Happy Birthday, Mr. Google

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Do you giggle when you google?
Do you doodle when you google?
Do the noodles when you google
Boil over when you google?
Does the Google fill your noodle
More than food'll when you google?
Do you giggle when you google?


Or on strudel when you google,
Do you nibble when you google?
Do you scarf down all the strudel
Without scruple when you google?
And loosen up your belt
A notch or twoodle when you google?
Do you giggle when you google?


Do you tipple when you google?
Take a sipple when you google?
Pour a tottle when you google
From the bottle when you google?
Does the room begin to wiggle,
Do you wobble when you google?
Do you giggle when you google?


Do you cuddle when you google,
With your snuggles when you google?
And your snuggles, when you google,
Do you tickle, when you google?
Do you try to get your snuggles
In the moodle when you google?
Do you giggle when you google?



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Proof That I Am Famous

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Back in the days when offices had water coolers, one of the oldest water cooler jokes was this:

I looked up 'idiot' in the dictionary, and there was a picture of Fred.

(Where 'Fred', was the name of one of the office wags who happened to be standing around the water cooler.)

Get it? The little pictures they put next to definitions in the dictionary are chosen to be so iconic that if they used Fred's picture next to 'idiot', then....

Well okay, no one ever said water cooler jokes were very funny. Maybe that's why hardly any offices have water coolers anymore. And come to think of it, how many of us have an unabridged Funk & Wagnalls on our desk anymore? Or even an abridged Funk & Wagnalls?

Mr. Google has pretty much done away with the popularity of printed dictionaries. But Mr. Google has continued the tradition of posting iconic little pictures for practically anything you might want to google.

Sure, if you search Google images, there will be a gazillion photos for almost any search, but only the three or four most iconic of those show up when you're searching the whole web for something.

If you search for 'anchor', for example, Mr. Google will show you these iconic images of anchors:

Note that almost none of those looks like the kind of anchor a real sailor would be likely to have on their boat today. But they are the most perfect representations that Mr. Google could find of what the word 'anchor' means to most people. I think that's what iconic means, anyway. And Mr. Google is tireless in his search for the most perfect, the most iconic images.

So, why do I bring this up?

I thought you'd never ask.

While trundling (look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls) through Sitemeter the other day to see if anyone is still reading this blog, I made a remarkable discovery. Someone had found this blog by searching merely for Flemish coil.

So, what the hey, I thought, I'll try doing that same Google search to see if I'm on the 27th or 28th page of hits for Flemish coil. In the course of western civilization, after all, there have been other references to Flemish coils besides the ones in this blog and other photos besides my Blogger profile photo:

And, what the hey, indeed!

I was shocked - shocked, I say - to see the results!

According to Mr. Google (who is never wrong), that very profile photo - photographed on location right here on O Dock - is the second most iconic photo of a Flemish coil in the entire universe:

Do you understand the significance of that?

Since Oprah is no longer on the air, recognition by Mr. Google is the most authoritative acknowledgement that one can have of one's standing in the world!

The once ridiculed Flemish coils of O Dock - and, in particular, my Flemish coil - have finally assumed their rightful place in the entire galaxy of Flemish coils. When it comes to Flemish coils, the coils of O Dock now speak for all the world!

If you still haven't grasped the importance of this, consider that I've just used four exclamation marks in the past six paragraphs. And how often does that happen?

I'm still reeling from all of this. I'm struggling to maintain balance. I'm desperately seeking that inner peace that has guided me through so many of life's overwhelming moments.

How will I cope with this sudden international recognition? Will it affect the tenor of this blog? Will I remain the down-to-earth, humble person that I have always been? Will I continue to ask tedious rhetorical questions like this?

How could I have guessed that a casual reference I made to Flemish coils in the comments page of a now silent sailing blog - lo, so many years ago - would one day lead to such fame?

At long last, I now know there is a God.

And that He uses The Google.

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I'm A Sailor

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I'm A Sailor



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Thunderbird

..

You just never know where the next blog post is coming from.

After not finding much time for blogging or much of anything else in quite a while, I decided to get away for a day with my wife this past weekend, so we drove up to Lake Tahoe.

