Welcome to Lenny's Blog

2009-04-26T20:00:00.001-07:00

The Lennymobile

Do to the outrageous price of gas I have been forced to come up with the perfect solution to this world wide dilemma. Because Hybrid, electric, or hydrogen fuel cell cars are a waste of time, I am in the process of developing the world’s first Magnetic vehicle. The “Lennymobile” will take full advantage of the Earths’ magnetic field. As most people with a High School diploma are aware of, the Earth has a Magnetic field that extends from the top or as it is often referred to, the North Pole, and all the way to the bottom, or the South Pole.

Due to ongoing “Patten Pending” issues I cannot go into specific details, but I can briefly describe the basic concepts.

Using the laws of magnetism, (law # 273.09) that “Likes repel, and Opposites attract”, I have constructed a room-temperature superconductor electro magnet that can easily fit into the back of most SUV’s. By simply pointing the “North Pole” of the super magnet towards the Earths’ North Pole, the “repulsive force” is great enough to propel the Lennymobile to speeds in excess of 83.6 miles per hours. Using a dashboard mounted GPS there is no problem in aligning the super magnet to the North Pole. If you are currently living “South of the Equator” the “Attractive Force” takes over and pulls the vehicle to the South Pole.

I know what your thinking, “Yes Lenny that obvious and works great when you’re traveling “North or South, but what if you want to travel to the East or West or the temperature goes above Room temperature.

It never ceases to bring a smile to my lips as just how naive most people are. I know you mean well, but do you really believe that a great thinker and innovator such as myself, and I modestly put myself in the same category as Newton, Einstein, and Anna Nicole Smith, would not have thought this though? Here is one you did not think of. Even in the eventual possibility that the Earths magnetic field disappears in the year 2012, the Lennymobile will still be the vehicle of choice for all those lost souls trying in vein to find the “Mother ship” to take them to the world of “Mike and Honey.”

The two rear wheels are electric motors that are powered by Lithium Polymer batteries, and the front two wheels are generators that can recharge the previously mentioned batteries and give the Lennymobile an endless supply of electricity.

And yes, I know that you think you have me here as this would violate the first law of thermodynamics, but here again you are not playing in my league, in fact your not even sitting in the cheap seats. There will be a switch on the dashboard that will deploy a retractable 5th wheel that is a generator, so it will produce more electricity that it is using!!!

I am also working on a “Sporty” version of the Lennymobile that in theory will have speeds in excess of 283.95 miles per hour. This takes advantage that the Earth is in fact round, and if you drive south you would be driving downhill. One should reach terminal velocity in a matter of minutes.

At first I thought this would be Environmentally Eco-Unfriendly as eventually there would be a excess of vehicles piling up at the South Pole, but now that I’ve put a small portion of the my thought process to the quandary, I firmly believe it would be a great solution to the global warming problem of the melting of the ice packs, as there would be an abundance of habitats’ for penguins. They would not have to stand out in the cold all winter long and could have sex in the back seats. It’s a Win / Win solution.

At this point I must confess that I am concerned about my safety, as the Major oil companies have become aware of the Lennymobile and have conspired to shut me up. Please stand up them and pass this alone to everyone you know.

Remember, God loves you, and I can kind of put up with you for a few minutes at a time.

Lenny

ULTRALIGHT PICTURES

2008-05-03T15:27:00.001-07:00

The Engine is up Front

Registration number...007

It Seems bigger from the outside

All Ready to go...

Rotax 582 for power

No Hangar!!!

Slideshow #1 Kanazawa Snow

2008-05-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

test

Slideshow #2 Okinawa Aquarium

2008-05-03T05:59:00.001-07:00

Slideshow #3 Para Gliding in Taiwan

2008-05-03T05:58:00.000-07:00

Slideshow #4 Palau Pictures

2008-05-03T05:57:00.001-07:00

Slideshow #5 Gliding in Hawaii

2008-05-03T05:57:00.000-07:00

Slideshow #6 Sumo

2008-05-03T05:55:00.000-07:00

Slideshow #7 Antigua

2008-05-03T05:54:00.000-07:00

Slideshow #8 Bali

2008-05-03T05:53:00.000-07:00

Slideshow #9 Cherry Blossoms

2008-05-03T05:50:00.000-07:00

#1 Stamps

2008-05-03T05:39:00.001-07:00

First of all let me say "Hi" to all my old Friends and "Hello" to all of you who will be getting the "Lenny newsletter" for the first time. Wow I can't believe ifs Christmas! The whole island has gotten into the holiday spirit with lights all over the place, and there are playing "White Christmas" on the radio. Yes there is one am station; 1580 on the dial, and I have all six radio buttons in the car turned to the same frequency. I don't think this will get to anybody before Christmas as they stop carrying mail on the plane this time of the year because of extra passengers. So, Merry Christmas if you’re lucky, or Happy New Year, or Happy Valentines Day

It has come to my attention that some of you are not writing, in fact all most all of you. I sent out 35 letters last time and only got two letters back. Do you know how hard it is too sent out letters? Not only do I have to come up with all interesting and witty thing to say but I have to go to the post office and buy stamps, which goes something like this...

ME: “Excuse me I would like to buy some stamps please.”

POSTAL GIRL: “……………..”

ME: “Hello, excuse me but can I get some stamps?”

POSTAL GIRL: “Want you want?”

ME: “Stamps I would like to get some stamps.”

From here on postal girl will be referred to as IDIOT

IDOT: “You buy stamps?”

ME: “Yes I want to buy stamps.”

IDIOT: “………………….”

ME: “Excuse me can I buy some stamps?”

IDIOT: “What?”

ME: “Stamps…Me buy stamps?”

IDIOT: “OK”

ME: “Yes I want Thirty Five, 29 cent stamps.”

IDIOT: “No have 35 Cent stamp!”

ME: “I'm sorry, I want 29 cent stamps.”

IDIOT: “ ..................... ........”

ME: “29 cent stamps me buy?”

IDIOT: “OK,” She opens the desks draw and tears off one stamp.

ME: “No, I want thirty five stamps.”

IDIOT: “No have 35 cent stamp.”

ME: “Yes, yes I know but I, ME want thirty five 29 cent stamps!”

IDIOT: Putting stamp back into Drawer. “What you want?”

ME: “Me want the god damn Stamp!”

IDIOT: “OK,” She opens draw and tears off a different stamp.

ME: “Good,” With an evil smile on my face. “How much?”

IDIOT: Taking out calculator and only making two or three errors, “29 cents.”

ME: “OK, I'll take ONE more!”

IDIOT: “Sorry, looking at watch, “Lunch!” Closes Drawer and walks away.

ME: Gritting my teeth and having vision of driving my Suzuki Samurai Jeep through the front door just like Arnold. “I'LL BE BACK!”

I must confess that I started this letter before Christmas but it's now the 26th of January, make that the 15th of February and I'm still trying to get this out It is the busy season for Fish N' Fins and we have had 50 to 60 divers a day for about two weeks, but things have slowed down to about 20 to 30 divers a day. I have been doing two dives a day and sometimes one night dive for the last four weeks without a day off. I'll usually have 6 to 8 divers on my boat and try to take them to the best spots depending on the weather and the tides. Last week I took a group to Peleliu corner which can be a real exciting dive as it is a vertical drop off starting at 5 feet and going straight down to about 1000 feet. There is almost always about 10 15 sharks at the comer but this time I was looking down and it looked like I could see the bottom so I went down to 150 Feet and what I thought was the bottom turned out to be a huge school of sharks! I estimated something like 150 to 200. I've never seen that many in one spot before.

There is also another place which we call "German Channel" because the Germans made it sometime before World War I. You have a 50/50 chance of seeing Manta Rays there. The biggest I've seen was one about 12 feet from tip to tip. 1 was able to swim up under it for about 15 minutes. It's always strange to see something that big.

The most exciting thing that's happen so far was about one week ago when I was down at 80 feet and the first stage on my regulator went out! An of a sudden my regulator started free flowing (air coming out uncontrolled) and started making this incredible loud popping sound that sounded like a motor cycle under water. Luckily when it broke air was coming out so I could still get air but needless to say when something goes wrong with your regulator 80 feet down it gets your attention real quick

One thing that is interesting in Palau is that local people chew beetle nut. Which is a nut that kind of looks like an acorn which they cut in half and sprinkle lime powder on it and with a half of a cigarette, rap the whole thing up in a pepper leaf and stick the whole thing in their mouth and crew on it. It gives them a "BUZZ" and everybody chews. The only problem is it makes you have this red saliva and they have to spit this red liquid all over the place. If they are indoors they will use an empty coke can to spit into. So you learn the hard way never, I mean never pick up somebody’s coke can and take a drink thinking that there's half a can of coke left!

There are only three kinds of people that come to Palau. Either they are tourist here for diving or missionaries here to spread the word of 5 or 6 different religions and screw up the minds of the local people or a lawyer from the US here to waste everybody’s time and money. So the other day I'm driving to the dive shop and a Palauan guy is standing by the road hitch hiking into town so I stop and pick him up. The first thing the guy says is "Thanks for the ride" and I say "No problem" and he says "How's your vacation going?" "I'm not on a vacation!" He looked at me strangely and replies "Forgive me Reverend, It's just that you don't look like a man of the cloth with the beard and everything and besides I don't get to church as often as I use to" To which I replied "I'm not a Reverend!" "Oh I'm sorry Councilor, How's you case going? Do you think you’re going to win and all?" "I'm not a lawyer, and I live here!" A tear comes to his eye and he shakes my hand and says "Want a beetle nut?" I was deeply touched, so I hugged him for his mother and took what little change he had left for gas money!

It is now well into February, and my birthday has come and gone. I had an amusing story to relate to you about my birthday and my age but somehow I just can't remember just what it was!

There is a chance that I will be going to Australia some time in July for a diving trade show. I am really looking forward to this as I have never been "below" the equator before, and I rea11y want to see a Kangaroo and see if water really goes down the drain the other way! Actually what determines the direction that water goes down the drain is the shape of the sink, but it is a good story none the less.

We have a lot of divers from Australia and they seem to be relatively decent people despite being descended from common criminals and still can't figure out what side of the road to drive on, and you would think that they would know by now the difference between a simple flashlight and a torch, but who am I to judge? Who knows maybe I'll run into "Crocodile Dundee" who if am not mistaken is the only one of them to ever make it "Big" And while I on it, why do they call the "Bar-B-Q" the "Bar-Bee" is it really that much trouble to put the stupid "Q" on the end! AND if they think their so damn SMART, why do they…I am sorry I just got carried away. So to all my Friends "down under" please forgive me, and, ah will one of you please be kind enough to pick me up at the airport?

We had a group of divers from Scripps Institute of Oceanography come over here a few weeks ago collecting sponges. Sponges have different kinds of bacteria that keep things from growing on them. They were looking into the possibility of some new bacteria that might help in the prevention of cancer or some other disease. So now, not only am I one of worlds leading sponge collectors; but also, one of the leading authorities on sponges. Well maybe not the leading but clearly I would conservatively place myself some where in the top ten. I say this with all modesty based on personal observations, as I do not think there can be more than ten people in the world who really care about sponges! I shall now try to enlighten those less fortunate on the difference between the common domesticated sponge and the wild sponge. Wild sponges come in all shapes where the common sponge tends to be more rectangular. Wild ones come in a variety of colors where as you may have noted the common sponge is usually pink, blue or yellow. The wild sponge leads a very stationary life with little if any movement where as the common sponge tends to migrate, first from the bathroom then the kitchen and finally works it's way into some dark corner in the garage. This lack of movement in the wild sponge does have one disadvantage, as it allows the collector to gain the upper hand during harvest time. In the future, all wild sponges caught be me will have a tag certifying that they have been "Hand Collected" without the use of drugs, long lines or gill nets!

I have to admit that there is a slight chance that perhaps a Dolphin or sea turtle may inadvertently be caught using the current method of collecting. So I’m designing a new sponge trap that will keep this to an acceptable minimum and I plan to market this to Scripps and other Institutes in the near future. I know what your thinking, "Just how big is the demand for sponge traps?" Granted there isn't a huge market for sponge traps, but I intend to charge an outrageous price as I am convinced that anybody who would BUY a sponge trap will pay any price.

Well I guess I'll try and get this in the mail tomorrow, so I'll end this edition by saying that your subscription to the "Lenny News Letter" is directly related to you writing back. So if you don't want to miss out on the next issue which by the way will cover such topics as "The Japanese, “Will they ever learn to dive?” And "Does anyone really like French people?" and "How to politely ask a fat girl to please go to the other side of the boat to help level the load" and "What do the Eskimos think of all this global warming?" and my personal favorite "Will poetry really be necessary in the 21st century?"

OK to all my friends who are-

Supreme Court judges......................... "Hey, what's one little bribe?"

High energy physics............................ "Let the force be with you!"

Model airplane flyers.......................... "They all crash sooner or later!"

Private pilots....................................... "The propeller goes up front!"

Air line pilots...................................... "The pointy end goes up front!"

Red Skins Orthopedic surgeons......... ."Break a leg!"

Poets................................................... "Give me a break!"

Unemployed....................................... "Get a job"

Lawyers.............................................. "Get a LIFE!"

Ex partners.......................................... "I can use the money!"

Japanese............................................. "No, you’re a good diver, really!"

Ex-sub sailors..................................... "What the Fuck? Over!"

Sponge experts.................................... "Just kidding, I'm laughing with you, not at you!'

Asian Diver staff writers................... ."It's spelled, Lenny Oberg!"

Australians......................................... "Don't worry, they always by to tear down the very best!"

Ex wives............................................. "I'm sorry!"

Insurance salesmen............................ "Luckily, I don't know any of them! "

Sons.................................................... "Eric, when are you coming over here?

And write to Grandma and Grandpa."

Mom and Dad.................................... "I love you guys!"

Every body else.………………………."I miss you, and Write me please!"

This concludes this edition! Back issues available upon request!

#2 TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

2008-05-03T05:37:00.000-07:00

Dear,

This is for all my friends who complained last time about my generic letter and wanted it to be more personal. So just fill in the blanks with your name, your first name will be sufficient as I am sure you know who you are.

Hey, how’s it going? Just thought I'd drop you this personal note and fill you in on the latest. I arrived here in Palau on Oct. 15th after staying about two weeks with Eric and Eddie in the Philippines. Eric (my son the dive instructor) is doing just great. Since April he has had about 80 students and has been busy every weekend with check out dives. He appears so have a steady girl friend by the name of Hanna. According to Eddie she come from a very wealthy family and her father is some big Colonel in the military and her brother owns a large security company. Eddie told Eric, half joking; to make sure she stays happy because if she "cries" Eric would probably end up "missing". But they seem to be getting along just fine. Eric asked me what I thought of her and I said "How can you go wrong? She's smart, good looking, has lot of money, But what does she see in you?" Eric started laughing and said "I don't know?" Actually Eric becoming kind of famous in he own way with all the divers and has a million friends, in fact I'm introduced as "The father of Eric"

Eddie is starting the worlds first "SCUBA CLUB" and it's going to be very big! The facilities will have a pool for Eric’s' scuba lesson, class room, restaurant, Sushi bar, dive shop and club house, and showers. He has a crew of 25 working 6 days a week constructing everything. The biggest job is the pool. The table is about 10 feet down and these poor guys had to dig this huge hole in the ground with a couple of shovels and a wheel barrel! Even with a water pump running, the bottom is about 1-2 feet under water. They were fabricating the foundation of steel "re-barb" by hand. It’s incredible to watch these guys having to cut 1" steel re-barb with a hack-saw. It takes about 45 minutes to cut through one rod. They have no power tools and everything is done by hand. I asked Eddie what his weekly pay roll for the 25 was and he said $1,500.00 dollars. That's about $50.00 each a week with the two fireman getting a little extra.

