The Amazing John Force

          Your loyal blogger is uncertain whether motor racing fans fully appreciate what we are witnessing from drag racing icon John Force.

          He clinched his 16^th National Hot Rod Association Funny Car championship this week with one race still to go on the 2013 schedule. But the championships and race wins, while tremendous, are not the story.

          The story is one of ageless enthusiasm, of dogged determination and of family. Force’s massive popularity stems, it says here, from his old fashioned, heart-on-the-sleeve love of drag racing.

          Force has never met a fan he didn’t like and has never stiffed a request for an autograph. He’s posed for more photographs than any 20 beauty contestants you can name and his smile is more genuine.

          Media? Sure, he has time for them. John Force has done more interviews than most US presidents and he is more popular than any president you can name. Come to think of it, Force has accomplished more than most presidents, too. This guy so earnest in his desire to spread the gospel of drag racing that he is believable.

Who doesn’t believe John Force?

 Heck, who doesn’t believe in John Force? He has more championships than NASCAR legends Richard Petty and Dale Earnhart, combined. He has more major race wins than anyone I can think of, except Petty. And, at 64, Force has just won another title.

Most team owners are younger than Force but he’s still beating the young drivers.

Three of Force’s daughters, Ashley Force-Hood, Brittany Force and Courtney Force, are racers. Ashley is not racing now, having started a family. But Ashley and Courtney have beaten their Dad in a final round race and it is pretty obvious that the talent apple did not fall far from the Christmas tree, if you catch the drift.

Brittney does not compete directly with John and Courtney, as Brittney drives a Top Fuel car.

Force’s son-in-law, Robert Hight, also drives a Force Funny Car.

John Force is the kind of racer we may not see the likes of again. I suggest we take a step back and appreciate everything he does while he is still doing it.

          Thanks for reading.

Recommended reading

     Your loyal blogger suggests you follow the link below to a story about life, family and courage. The story details the life of Anthony Calvillo, the Canadian Football League quarterback this blog has featured in the past. It appears Calvillo is every bit as good a man as he has been a quarterback.

     I wish I'd written this. It is very well done.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/football-thursday--anthony-calvillo--greatest-qb-you-have-never-seen--didn-t-need-steelers-to-validate-career-041617509.html

91-0

           A recent high school football game in Texas ended with a 91-0 score. One team was highly ranked. The other team was not ranked at all.

          Stuff happens when you have a mismatch on the schedule.

          According to the losing coach – read again, this was the losing coach – nothing that happened during the game was out of line. The winning team did not talk trash. The losing coach said, “We ran into a buzz saw,” and let things go at that.

          But a parent of one of the players on the losing team filed an official Bullying Report because of the final score.

          Now, we can agree that a 91-0 score is a pretty big wipe out. You would hope the teams agreed to go to a running clock in the second half in order to end the game quickly, avoid injuries and keep the score down.

          Whatever happened, reality struck a decisive blow in that game. The following message was delivered: Sometimes life gives you a 91-0 defeat. Deal with it, live with it, learn from it, get better because of it and move on.

          Where have we gone as a society that a resounding defeat in a football game is worthy of a Bullying Report? Where have we gone as a society that we even have a thing we call a Bullying Report?

          As a journalist, I used to cover an area where there was an outstanding girls high school basketball program. I watched the really good team hammer a lesser team 92-6 one night. The starters for the good team were in the game for much of the fourth quarter. I went to the losing team’s practice the next day with the idea of writing a story about how coaches deal with teams that run up the score in high school games. I dumped the story idea. The losing coach taught his players to deal with the big loss by practicing their defense.

          “Get better,” the coach said.

          No parent filed an official Bullying Report, either.

          An iceberg floating majestically in the Atlantic Ocean was suddenly and violently struck by another majestic object, the Royal Mail Steamer Titanic, one night in 1912. The iceberg defended itself and the rest is history.

          Sooner or later we have to learn that the best way to deal with difficulty is to prepare as best we can for it, deal with it the best way we can when it comes and then keep going.

          Friends can be supportive, too. Remember the writing that appeared in this blog space a few months ago about Hall of Fame Pitcher Don Drysdale? If an opposing pitcher threw at a Dodgers hitter on a day when Drysdale was pitching, Drysdale threw at two opposing batters. So, if you have to deal with a bully, it’s a good thing to have a big tough guy like Drysdale on your side.

          Just remember that nobody bullied you into reading this blog. Instead, your loyal blogger thanks you for reading.

