{"id":24438,"date":"2019-08-18T13:29:51","date_gmt":"2019-08-18T20:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=24438"},"modified":"2019-08-19T07:56:56","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T14:56:56","slug":"eight-legged-t-shirt-marauders-oh-my","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=24438","title":{"rendered":"Eight-Legged T-Shirt Marauders, Oh My! (Updated 8\/19\/19)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fullsizeoutput_40b9\"<\/a>Polly came home late last night and found a small tarantula\u00a0at our front door. I took\u00a0its photo because in spite of living in the Sonora Desert we don’t see them all that often. So if it’s all the same to you I’m taking\u00a0this sighting as a good omen.<\/p>\n

When we first moved here and lived in a rented house on the west side, our son Gregory came to visit. We were sitting\u00a0on the patio one day, keeping Greg company while he swam. And in one of those perfect moments he looked up at us from the far side of the pool and said “I thought this place would be crawling with tarantulas.” “Look behind you,” Donna said. A full-grown specimen, somewhere between a big mouse and a small rat in size,\u00a0had picked that moment to amble across\u00a0the pool deck behind Greg, and when he turned around it was at eye level, not a foot from his face. Looking back on that day, we’re lucky we didn’t have to drain and pressure-wash the pool.<\/p>\n

So this critter on our doorstep last night? Probably a young adult; not very large as tarantulas go. There were plenty of bugs out front, attracted by the porch light, and no doubt he was enjoying\u00a0a good nosh when Polly and I started making a fuss. When I traveled for a living I usually ate out alone and hated it when strangers decided I needed company and came over to talk to me. I bet this guy felt the same way.<\/p>\n

The object by the tarantula is one of our shi shi dogs from Okinawa. Technically they’re shisa<\/em><\/a>;\u00a0not dogs but lions (though everyone calls them dogs). Okinawans place them in pairs on the roof or by the front door\u00a0to guard\u00a0their homes. The one with the toothy open mouth goes to\u00a0the right; it\u00a0keeps evil spirits\u00a0out. The one with its mouth closed goes\u00a0to the left; its job is to keep good spirits inside. Ours are still on the job, 28 years later and half a world away from the Ryukyus.<\/p>\n

\"VtyHVjubS2SyDncg+41QkQ\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While Donna was in California last week, she made a side trip to my old school, Sacramento State College. Today it’s California State University, Sacramento, but everyone still calls it Sac State. She picked up a nice T-shirt and coffee mug at the bookstore and here I am with my\u00a0alma mater swag:<\/p>\n

\"fullsizeoutput_40b0\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s the T-shirt I was wearing when I went all paparazzi on\u00a0the tarantula. I wonder if he noticed?<\/p>\n

Speaking of T-shirts, over on Twitter people\u00a0are posting photos of Walmart shoppers wearing\u00a0challenge shirts.\u00a0These are Ts with generally belligerent\u00a0sentiments on the back; one I’ve seen says\u00a0“I’m\u00a0a DRY WALLER. I love FREEDOM. I drink\u00a0beer. I like BOOBS. I own guns. I PROTECT MY FAMILY. If you don’t like it, MOVE.”<\/p>\n

Naturally people are turning\u00a0the idea into occupational memes.\u00a0As in “I\u2019m an OPHTHALMOLOGIST. I love 3 DAY WEEKENDS. I eat CATERED LUNCHES. I don\u2019t know how to change the OIL in my CAR. If you don\u2019t like it. MOVE.”<\/p>\n

Mine would say “I’m a retired MILITARY OFFICER. I get a PENSION. I’m SET FOR LIFE and you can SUCK IT. I judge you on your\u00a0SPELLING and GRAMMAR. If you don’t like it, GET AN EDUCATION.” Except I wouldn’t be caught dead in a Walmart.<\/p>\n

Another meme making the rounds: this political cartoon.<\/p>\n

\"EBzoartXoAAs70G\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ah, the things liberals love: Segways, porn, abortions, man\/sheep love, man\/man love, dopers on skateboards, Bill and Monica of course, fuel-efficient cars, and, not to be forgotten, flag-burning. Thanks to a friend who took the trouble to run the cartoon down for me (shockingly, most of the versions reposted to Twitter had the caption cut off, and none of the tweets I saw bothered to name the artist), I now know the cartoonist is Dan Collins. My friend also suggests that, based on Collins’ other work, this one may be satirical.<\/p>\n

Well, it may be satirical (who can even tell these days?), but one thing that stands out to me is the cartoonist’s familiarity with internet porn:\u00a0where else would he get the inspiration for scissoring lesbians?<\/p>\n