The last Friday that I was there Eddie put on a little Bar-B-Q for the crew and they decided to really live it up and went into town to find the "main course" Which turned out to be ...DOG...Yeah, I’m talking about a "Rover Fondue", a "Fi-Fi soufflé", a little "Spot" on the half shell...Actually they put him on the Bar-B-Q for about 10-15 minutes then skinned it and marinated it in some kind secret sauce for 3 hours and then ate it raw! It's supposed to give you strength or something; they even had some kind of ceremony saying that there sorry to the dog about having to eat him. I struck to my fried chicken, at least I pretty sure it was chicken!

The traffic in Manila is still unbelievable, cars going every way in every direction. If you think grid lock is bad in L. A. over here not only is it locked, but someone threw away the key! Taking a cab can be quite an adventure. Eric and I took a cab the other day and got the cab driver from hell! This guy was not going to stop for anyone or anything. He was on the horn almost continuously, sometimes he would beep the horn for no apparent reason, not only that, he had a back-up horn with a special switch on the dash which he used only on special occasions. It appeared that he was pissed off because he had been disqualified from a destruction derby for reckless driving! Only once was he driving down the right side of the road, the rest of the time we were like a salmon going up stream against the traffic. In Manila there are actual signs posted that say "NO COUNTER FLOW TRAFFIC." But he did get us to where we were going faster than anyone else so I guess it was worth the two bucks!

I did manage to get in some diving in the Philippines. The water was pretty warm and really didn't require any wet suit. The last time I dove there in February it was rather cold. We stayed in a resort own by a great guy by the name of "Boy Venus" For some reason the name "Boy" is real popular in the Philippines and even the movies use the name, in fact one of the hot Kung Fu movies (which is all the ever show over here) is call "Boy Kano". Kano is street talk for "American" (American--Kano--get it?) it's about some guy who is half Filipino and half American and some mean Chinese bad guys killed his wife or sister or maybe it was his mom, but anyway he's out for revenge and has to kill everybody on mainland China! I think it's up for some kind of award. There's another one called "Boy Recto". I'm not sure what Recto is short for but I think it's about some Half assed guy out for Montezuma’s' revenge!

Just in case you were wondering what happened to all those Disco albums from the 70s', don't worry their allover here in the Philippines.

Anyway it's been raining ever since I arrived in Palau. And I'm not talking California Rain, I talking about typhoon kind of rain with 30 to 40 mph winds, with rain pouring down all night long on my tin roof. I would wakeup two or three times a night thinking that the roof had just blown away. But yesterday the sun came out and it's just another day in paradise.

There were 4 broken windows in the house that had been covered up with plywood. Looking around I found all kinds of glass just lying around so I got my glass cutter out and cut 4 windows, no big deal until Francis comes by and can't believe that I cut the glass. Evidently no one on the Island can cut 1/4" glass so all of a sudden I've got strangers walking up to me wanting to know if I'll cut some glass for them! I really hadn't planned to get into the glass business but who knows...

My container arrived on the 21st only 3 weeks late but by Palau time that's not bad. The Samurai jeep came through without a scratch and has been the perfect car. Everybody likes it because it is built with American standards instead of the bottom of the line Japanese cars that they get over here.

Probably to most interesting thing that I have learned so for about Palau is the incredible diversity of bugs. The other night I made the mistake of leaving the window open and the light on inside the house. I went up the hill to see Francis for about one hour and when I returned it was like I had entered another world. There were big bugs flying around the room and even BIGGER ones trying to get off the ground. It appeared that the really big ones needed some sort of runway to get up enough speed to takeoff, so they were using the arm of one of my chairs as a runway! They tended to take off in a westerly direction so I wrote a big 27 on the arm of the chair, and tried to assist them by setting up a temporary tower. Most of the bugs caught on to the procedure quickly but some seemed to have problems with the radio work, and a few just didn't catch .on at all so I squashed them. Later that night I went into the bathroom and there sitting on top of the toilet seat was the MOTHER of all spiders! I'm not afraid of spiders and evidently this spider was not afraid of me, so we had a stand off with neither of us giving ground. I thought about squashing him but I had just cleaned the bath room and didn't want to make a mess. I finally got him to crawl on to a magazine and carried him outside, he must have weighed about 2 lbs. but since I don't have a scale I can't verify that so you will just have to take my word for it.

Well, it’s about time for me to go diving so I'm going to end this now. If I remember correctly you did not write back last time, so I suggest you write or else you might be taken off the list---I mean, I might not write these special letters just for you!

#3 BOIL

2008-05-03T05:36:00.000-07:00

I just got released from the hospital this morning and I can see by the concern in your face that you want to know all about it! It all started about a week ago when one morning after I shaved; yes I shaved my beard off after 20 years. I thought that it might be about time to see just what I looked like under all that hair. So I shaved it off a few days after my birthday (Feb. 4, just in case you didn't know). Any way some times when I shave I get an in grow hair that once in a blue moon will turn into a small insufficient pimple that goes away in a day or so. Well you guessed it, this one hung around a few extra days and than decided to turn into a boll right on my right cheek next to the corner of my mouth. Great, just what I needed. So it grew to the size of golf ball and I figured it was about time to go to the doctor. I went to the SDA clinic (Seventh Day Adventist) and talked to the doctor there who is a nice old guy but whom I'm not too sure of his ability to recognize a real problem when he sees one. He prescribes some antibiotics for me to take four times a day and says the Immortal word of all Doctors from all over the world. "Call me if it gets any worse!" Which I have come to know, really means "So long kid and don't bug me no more!"

The next morning I wake up only to discover that my cheek has doubled it size over night. I go back to the doctor and he says that we should open it up to help it drain. By now I'm willing to try any thing. He then utters another of those famous doctor sayings "You may feel a sight discomfort!" Slight Discomfort my Ass!! He's got this 12" needle digging so deep in my check it feels like he's going to poke through to the other side! After about what seemed like three hours of surgery he says "Strange, nothing in there!" With tears in my eyes I look up and say "By chance have you ever done this before?" He then decides that maybe he's looking in the wrong place so he takes the needle and says does this hurt?" I felt like grabbing him by the balls and saying "Does this hurt?" But I figured he had the advantage of having a knife and I didn't so I let it go. By now I have a gapping hole in the side of my cheek that you could almost put your fist inside, so he rolls up what looked like a washcloth and sticks it inside. "Call me if it gets any worse!"

I stagger out to the front deck to pay my bill ($30.00) I kinda knew that I was in trouble when I had to ask him what seemed obvious to me and everybody else in the waiting room "Can you give my anything for the pain?" I sat down and waited for the nurse to come back with my pain pills. By now the whole side of my face felt like it was on fire and someone was trying to put it out with an ice pick. I'm starting to squirm sitting on the chair when she finally comes out with a small bottle of pills. She sets them down on her desk and starts talking to some patient about how to fill out some stupid form and then the phone rings and she talking to her boyfriend. After ten minutes I can't take it any longer and I walk over to the counter and yell "Can I have my fucking pills now!" No I didn't say that I just made that up, but that was what I was thinking. She did give them to me finally and I swallowed two with a little water from a little paper cup with daisies on it. "Excuse me, but will these make me drowsy or anything? I might be operating some heavy equipment later today and I wouldn't want to, you know, squash some little kid or something!" To which she replied "Oh no it's Acetaminophen!" I said "What's that, some form of Codeine or Morphine or LSD or something?" "Oh no it's Tylenol" "TYLENOL, are you crazy? I'm about to pass out and you give me something from a TV commercial!" She smiles "But it's Tylenol 3!"

I get in my jeep and head over to the dive shop, look at the bottle of Tylenol and think that if I were take the whole bottle at once…By the time I get to the shop I'm starting to get the chills and my lips are starting to swell up. I go to the Marina Hotel and Susan (Francis wife) is there and suggests that I lay down in one of the rooms for a while. They put me in room 103 and I tell the girl at the front desk to please check on me in an hour or so just to make sure I'm still alive. I had this vision of them finding some decaying body in the bed a few weeks later and saying "You know if somebody had just checked…I got under the covers and I'm still shaking and the pain is so bad I can't talk. (Yes I know that must have been REAL bad!)

I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know the front desk girl is asking me how I felt. The pain was not so bad so I figured that the Tylenol had probably kicked in…NOT…she wants to know if I want to watch a video on the TV? They play video's in the office and you can see them in the rooms. I said “Sure just pick something you like.” She turned on the TV and left and I just laid there watching the static for about 20 minutes before she was able to find a great selection. It was called "Fury for Freedom" Which is about some punk kid that was in high school and was always getting into trouble and then he joins a Karate school and becomes an expert, but then gets into a fight back in high school and goes to court and the judge lets him go only if he joins the Marines and he goes to Vietnam and kills all sorts of guys but then get into a fight with some officer and…and…the electricity cuts out! I just lay there waiting for the power to come back on for 45 minutes. When it does come on I figured that they would continue with the movie so I watched the static for another 20 minutes. OK, it’s not coming back on so I get up to turn off the TV, and take three steps and look into the mirror. Oh great, my face is puffed up like a beach ball! I get back into my jeep and drive to the clinic. The old doctor looks at me and suggests that I go to the new hospital and leave a real Doctor look at it because he's not sure just what's wrong.

Palau has just opened a new Hospital, which by the way I helped Richard Install the computers and an the cables, they only had enough money to build it but not any money to update any of the equipment for the inside so they just took all the old stuff from the old hospital and moved it into the new one. After waiting for over one hour I got a chance to see a doctor. He was an Indian, not an American Indian but an Indian from India, and spoke with the typical stereo type Indian accent. .

"Oh, your face not look to good!"

"Hey, you’re not much to look at either rag head." I didn't really say that I just made that up.

"Oh you “You make joke,” (giggle) “I mean the big lump on your face"

"No, the lump on my toe. Of course the lump on my face you idiot"

Reaching over and poking the hole in my face with his finger... "Does this hurt?"

"THAT does it. Come on, put ‘em up, just you and me doc. right here, right now!"

"Oh very sorry, very sorry"

"Well OK, just don't let It happen again. What do you think?"

"Take two of these antibiotics and call me if it gets any worse"

"Yeah, Yeah, I know, can you at least give me something for the pain?"

Thinking for a few moments he writes some thing down on a piece of paper and hands it to me.

"TYLENOL"

Its 6:00 PM by the time I get home and immediately head straight for bed. Took my pills and told Francis to please check me in the morning. Still had thoughts of them finding some rotting body and saying "If somebody had just checked...!”

I woke up at 7:00 the next morning and felt pretty good no pain, sat up and started to get out of bed when I realized that my most of my right check was still lying there on tile pillow! Holy shit. Now I discover that I can't see out of my right eye! I look in the mirror... "Oh my God", the right side of my face has tripled in size, and has even swollen so big that it has almost closed my right eye! Oh Man, Oh Man this can't be happening! I jump into the jeep and head straight to the hospital emergency ward. On the way there I keep thinking that it must have got so infected and with the washcloth still struck in the hole in my cheek there was no place for it to go so it just filled up the empty space in my head! When I arrived the nurse immediately puts me on the table and starts to pull the washcloth out. "Ah, I would stand back if I were you!" But nothing, nothing comes out. So she cleans it up and puts in a new washcloth and says that I can leave. "No way" says I. "Something's wrong and I want to be checked into the hospital" About 10:00 O'clock a doctor finally comes in and agrees with me and orders the nurses to start a IV going so they can get me on antibiotics as soon as possible. At this point I must confess that I'm not afraid of needles as long as they stick them into somebody else, and it's not even the needles that bother me It's the PAIN I don't partially like. I don't know why but somehow I just knew that I would get some trainee nurse that still hadn't got a passing grade on starting IV's. Sure enough, they bring in this 250 ponder who looks at me and starts giggling. She talking to the doctor and then says "You want me to do what?” Christ, just give me a dull rusty knife and I'll do it myself. She wraps the tourniquet around my arm and says "You may feel slight discomfort" I look at her and said ''What? Are you studying to be a Doctor or something" I'm not sure who hand is shaking more hers or mine but she jabs this huge needle in my hand trying to hit a vain. "Oops I miss (Giggle) Sorry; missed again...This is my first time you know! (Giggle), Oops." Mercifully the head nurse comes by and takes pity on me and slaps my wrist 30 or 40 times until the vain is just about to pop through and sticks the needle in.

"Take him to the Surgical Ward and check him in!" These words were uttered with the same inflection as you would say "Take him to dungeon and throwaway the key!" Everyone around me had the look on their face as if to say "Oh my God, Not the SURGICAL ward" They put me in a wheel chair and rolled me away. I not quite sure why, but I had this strange feeling that I was going back into time to some ghastly prison of war camp that was being controlled by some hideous combination of a Nazi, Japanese, and the deep south prison guard. I was expecting to see this tall blonde guard with a crew cut hair cut, little squinty eyes, a big pot belly, wearing chrome sun glasses and dressed in a kimono, come out of nowhere and with southern Japanese ascent say "What we have here is a Failure to Communicate." Mentally I was prepared. The first thing would be to eat any and all food they slid under the door to my cell, to keep my strength up. Second I wasn't going to kowtow to no white silk, hooded imperial grand wizard no matter how much they tortured me, well, OK I'd do it, if it was for the well being of all the other prisoners, and third they weren't going to…to…I'm not sure what number three would be, but they weren't going to do it to me, By golly!

They wheeled me into my semi-public room with my IV bottle rack and said that I could have the bed over in the corner, So far so good; I sat down and had a look around, there were three other beds with four other guys laying on them. My IV bottle rack looked like it had been left there since the war but it still did it's job of holding up the IV bottle and all the tubes that ran down to my hand. The guy lying in the bed straight across from me looked pretty bad. His arm was in a sling and what looked like knife slashes all over his chest and back! "Those bastards!" I hissed between my teeth. In the other corner was this real old man sleeping, with six relatives sitting around looking real depressed. The third one was sitting up in his bed with a great big grin on his lips and said "Hello! How are you doing?" I knew right then and there that he was a plant, a spy, an informer, for THEM! All of a sudden the guy with the knife slashes all over his body comes over to my bed and asks "If you’re insane can they put you in jail?" Kind of caught me off guard, "I don't understand the question" He repeats it "You know if you’re INSANE can they just put you in jail or something?" My mind going like a whirlwind "Gee, that’s a tough one, I’m not really sure about that, Ah...could you excuse me for a minute?" I slowly, as not to make any sudden movements, got out of bed and dragging the IV bottle rack, which had wheels not unlike a broken shopping cart, and headed straight for the front door. The nurse stops me and wants to know where I'm going? "No where, just checking" "Checking what?" she persists" "Just checking to make sure there wasn't a mix up and by some trivial clerical error you've put me in the ward for the fucking criminal INSANE!"

It was lunch time now and some old fat lady, with her hair tucked up under a plastic bag of some sort, rolls in this cart with what I guess was suppose to be spaghetti. ''Where's you cup? Do you have a spoon?" "Hey you got me, and no, I don't" She walks away and comes back a few minutes later and hands me a little plastic spoon and a Styrofoam cup with some pineapple juice in it. First of all I hate spoons, and how do you eat spaghetti with one any ways? Plus my mouth was so deformed by now that all I could do was try and hold a noodle by one end and tilt my head to the right and try and drop the noodle in the corner of my mouth and suck it in. This worked with fair success and after an hour or two I estimate that I was able to consume about twelve noodles. So I change my mind about my first decree about eating everything and figured things could only get better.