While sitting at one of our favorite lakeside restaurants, which overlooks a small marina, what shimmering vision should appear across the Lake, headed right for us, but the semi-mythical Thunderbird, a 55-foot mahogany speedboat that has been the queen of the lake since it was commissioned by an eccentric local gazillionaire in 1939. There may be bigger and faster boats on the lake today, and there are certainly more elegant or more graceful ones, but none comes even close to the downright badass chutzpah of Thunderbird.

Okay, this may be a sailing blog, but think of Thunderbird more as a cultural oddity than a big power boat. And cultural oddities are something I feel comfortable blogging about.

I had never seen Thunderbird up close, and for most of her seventy-something years, most common riff-raff like me haven't either, which has only added to her mystery and mystique. She has been until recently in private hands and very well sequestered.

To say that the peculiar recluse who had her built was wealthy would be like saying Larry Ellison is wealthy. Born into a family whose fortunes originated in the Gold Rush (which is about as far back as modern history goes hereabouts), George Whittell, Jr. at one point had the opportunity to purchase 40,000 acres of Tahoe lakefront property - including 27 miles of shoreline.

So he did.

Today, shoreline property at Lake Tahoe doesn't come available often and when it does, it might be a quarter or half-acre at a time. And the cost? Well, if you have to ask...

Which is to say that George Whittell lived in a different age. Like today, some of the absurdly wealthy liked to flaunt their riches, but in the 1930's it seems they were free to find more absurd ways to flaunt it. George, for example, liked to keep pets. But it just wouldn't do to have ordinary pets like we riff-raff.

George befriended the lion tamer of the Barnum and Bailey circus and went off to Africa to get some proper pets - you know, giraffes and elephants and lions and cheetahs - which he brought home to his modest country estate near San Francisco (the little 40,000 acre spot at Tahoe was just a summer place). George liked tooling around Tahoe in one of his Duesenbergs (he had six), with the top down and his pet lion perched with its front paws on the windshield. No, I swear, I'm not making this up.

So, what kind of perky little runabout would George order to get to his new place up at Tahoe? You can bet he wasn't picking something out of the Bayliner catalogue. Those who were merely wealthy at the time would have a custom boat builder like Gar Wood knock out a little 30-footer and be done with it. But not George.

Like his elephants and his lions and his Duesenbergs, George would need something designed to impress. He had arguably the most famous power boat racer and designer of the time, John L. Hacker, create something twice the size of a merely extravagant boat. It was powered by twin V-12 550 hp engines and capable of 60 miles per hour. (Big powerboats don't go knots, they go miles per hour.)

If you think the boat looks something like the art deco airplanes of the thirties, that's no coincidence. George also owned a DC-2 airliner - the equivalent of having your own 737 today - and asked that the boat's shape and finish resemble the plane. A 100-foot boat house was built on George's estate just for Thunderbird and a 600-foot tunnel blasted out of the rock to connect the boathouse with the main house so that George and his guests wouldn't be seen coming and going.

George must have soon tired of his plaything. When the boat was sold to casino magnate Bill Harrah years later, the engines had run only 83 hours. Harrah used the boat as his personal yacht for entertaining the glitterati and showbiz types like Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr, who visited his casino, adding further to the legend of Thunderbird.

So here I was, suddenly, after years of reading and hearing about and catching occasional glimpses of her on the water, finally with a chance to see her up close. And what was my impression?

Well, she sure is impressive. I mean enormous, with acres of immaculately varnished mahogany brightwork and shiny, polished stainless steel and chromed metalwork everywhere. But, somehow, I felt like I was being played. This was a boat with very little purpose other than to impress - to make people take notice of its owner. Was it beautiful or elegant? Would it be as much fun to 'drive' as a nice sailboat? Would I want this thing if someone were to give it to me? I'm not so sure.

I was reminded of Maltese Falcon, the immense sailing machine built by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tom Perkins. That boat was built mainly to be 'the largest privately-owned sailing yacht in the world'. Perkins and the Maltese Falcon project are described in a well-written book by Newsweek writer David Kaplan. Like George, Perkins must have soon lost interest in his giant playtoy after it was created and everyone had associated the boat with Perkins' name. He sold it three years later.

