part. Especially with a fuel-injected bike. Regardless, it's fun spending time in the shop instead of at a desk.

I'll have some pictures from Halloween for you sometime this week.

And, amazingly, it rained here today and it's only reached 75 the last two days. Maybe the hot weather is finally over?