I'm supposed to get a new IV every six hours and it was that time. In walks my male nurse, or should I say, in sashays my male nurse and sit down on my bed puts his hand on my knee and with this incredible lisp says "Hi, I’m Tony, and I'll be you very special nurse for tonight!" Great, just what I needed. But by and by Tony and I get to talking and Tony says "You know, I want to be a doctor some day" This was too good to pass up. "By any chance are you studying to a Proctologist?" A big smile comes to his face why, yes, how did you know?" "Just a lucky guess!"

Evidently there is relatively free medical in Palau but when you go to the Hospital they don't supply you with anything. That's why there were no spoons, cups, soap towels or even toilet paper. It's also a custom for the relatives of the sick person to stay with them the whole time they are in the hospital so they spread out these little mats and everybody sleeps on the floor.

It was time for lights out now and everybody lay down on their mats and we all tried to get some sleep. My biggest fear was that my bottom lip had swollen so much that I was afraid that it might

flop up over my noise and I’d suffocate myself while I slept, so I ask Tony to please check on me just in case.

I was in that state where you’re not quite asleep and yet all the sounds around you somehow work their way into your dreams. It was hot outside and of course I didn't bring my fan so I laid there listening to all the snoring and let my mind wander off into some far off place where it was cool, so cool in fact that it was snowing, yes soft fluffy white snow coming down all around me. Morning came and I could tell I was almost but not quite awake and I was still having this great dream about snow and floating through pristine white fields of white floating things and white chickens and baby white seals...and…CHICKENS? I'm awake now and there's still white stuff floating all around. What the hell? Chicken feathers all over the place! A seam in my pillow had broken open and chicken feathers were pouring out all over the place. Chicken feathers were all in my hair. My face was covered with them and there's a three inch layer all over my bed. Tony comes in and says "Why Lenny, don't you just look sweet, I could just”… I stopped him with a raised finger. "Can it Tony!"

People must have felt sorry for me because strangers would walk over to me and give me things like coconuts, Gatorade, old tuna fish sandwiches, grapes and beetle nut. The way my mouth was swollen they thought that I could really chew down the old beetle nut! By the end of the day I had collected so much stuff I was thinking of opening a small gift shop.

You know, I don't think that’s it’s to hard to be a nurse. I mean all you have to do is come by every few hours and stick a thermometer in someone’s' mouth, check their blood pressure, count their pulse rate and give them a couple of Tylenol. How tough can that be? In fact I should have been a doctor.

“Nurse”

“Yes Doctor"

"Every few hours why don't you check the patient’s temperature, blood pressure and pulse rate, and nurse?"

"Yes doctor"

"Better give him a couple of Tylenol...and nurse"

"Yes doctor"

"Call me if it gets any worse"

After five days of this my face finally came back to kind of normal and they said I could leave. Before the doctor had finished the sentence I was packed and halfway out the door. "Wait, you have to pay your Bill!" I hadn't thought about that. At the front desk they made out my Bill and handed it to me. $127.15 not bad I thought for five days in the hospital, but then I started thinking. I only make $100.00 a week so that's still a week and a half of my pay! They get you one way or the other. At the bottom of the Bill there was a question to be answered by the doctor in the space provided.

Condition of the Patient upon release?

To which the Doctor had scribbled.

“Getting better!"

#4 SPECIAL LENNY NEWS LETTER

2008-05-03T05:35:00.000-07:00

About a year ago I lent $20.00 to a good Palauan friend of mine by the name of Billy-Joe. It's common practice here to shorten every body's name down. Some of the characters that I hang out with have names such as. "Winkler" who we call "Wink" and "Florenceco'" which turns into "Show", and "Abraham" who of course is "Abra", and "Kayoshsi" is shorten to "Kayos", and Nixon is Nix’s, and "Musao" which stays "Masao", and "Billy-Joe" will respond to just plan" Joe"

Joe is a short five foot two, and is about 25 years old, and has worked for Fish 'n Fins for two years but about six months ago we had to let him go. Sometimes he would get a little drunk pay day night and just not show up for work the next morning, which in itself is kind of the way things are done around here. But business was a little slow so we gave him some "Time out. Joe got a job working as a boat driver for another dive company and would still come around just for something to do. So last Saturday he comes driving up to our gas pumps to fill the tanks in his boat. The total bill can to exactly $20.00 so I take this opportunity to inquire. "Say Joe. My little brown friend, does the number twenty have all special meaning to you?" He looks up at me, and I can tell he's trying to think real hard by the blank expression on his face. Then in a sudden flash of enlightenment he starts this big grin from ear to ear and says. "Oh yeah, I owe you twenty bucks!"

Me: "Well?'

Joe: "Well what?"

Me: "Well, when am I going to get it?"

Joe: "Get what?

Me: "My twenty buck!"

Joe: "Ah….soon”

Me: "Like how soon? Like, sometime in my life time'?"

Joe stars laughing. "One never knows, does one'?"

I have already written off the $20.00, but it's always fun to give Joe a hard time about it. Besides now he owes me, and to save "Face" he has to do "favors" for me. Consequently anytime I need something done 1 can always get Joe to do it for me. But the best part of all this is because he owes me $20.00 he can't ask me for any more money. Hence I guess it’s a small price to pay. .

Business has been very good so far this year and we've had a lot of big name special people here the last few months. First we had a Production team nom Steven Spielberg. Evidently he's going to open a chain of restaurants called "Dive" So he had one on his production teams called "Walk on water" which consisted of about twenty five guys, come over here and film all sorts of underwater stuff. I guess when you walk into the restaurant it's going to look like a Submarine with portholes and a front viewing screen, so it will appear that you’re under water. Neat! They were here for a little over a month. At the same time we had Howard Hall here who was doing a special IMAX film about the "Living Sea." IMAX is that movie theater that has this huge wrap around screen. They did a whole thing with Francis and the kids. So Francis is a big movie star now and the grand opening will be in France some time in August. Howard said that he would put at the end of the movie in the credits a "Special thanks" to Lenny so keep you eyes open and let me know. Right after they left, along comes David Doubilet, who is probably the best underwater photographer in the world. He does ALL the underwater photos for National Geographic Magazine. He had been to Palau in 1982 to do a special on the "Strange world of Palau's salt lakes" will Bill Hamner who was here also working with Howard Hall for the IMAX thing. Bill gave me an autographed copy of the National Geographic Magazine (Vol. 161) No.2 February 1982) that they did years ago, plus copies of all the research papers. When David arrived we were standing by the dive shop and he told me he was here to get pictures of only two things, Manta Rays and a small tropical fish called a Mandarin Goby. He had just arrived from Yap and had gotten some good shots of Manta Rays but wasn't able to find any Mandarin Gobi’s. He say that he's been diving and taking pictures for over thirty years and had never seen a Mandarin goby and that was the one fish that he really wanted to see and was willing to go to any depth and spend as much time as necessary just to get one shot of one. I started laughing and he says "What’s so funny?” I pointed down at the rocks at the side of the dock and said. "There's one!" He almost fell off thee pier, "They're all over here, they come out just about sunset. In fact I have one in my aquarium in the hotel” I told him that we collect them with 1ittle spear guns with a needle and a rubber ban. You shoot them in the tail! He's corning buck to Palau in the next few months wants to do a special on just the Mandarin Goby and wants me to go with him and help do the shoot. He said he wants to get a special split (above and below the water) picture of me with the spear gun and the goby. So maybe I get my picture in National Geographic!

But, that's not why this is a "Special Lenny News Letter." It's special because Sunday, Francis and I were sitting at the shop when a boat comes racing up to the dock with the boat diver yelling to call 911l because they had a injured person on the boat. Francis called 911 and 1 got into my Jeep and backed it up to the dock, and yelled at Francis that we could put the guy in the jeep and get him to hospital. I jumped out and ran to the boat, Francis was all ready there and looked up and said "No need it’s too late!" I looked down. It was Joe!

Earlier that morning he had been drinking und borrowed someone’s Jet Ski and went riding around the rock islands. It appears that he somehow lost control and ran straight into one on the islands. He had a large gash in the side of his head, and I figured he hit a rock and flew off and struck his head and was either dead on impact or unconscious and drowned. The boat driver said that they saw the Jet Ski floating all by it self and when they went to check it out they found Joe's body floating face down in the water.

Two days later Nixon, who is Joe’s brother, invited me to the funeral. All the dive guides from all the other dive shops attended as well as all of his family relatives. They put me in a chair up front and Winkler sat next to me and explained all the customs. I was the only "White" man there and I felt much honored to be invited. It is custom at a funeral for all the moaners to stay there for a few days and the family would provide food so that you will stay longer. We stayed until about 1:00 am before we left. We were all seated outside and Joe's body was inside the house. They would invite you in to view the body and pay your last respects in small groups. Those of us from Fish 'n Fins were invited in first. You would, on course, remove our shoes before going into anyone’s house and they had Joe’s body on the floor lying on a bed of flowers with a cloth around his head to cover the wound. Winkler told me that you were suppose to get down on your knees and work you way around the body and that Joe's "Spirit" or "Ghost" would be there and you could ask him for a specia11avor. Looking at Joe 1 started to cry, and then got really mad at him. I don’t believe in "spirits" or "Ghost" and he just laid there like he was only sleeping. I wanted to grab him and shake him and wake he up just to tell him "Joe, you idiot, How could you be so stupid arid go and do something so dumb." Later they sent around a collection for donations for the family to help pay some of the expenses. I looked into my wallet and took out a twenty dollar bill and dropped it in, and said to Joe "You can keep the other twenty!"

The next day the dive guides from the other dive shops all came down to Fish 'n Fins and we went out in the boats to the spot where Joe died and dropped flowers on the water. Joe was a good friend to all of us and will be missed, especially by me.

#5 BABY SO-AND -SO

2008-05-03T05:34:00.000-07:00

I'm out of here I can't believe it! I'm packing my bags and will take the next flight out. I can put up with a lot, but this is the last straw. I heard rumors going around that they might install a STOP LIGHT! I mean there are already four stop signs on the island, so what do they need a stop light for? I've told the chief of police that if they put one up I’m not going to stop no matter what color it is. I'll show them. Mess with me.

Speaking of driving, the speed limit here is 20 mph, and this can be a little too hot for some of the locals who will slow it down to 15. Since it only takes about 15 minutes to get from one end on the island to the other, this is no problem. Bur sometimes you'll get behind some guy who thinks 15 is just a tad bit to fast and drives at a safe and sane 10. It’s a crack up to get behind one of those guys doing 10 and then watch him hit the brakes to slow dawn to go around a corner. You can just about drive any way you want here. Stop in the middle of the road to talk to some of your friends. Or drive down the opposite side because there's too many "pot hole" on your side. Pass on the right if the other guys not sure just where he's going, which is hard to believe because all the roads here dead end! If you get lost, just turn around. You can even speed to 40 mph coming down off the bridge, right before you hit "Dead Mans Turn." It is called that because the road coming down from the bridge is a narrow two lane causeway with water on either side with a slight dogleg to the left at the end. About once a month on payday Friday night some local gets drunk and forgets about the turn at the end and goes flying off the embankment! If he's lucky it low tide, if not, well, you get the picture.

The Palauans are very superstitious and believe that there are ghosts that hang out down there and they will not go there alone at night. For some reason I can understand, the ghosts won't "get them" if they are with someone else. Since my house is on the other side of the bridge, no one will come up to see me at night. I've told them that I drive there all by my self every night and I've never seen a ghost! To which there are quick to reply "Oh, you won't see them, but they see you." This saddens me a little, because I truly would like to meet a ghost.

Well a new year has begun and so far I can't really see too much difference from the pervious one. Some of you may not be aware that I was back in the States a couple of months ago so I'11 fill you in on the details. I went back to see if my ex-partner was ever going to pay me the money he owed me from when I sold him my half of the shop. I owned a tropical fish store by the name Tanks-A-Lot Tropical fish for the last seventeen years. When I decided to go to Palau I sold him my half and he paid me some of the money up front (no way near what it was worth) and was then supposed to deposit monthly payment for the next fifteen months for the remainder of the money.

To make a long story short, I only received one or two of the payments and nothing for over a year. When I returned I paid a visit to the store I was shocked to discover that there was hardly any inventory and that he was never around. Most of the customers I ta1ked to still can't believe he owned the place as they didn't think he even worked there. Needless to say he didn't give me any money but promised that I’d get every penny he owed me. I just found out a few weeks ago that he shut the store down! I'm trying to locate a collecting agency to go after him so at least I'll get half of my money! So if anybody out there knows of a good collecting agency please let me know. Even better, if anybody knows some ex-Mafia type guys who will "Take him for a long walk off a short pier." Well that's OK by me.

My parents were having a family reunion in Long Island, New York and requested that I go back with them, and being the perfect child that I am, I was forced into going. Actua1ly I hadn't been in New York in over twenty years so I thought it would be fun. My mother comes from a large family with twelve brothers and sisters. I must admit that I have a pretty good concept of what aunts and uncles are, but after that, there are these things she called "cousins." This is when I started having problems. So my Mom, who took great delight in this, kept introducing me to all these strange people and would say things like "Now Lenny, this is your second cousin so-and-so" and would go to great length's to point out family traits that we had in common such as, pointy ears, little toes, or bent noses.

Then we got into "second." cousins and ones that were “twice" removed or even worse, ones that bad been removed "three" times. You’d think that being removed "once" would be enough, but I guess not. And if they were "removed" what were they all doing back again? Just whose idea was it to be able to have a whole bunch of "second" cousins anyway? Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier if they just numbered them? We all could wear name tags with numbers on them, or even better, football jerseys, so when you walked in you'd be given a program that would list everybody name and extraordinary body parts. Then it would be more like. "Now Lenny, this is your cousin number twenty seven" and all you would have to do is flip through a few pages in your program and say "Hey, so-and-so, how’s it going. Love that noise."

I did however; unearth a fundamental law of nature. That is, “cousins beget cousins." I mean there were little baby "cousins" all over the place. And all the mom and dad cousins would go from one baby cousin to the next baby cousin and say "Why doesn't she look just like cousin so-and-so." Or my favorite, "Ah, look, he's got cousin so-and-so’s nose. Now wait a minute here gang, I don't care what you say, ALL babies look the same. Let's for the sake of argument say that little baby so-and-so is a real bad seed, I mean a real nasty baby cousin, and is always in trouble with the law, and things get so out of hand that he ends up on the FBI’s “Ten most wanted” baby cousin list. You'd go to the post office to buy some stamps and there on the wall is a baby cousin wanted poster.

WANTED, BABY SO-AND- SO

DESCRIPTION: 22" from head too little baby toe. Weights about 10 pounds, Bald, no teeth, cute, cuddly, stupid grin on face most of the time, cries for no apparent reason, poops his diaper 8 to 10 times a day, if given half a chance will suck his thumb, sleeps all day, cries all night, and cute little bent nose.

There would be a photo of little baby so-and-so, complete with a tiny little thumb print, or perhaps a teeny weenie little foot print, and you'd look at the photo and say "You know, I've seen that face somewhere before." The guy standing next to you would be saying the exact same thing. In fact everybody in the whole damn post office would be thinking that they've all seen that baby's face someplace before. So I rest my case. And please don't go sending me a whole bunch of baby pictures to try and prove me wrong.