\n

The other day I mentioned Pima Air and Space Museum’s Martin Marauder. As with most of my flying-related\u00a0entries\u00a0I cross-posted it to an aviation group on Daily Kos (you can see it here<\/a>). Judging by the comments there,\u00a0what folks remember about the Martin Marauder is its reputation as an aircrew killer. One a day in Tampa Bay. The Widowmaker. The Flying Prostitute (no visible means of support, haw haw). And so on.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>
B-26 Marauders fly above England in 1944 (AP photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The B-26, introduced in 1941, had a higher wing loading than other medium bombers of the day and consequently a higher stalling speed.\u00a0That meant you had to fly faster on final approach to landing: 120 to 135 mph depending on aircraft weight. The B-25 Mitchell, a contemporary medium bomber, flew final at 100 mph. That’s what set the Martin Marauder apart and gave it its deadly reputation. In fact they did crash a lot of them in training at MacDill Army Air Field in Tampa (one a day in Tampa Bay), but once aircrews learned to fly the airplane properly, the B-26 proved to be a great medium bomber, and I’m still scratching my head trying to figure out why\u00a0virtually all of them were scrapped and melted down at the end of the war, while lesser medium bombers like the B-25 Mitchells and A-26 Invaders continued to serve into the Korean War and beyond.<\/p>\n

Speed is relative. People ask me what it’s like to fly at more than twice the speed of sound. I tell them that while you can sense resistance\u00a0as you pass through the transonic shock wave,\u00a0a feeling of pushing against an invisible soft pillow in the air, once above the Mach everything feels normal again. And since\u00a0you’re usually\u00a0way up there when supersonic, far above the earth and clouds, there’s nothing whizzing by to give\u00a0you a sense of speed. It’s numbers on gauges. By contrast, when you’re on final approach to landing you’re close to the ground and more aware of your speed\u00a0than you\u00a0are at altitude.<\/p>\n

Was it really that big a deal for a WWII pilot to transition from an airplane that took off and landed at 100 mph to one that did\u00a0it 20 to 35 mph faster?<\/p>\n

Once, when I was flying F-15s in the Netherlands, I hitched a backseat ride in the two-seat trainer version of a Canadian CF-104. The 104’s nickname was “the Zipper,” because with its tiny thin wings you had to\u00a0fly fast\u00a0or not at all. It too was called the Widowmaker, and not without reason.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>
CF-104D (photo: Chris Charland)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My F-15 flew final at around 175 mph\u00a0and touched down at\u00a0around 140 (I use miles per hour instead of knots because that’s the speed measurement used by the WWII bombers mentioned above and I want readers to be able to compare). F-15 landing speeds\u00a0were\u00a0similar to those of the F-4 Phantom and most other jet fighters.<\/p>\n

The Zipper, though … damn. You flew final at 195 mph\u00a0(adding speed for higher fuel weights) and touched down around 175. If you had to fly a no-flap approach you added another 25-30 mph. The 104 was insanely fast compared to anything else I’d flown … but I didn’t notice the relative difference in speed all that much when the Canadian pilot up front let me fly an approach from the back. When the Zipper was on speed\u00a0it just felt right, but of course I kept one eye on the airspeed indicator as well.<\/p>\n

In pilot training in the 1970s our primary trainer was the Cessna T-37, a fat-wing little jet that flew\u00a0final at 115 mph and touched down around 90. Halfway through the one-year program we transitioned to the Northrop T-38 Talon, a supersonic trainer with thin, stubby wings, intentionally\u00a0designed to fly like the F-104.\u00a0The Talon flew\u00a0final at 155 (again, adding speed for heavier fuel weights) and touched down at around 140 mph. The speed differential\u00a0between the T-37 and T-38 was even greater than that experienced by WWII aircrews\u00a0coming to the B-26 Marauder from similar but slower bombers, and yet I don’t remember it being any kind of deal. We never, for example, called the T-38 a widowmaker. Speed is relative, and anyway, that’s what training is for.<\/p>\n

I think the thing with the Martin Marauder was psychological. Whenever I took non-flyers up on incentive flights in two-seater\u00a0F-15s, without exception the main thing they worried about\u00a0was throwing up.\u00a0Their friends\u00a0would\u00a0set them up to be airsick by talking and joking about it nonstop in the hours and days leading up to the incentive flight, and in nine cases out of ten they would indeed fill a couple of barf bags.\u00a0I think something similar happened\u00a0with aircrews learning to fly the B-26 Marauder at MacDill in WWII. They knew they were going to\u00a0tangle with the Widowmaker, a notoriously treacherous airplane, and those planted fears\u00a0became a factor. The\u00a0Marauder had a rep and new aircrews allowed it to live up to it.\u00a0Naming calls<\/a>, to use an archaic phrase.<\/p>\n

\n

Well, thanks for hanging with me. I have to get back to hating freedom, beer, and boobs.<\/p>\n

\n

Update (8\/19\/19):<\/font><\/em><\/strong> replaced the political cartoon with a complete version and credited the cartoonist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Polly came home late last night and found a small tarantula at our front door. I took its photo because in spite of living in the Sonora Desert we don’t see them all that often. So if it’s all the same to you I’m taking this sighting as a good omen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1960,40,250,3,555,27,2,2761],"tags":[2662,2854,2856,1391,2852,2851,2853,2850,2855],"class_list":["post-24438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-minded","category-critters","category-culture-wars","category-flying","category-local-color","category-memes","category-personal","category-yell-clouds","tag-maga","tag-martin-marauder","tag-naming-calls","tag-okinawa","tag-sac-state","tag-shi-shi-dog","tag-t-shirt-meme","tag-tarantula","tag-widowmaker"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24438"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24465,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24438\/revisions\/24465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}