The title of Kaplan's book is Mine's Bigger.

Exactly.

What do you think? Is Thunderbird a work of nautical art? Or is it just a bit too much?

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Picture Quiz

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Where am I?

Well, yes, you might well ask that since I haven't posted here in over two months. But that's another question involving an all-consuming project at work, and some all-consuming problems we've had with a sick family member. All that time I used to have to write blog posts has been mostly all consumed, lately. Hopefully, that will change soon.

But, what I really mean is where was I when I took this photo, and just what is this a photo of?

Is this an early prototype for the Oscar-Mayer wienermobile?

Is it a vintage New Jersey diner?

Is it the secret love nest where Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra used to tryst?

Or, is it the biggest, baddest Wurlitzer jukebox ever made?


It certainly has some stories to tell.

Someone reading this blog should recognize it (assuming anyone is still reading this blog). It's been photographed almost as much as the Golden Gate Bridge.

If you think you know the answer, write it on the back of a Hallberg-Rassy 352 and send it over to O Dock. Or, better yet, leave a comment here.

There will be a follow-up post with more pictures and a thougtful narrative that draws insightful life lessons from a chance encounter with this, uh, whatever it is.

Now, let's not always see the same hands.


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Picturesque Speech

A

day

hardly

goes by

without me

thinking how

much life tends

to go around in circles and how much

I'd rather be sailing on my boat

on the rolling sea      on the rolling sea     on the rolling sea     on the rolling sea     on the rolling sea

                 on the rolling sea          on the rolling sea        on the rolling sea        on the rolling sea  

Instead, here I am, stuck

in my cube in my cube in my cube in my cube

in my cube in my cube in my cube in my cube

in my                                                          .

in my                                                          .

in my                                                          .

in my                                              my cube

in my                                              my cube

in my                      _  _                  my cube

in my                      O O                  my cube

in my                        >                    my cube

in my                        o                     my cube

in my                                              my cube

in my                                              my cube

in my cube in my cube in my cube in my cube

in my cube in my cube in my cube in my cube

day after day after day after day after day after day after day after day,

writing these tediou.....zzzzzzz, writing these tediou.....zzzzzzz, writing these tediou.....zzzzzzz,
um, maybe some coffee will help.....writing these tedious


   
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports
reports        reports        reports        reports        reports        reports


that no one will ever read.  



philosophers
and wise men have tried to
tell us over the years, of course, that
life moves in cycles and in circles, that we
do not travel along a simple, straight path, reaching
our destinations and achieving our goals in a direct way.

We must suffer interruptions and diversions along the way.
That way is bumpy and frought with peril. There are dangers
and demons and dragons to dispatch before we may triumph.
As I am learning, into every life some spreadsheets must fall.
Long distance mariners and pilots know that the shortest way
around the globe is an arc, and not the straight path that the
unsuspecting would suspect. So, I am learning to put up with
the detours, to negotiate the potholes and the bumps in
the road. This time spent in purgatory will serve its
purpose, will make the sweet days that must
surely lie ahead that much sweeter, and
may, perhaps, yet turn me into that
most tedious thing of all, a
philosopher.

                

Sailing Blog Writer

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Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my blog?
I've been down for weeks, working like a dog,
It's nothing novel, but my boss is here.
I'm on the job, but I want to be a sailing blog writer,
Sailing blog writer.

It's the dirty story of a crew of eight
That's been cut to four, so no time to waste.
Wish that I were working for the Daily Mail,
But I'm working here and I want to be a sailing blog writer,
Sailing blog writer.

Sailing blog writer (sailing blog writer).

I'm a thousand miles from San Francisco Bay,
No sails for me even though it's May.
The days get longer, I don't like this style,
Maybe I should quit cause I want to be a sailing blog writer,
Sailing blog writer.

Today we're sending off some long-time friends,
Will I ever see any of them again?
Too many empty desks, too many empty chairs,
How I need a break and I want to be a sailing blog writer,
Sailing blog writer.

Sailing blog writer (sailing blog writer).

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