The neat thing was that my mom had sent copies of the "Lenny New Letter" to all my cousins and everyone knew who I was or at least knew about me, and wanted to know how my "boil" was doing or if I had any new ones in some strange place on my body, or if I was finally able to buy stamps. They would outdo themselves in making sure that I had plenty to eat. I gained 15 pounds while I was there.

I did succeed in going into the "City" or better known as the "Big Apple" (I'd like to know just why they call it that?) with my good old buddy Tommy or I should more correctly call him The Honorable Thomas Adams as he has somehow managed to get himself elected a Supreme Court Justice of New York. I hope this friendship will come in handy someday when they want to put me away for something and I can say "Hey I know Tommy." They will probable lock me up and throw away the key.

We walked halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge, and we would have walked all the way across too. But to our astonishment we discovered that the second half was identical to the first, only in reverse.

From there we went to the World Trade Buildings and amused ourselves by trying to figure out a way to place a bomb inside one of the parking lots and blowing it up, and we were truly disappointed to discover that it had already been done by some blind guy and a bunch of camel jockeys. From there we went to the Empire State Building and rode the elevator to the top. If you don't count the other two or three hundred people, we had the whole place to ourselves. There were signs that pointed out in different directions telling you just what you were looking at and how many States you could see on a clear day. Since it wasn't a real clear day we could only gaze out and try to imagine what it must be like on a clear day. This soon became boring and we couldn't believe that we forgot to bring some water balloons with us so we could try and hit one of the little "ants" walking around down below.

I then remembered that I once read in a book somewhere that if you tossed a penny off the Empire State Building and you hit somebody on the head it would squash his brain. This might be true but I can tell you one thing, it's not easy to hit someone from that height. We must have gone through a buck and a half worth of pennies and didn't hit anyone! Granted it wouldn't have been easy from our vantage point to tell in fact if we did hit someone, but we figured that if we manage to squish someone’s brain we could tell because all the other "ants" would all gather around one of their "fallen" to help and lend assistance. Then again this was New York and we could have wiped out half the population and no one would want to get "involved'. You know, now that I think about it, a lot of New Yorkers walk around like they have already been hit by a penny!

We were prepared to continue this experiment all afternoon if necessary, but we were forced to cease when the guard became suspicious when we asked him if he could change five dollars into pennies.

A few days later Tommy and I flew to "Block Island" or at lease I think it was Block Island. Anyway it's at the end of Long Island but isn't part of New York, but is in fact part of Connecticut, or Rode Island, or some other state. I was sure that I saw Jackie Kennedy Onassis walking down the street with some of her grandchildren but a local resident informed me that she hangs out over on Martha's Vineyard, which is another island somewhere in the vicinity. I have to admit that I didn't know that Martha's Vineyard was an island as all along I had thought that good old Jackie was just hanging out with a bunch of grapes in someone’s' backyard.

My parents and I drove, or I should say I drove and my Mom tried to read the map and from the back seat, my Dad would put in an occasional "Hey, You should have tuned back there, maybe", up to Connecticut to visit my Dad's sisters. The trees were just beginning to change colors because it was Fall and were very pretty, but it was getting a little to cold for me. Thanks to my Mom's expert map reading and my Dad's photographic memory we managed to keep driving around in circles and it only took three times as long to get to were we were going, but we got to spend some "Family Time" together.

Now that I'm back in Palau, Francis asked me if I could manage the dive shop for him. He said that he didn't think Palauan could do the job. I never thought that I'd hear him say that. Anyways, I've been doing that for the last month and I'm making steady progress in organizing and cleaning up the place. I've just placed an order with U.S. Divers to become a dealer and hope to have inventory by next month. Putting in a lot of hours and only diving once or twice a week.

Wow, I've been sitting here for over an hour trying to come up with something new and witty to say, but I’ve just experienced "writers block." Take the last paragraph, it doesn't seem to flow or read just right, some how it's just a group of words that states facts but doesn't really hold your interest or make you feel involved. Not quite up to the "Lenny Standards" then again neither does this paragraph. I'm hoping that if I just keep writing that something will come into my head that I can put down into words that will make you smile or laugh or something, but so far, nothing. This is worst than I first thought. I was sure by now I would have come up with something…Oh, I know…Nah,…it wasn't that funny…How about?...No,…This is crazy,…I don't want to end this edition like this...

#6 TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A DIVE GUIDE

2008-05-03T05:08:00.001-07:00

All divers are guilty of this, everybody does it, even if you’ve never done it before, as soon as you start diving, you are going to do it, whether intentionally or inadvertently, sooner or later, you are going to lie. I'm not talking about big lies that have a major influence on the New York stock exchange or a profound effect on world politics, but small little ones that just kind of slip out during normal conversation between two or more divers, they can’t help it, it just happens. Maybe "lie" is to harsh a word to use here, perhaps "exaggerate" or "magnify" or better still "overstate" would be more fitting. I know what your thinking, "Lenny, you've gone to far on this one", but let me give you just one illustration of the kind of "overstatement" I'm talking about.

I had three new divers on the boat recently, and to prevent any future legal litigation, I'll just refer to them as Mr. Johnson, Mr. Gordon, and Ms. Owen. We had just dove Palau's "Blue Corner" which, I think almost everybody would agree is one of the worlds best dive sites. Everything had been perfect, the sea was as flat as newly cleaned glass, visibility was at least 150 feet, and a slight incoming tide had made it one of those dives when you wished you could stay down all day, and that's not an "overstatement." I could tell by the grins on all their faces that everybody had a great dive. It was Mr. Gordon comment that caused the chain reaction.

Mr. Gordon: "Did you see the size of that barracuda; it must have been four feet long!"

Mr. Johnson: "That's nothing; the one I saw was at least five foot!"

Ms. Owen: "Did you see the school of them? Must have been 25 or more.”

Mr. Gordon: “Hundreds, I'd say."

Mr. Johnson: "Thousands, is more like it!"

Ms. Owen: "What a great dive, it's not everyday you get to see thousands and thousands of six foot barracudas’"

Mr. Gordon. "You got that right."

Mr. Johnson: "And did you see that shark? Biggest white tip reef shark I've ever seen!"

Ms. Owen: "Which one? I saw at least six"

Mr. Gordon: "Six? Where were you diving? I saw twenty or more gray reefs.”

Mr. Johnson: "I'm sorry, did I say white tip reef shark. I meant a tiger shark, really big one too, probably ten foot, maybe even twelve."

Ms. Owen: "The one I saw was fifteen."

Mr. Johnson: "Fifteen foot? I didn't think they got that big."

Ms. Owen: "Ah, not the ones that usually hang out around the reef but those pelagic ones get at least that big."

Mr. Gordon: "Pelagic?"

Ms. Owens: "The ones that come from the open sea."

Mr. Johnson: "Yeah, those ones are really big."

Mr. Gordon: "What a great dive.'"

Ms. Owens: "I saw a Manta ray."

Mr. Johnson: "How big?"

Ms. Owens: "Fifteen foot."

Mr. Johnson: "Didn't either of you see the three twenty footers?"

Mr. Gordon: "No, but I saw one that was thirty five foot from tip to tip!"

Ms. Owens: "Thirty five feet?

Mr. Gordon: "From tip to tip."

Mr. Johnson: "Are you sure It was thirty five foot?"

Mr. Gordon: "It was Pelagic."

Mr. Johnson: "Oh."

Ms. Owens: "What a great dive!"

There was an uneasy quiet on the boat and you could almost hear the wheels turning in their heads. I couldn’t wait to see where it was going to go from here. Then Ms. Owen turns to me and says, "Lenny, what did you see?" All eyes were on me. It was my moment of "truth." I knew that I only had one shot at it, and it had to be a good one. I Picked up my mask and causally applied two or three drops of defogger on each lens, gently rubbing the solution in between my fingers. I then reached over the side of the boat and filled the mask with water, gently swilled it around and poured the remainder back into the sea. I took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and looked straight into their collective eyes and said.

“I saw a whale shark.”

This got their attention and I could sense that Mr. Johnson was about to make a comment so I continued before anyone could speak.

“Actually it was a mated pair; they were a little over 75 feet in length.”

I paused for a moment or two to let the image sink in.

“And the female was giving birth.”

I couldn’t help myself, I was on a roll, and I had to continue on.

“Normally I wouldn’t have taken the time to watch as I’ve witnessed that dozens of times, but what got my attention was the fact that the female was giving birth to identical twins. So as long as I was there I figured I might as well watch. As you are probably aware, a whale shark giving birth to identical twins has never before been observed in the history of man.”

I looked over at Ms. Owen, and just to be on the safe side I added.

“Or woman.”

All three jaws dropped simultaneously and I knew I had pulled off the biggest “overstatement” of the all. I sat back and propped my feet up on the ice chest, carefully positioned my body to insure the proper amount of sun light to maximize my tan, adjusted the brim on my hat so that the shadow fell across my eyes, popped open a soda and thought to myself.

“It’s good to be dive guide.”

#6a Mr. Wrapit’s Snorkel

2008-05-03T05:07:00.002-07:00

CONFESSIONS OF A DIVE GUIDE

By Lenny Oberg

Mr. Wrapit’s Snorkel

Over the last few years, working with Fish ‘n Fins, here in Palau as a dive guide, I’ve had the opportunity and pleasure to meet a array of divers from all over the world. It’s during the 45 minute boat ride from the dive shop to the dive sites that one gets the occasion to talk and become better acquainted with the divers. None however have left altogether the same impression as a Mr. Wrapit from Tucumcari, New Mexico. Mr. Wrapit was a small unassuming man, and despite coming from Tucumcari, New Mexico, his skin was so white that it had the appearance of having a slight blue tint. While the other divers engaged in typical divers’ conversation, such as all the various locations they had dived, or how long they have been diving, or what was the deepest they have been. Mr. Wrapit sat alone in the corner of the boat, and even though he had one towel that he had taken from the hotel, completely wrapped over his head and another one around his frail body, he still tried to take advantage of what little shade he could find. Sensing the poor Mr. Wrapit was being left out; I attempted to bring him into the conversation. It all commenced when I happened to take notice of Mr. Wrapit’s snorkel, and made an innocent inquiry as to how he had come to acquire such a unique article of diving equipment. It is his response that I will try and relate, to the best of my recollection, to you at this time.

“Well Sir,” he commenced, holding up the item in question, and cradled between his hands more like a delicate piece of fine crystal, than the extruded polyurethane plastic , that it in fact was. “This is the finest snorkel that has ever been, and it’s no accident that it has come into my procession. It was given to me by a man with the name of Eugene Filbert, perhaps you you’ve heard of him: his father was a Baptist Deacon, and an ex-Mafia con man. It was the older Filbert that caused my grandfather, Alfredo Q. Wrapit, to move from Nashville, Tennessee to Tucumcari, New Mexico where he meet his future bride, my grandmother, Geraldine Wrapit who at the time was working at a 24 hour truck stop, flipping flapjacks early in the mornings and banging burgers later in the evening for weary truck divers making their way across the country. Geraldine was one of the finest and gentlest woman one could ever meet, but could be strong willed at times. It certainly was no accident the time that Larry Brambila, a slightly over weight dry wall hanger, became overly annoyed when he was discovered that that fresh squeezed orange juice was not fresh but was made from concentrate. And to make matters worse, from California and not Florida, as stated on the special breakfast menu. You see Larry Brambila was…No, it wasn’t Larry Brambila after all, it was Roy Haubert. Roy’s wife, Stella had been truly beautiful in her youth, and it was no accident that she was second runner up in the Miss Tucumcari beauty contest, and would have won if it wasn’t for the bathing suit competition, which showed off her tattoo a little more than she wanted but not as much as some of the judges would have liked to see. Most everybody firmly believe that that it wasn’t by accident that folks really began to see just how generous she really was, till that tragic incident with little Joey Juppe’s sling shot. Stella would lend her glass eye to Miss Amy Zitko. Miss Amy had lost her left eye during a unfortunate accident involving a mishap with an experimental piece of farm equipment that the University of New Mexico was developing to assist local farmers with the harvesting of Casaba melons. Only problem was that it, the glass eye, just wasn’t big enough, and would, when Miss Amy wasn’t paying close attention, get twisted in the socket and look up, or wander to one side or the other, while one was looking straight ahead. Most of the adults didn’t mind and had become quite accustom to it, but it would make some of the younger children point and cry. It was kind of scary. She tried packing or wrapping it with small pieces of cotton that she liberated from a large economy bottle of Bayer Aspin. Only it wouldn’t do much good, and somehow it would work loose and stick out and look kind of weird. It was always dropping out and she never could tell, being on her blind side. Sooner or later someone would have to inform her that her eye had fallen out again, and everybody would have to sit still and not move around until she retrieved it and jammed it back in again. Some times she jammed it in the wrong side out, which really didn’t matter that much as Miss Amy’s good eye was sky blue and the glass one was brown, so no matter which way it went back in, it didn’t match up anyways. Miss Amy had no problem with borrowing things and would appropriate Mrs. Blogs wooden leg now and again to get around on. Even though it was considerable shorter than her own , she said she didn’t mind as it was much better that trying to get around on crutches that tended to slow her down. Hardly anyone but a few of her closest friends knew that she was a bald as a Ballard ball and would barrow Mrs. Williams blonde wig Saturday evenings so she could wear it to attend church the next morning.

Mr. and Mrs. Williams oldest daughter Norma had married a missionary by the name of Cletus Gonzalez. You can imagine the surprise and disbelief the town’s people felt when they learned that Cletus was eaten by savages! Evidently the savages never got the message of “Brotherly Love” that Cletus was trying to get across and the only time really seemed to sit up and take any notice introduced them to the fine art of barbecue. Some say it was an Accident that poor Cletus was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Don’t tell me that it was an accident that he was roasted, there’s no such thing as an accident. When my uncle Renaldo was standing under a scaffolding once, sick or drunk or something, an Irishman with his wheel barrel full of red clay bricks fell on the old man from three stories up and broke his back in two places. People said it was an accident, because uncle Renaldo didn’t know how or why he was there, but I think he was there for a purpose. If he hadn’t been there at that precise place and exact time that Irishman would have been killed. Nobody can make me believe any different. Uncle Renaldo’s dog was there. Why didn’t the Irishman fall on him? Simple, the dog would have seen him coming and moved away. Accidents don’t happen, it was suppose to be. Uncle Renaldo’s dog was a pure breed Sheppard, or would have been if it wasn’t for that pit bull. I have a picture of him in my dry box and when I get a chance I’ll show you. Uncle Rolando’s dog previous owner was the late A.J. Thiem. No one was ever sure what the A. J. stood for, that’s why they called him Willie. Willie worked is a small carpet mill that made Astroturf and it wasn’t by accident that he fell into the machinery one day and went though is less than a minute. His widow ended up having to buy the piece of Astroturf with Willie all woven in, and people came from miles around for the funeral. There was a little over 2twenty yards rolled out. It was raining that day and people attending the service had mud on their shoes and were generally making a mess in the Church of Divine Destiny, so a vote was taken and I can assure you that it was no accident that they never buried poor old Willie, and till this day, people say Willie finally has a purpose.

It was so quit you could hear an o-ring hit the deck. No one said a word as we put our dive gear together and struggled into our wet suits. I was the last one into the water and as I gently glided down into the crystal blue water I couldn’t help thinking, that it may be true the in outer space no one can hear you scream, it’s was equally true that at sixty feet under water everyone may indeed hear you scream, but they don’t necessary know exactly why!