 

A street full of colors

          Two blogs ago, your loyal blogger wrote about a conversation with an Ohio native about the changing of seasons here.

          It is amazing to note that just when the football season reaches roughly its

Greens, reds and yellows on the trees along our street.

halfway point, a weird thing happens in nature: The foliage changes colors and then stuff falls off trees. It happens everywhere, not just in Ohio (as was discussed in a blog in this space in 2012), but the colors seem to have a greater variety here and that prompted a session with the Nikon earlier this week.

          The results are here.

          Note the differences in the trees in the first image. A yellow tree, a red one in the distance and several greens. This image comes from the street we live on. The picture presented itself while your loyal blogger was walking Maggie, the non-barking Bassett.

    

Look at the greens and yellows together, like Bogie and Bacall or
 John Wayne and Bacall. Both are neat on their own, but when brought
 together, they are special.

      The red tree, by the way, resisted all efforts to capture a presentable close-up that reflects what it really looks like.

          This makes a point about the photographic art: Sometimes an image hits you in

Same tree as above, call this one
image 2 B.

the head and grabs your attention. Frequently a photographer spends great gobs of time looking for an image, but this was the product of an, “Oh, wow,” moment.

          The second image, from the yellow tree, shows individual leaves with both green and yellow coloring. Getting them to stand still was an issue. The little breeze that felt so good on a warm day moved the branches and leaves just enough to create a pain in the neck for a photographer.

  

The final image reflects the coming of the winter with the yellows, some reds and dull gray.

        The third image is kind of fun because the yellows and greens are there, but this time the dull gray of the naked branches is in the background.

 

          Hope you enjoy this and thanks for reading.

A little dose of common sense from the diamond...

          Many years ago, there was a Little League baseball game in Imperial, California. It was a playoff game and it drew parents, grandparents and family members from every branch of each player’s family tree.

          Little League baseball is a great family unifier.

          During the game there was a controversial play and, after a lot of arguing and phone calls to district administrators, play had to stop while the adults acted stupidly.

          Two players, one from each team, sat on second base. They sat with their backs together and facing away from each other so that their backs supported each other while they waited through the marathon delay.

          The kids just wanted to play baseball, to get on with the game. The adults lost their heads.

          A few years later, there was another baseball game for kids in a different city, but this one was not sanctioned by Little League baseball. It was a playoff game for the youngest players in Little League and, at the time, there was no post season for players that age. The parents decided the kids needed to play and set up the game.

          One of the managers either failed to understand the substitution rules in force that night or he wanted to cheat, I never knew which. Whatever the case, he continued to insert his best hitters into the batting order when he could not do so. He was stopped each time by the umpires and the situation became steadily uglier. The teams involved came from different towns and, as you might guess, the adults in the grandstands grew increasingly restive.

          Finally, the game ended. Unfortunately, the arguing among the adults got worse and eventually baseball bats were used as weapons in the parking lot. A game which should not have been played in the first place turned into a riot.

          The kids did not fight. They didn’t argue with each other. They just waited for their chance to play baseball. The adults could not allow that to happen without bickering and, ultimately, violence.

          And so, today, we have the same thing happening on a larger scale in our nation’s capital. The American people just want to get on with their lives and our leaders want to bicker.

          Our leaders’ fragile egos can’t allow what every Little Leaguer out there (and virtually every American adult) knows is the key to making life work: Compromise.

          Perhaps the answer to our current governmental breakdown is to send a few Little Leaguers to Washington D.C, and have the kids tell a few members of Congress this: “You guys agree to do this and you guys over here agree to do this and everything will work out. That’s what Mom always makes us do and it works.”

          Every Little Leaguer knows that Mom is usually gonna be right.

          
         Let’s play ball.

A seasonable debate

An Ohio native told me something I disagreed with. That led to a discussion. Generally speaking, I always believe my side of the discussion is the correct side.

The Ohio native in question did not agree with my self-diagnosis, which furthered the discussion.

Dear reader, you be the judge.

Ohio native: The seasons are changing late this year.

Me: That isn’t true. Football season started right on time, the high schools, colleges and the pros. The baseball playoffs have started. Basketball is warming up. Everything is right on time.

ON: What I mean is the Fall is coming late.

Me: Don’t be ridiculous. The football season has been going since late August and we all know that football is played in the Fall. Thanks to the television networks, the season comes earlier now than it ever has before. I’ve already been to three high school games this season.

