This weekend was my 30th birthday weekend, and a hell of a time was
had.
Friday night our friends Jason and Tracy took Jenn and I out for a
great dinner at Applebee’s where I had a pretty tasty steak and shrimp
plate that really didn’t leave any room for dessert. Hung out there for
quite some time and had a good time seeing them again.
After that, Jenn and I hit the store for some last minute supplies in
preparation for Saturday. While we were there, I picked up the KT
Tunstall CD Eye To The
Telescope
(which, as it looks, I should have bought from Amazon since the price is
like half of what I paid). It’s a pretty decent album, but while there
are a couple of real stand-out tunes on there, most of it feels pretty
same-y. Sort of like the James Blunt album Back to
Bedlam -
good, but many of the songs feel a little redundant.
Saturday Jenn, Stu, and I headed out
for the Wild Waves/Enchanted Village theme
park in Washington. It
was record heat and only a couple of hours north, so we figured that
sounded like a lot of fun.
It was a long but fun day - we left the house at 8:00a and got back at
7:00p. Jenn’s face got sunburned pretty bad (she didn’t put lotion on
her face), and Stu and I both got burned on our shoulders and back where
we missed getting suntan lotion (which just goes to prove that the
lotion actually works). They have some really cool water slides and
except for the pretty long lines, it was really awesome.
Wild Waves really gets you coming and going. It’s $30 for a ticket to
get in, then $12 to park. Oh, and if you want a locker to stick your
stuff in, that’s another $11. (Thank goodness we parked close enough to
the door that we could leave our stuff in the car and just go out and
get it as we needed it.) Lunch was a $3 hamburger and fries basket that
cost $8.50 including tax. You’d think that’d be cost-prohibitive to a
lot of people, but this place was packed. I suppose folks just come to
expect that.
Saturday night we were pretty beat from the water park all day, but
when we got back home we sort of hung out and had a good time relaxing
and talking about the craziness that is Wild Waves. That’s going to be a
hard one to top for next year. We tried to play some Xbox 360, but the
drive on it died and it won’t read discs (games or DVDs) anymore. (I
called the support line Sunday morning after we got up and the support
person who helped me, Julie, was super nice. As I’m still under
warranty, they’re going to send me a box via UPS to send the Xbox back
in, then they’ll either repair or replace it and return it in 10
business days. I ended up filling out the extended warranty order form
after I hung up with her since I’ve heard some of my friends having
mechanical trouble with their 360s, too. Time to get extra coverage.)
Sunday
we woke up late, cleaned up a bit around the house, then went to the
store and got some stuff for an afternoon barbecue. We also went to
Rose’s Restaurant and Bakery and
picked up a tiramisu cake that was so big it was “ricakeulous.”
Around 2 or so, Tracy, my parents, and Stu came over to enjoy some
burgers and hot dogs fresh off the grill. Jenn did a great job cooking
that up (and big kudos to her for going out in the heat with a sunburned
face and doing that for me). We all had a slice of cake (caketastic!)
and sat for a bit in post-cake coma.
I got some nice stuff from folks, too. Stu got me Ghost Recon:
Advanced
Warfighter
for my Xbox 360 (which we couldn’t play because the drive was out). My
parents got me an RC helicopter, which is cool because I’ve been wanting
to get into that for a bit, so this entry level one is a good place to
start. Jenn got me Fraggle Rock Season 1 on
DVD which
I can’t wait to watch - I love the Fraggles.
After everyone headed out, I got a call from my sister Tori, who
recently got married and moved to
Hawaii. It was good to hear
from her and see how she’s doing, and it was really cool of her to
call.
Once the battery for the helicopter charged up, I took it out for its
maiden voyage.
They say that if you can fly an RC helicopter, you can run any RC toy
you want. I quickly figured out why.
The model I have has two channels - one for throttle and one for yaw
(increasing or decreasing tail rotor power). The thing is, the tail
rotor power is proportional to the main propeller throttle - that is,
the more power you give the main propeller, the more power the rear
propeller has available. The trick is to increase the main throttle
while correctly compensating with the rear propeller so the helicopter
flies straight.
The description sounds simple. Actual execution is akin to balancing a
ten foot pole on the end of your finger. When you start out you kind of
have it under control, but once you start losing control it’s pretty
much over.
The typical flight goes like this:
First, you place the helicopter in the middle of the driveway because
the grass is too long and ends up blocking the rear propeller from
spinning. You increase the throttle of the main propeller and the rear
starts spinning around, so you jimmy around on the rear propeller to
stabilize it. Here’s where it gets tricky. Since you don’t have control
over pitch on this model, it automatically flies “forward,” which
equates to actually flying sort of generally in a forward direction. I’m
gathering it flies sort of at an angle, like about 10:00, not really
straight forward.
Anyway, once you sort of get it stabilized, you increase the power to
the main throttle, then you run like hell. The reason you run is that
you’ve now lost the delicate balance of rear propeller to throttle and
the helicopter is undoubtedly chasing you at roughly waist level, set on
smacking you square in the nuts with its primary propeller. Barring
that, it will fly in an arbitrary direction with the intent to injure or
maim as appropriate until you either let off the main throttle (bringing
it crashing to the ground) or run it into the neighbor’s bushes (full
stop).
I was able to get it to fly in a generally decent controlled fashion
and land softly precisely once. That was the point at which my neighbor
from two doors down, Tim, came busting over wondering “how I did that”
because he’s had a copter for two and a half months now and crashes it
every time. He has a more advanced model with throttle, yaw, and pitch,
so maybe it’s just that much more complex. You’re supposed to be able to
hover those, though, and I would think that’s actually what you’d start
trying before moving forward… but he’s started with forward motion and
can’t figure out how to hover.
I wonder if the one I got is stereotypical for difficulty or if it’s so
entry level that it doesn’t have any of the automatic stabilizer
features that more advanced helicopters might have. Not having a frame
of reference, I couldn’t say. I ran the battery down fairly quickly and
went inside to call my dad and thank him again for the RC hedge trimmer.
I think I need a lot more practice.
All in all, a caketastic birthday weekend.
The
kind of helicopter I have is an