#7 THE LENNY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR NEWS LETTER

2008-05-03T05:07:00.001-07:00

I can't believe it's that time of the year again. Didn't we just do this about a year ago? The worst thing about Christmas is the music! We only get one radio station over here, well I take that back, there is an all Christian radio station that plays nothing but Christian music all day long, only to be occasionally interrupted by "Dr. Bryan Ebstein's prophetic ministries of the world" or "Reverend Earnest Angely speaks out" so that station really doesn't count. The other station has started playing Christmas music ever since the months started ending with "ber" and to make matters worse the radio station only has a very limited collection of Christmas CD's so I've heard the same stupid songs over and over again. There should be some kind of law that says that a radio station can only play "Christmas music" forty eight hours before Christmas, and let's say maybe twelve hours after. Plus they should throw in that it's illegal to play the same song more than three times in any given hour. I don't think that's too unreasonable.

Why it is that nobody writes any "New Year Eve" songs? There is just the one, and I must admit I haven't got a clue as to what the song is about, and I pretty sure no one else knows what it's about either, but are too embarrassed to admit it.

As usually Palau is all decked out for the occasion, all the shops have put out their best Christmas lights. The Presidents of the republic of Palau's brother has gone way over board with millions of white lights all over his house, the locals are not that impressed as they think he's just showing off as to how much money he has made since his brother has become President. Which is no little amount I might add now that the Taiwanese and the Chinese have been slowly but steadily taking over, most if not all the shops are owned by Chinese, and they really get into the Christmas sprit, with all sorts of multi -colored, semi - coordinated, flashing lights. Most of them haven't got a clue what Christmas is suppose to be about, but that hasn't stopped them from making substantial profits off the Palauans. I'm not sure but I think that they don't actually know that because it's "Christmas" you put up the lights, but perhaps they think that if they put up the lights people will come into their shop and buy more, so they keep the lights up most of the year. I've tried to explain that to Mr. Chow Tie but he just keeps smiling and bowing and says "Oh, Mr. Lenny, you very funny person." Then again he does that no matter what I tell him. Even though we have this little problem of communicating, we've become good friends and wave vigorously at each other each and every time I drive by his shop. I guess the only difference between the Chinese and me as they have found a way to make some money while I just get irritated by the music.

The other thing that happens at this time of the years is that we become extremely busy with divers from all over the world, and this year will probably be no exception even though there are over fifteen dive shop here now, most of the other dive shops being Japanese, as the Japanese make up by far the largest group of divers that visit Palau. The Taiwanese are matching them in sheer numbers but they unlike the Japanese do not dive. They in fact don't even know how swim.

One of the first groups of Taiwanese tourist that came here a few years ago went out with us to go snorkeling, so we took them to "Soft Coral Arch" which is or was an extremely beautiful under water arch that is or was completely covered with soft corals of every color and size. We gave them all masks and snorkels and told them to "jump in." One thing that you soon lean when you work with people from other countries that do not speak "English to good" is never, I mean never, say anything that can be taken literally as they all jumped in at the same time and proceeded to go straight to the bottom! We almost lost the whole boat full. We were pulling them out of the water not unlike drowning kittens struggling to get out of a brown gunny sack! I can still see the terror in their little eyes. The only way I can make any sense of it, is that they come from a culture where if someone says "Jump" they not only "jump" but "Jump" with enthusiasm.

You might have noticed that when I mentioned "Soft coral arch" I used the term "was" as it no longer incredibly beautiful as most of the corals have been destroyed by the large numbers of snorkel's that visit the site every day. The ones that do know how to swim will dive down and rip off a chunk and bring it back to the surface so everyone can see! I really can’t’ blame it all on the tourist as a large part, if not all, the blame must go to the guides who do not tell them not to do it. But unfortunately most everybody here is trying to get rich quick and not really too concerned about the future!

This time of the year is when I have to go and get my work permit and resident green card (only its kind of orange) renewed for another year. This entails going to immigration office and filling out the form that must be typed written which isn't so bad as I can't write free hand anymore, and then go to the jail/police department to get a police clearance, then over to the photo shop for two 1" x 1" identical photos that have been taken "recently" then the best part, my annual physical check up! I always go to the SDA Clinic (Seventh day Adventist) as I can usually get in and not have to spend the entire day sitting around waiting, as I have much more important thing to do, such as sitting around all day at the dive shop.

Anyway they take a sample of blood and check it for all sorts of things, and I always have them check my Cholesterol, HDL Cholesterol and Triglyceride as I have always been a little high. OK, a lot high, but this year my Cholesterol dropped from 194 to 142 which is still a little high I know but compared to what it usually is. It’s just a drop in the bucket. My good Cholesterol (HDL) went up from 36 to over 67 which is really good because the normal range for a male is 29-67 and their test could only go as high as 67 and mine was "above analyzer range." They were out of the reagents to check my Triglyceride but they assured me that they would have a new supply in the very near future. They checked my height, 5'11" and weight which was 179lbs. down as much as 10 lb. as I don't make enough money to buy food anymore.

Last year I had this old white doctor from the States who insisted that I should read the Bible more often and become ''born again" I told him that I was pretty much happy the last time I was born and didn't really see why I should have to repeat it and besides I thought it might be a little harder on my Mom this time round. He didn't appreciate the humor. Besides I kind of lost confidence in him because at the bottom of the form where they make comments on the results of their exam, he had written in large, bold, and not entirely ineligible letters "Well adult female!"

This year I had the new Female Filipino Doctor. I think she was slightly embarrassed when she asked me to unbutton my shirt so she could check my heart beat and I stripped down to my birthday suit. But after an exhaustive exam she was "very impressed" and said I was in extremely good shape and had the heart of a much younger man. I asked her if she was going to do that thing where the Doctor asked you to "cough" but she said that she could tell that everything was "OK" just by looking. I was so excited after my check-up with the low cholesterol and everything that I went straight out to a local restaurant and stuffed myself with some the local delicacies such as “spam surprise” and some “canned beef delight”, followed by a large "fried pig fat burger'' (It’s an acquired taste), and a diet coke. Don't want to waste all those calories on a stupid cola now do we. Well, that's not entirely true, I hate diet coke.

I hope this news letter has brought back a little of the true meaning and spirit of Christmas for you as it has for me, as I'm once again spending Christmas by myself here in paradise, well I won't be entirely alone on Christmas day as we are completely booked with Japanese divers, and who knows maybe we can pass the time by singing Christmas corals (get it?...you know, corals, as in reefs and corals, as in songs? Ah, forget it)

Mom & Dad

See I told you I'd send dad's glasses back, so it only took 4 months what's the big deal. I haven't heard back from anybody in Hawaii yet but I'm sending out follow up letters this week, so I'll just have to wait till I hear back. Other than that thing are pretty much the same, we were busy for Christmas and New Years but things have slowed down now until February when they should pick back up again. It's Chinese New Year and Japanese Golden week or something like that all at the same time. The post office is about one month behind in delivering the mail, I don't think that it affects the out going mail but everything coming in is from way before Christmas. I still haven't heard from Eric but if he wrote it may be some time before it gets here.

Not a whole lot to report other than I'm getting a little burned out on diving six to seven days a week for very little pay, so I hope something comes out of the Hawaii thing as it would be good to have some money for a change. Hawaii can be expensive to live but the people that I've met will help me find a cheap place to live. I went to the New Years Eve party over at the Palau Pacific Resort and they had a drawing for two round trip tickets to Guam, Guess who won it? Yeah, only I don't know just what to do about them as I really don't want to go to Guam so I'm going to try and sell them this week. The only time I've ever won anything and I can't use them, just my luck. Anyway I love you guys and if this thing works out in Hawaii I'll try and come home first.

Love always

Lenny

#8 LENNY’S CHAIN LETTER

2008-05-03T05:05:00.000-07:00

This copy of the "Lenny Chain Letter" has been around the world 3.67 times, possibly 3.69 times and now it has finally arrived at your door and it’s your turn to continue with the "chain letter" tradition.

As you may, or may not know, the proper procedure for passing along a "chain letter," is for the Chain letter receiver, here after referred to as the "CLR" to make ten (10) copies of the Lenny Chain Letter "LCL" and send them to ten (10) unsuspecting souls "US" that you think would be stupid enough to pass along. As an incentive to continue this time honor endeavor, the chain letter is always accompanied with a curse "C". This is no exception. So now you are an official "CLR" and have received a copy of "LCL" and naturally you don't want to incur the wrath of the "C". It’s your oblation to make ten (10) copies of the "LCL" and send them to ten (10) “US”, so they may in turn become “CLR”

You will find my E-mail address and bank account information at the end of the letter. All you have to do is send $5.00 to me and you will have "Good luck" and "Good fortune". OK, I know what your thinking, "Why should I send you $5.00?" Well, I'd think that 5 bucks is a small price to pay for happiness and prosperity, wouldn't you? You could hit the lotto or get lucky in Las Vegas, and it would all be because that I gave you "Good Luck." All right how about this, if you can't send the money at lease write me and inform me as to who sent to the "Lenny Chain Letter" and who you sent copies to and why. I'm serious about this; I want to see just how far it goes. And if you do answer I will guarantee you "Good luck" and "Good fortune" especially if you send the $5.00. If you are foolish enough to not respond, all I can say is that you have been WARNED!

Go ahead and ask "Lenny, just how bad could this "curse" really be?" Well funny you should ask, as I can give you an example that I think will help shed some light on just how serious the "curse" really can be. I shall share it with you it this time.

There once was this girl, who will remain anonymous to protect the innocent, but you may have read about it in news week or seen a recent 60 minutes episode on TV, who, after receiving her copy of the "Lenny Chain Letter" for some bizarre and unexplainable reason carelessly tossed her copy into the waste basket. What you are about to read are the unsettling but true events that were to be the last six hours of her pitiful and tragic life. It started out innocent enough; just a broken finger nail on her left little finger. I'm sure had she been aware of the ill fated chain of events that were to follow; she would not have been so fast in disposing on the "Lenny Chain Letter" in such a thoughtless and dangerous manner.

In a matter of minutes, after the ball of waded up paper that was once the "Lenny Chain Letter", came to rest in the bottom of the waste basket, she became aware of a slight itching feeling in her nose. Just a slight tingling sensation, but it would not go away, none the less. Scratching didn't seem to render any relief. Using her left little finger she inserted into the right nostril and then it happened. The nail broke off and lodged itself in the back recesses of her nose. Bleeding commenced almost immediately, and try as she might, she could not stop the ever increasing flow. No amounts of tissues were sufficient in soaking up the blood. It was dripping down on her brand new white dress that she had just purchased the day before. Justifiably concerned she decided to ca1l 911 for help. When she picked up the phone however, it slipped from her gasp due to the blood that still remained on her fingers, and struck her pet cat on the head. The cat now frighten and dazed ran into the field behind the house and was promptly attacked by a rabid coyote. The cat was able to escape from the coyote and somehow managed to crawl back into the house, where the girl feeling sorry for her beloved pet bent down to tend to it’s wounds, only to have the infected feline bite her savagely on the leg. This particular strain of rabies needed almost no incubation time and soon infiltrated her entire body. Uncontrollable vomiting was the first symptom, followed closely by a complete loss of bladder control, and finally the most hideous symptom of the all, an extreme case of P.M.S.

Realizing that she was in trouble she called her work to tell her boss that she would not be coming to work that day but would instead go to the doctors. Her understanding boss informed her that was the "last straw" and fired her on the spot.

She had the chi1ls now and started to shiver and decided to put on her jacket, but due to her deranged state of mind she put it on backward with the zipper in the back!

Feeling faint she somehow managed to make it to the garage only to discover that the car had a flat tire. After much fumbling with the "jack" she managed to change the tire. She backed the car out of the garage and pushed the button on the automatic garage door opener only to have the spring on the garage door break and the door came smashing down on the front windshield. Not being able to see clearly she ran the red light at the comer and collided with a big yellow school bus, causing the bus and a full load of screaming kids to plummet 2000 feet down the mountain and slowly sink into a shark infected lagoon.

The police and fire department were late getting to the scene, due to the fact that it was lunch time and they were all busy eating doughnuts over at the "Doughnut Hut" and really didn't want to be bothered. They finally did arrive however and discovered that she was trapped inside the burning car. The firemen used the "Jaws of life" to cut her out of the wreckage and commented that she was doing just fine until they turned her head around.

At the hospital things didn't get any better. The orderly that had wheeled her into the operating room was high on "crack" and had managed to accidentally mix her records up with another patient who was having a "rectal" transplant” The operation was a success, but an hour after the surgery while she was in the recovery room. The "Organ" rejected HER!

They finally hooked her up to a life support monitor and entire medical staff agreed that she had a slim chance of surviving. Unfortunately one of the kids from the big yellow school bus wandered into her room, and thinking the life support monitor was a new video game, got pissed because the "Game" was boring and pulled the plug.

According to one eye witness, her dying last words were "It was the…the…"Lenny Chain Letter...agghh"

I don't know, but if I were you I'd make those ten (10) copies and get them in the mail as soon as possible. And oh yeah, I just remembered what the Lenny Chain Letter is an about.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Don't delay; don't miss out on all that "Good luck", send the $5.00 to

Lenny Oberg

3329 Faust Ave

Long Beach, Ca 90808

#9 (c) THE V.A.

2008-05-03T05:03:00.000-07:00

Some of you are probably unaware that I was the most highly decorated sailor in the Vietnam War. Ok, so I may be stretching this just a little, but I do take full credit for making one of the major decisions on board the U.S.S. Pomodon, (SS486). That was the name of the Submarine that I was stationed on during the Vietnam War. That much is true, however the rest of this may be slightly clouded as my memory is starting to fade.

When I joined the Submarine reserves back in '68 I was among the last group to be on Diesel boats and all submariners now go to nuclear sub school. The day I joined I met another kid by the name of Bart Wilson. Strange as this may sound, it true. We signed up together and our service numbers are one number apart. We went to monthly meeting for a year together, went on active duty on the same day in Long Beach, we were sent down to San Diego on the same day, were assigned to the same submarine, spent two years on the Pomodon together, and were released from active duty on the same day. We have stayed in contact over all these years and he is one of my best friends. I do not know exactly why our lives have been entwined as they have, I only hope when he dies this curse can be broken so I can continue on with my life.

Now where was I? Oh, yeah. It was August 14, 1968 and we were at periscope depth (approximately 60') in the war zone, off the coast of North Vietnam. The tension of the crew was high as we had been on liberty in Hong Kong just a couple of days before and most of the crew hadn't sobered up yet. The Captain made a 360-degree (this would be so much simpler if they only put on a degree symbol key) sweep of the area and lowered the periscope. "I don't like the looks of things out there, Oberg why don't you take a look?"

I turn my hat around so the rim would not interfere with my view, and told the Captain to raise the #1 periscope. He pointed to all the stripes he had on his hat and then to the total lack of strips on mine so I decided it would be best for all concerned if I raised it myself. There off in the distance I could just make out the outline of land. I switched the scope form low power to high so I could get a closer view. There was no doubt about it. It was definitely the outline of land! I quickly lowered the scope and said "Captain in my opinion I strongly recommend that we get the hell out of here." The Captain thought about it for a minute and said that he concurred with me and turned the sub around and we headed back to Hong Kong for a few more days or R&R. And that is how I won the War!

Because of my heroism under fire, I now qualify for Vietnam Veterans benefits, which means I can go to the V.A. Hospital here in Long Beach. As you may or may not know is that I have been suffering from varicose veins in both my legs since my days standing lookout watches on the submarine. I have put off getting them stripped; please refer to my previous communication. But last week July 2 was the day of the surgery and many of you have sent letters, telegraphs, and e-mails. (You did, didn't you????) If not that's ok, you still have time to send a get well card and make any excuse you want, cause with all these pain pills I've been taking, I'm dumb enough to believe it.