ON: You goofy guy. I don’t mean sports. I mean the weather seasons. The ones determined by the earth’s rotation, the Sun, stars, Moon and all that stuff.

Me: No, no. You have it all wrong. Warren Moon was a star, sure enough. He played in the Canadian Football League and in the NFL, but he never played for the Southern California Sun. That was in the WFL. Moon played for the Oilers and some other teams in the NFL after he played in Canada. He’s retired from football now, so he is out of the rotation.

ON: [After a blank stare] Look: Our year is split into four SEASONS. Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Each season has weather conditions that are generally different.

Me: Well, I can’t afford to stay at The Four Seasons. I always stay at hotels in the (name withheld because they wouldn’t pay for the mention) chain. But this idea of yours that the year is split by seasons is poppycock. The football, basketball and even hockey seasons all start in one year and continue into the next. The auto racing season goes almost all year long, although it does not generally start earlier than January nor continue later than November. Baseball goes almost that long, too. I don’t know about the soccer season, but I really don’t care, either.

ON: [Holding his head in his hands] I have a headache.

Me: I’d have a sore wallet if I stayed at The Four Seasons.

ON: I like The Four Seasons…wait a minute, that isn’t the point. I’m going to try this one more time. Have you noticed the leaves that are on the ground?

Me: Sure. Those guys we’re paying to clean this place up have been no-shows the last few days.

ON: And how do you think the leaves get to the ground?

Me: Is this a trick question? I assume it has something to do with gravity, which is the law of the land.

ON: Wow, I’m speechless.

Me: That’s good. You weren’t making much sense anyway. You should try writing your speeches first, then reading the script. That way you won’t freeze in front of an audience.

ON: [A sneaky look crosses his face] Why would I freeze? The Fall is late and Winter isn’t here yet.

Me: This again? Fall kicked off in August and the NHRA drag racers have already had the Fall Nationals. And Fall ends with the Winter Solstice, which is when football teams start having a harder time passing the ball. This year it will impact the college bowl games first because the Solstice comes on a Saturday.

ON: I think I need a doctor. My head is spinning.

Me: Better cut back on the drinking. Let me make things easy for you: Fall starts with football. Winter comes around the time the college bowl season gets into full swing. The Winter is ready to end when the NHRA runs the Winternationals in Pomona. Get it? You need good weather for drag racing, so Winter must be ending. Spring begins with baseball’s Spring Training, right? That’s pretty obvious. And summer starts a few weeks before the Major League All-Star game. That’s why they call it the Mid-Summer Classic.

ON: Now I know I need professional help: You are starting to make sense.

Me: I have vision and the world…

ON: Wears bifocals, I know.

You may adjust your glasses now. Thanks for reading.

While thinking about a sore foot the other day...

          The federal government of the United States has partially shut down. Elected officials in Washington DC are worried that none of us will notice the difference.

          Hunters have noticed the difference. A news story today mentioned that hunters are not allowed to hunt on federal land during the federal government’s period of limited operations. The story mentioned the suffering of the hunters as the season starts. The story mentions the financial impact on some businesses from not having hunting in their areas.

          Nobody asked the animals how they felt about it.

          The feds should talk to NASCAR driver Ron Hornaday if they want to make a good restart. Wait a minute, that would not work. In a NASCAR restart, everyone comes together.

          Enough of the political cheap shots. On to the boring, prepared material.

Sometimes common language works hand-in-hand with common sense. For example:

Plantar Fasciitis: Sore foot. The plantar fascia is part of your foot. The suffix, itis, means sore. Thus, a sore foot.

          You make a doctor’s appointment for treatment of your sore foot. The doctor diagnoses that you have plantar fasciitis, which means you have a sore foot. A treatment is ordered and, hopefully, your sore foot gets better.

          Frequently, the prescribed treatment is aspirin, which you could have prescribed for yourself, and shoe inserts, which are available in many, many places. You ask yourself why you had to go to the doctor for aspirin and inserts.

          The answer is very much like the story of the broken locomotive. The locomotive would not run and the train was stuck. A locomotive expert was called to the scene. The expert walked around the locomotive once and nodded to himself. He selected a large sledge hammer from his tool kit and whacked the locomotive once.

          The locomotive suddenly worked and the expert charged the railroad company $50,000. He charged $10 for hitting the locomotive with the sledge hammer and $49,990 for knowing where to hit it.

