There are four ham radio operators in the entire state of Rhode Island.

One is dead.

The next one is a doddering old slobbery geezer in a rest home that has a 2 meter handy-talkie and keeps dropping it out of his bed.

The third one is a novice and can not use an HF rig until he passes the General test.

The fourth one is tired of everyone bugging him to send them a QSL card so he tells everyone he lives in Wrentham, Massachusetts.

I have half a mind to take my PRC-320 and set it up in a park in Providence and go on the air. I would check into several of the nets and be the most popular guy on the net that night because there are an awful lot of guys like me that need Rhode Island to complete their Worked All States award.

As for me?

I'll just take the 2 meter handy-talkie with me and go on the local repeater and after we've chatted I'l drive by his house and pick up a QSL card and call it good.


In other news.

On Wednesday I brought my pickup to the dealers to have a sticky caliper fixed on my pickup. They were supposed to have it for me that night.

Apparently the parts are located in Outer Slobovia or possibly Inner Mongolia because the rig is going to spend the weekend in the shop and I have no clue if it will be ready by the timme I need it to go to work.

They offered me a loaner 'so you can get back and forth to work'. When I pointed out that I am a Merchie and would drive the car to Philly and leave it parked there for about a month.

I had this problem a while ago with an insurance company offereing ma a loaner after the pickup got clobbered by a drunk over a year ago.

I had a hard time getting it to sink in with them and these guys are no exception. They do not understand what they are going to be getting in to.

The drill is this: I take their car to Philly and about 2 days later I start getting calls asking me if there is any way I could return the car. This is followeded by the "Gee! I didn't know...could you maybe sneak off and swap it out somehow?"

"No sweat. Call FlightCo helicopters out of Port Arthur and have them snag me and fly me to Galveston, Texas and then I'll fly back to Philly and then you can fly me back to Shreveport, LA and have a chopper there run me out to the boat. I'll start packing right now."

"But..."

"But I explained this to you long before I took the car. Which of the two words 'one month' didn't you understand?"

"Wait a minute...where are you now?"

"About 40 miles out of Galveston headed in a straight shot for the Keys and then up the coast to New York."

"Well, we're going to have to do something about this! I never heard of such a thing!"

"You sell Toyotas, right? Some are still made in Japan, right? How do you think they get them here?"

"I guess they ship them."

"Who works on the ships?

"I dunno, sailors, I guess."

"Correct. I am one of those guys. I am a sailor. I told you a dozen times."

There is no way I am going to deal with stupidity like this and it happens quite a bit to seamen because an awful lot of the world has no clue as to how goods are moved around.

People will agree to al sorts of things like this and then want to blame me and the best way to avoid the hassle and bellyaching is to simply stuff $1200 worth of groceries into the Miata somehow and drive it to Philly.

Wish me luck because I do not see the pickup getting fixed on time.





my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/