They gave me a list of "do's & don't" before surgery. Things like don't eat after 12:00 midnight, have a designated driver drive you to the hospital, leave all your valuables at home, you know the usual things. They wanted me there at 6:00 am so Loren came by and picked me up and off we went.

After being checked in and then double checked to ensure that the name on my wrist band was indeed the same one that was on my I.D. card things went into full swing. The first order of business was to have my legs shaved! So there I am lying mostly naked due to the fact that my hospital gown was not much bigger than a baby's bib. I don't know why but all the nurses at the V.A. or either vastly over weight black ladies or middle aged Filipino, all of whom are exceptionally friendly however. I was lucky to have a great nurse by the name of "Liz." The first words out of her mouth were, "My lord child, where did you get all that hair?" So she was shaven and shaven, and hair is flying out in all directions and then she pulls up my bib and starts shaving parts that should never be shaved. About this time in walks another black nurse that could pass for Liz's identical sister and she starts on my other leg, and before I know it there's not a single hair from my waist down. There so much hair all over the place it looked like I had sat down in the middle of a catfight. I thanked Liz for all that she had done and inquired if this meant that we were going steady now, and what she was doing after the operation?

Now they have me lying on this table with half a dozen tubes and wires hooked up to me. The doctor comes in and asks if I'm ready and if I had any questions and I said that I was indeed ready but that I had a couple of questions. "First of all, am I supposed to go into the “light” or run away from the “light?” They don't really make it clear in the movies." He said that he wasn't sure himself so I told him that if I saw any light, just to be on the safe side, that I'd just hang around close by and not commit myself one way or the other. He said that it sounded like a good plan. Then I asked him "Why are you still just "practicing medicine" why haven't you graduated yet?" and the next thing I know there's some lady looking me in the face saying "Lenny, Lenny, it's time to wake up, it all over!" I don’t remember a damn thing!

By this time my mother and Loren had arrived and they (the doctors) started to roll me into the recovery room, and just to prove to them that I was in control, I threw up! It wasn't that much, just some yellow stuff. "That'll show em!" Loren turned a few shades paler than me and ran out side for some fresh air.

They gave me a nice room all to myself, that had a window with a great view of…you know I don't rightly know as I never looked out but 'm sure it was just grand. My mom stayed around for a while, and then got bored. She wished me well, kissed my forehead and whet home, leaving me all alone in a strange bed, in a strange room, with a bunch of strangers.

Both of my legs were completely wrapped in bandages, so tight that my left leg was starting to tingle, so I rang for the nurse and had her re-adjust the bandages so that a little blood could get down to a few of my toes. Ah, much better.

Because I had threw-up after the operation, they inserted an IV into my left arm and started a slow drip of some kind of clear fluid. I tried to explain to the nurse that I have not “thrown-up” but had in fact “thrown-down” that this IV was completely un-necessary, but this fell on “deaf ears,” which was indeed true as the nurse actually was deaf and relied totally on an hearing aid.

Soon a middle aged Filipino nurse came in and acquainted me with the fine art of a “bed pan.” She explained in great detail; how I should twist slightly to the left, raise my right “cheek” and carefully place the pan under my butt and do what ever I needed to do, then place the pan back to its original position and ring for the attendant to come in and remove the contaminated container. She asked if I was in any discomfort, to which I replied, “No, but I’ll take a few pain pills if you have any extra ones lying around.”

Alone again, I amused myself by experimenting with the remote bed adjuster to see just how many positions I could get the bed into before I would fall out. This is way better than the “Craftmatic” one you see in all the late night TV infomercial. But soon this too became mind-numbing so I did what I do best, fell asleep.

Around two in the morning I awake having to piss like a racehorse. It’s that stupid IV; it’s been dripping all night! Damn! So I grab my handy bedpan, twist my body to the left, rise my right cheek, inset pan and …nothing, I can’t do it lying down in bed!

Sorry I haven’t finished this one…I hope to finish it real soon…

#9 (b) DEATH

2008-05-03T05:02:00.000-07:00

I just saw the Angle of Death, the Grim Reaper, Death himself! I know this may be hard to believe but I'm telling you it true. It happened last week while I was driving back from San Diego with Loren. We had lunch with a friend of his, who had just signed the papers to join the Navy. He wanted to be on Submarines, and I use to be on old diesel boats back during the Vietnam War, which is why I can go to the V.A. hospital of my choice. Loren wanted me to talk to the kid, and kind of help steer him in the right direction. To be on Subs you must first volunteer and then score half way decent on the written exam. He had scored a 59, which he was very proud of. The only problem was it was 59 out of 135 so he was qualified to be a cook, or rather a mess cook, and work his way up to cook. I shook his hand and wished him luck, because he's really going to need it.

On the drive back up to Long Beach on the freeway, all cars must slow down and go through an immigration check, which is close by Camp Pendleton to see if there are any illegal aliens hiding in the trunk of your car. By the time we got there it wasn't too busy so the line had only backed up 1,237,379 miles or so. As we crept forward a few inches at a time I glanced up into the rear view mirror and that's when I looked death right in the face! The grim reaper was right behind us, and driving a white, late model Chevy!

His head was tilted back at a 45-degree angle (no goddamn degree symbol either!) His skin was pulled so tight over his face that you could clearly see the outline of all the bones in his skull. I couldn't see his eyes, only black sockets where they once may have dwelled, but had long since vacated. His hands were in the classic 10:00 and 2:00 position on the steering wheels; or at 9:00 and 3:00, I can never remember. Either way, they were wrapped around the steering wheel in a death grip, which now that I think about it, could be the only way the grim reaper can hold just about anything. His mouth was wide open, not just open, it was like he was reciting the alphabet and when he got to "O" he mouth just froze. He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a thin black tie.

"Loren, there's a dead man driving the car right behind us." He slowly turned and then quickly turned back.

"Oh, my god he's dead!"

For every inch we moved up so did Mr. Death. At first I thought it must be some kind of joke by some medical students driving around town with their practice cadaver, but try as I could I couldn't see anybody else in the car. It took almost thirty minutes for us to finally get to the checkpoint, and the whole time he never moved a muscle, he just keep staring up at nothing. As the immigration officer waved us by I drove through slowly to see her reaction to the Grim Reaper, but she didn't ever look at him and just waved him by, which only confirmed my suspicion that nobody but us could see him. But wait! How could I see him in the rear view mirror? If he was indeed the Grim Reaper I shouldn't be able to see him in the mirror and…. Oh, yeah, you can't see a vampire in the mirror! Damn, it was a really good theory…

As we pulled away I accelerated to 65, but he stayed on our tail and closed the gap. Death was tailgating me. I know I'll slam on the brakes and…No, that's just what the clever bastard wants me to do. I'm not falling for that old trick. Just be cool. Drive safe and sane and nobody will get hurt.

That's when it hit me, maybe the grim Reaper wasn't after me but it was in fact that Loren's time was up? Whew, what a relief, I mean I'm sure going to miss him, but hey, when it's your time what can you do? Out run death? That's it! I put the pedal to the metal. 75, 80, 85 but Death stayed right there. I pulled around a school bus hoping that Death might take the path of least resistance and settle for a bunch of kids but he didn't go for the bait.

The telephone poles were going by like a picket fence as we weaved in and out of the traffic, but there was no letting up with Death. It was like he was working overtime. Things were looking bad for us as I couldn't shake him off, and I figured it would be best just to pull over and get it over with, when there up ahead I saw it, a way out, a way to cheat Death himself, just a quarter mile ahead. "Come on baby just a few more yards." I made a quick lane change between the double yellow lines. The one place the lone rider of the apocalypse couldn't follow us. The car pool lane! "Yeah, I got you, you Bastard!"

Death was pissed; at least I think he was, as his expression never changed. He slowed down and put his blinker on and turned off on the next exit. I didn't get the name of the exit so let this be a warning to you. "The future may be cloudy and unclear, but the end is always near!"

#9 (a) K-MART

2008-05-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

July 11, 1999

It all started about 2 weeks ago, when I was denied entry to my local K-mart due to the simple fact that I didn't meet the minimum weight requirement. I'm not saying that there's an armed guard posted out front or anything, but they restrict entry by a clever device know as the "turnstile. What you're probably unaware of, is that the new generation turnstiles have a built in micro computer that can actually read your mind and before the signal from your brain, that says "Oh, Shit this is K-mart," can reach your legs and you turn to run, the turnstile activates the one way check value and a powerful air operated arm pushes you into the store.

But this is not what happened to me however. The turnstile was in the locked position and refused to let me pass. After three or four attempts I stepped back to let an enormous lady behind me take a shot at it. To my amassment she was allow to pass with no restriction. I tried again and again and each time the results were the same. Totally confused, I sat down on a wooden park bench next to the life sized Ronald McDonald hamburger clown, and put my extraordinary powers of observation to work. To my bewilderment, every time a gigantic woman would approach the turnstile it would lovingly open with the slightest touch. Eureka! I have it! They had installed two electronic sensors on either side of the turnstile. When both are touched simultaneously by, oh lets say, someone's big fat ass, not only would the gate open, but over the stores public address system could be heard the words spoken by the micro computer in an almost but not entirely human voice, "Welcome K-mart shopper, fresh lard is on sale on isle 17."

It seems that adult males must weigh at least 275 lbs., and with females it's slightly higher, for the sensors to activate. Armed with this knowledge I quietly waited just out of sight of the official K-mart greeter, and when a five hundred pounder waltzed by I slipped in behind her and was caught up in her draft and was literally sucked in by the vacuum!

Using the cover of my symbiotic partner, we went down isle after isle. Soon I found that I was becoming more at ease and would dart away from my host for longer and longer periods of time until I was able to move around the store without drawing attention to myself. I was however always fearful of the overhead surveillance cameras.

I soon found myself in front of the K-mart gun and ammo department, or the "Children’s play thing" section, as they like to call it. The guy behind the counter looked almost normal, at least from a distance so I walked up to him and explained that with all the social unrest going on in the Mid-East, it was becoming clearer each day that I should be armed for my own protection. He whole heartily agreed with me and took pride in showing all the latest hi powered handguns that had plenty of "stopping power." I nodded in full agreement but said that these were mere toys and I was looking for something a little more serious, something fully automatic, something that would be good for drive by's.

Since I was looking at a handgun he said that there was a police check and a three-day waiting period. "Three days? I can't wait three days, I will have clamed down and there would be no need for a gun by then!" He didn't smile or nothing but said that he would have to ask me some questions for the permit.

Clerk: "Name?"

Me: "Lee Harvey Oswald"

Clerk: "Address?"

Me: "I'd rather not give out that information"

Clerk: "Occupation?"

Me: "I have been working for the post office, but the bastards just fired me this morning!"

Clerk: "Are you taking any kind of illegal drugs?"

Me: "Why? Does it show?"

Clerk: "No, but it's one of the questions"

Me: "Is heroin illegal now days?"

Clerk: "Yes, I think so"

Me: "Well, ok, if it is, I promise to stop first thing in the morning"

Clerk: "So that's a yes?"

Me: "No"

Clerk: "No? You're not taking any drugs, or no, you're not going to stop?"

Me: "Yes"

Clerk: "I don't understand"

Me: "Why don't we just leave that one blank?"

Clerk: "Have you ever been convicted of a major felon?"

Me: "Convicted?"

Clerk: "Yes, convicted"

Me: "No, never convicted, I mean I've been to court a few times, but they were never able to convict"

Clerk: "Purpose for owning a handgun?"

Me: "Revenge"

Clerk: "I don't think that a acceptable reason"

Me: "Hey, that's the only reason. You think people actually want to shoot at silly paper targets? Come on man, get with the times"

Clerk: "Lots of people like to…."

Me: "Don't piss me off kid! I'm like Mike Tyson and I could blow at any time"

Clerk: "I'm sorry"

Me: "You know I don't have time for this shit, how about I just buy a rifle?"

Clerk: "Great, I hate doing all that paper work!"

The highly trained K-mart cashiers are not the dumbest however; this distinction goes to the one that works for the "Everything for 99 cent store." You know the stores where everything is only 99 cents. How come they don't have a "cent" symbol on keyboards? I mean am I the only person in the world that ever wanted to use one? What gives? There's one (99 cent store) over by my house and just the other day I picked up a few things. A 10 pack of razor blades, a precision hand held screwdriver with 5 interchangeable tips, and a two-gallon bottle of shampoo. I carefully placed my items on the conniver belt and watched as they worked their way slowly towards her. At this point she picks up the razor blades and screaming at the top of her lungs yells, "Price check!" This action immediately halted the five other cashiers and necessitated in the calling of the manager. Eventually they all agreed that it was probably 99 cents and my purchase was able to commence. She said that she was sorry for all the delay, as it was her first day on the job and she still didn't know all the prices. I reassured her that "time" was the only thing that I had plenty of, and asked if she use to work at K-mart? "Why yes, how ever did you know?" To which I replied. "Ah, just a lucky guess."

#10 BUS STOP

2008-05-03T04:52:00.000-07:00

04/04/00

Since I don't seem to remember things as well as I use to, or perhaps I do but just don't know it, I've stared writing down little notes on a small piece of paper to remind me of events that happen in my life that I consider worth writing about and passing along to everyone. I usually just jot down one or two words that will jog my memory and then I can "tie it all together.” As I look over my notes I find that I have written the following items.

1) Bus stop - teeth

2) Soft ball - 52

3) Porno - Bible

4) Lotto - lucky numbers

5) Shower - Vegetable salad dressing

This is the scary bit! I know exactly what I want to write about for items #1 though 4, but I don't have a clue for item #5! I can't for the life of me remember what the hell I was thinking about; I can't "tie anything together". No matter in which order I try and put them in.

#1) Anyway, a few weeks ago I received a call from my friend Francis from Palau, his family is living up in Oregon and he was going back to Palau for a short visit and asked if I could pick him up at the greyhound bus stop in LA. I said "Sure it would be no problem" and jumped in the van and headed for LA. The last time I was in a greyhound bus terminal was way back in '69. (Yes I'm really that old!) I use to ride the bus from Long Beach to San Diego to get back to my Submarine when I was in the Navy.

When I arrived at the terminal, I was informed that the bus had a flat tire and would be about one hour late. So I kind of wandered around to see if things had changed any. To my lack of surprise, things were pretty much the way I remembered them. Not much had changed, Oh sure, the benches had been re-painted from charcoal gray to a new and upbeat neutral gray. The signs and posters that were written in English had been replaced with signs and poster written in Spanish. And the urinals automatically flushed when you walked away from them, or at least they tried but were clogged with cigarette butts, many of which probably have been floating since October '69!

In one room there were about a dozen or so people sitting around with that same blank gaze that I see when I'm sitting in the waiting room over at the VA hospital. Almost all of them were missing a minimum of at least one body part, mostly teeth. Between them all there wasn't enough for one complete set. (See how it ties together?) The one thing they all had in common was half a cigarette butt precariously clinging to their bottom lip. They didn't even try to flick off the ash, but instead, it appeared that there was some kind of unofficial contest going on to see who could have the longest ash adhere to the end of their cigarette. One guy had almost a full two inches, and was far and away in the lead when I walked in. All heads turned in my direction, and for a brief moment there appeared to be some small resemblance of intelligence, but that vanished faster than Senator McCain's campaign.