          Your sore foot could have turned out to be something more serious, so you have to check it out with an expert. Hopefully, the expert will not use a sledge hammer on your foot.

          Of course, knowing which expert is best for your needs is a difficult chore. Even those who score well on Angie’s List might not be a good fit for your individual situation.

          Take, for example, the oil well fire that happened in Texas a few decades ago. A smallish oil company had a fire at one of its wells and its profits were literally burning up.

          The owner of the company put in a call to legendary oil well fire fighter Arnold Hammer. Hammer’s chief of operations told the oil company owner that the firefighter was booked solid and could not be on site for at least six months. When suppression engineers arrived, they would charge $1 million a day.

          “Forget it,” the oil company boss said. He pulled out the phone book and checked the yellow pages under oil well fire fighters and discovered a business named Joe’s Cheap Oil Well Fire Fighting Service just a few miles away. A phone call netted a conversation with Joe himself.

          “I can be there in 20 minutes,” said Joe, “and it’ll cost you ten grand.”

          The oil company man was happy to hire Joe’s company and he walked to the gate of the property to allow Joe and his men to drive to the site of the fire. As he neared the gate, the oil man noticed a rooster tail of dust rising on the dirt road leading to the oil rig. It turned out to be a truck belonging to Joe’s Cheap Oil Well Fire Fighting Service, roaring up the road to save the day.

          Ignoring the still closed gate, the flatbed truck belonging to Joe’s Cheap Oil Well Fire Fighting Service blasted through, sending the helpless gate flying through the air. The oil boss noticed two men in the cab of the truck and seven or eight more screaming and yelling as they held on for dear life in the bed of the truck as the vehicle careened down the path toward the fire.

          The truck halted virtually on top of the conflagration and what happened next was the wildest thing ever seen on a Texas oil field. The men of Joe’s Cheap Oil Well Fire Fighting Service flew off the truck and raced into action. They looked like madmen as they shoveled and raked and finally exploded some dynamite to put out the fire. Then they fought to contain the gushing oil. One guy even stripped off his shirt and jammed it into the line of the well until the proper equipment was put in place.

          The fire was out and the well was capped in 18 minutes.

          Exhausted and filthy, the men of Joe’s Cheap Oil Well Fire Fighting Service filed back away from the oil well, their work done for the day.

          Pleased with the result, the oil company owner pulled out his checkbook and paid Joe, the owner of Joe’s Cheap Oil Well Fire Fighting Service.

          “That was fast work, Joe,” the oil man said. “Ten grand for less than twenty minutes of work. What are you going to do with the money?”

          “Well,” said Joe, the owner of Joe’s Cheap Oil Well Fire Fighting Service, “the first thing I’m gonna do is fix the brakes on that truck.”

          For those of you who have read this far, thanks for reading.

The year in images

          So much has happened in the year since we moved to Ohio that it is hard to believe that it is just over 12 months since we arrived for good.

          We’ve had a few adventures, as you’ll see, and we’ve treated the experience as a big photo opportunity. Simplified into images, here is the story of our year. Try not to laugh at the California guy adjusting to Ohio!

          In some ways, very little has changed. Your loyal blogger still travels frequently, but home is now a new address. On the other hand, there are no images of yours truly mowing the lawn or raking anything because none of that happened.

          Some images come from my five megapixel Sony, some were captured by with my Nikon D90. A notable exception came from Mrs. Leeway’s phone camera. Hope you enjoy the images!

We discovered a wonderful park across the street.

 

Using his feet, your loyal blogger issued his first
wintery holiday greeting in the driveway.

 

 

If it was turned properly, this dripping ice would be
a very nice image.

 

 

There were lots of Goodyear tires to go around at the
drag races.

 

Niagara Falls.

 

More water falling.

 

Fort Niagara is near Falls.

 

Our tree property might be a little overgrown. Maybe we'll have
it cleared next year.

 

 

The Civil War research led your loyal blogger to an old Confederate
hospital that is now an old Confederate cemetery.

 

We bought a picnic bench and painted it white.

 

Mrs. Leeway finally got to visit the Bristol Motor
Speedway. We did that and now we want to see
a race there. That's next year's goal.

 

Saw a great stock car race in Pensacola, Florida.

 

Gettysburg. My buddy Buck Weber and his wife Diane have not
visited Little Round Top, but their shirts have!

 

Gettysburg. A foggy morning in the fields between Cemetery Ridge
and Seminary Ridge.

 

Gettysburg. Notes found on Little Round Top.

 

The Akron Aeros won the game your loyal blogger went to see.

 

A paint job I liked on an NHRA Pro Mod car at the Bristol Dragway.

 

Ken Schrader's car from an old wreck.

 

 

Amy celebrated her birthday at the drag strip.

Stella, the newest family member.

Cemetery Ridge: Four hours of soup tasting

          Photography is frequently about the waiting. Waiting for the light to be right, waiting your subject to show up or waiting for your studio appointment time.

          What a photographer does before all those things are right is one of the keys to

Image 1. Early in the session. You can
see what the clouds add to the image.

producing good images. This is especially true of outdoor shoots. You don’t have the time to arrive just as the light gets good. By the time you set your equipment (tripod, monopod, lights, reflectors, defuses and, oh yeah, the cameras) in position and adjust all the settings, your light will have changed or disappeared.

          Like a math class, homework is vital to photography.

          I have a modest example here. I shot these images along Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg in June of this year. This statue is along the line the Union defended on the final day of the battle of Gettysburg, July 3, 1863. We know it today as Pickett’s Charge.

          I knew from experience that the weather conditions that afternoon appeared to be heading toward something I’d wanted to capture for years. As we don’t live within easy driving distance of Gettysburg, the chance was a tremendous opportunity.

Image 2. From the front and with
the 'soup' at its most light sensitive.

          Your loyal, not to mention intrepid, photographer was on site for four hours. The camera bag included the trusty Nikon D90, four lenses, a tripod and a monopod. The external flash was in the bag but went unused.

          It was important to know where the sun would set in relation to the statue and what the resulting angle would be. What would the statue look like from that viewpoint (with backlighting) and what lens would be best?

          Lens selection would dictate the answer to some of the considerations listed above and would also offer different opportunities for the camera settings. What ISO would work best in the low light, what shutter speed and aperture contribute best to the image?

           What stage of the sun’s setting would work best in the image?

          Look at the images. I admit they do not illustrate one important part of the process, covering the subject from every possible angle. There isn’t enough space here to exhibit that part of the procedure here, but the session included images from everywhere around the statue.

Image 3. See how the colors have started changing? Now the
statue seems to be raging against the evening sky. You must
remember the context of the location.

          Look at the second image. This one was captured later than the first, but because the soup is different (I call the combination of the ISO, shutter speed, aperture and lens expansion the soup) the lighting seems brighter.

          The third image is significantly later in the session and the clouds now made a 

Image 4. Do you see how the light frames the leading edges of the
figure? A few steps to camera's left would have been better for
this effect.

more important impact on the image. The statue had become solidly backlit and the colors of the sky were changing by this point in the evening. Look how clear the lines of the figure were against the sky. By this time I had abandoned the monopod I used in the earlier hours.

Every image was now captured from the top of the tripod. Tripods are inexpensive nowadays and they telescope so easily that they are very portable. Mine has a nice little carrying handle.

          Look at the fourth picture now. See how the sun reflects off the forward portions of the statue? The sky was a little too consistent for this to be a really nice shot, but the lighting made this a fun image. The reflection frames the statue and, given the setting, it talks to us a little about facing difficulty.

          In the fifth shot, the sun had finally inserted itself into the frame. I wanted something really special and knew I had to include Ol’ Sol somehow, but I was uncertain when the particular cloud pattern we had would make for the desired moment. All I knew for certain was that I was still waiting for the perfect moment.

Image 5. The time for the session is starting to expire. The clouds
are not quite what I need for what I want (I'd rather blame the
conditions than blame myself!) but I have largely decided what lens and
soup settings I want for the big finish.

          Even in the final few minutes I was still experimenting with the soup and swapping lenses back and forth. I had still not settled on the right location for the camera. I had one spot for the short lens and one for the long one. But I still needed right spot for the intermediate lens.



Image 6. The sun has set, the light is
leaving but I have just enough time for
this last image.


 

          In the final frame, the sun has gone down behind the mountain. But the darkening sky remains red and bright enough to backlight the statue.

          In all, about 600 frames were produced, but many were deleted as the hours progressed. The joys of digital photography include the ability to check and recheck your soup and I did a lot of that. It isn’t much different from a cook tasting soup in the kitchen and then adding a dash of something.

          I hope this helps some beginning photog out there think before clicking. As we said back when we were kids, the more you think, the less you stink.

          Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

Image 7. The best of the lot. It is Sunset for the Confederacy.