The guy with the two-inch ash was more than slightly annoyed as the ash fell into his lap giving the others the prospect of victory. In fact, for the first time in my life I could actually smell the victory in the air. I took a seat on a neutral gray bench in the corner and looked around for something to read, but soon discovered that there was nothing, not even an old National Inquirer. It was about that time that my keen power of observation came into clear focus. Everybody in the room was dressed in gray! Oh my god! These were not the passengers but in fact the drivers! I had stumbled into the driver's room. I stood up, smiled and said with all the sincerity that I could muster "Ah…Hey fellows, anyone got a light?"

#2) I stared to play baseball again. Well, ok, slow pitch softball, but that's not the point, the point is that this is the first time since I played on the "All Taiwanese" team in Palau, where I was the only "round eye" on the team. We use to kick butt too, mostly on the "All slightly inebriated, who happened to be standing around at the time" team. My friend Bob Novak sponsors two teams, one that plays on Wednesday night and the other that’s plays on Thursday night. The Wednesday night team is open to all ages, where the one on Thursday night is only for those over 55 years old. The Wednesday night team is 0 and 6. This for those of you new to the sport of baseball means that we haven’t won a single game. However the Thursday (over 55) night team is 4, 1 and 1. This of course means we have won four, lost one and tied one. I play first base on both teams. Ok, that part I said earlier about being the point, well that's not the point, the real point is that I'm only 52! (See how it ties together?) And no one from the other teams has challenged my age! I expected everybody to start yelling, "Hey, he's not 55, he's only 35!" or "Hey, get that young whipper snapper off the field!" but NOOO… nothing! One guy from another team actually came up to me and wanted to know, now that he just turned 65, how he should collect his social security. This really sucks!

#3) I was watching the news on TV the other day and they were reporting on this guy who had gone out and raped, killed and mutilated and bunch a school girls. A couple of things come to mind when you hear a tragic story such as this. Why is it that we only remember the name of the criminal and never the name of any of the victims? We all know Charles Manson but nobody can tell you just whom in fact he killed. Or try and name a few of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims? They also stated that when the police went to his home they found pornographic material. Then there was this editorial stating how bad pornographic material was and that it should be banned. Not that I'm for pornographic material, especially after that last batch of pictures; they never can get my "good side" (see how it ties together?) But what about the guy who goes out and kills a black person, or a Jewish person, or blows up an abortion clinic, and when the police go to his house and find a Christian bible or teaching from Mohammed, they never say that we should ban all religious materials? Maybe it's just me, but I really don't see that big of a difference here.

#4) After years of major disappointment I have decided it time to change my lucky lotto numbers! Yes I know what your thinking, "Lenny, How can you change them after all they have given you?" But that's just it, they haven't given me a damn thing and it's time for a change. Before I acquaint you my new lucky numbers I'm compelled to tell you my old ones. They were 2,4,48,30,52,13. The first three are easy, my birthday, February 4, 1948. 30 is the age of my son Eric. 52, contraire to popular belief is my age (See how it ties together?) and 13 just because everyone else thinks it's unlucky. My new lucky numbers are 64, 76, 83, 87, 91, and 96. Yes I know what you’re thinking, "Lenny, you idiot, the lotto only goes up to 52!" But there are good reasons for the change, the first being that, having painstakingly calculated the odds, using the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, my new numbers have just about the same chance of wining as my old ones. Plus I have this premonition that the day I hit the 50 million dollar lotto there will be 50 million other people with the same numbers and we all get one dollar. So by choosing these numbers I'm assured that I will be the only one with these numbers and hence the only winner. Yeah, now who's the fool, eh?

#5) Sorry but I still don't have a clue about the "Salad dressing" or "showers". So if anyone out there has talked to me about Salads or we took a shower together or spread salad dressing on each other for whatever reason, please let me know and I'll "tie it all together!"

Hope to see you soon, but until then, may you always have blue skies and green lights wherever you go.

#11 MY HOUSE IN PALAU

2008-05-03T04:51:00.000-07:00

7/02/01

Well, things have been rather interesting, to say the least. It's been raining here for the last 10 days, and yesterday we got hit with the worst storm here in Palau in the last 20 years! The whole place is completely falling apart. It's rained so much that the main road from the airport has had sections collapse. The big problem is that the one section that let loose, is where the main optical line for all the communications for the entire island crossed the road, so you guessed it, there is no connection with the outside world. No Phones, no faxes, no Internet, and no e-mails. I tried to call you this morning, but no luck. At this time, I have no idea when things are going to get better.

And just because I don't have enough things to worry about the rain has soaked through the entire surrounding hillside by my house. The neighbors' house next door is about to side down the ravine. His outhouse was located about 40 feet away, is now over 60 feet away. The house directly above mine, has slipped about 6" and last night my bathroom decided that it didn't like the neighborhood, and set off on its own. Luckily it's only slid about 2". There is a big crack along the bottom of the wall, around the floor. I have all my “stuff” semi packed just in case. Don't know where I'll end up going if the whole place gives way, probably move over to the warehouse where the ultra light is and just live there, even though there is not electrical power or water. Then again there hasn't been any electrical power, or water here either for the last 3 days. The power came on early this morning, so I'm trying to get this at least on a disk on the slim chance that they get the internet up and going I can send it out.

The winds coming from the Southwest, so the PPR is getting hammered. Of course the shop is closed down, but with the good chance that I may homeless any moment now, I don't really care about it.

The main street into town has had two major sections collapse and is down to just one lane. In fact the whole area around my house is slipping away. My friend Hudson, (the cab driver) house spit in two last night and will slide down the hill probably sometime this afternoon. The rain has not let up and things are looking rather grim, but never dull!

Just found out that the temporary floating bridge is taking on water is about to go own. They gave up on trying pumping the water out, as they can't keep up. They are only letting one car across at a time. I have decided not to try and cross, 'cause with my luck, it will pick that minute to head south. Then again, the good news is, if I don't cross it, it will be safe for everyone else.

The road that they are building around the big island is a total disaster, things are far worse off now then when they started three years ago.

The main water line down the street has broken and the escaping water has tunneled through the road and caused three major sinkholes. So far I can still get the car by, but the big problem is that one of the sink holes is right on the edge on the road and may take out the entire hill side.

Tresses have fallen all over the place from the wind and loose soil. Went by my friend Winkler to see how he was doing. A huge tree had fallen in the night and came crashing down. Luckily the tree came down and hit the power lines and is being held up or the moment by the lines. He's waiting for the power company to come by and help cut it away, but I think he's going to waiting for quite some time as there is not much help available as everybody's home trying to keep his or her houses from slipping away. I told him to call me If thing get bad. Of course there are no phones,

Shit! The rains pouring down and the power just surged! It's raining so hard that I can't see the house next to me!

I have all my pots and bowls sitting out under the roof catching rainwater so I can have some drinking water, plus water to flush the toilet, and take a shower. (Don't think I'll be using the neighbors' outhouse any more)

I had finally broke down and bought a Propane tank for the stove and just hooked everything up, just in case I actually had to cook something! The best thing is that with no power and water I was able to warm up some water on the stove and take a nice hot shower!

Speaking of outhouses, if my bathroom keeps on sliding, I'll have one of my own in just a few hours or so.

The rain has stopped and I'm going out to take a reading, I'll be right back.

So far so good, I have been monitoring the gap between the house and the cement walkway. It's about 2" and seems to be holding for the time being. Of course the whole hillside is probably sliding so it all academic.

I can hear the water gurgling under the cement walkway! There's a big ass tear in the soil right above the house and I can see the water forming a small underground stream. Great!!

Shit there goes the power again; I'm on battery back up,

Got to go!!

Later

Lenny

#12 HELP SAVE LENNY ENDOWMENT

2008-05-03T04:47:00.000-07:00

Date 10/15/ 2001

Well, as you may have guessed, things have not been the best lately, since September 11. The drop in divers happened almost over night. We have had more than our share of postponement and cancellations. We had to cut back on all our staff at the shop. We didn't lay anyone off but cut back on the hours. I'm only working half days for half pay, and half of nothing is not a hell of a lot, let me tell you. I don't know how long I can hang on as it's costing me money to go to work! I find myself starting to reevaluate my life and I get rather depressed, which goes completely against my "Lay back Lenny" image.

I was lying in bed last night and my heart started pounding. My blood pressure is up again. I just ran out on my medication. After spending 1 1/2 hours at $1.50 a minute, listening to various phone messages on the phone to the VA hospital in Long Beach, I finally got to talk to a real person, and all I could get out of him was an appointment for next Thursday. Didn't seem to matter that I live clear across the world on a little island and that it was impossible for me to just "drop by" on Thursday. So I told him to "fuck off and die" ok, I really didn't say that I thanked him for all his help and hung up. Then I yelled at the phone, "fuck off and die" I did feel a little better however, but not real" sure my blood pressure dropped much in the process.

I've been able to spend some time working on the plane but I haven't been able to receive any of the parts that I've ordered. Continental Airlines has refused to ship any mail weighing over 1 pound. Yesterday I had to buy two 1/4" stainless steel nuts at the hardware store here on the island. I can get them for 7 cents each in the states. They charged me $1.95 each! I gave the clerk 5 bucks and told him to "fuck and die"

Two weeks ago about 6 pm I get a call from my friend Joel (Francis’s brother) he asked if I wanted to start playing basketball again. They have started a "masters" league, which means that you have to be over 35 to play. I said, "Sure, when was the next game?" and he said "7 O'clock" I put on my old tennis shoes and went to the gym. The other team had all ten of their players; we had me, Joel and three other guys. So I played center for the entire game. Needless to say I was a little winded by the forth quarter. Well that's not actually true, I was exhausted by the end of first minute of the first quarter, but I made it all the way though. About half way though the second quarter the rubber soul on my left sneaker separated at the bottom. Every time I tried to run it would start flapping, not entirely unlike a chicken trying to fly away from an on coming motorcycle. This is not to say that I would intentionally clear across the road just to run over one on the little bastards, but rather as my High school English teacher would say; "Imagery"

I felt pretty good that night however and slept like a dead dog. Next morning I jumped out of bed, only my legs decided on their own about 10 minutes earlier that they were happy just where they were and they were going to spend the rest of the day in bed. I nearly fell on my face! Surprisingly enough I wasn't in that much pain the next day. The next game we had 7 players and I played about 3/4 of the game. The game after that there was only three of us, and last night I was the only one to show up. All the other guys are hurting and can't make it. I played for the other team. They had me playing center against this 6'3" 300 pounder. I was faster than he was so I managed to get past him a few times for easy lay ups. He changed his defensive tactics and figured the best way to stop me was the slap me in the head the next time I tried to go around him. It worked pretty well as he hit me right in the face and broke my only pair of glasses! So now what's left of my small world is all out of focus! I thought about telling him to "Fuck off and die" but after reflecting on the matter for a few moments, I let it slid this time, plus I'd have to stand on a small ladder to look him in the eye. Looking at the "official standing" I see we are fighting for last place!

I pretty sure that I'm going to get married sometime next year! Yeah, kind of took me be surprise likewise. I figure it's about that time, only problem is I don't know who it's going to be just yet. I use to like being by myself but lately I'm starting to feel a little lonely. Somehow it just doesn't seem right that everybody else in the whole world has a "Soul mate" but me. So I'm open to any and all suggestions.

After proof reading this I have come to the conclusion that this is rather pathetic and a not so veiled attempt at an out cry for help, which also goes against the "Lay back Lenny" image, so don't take any of the above too seriously. However if this has touched you in a small way please send one or more of the following items:

1) Money (unmarked small bills and preferably in US currency)

2) Drugs (doesn't really matter what kind, what ever I can't use I'll simply sell the school kids over at the play ground.)

3) Certified aircraft parts and hardware.

4) Tennis shoes size 10 1/2 (major name brand only please. Hey, I may be down and out, but I still have style)

5) Glasses…I don't know the prescription as I can't read what my optometrist wrote on the paper because he wrote it too goddamn small. If I could read the prescription I wouldn't need the damn glasses now would I? He name is Doctor Morgan, Hogan, or Borland. Hell, I don’t know. Do me a favor, any optometrist you see walking down the street, just walk up to him and say “Lenny says fuck off and die.” Thanks

6) Women; beautiful, sexy, and rich. If not real good looking then one with a lot of money will suffice.

Please send all donations to the “Help save Lenny Endowment.” A non-profit, charitable foundation dedicated to the preservation and continuation of the “Lenny lifestyle” which without your help is endangered and doomed to vanish in just one generation. So please give what you can. Remember, you don’t have to give “till it hurts” just to you feel a little discomfort.

Thank you and may God bless you.

Lenny Oberg

P.s. Please make all checks out to "Cash" as this will help facilitate the healing process.

#13 LET'S GO SAILING

2008-05-03T04:03:00.000-07:00

About a month ago a good friend of mine by the name of Steve Marks asked me if I could help sail his 40' catamaran to the Philippines. I checked my social calendar and low and behold I had nothing going on that week, or the next six or seven weeks for that matter, so I said Sure why not? It seems that Steve's wife, Debbie was enrolled in veterinarian school in the Philippines and he decided it would be best to move over there for a year or so until she completed her studies. Steve had enlisted another good friend, John McCreary to be Captain, and Steve would be the First mate, so by default, that made me "little buddy." The Yacht is equipped with all the latest toys, and has all the whistles and bells to make sailing in the open ocean, well, rather boring. After wasting four or five hours waiting for the Palauan custom officials to finally get done with their lunch break of “Spam surprise” and canned corn beef, washed down with a six pack or two of Budweiser, we were off. We headed north inside the barrier reef up the west cost to the northern tip of Palau with our engines (twin diesels) running. We then turned north by northwest out into open waters, killed the engines and hosted the mainsail, raised the jib, lowered the boom and shivered my timbers! I can see by the look on your face that you're not that familiar with nautical terminology so I suggest that you take a few moments here to acquaint yourself with the following sea faring expressions.

Bow: The pointy end of the boat, usually located towards the front.

Stern: The end of the boat opposite the pointy end.

Screw See Prop.

Mainsail: Big triangle looking piece of cloth held up by the mast.

Mast: Tall pole that holds up the mainsail

Prop: See screw.

Jib: Small triangle piece of cloth located towards the pointy end.

Boom: Big, hard metal thing that hits you on the head.

Battens: Fiberglass rods that go inside the mainsail to help keep the shape.

Line: Rope.

Shore line: Rope that is lying on the beach.

Helm: Steering wheel.

Deck: What you walk on.

Poop deck: Where you go if the toilet is not working. Also see Bing

Landfall: That place where the land falls into the sea, usually at the edge.

Relative Bearing: Where something is relative to the boat (front 0, right 90 back 180)

Bing: Steve's Dog

Relative Bearing Grease Just A cheap joke!

Knot: Speed that is either faster or slower than miles per hour or kilometer per hour, only I can't remember just which at the moment.

Banca: Small Philippine out rigger boat

Next stop the Philippines! Only 587 miles to landfall! We were headed for the San Bernardino straits, which if you remember your history is where a great naval sea battle took place between, ah, the good guys and the bad guys. All I can remember is that the good guys boats managed to somehow cross the "T" of the bad guys boats which meant that the good guys could fire all their cannons all at once at the bad guys because their boats were facing broadside and the bad guys couldn't fire back as the were pointing their bows at the good guys boats and didn't have any cannons up there or something like that. Anyway the point is, that is where we were headed!

Once we got past the protection of the island we were in big rolling seas, now I never get sea sick, unless I'm on a boat! And sure enough I'm not feeling so good, but not so bad as not to be able to eat dinner, which was lasagna that Steve had made at the Palau Pacific Resort and then frozen so all we had to do was nuke it in the microwave. This stuff was really good so I made sure that not only did I have seconds, but thirds and fourths thrown in for good measure, the only problem was there was nothing to drink! Steve and John how gotten together and brought thirty or forty cases of beer and diet coke! I don't drink beer and I hate diet coke. Steve dug through piles and piles of caned food, and luckily down at the bottom of the pile was a bottle of apple juice. Here in Palau it's sometimes rather difficult obtaining the basic necessities of life such as food and drink, and what little we get all comes from one or two stores which means your choice of brand names are limited to one major brand and one called Western Family which is a brand of really low quality items that vaguely resemble the better brands. Needless to say this was not my first choice in apple juice, but I had no choice. Oh, well it least it was wet, sort of.

We sailed all that day under full sail and had even managed to hit twelve knots now and again. By the end of the day we decided that we would keep the mainsail up full for the night as the weather-looked good. We split up the night watches into three hours each, so I volunteered for the 10:00 PM to 1:00 AM. John called me at 10:00 PM and I got up and took about three steps and came to the sudden realization that I was going to be sicker than a dog. Now I'm not quite sure just where that expression comes from, but it's not exactly true, as there was in fact a dog on board with us. Steve had not only brought his dog "Bing" but also his bird "KO", a blue eyed Triton cockatoo, and he (the dog) and the bird were doing just fine. This was going to be a long three hours! I managed to prop myself up against the helm and didn't move a muscle for the next two hours, fifty nine minutes and fifty nine seconds, then I tapped on Steve's door and said "Steve it's your, Yuuuuuch!" Lasagna was flying all over the place, the helm, the deck, the boom, the dog, some of it even managed to make it over the side! Strange how something that tasted so delicious going down tastes so vile on the way back up! I didn't even try to make it back to my bunk but just passed out on the floor. Next morning the sun was out shining, the water was shimmering, dolphins were surfing on the waves at the bow and I didn't give a damn! When you're seasick the only relief is death!

From the helm I could hear Steve, “Oh, Shit, the mainsail torn!” During the night the wind had managed to rip a large gash in the bottom of the sail up to the first batten, it looked worse than it was at first sight. We managed to lower the sail and rig it so we could sail with the mainsail partially lowered. We lost a little speed but we weren't in a real big hurry.

By the third day I was feeling a little better as long as I didn't walk or eat anything. I had this sudden craving for a coke a cola, but all we had was diet! I suggested to the others that we should simply turn around and go back and get some, but this idea was rejected a little too vigorously I thought, with even rumors of someone walking the plank!

About three in the morning we are awaken by the cry, "Land Ho.. .Land Ho!" John and I ran, or rather John ran and I kind of crawled to the helm were Steve was looking though the binoculars and pointing to some lights and shouting. There, relative bearing 290" John grabbed the binoculars and said.

"Yea, I can see them too!"

"Give me those things." I said. Sure enough, they were lights all right, two white lights and one green light. "You stupid idiots, that's a ship, those are its running lights!" I handed the glasses back to Steve. "I can't believe it, you woke me up to see a god damn ship."

"Hey I'm sorry guys, it looked like land, what do you want me to say?"

"Nothing." As I crawled back to my bunk I whispered under my breath, "And I want a coke!"

The forth day was actually really nice, not that it was really any different from the other three, but I was almost but not quit entirely not seasick. While the rest of the fearless crew were doing what ever they did when the were not on watch, and I was amusing myself by trying to catch a few waves and surf down the face of the wave with the boat, which was fun for the first couple of hours than grew rather tiresome, when all of a sudden something caught my eye... yes, there it was again, way off on the horizon...it looks like…it looks like, LAND!

Only I was cool, I calmly called down to Steve to please come up as I had something to show him.

"Do you see that over there?" I inquired.

"Where?"

"Over there, that thing that looks like a freaking volcano!"

"Land Ho... .Land Ho!" Steve has definitely seen way to many old pirate movies. I may have to get him an eye patch and a wooden leg.

We sailed the rest of the day up through the Straits and came to a small fishing village and dropped anchor. In less time than it take to write this up comes a small Banca with three Filipino's in it, one was the owner of the boat, one was the mayor of the village, and the other was, as far I could tell, a concerned on-looker. The mayor spoke a little English and we were able interpret that being as no body ever stopped at his village the mayor wanted to make sure that we were properly greeted, plus he wanted to trade a couple of packs of local cigarettes for some American brands. I told him "Unfortunately none of us smoke, but perhaps we could give you a couple of beers for all you trouble of rowing all the way out here." I got one of those, "If looks could kill" from Steve and John, "But it seems that we are completely out of beer also." I could tell from the looks on their faces that they weren't going to return home empty handed. "We have, however a whole pan of lasagna for your dining pleasure." They weren't too thrilled at this offering as they hadn't a clue what it was, but when I told them that it was Meat they went crazy.

"What we do, eat frozen?" They inquired in unhesitating unison.

John goes into great detail of just how they should be sure to remove the aluminum foil and set the micro wave on defrost for ten minutes and then cut the lasagna into small slices and cook each slice for about two and one half minutes then serve with a fresh tossed garden salad and perhaps a chilled red wine. All the while the mayor was busy translating to the boat driver who was nodding his head in total agreement, and the concerned on looker was frowning and rubbing his hand on his chin and looking quite concerned. When John was finished they all looked up and said in complete unison,

"What we do. Eat frozen?"

We were getting low on ice so Steve asked the mayor if there was any ice in the village and to our surprise he answered that indeed there was a ice maker and that they would be glad to row all the way back and get us some. As they were staring to row away I asked if they had any coke and the concerned on looker looked up and smiled exposing ten out of his fourteen teeth and said.

"Yes, Family size!"

In less than one hour we had three blocks of ice and four family size bottles of coke! I drank the first one completely down in twenty seven seconds and carefully placed the other three so that they would receive the maximum amount of surface area from the three blocks of ice.

Later that evening we decided that since things were going pretty good that we would continue sailing on through the night. Which was a great idea until a few hours after sundown when all the fishing Banca's came out. There were literally thousands of them, and they stretched end-to-end clear across the horizon. It's quite fascinating to see how the fishing is done, as they had fishing nets deployed between small groups of two to four boats and they would work in tandem to catch anything and everything that moved. Any fish, crab or small furry mammal that happened to venture out that way had about as much chance of making it though as the Pope has of being circumcised! None of the Banca' had running lights, so it was nearly impossible to tell just how far away they were or which direction they were cruising. The only light they had was a single gas lantern that was shining so brightly that collectively from a distance it looked as if you were coming into a large city. It wasn't long before we were sailing right through the heart of them. Let me tell you, sailing through hundreds of unmarked Banca's in the middle of the night keep my attention span longer that my usual five to six minutes, but luckily we didn't run over any body, at least that I know of.

After four more days of sailing we arrived at Puerto Galleria. Which is a small village about five hours, by car, south east of Manila. Over the last few years it has been taken over by Europeans, mostly old Germans pedophiles who hang out on the beaches and take advantage of the cheap prices for sandals, T-shirts and 13-year-old girls. There's also a Yacht club that Steve promptly joined, so we too could hang out on the beaches and take advantage of the cheap prices for sandals, T-shirts and 13-year-old girls older sisters! In the middle of the town is a Catholic church, with a gigantic bell tower and an equally gigantic bell which they rang every morning about a hour before sunrise just to let every one know that the sun's about to come up, and then again each and every hour, or sometimes at random, just to see if you were paying attention and to reassure you that the bell still works. As I walk around town I couldn't help but notice that everybody was wearing a watch and appeared quite capable of telling time all by themselves, so I really don't know why they insist on ringing the damn thing.

You can catch a Banca and go around to the other side on the lagoon or take a jeepney (ornately decorated stretched jeep) up and over a large hill or very short mountain depending on your point of view, to the city of Sabang, which is the “Party Town.” This is how and where we lost John for two days! But on the third day John can back home, wagging his tail behind him, literally....

It was time for John and I to make our way back to Manila so we parted company with Steve and were about to get on board the bus to Manila, when this guy comes up and offers to take us by cab for slightly more than price of the bus, so we piled all our stuff into the back of the cab and off we went. Now, for those of you who have never driven a car in the Philippines, or entered a destruction derby, there are basically only two rules to follow. The first being: "There are no rules." And the second; "Rule number one is strictly enforced!" For example, say you are in the extreme right hand lane and you just have to make a left turn, right then and there, it is permissible to simply cut across any and all on coming traffic and completely block all the lanes while simultaneously blowing your horn with one hand and waving your other hand wildly in the air, until someone makes a mistake and lets you in. Our cab driver, bless his heart, had taken it upon himself for reasons only know by him and perhaps a few minor deities, to get us to Manila in record breaking time. I mean this guy was not stopping for anything. We were flying down the road so fast that frequently the rims on the wheels actually stayed airborne until they hit the opposite side of medium sized potholes! When we reached what was, by a long stretch of the imagination, a freeway the fun really began. There were suppose to be two lanes of traffic going in opposite direction divided by, what at one time may have been, a thin white or perhaps yellow line. As it was rush hour (That was an oxymoron) they were in fact four lanes going in one direction with an occasional brave car making its way up stream, not unlike salmon looking for a waterfall during mating season. About every mile or so the traffic would come to a complete stand still and most other drivers would simple get out of there respective vehicles and read a John Gresham novel or two while waiting. But not our man, no sir, he would put the pedal to the metal, pick up some speed, blast off the shoulder, and plow through community maintained farm lands. Poor half crazed wide eyed peasant farmers who thought they were relatively safe as they were sanding in the middle of vast stretches of farm land, would leap out of the way, uttering sounds that can best described as similar to water buffalo giving birth over a loud speaker.

At one point he tried to squeeze between six cars that were so close together that I doubt that even purely theoretical sub atomic particles could have passed by without touching! Despite our divers best suicidal efforts we arrive in Manila with out any major injuries. In record time I might add, and managed to find a cheap hotel to spend the night. Later that evening John and I ventured out looking for a place to eat. One thing that we can't get, or rather, one of many things that we can't get in Palau is a coke that the expiration date isn't past by three or four months, or a good steak, so we elective to find a good stake house. After only walking for a mile or two we happen upon a place called “The Hobbit,” which was named after the books by J.R. Tolkin, you know, the ones about rings, lords and little people. We walked in to find that the entire staff who worked at the place were dwarfs! I mean there's not one person over three feet tall. Now here's an excellent idea that just wouldn't make it in the States. They had some guy sitting up on the stage with a guitar singing old American folk songs, which proved to be a little too much for us, that and they wanted to charge us a cover charge for live entertainment. So we walked on down the line, till we came to a real steakhouse that served real manly steaks and Cokes in bottles that weren't expecting to violate their expiration dates until sometime shortly after the turn of the century.

It was time, for me at least, to bid farewell to Manila, so I inhaled a large lung full of smog and yelled as loud as I could over the deafening sound of traffic.

"Manila, I bid you a fond farewell!" Only I don't think anyone heard me.

#14 PARA GILDING IN TAIWAN

2008-05-03T02:31:00.002-07:00

The day after I left the Philippines, I caught a flight to Taiwan where I was met by my friend Yang Shu Chin or Christina as she calls herself in English. As you know or may not know I recently was able with help from my Mom and Dad to get a new or slightly used engine for my ultra-light airplane. I also wanted to find out if anybody was flying ultra-lights in Taiwan, and if I could get parts, cheap! Christina knew a guy who knew a guy who flew ultra-lights and arranged a meeting with him the next day.

That evening I decided that it would be best if I got a haircut as to not look to wild and maybe scare the guy away, so Christina asked her brother where to go and off we went. The shop was rather small with one lady working and was quite surprised to see me walk in. Her name was Miss Chin. Miss Chin sat me down and washed my hair and asked how I wanted my hair cut, at least that what I think she asked. In Taiwan, as in Mainland China, there are basically only two styles of haircuts to choose from. This is rather odd considering that there are well over 847,298,847,467 Chinese just within the sound of my voice alone!

Choice number one is the 3/4-inch buzz, which is where each and every single hair on you head is cut to precisely 3/4 of an inch. Choice number two is the Bruce Lee look. Now with the Bruce Lee look you get two choices, either the early Bruce Lee look, where the front is cut with bangs or the late Bruce Lee look, where the front is parted off to one side or the other. I opted for the late Bruce Lee look with the hair parted off to left, which was also the first choice of Miss Chin. Miss Chin started cutting, and hair was flying is all directions, though mostly on the floor, and Miss Chin was making doubly sure that not one hair was going to missed and that this was going to be a haircut that I would never forget! First she used the long scissors, then the short scissors, followed by the electric shears, then back once again to the short scissors just in case one hair managed to escape detection, then back over to the wash bowl for a shampoo, follow by the blow dry and, oops, there's one hair, a billionth of an inch longer than his companions! When she was satisfied that each and every hair was accounted for she looked at my moustache. I conveyed to her though very descriptive sign language that if she cut my moustache too short that she would be involved in an untimely and painful death, so she "just trimmed" it a little.

The next day we meet the guy at the local McDonald's, which unlike the ones in the States do not serve Chicken McNuggets but rather in fact serve, what in Taiwan is hotter than Bill Clinton in the oval office, is something that can only be described as Chicken McFeet. Which are sweet and sour chicken feet! I struck with a big Mac and fries. The guy's name was Mr. Su. In Taiwan you can't go too far wrong if everyone you meet you simple refer to him as either Mr. Chin or Mr. Su. Mr. Su was really quit nice and spoke about six words of English, which is about five more than I know in Chinese. We followed him out of the city (Kaohsiung, in case you want to know) and South about two and a half hours. As with most places once you get out of the big city the rest is rather nice, and this was no exception, as soon we were out in the country with green fields and mostly blue skies, with only one white cloud to be seen way off in the distance. Mr. Su owns a flight Park where he teaches ultra-light flying and Para gliding. He had four planes sitting there, three of which looked like they could quite possibly in fact, fly! We fueled up one; pulled the starter rope, no electric starters on these babies, and taxied out onto the 600' runway and off we went. Close by was a large river bed with an actual river still winding it way to the sea, or where every rivers go as the meander. We went up and over a extremely large Buddhist monastery where all these guys in bright orange robes, and shaved heads were busy gardening, then over some other monastery where all these women in black pajamas were gardening, then under a suspension bridge that was suspended over a garden, then back across some more gardens and finally back to the flight park where we landed and almost went off the end of the runway into a garden.

I asked Mr. Su about motor Para-gliding and he showed me one that he had designed himself. Which I must admit looked very well constructed. I then asked if he could teach me how to fly one and he said yes but I should learn how to Para-glide first. Since I've never tried Para-gliding I figured “What the hell, why not.” After a few quick lessons on the ground we headed up the nearby mountain.

My Mom and Dad had given me a camera to take pictures because I never take any picture, because I don't have a camera. I handed the camera to Mr. Su and told him to make sure to get some pictures of me, and he said, "Most assuredly, I would be honored and delighted, nothing would give me more pleasure." Actually I handed him the camera, grunted and made classic mime camera jesters, eventually he got the point and gave me the universal "ok,” sigh.

The nearby mountain is about 2,500', and as we drove up the extremely narrow winding road to the launch area, which was located about half way up, I couldn't help but notice that on one side of the extremely narrow road was the mountain and on the other side was nothing! The city planners had not wasted any money on foolish things such as guardrails or curbs. But by and by we made it to the launch area and as we unpacked the chutes, I looked off to the left and discovered that there was a small Buddhist temple, complete with the prayers and receptacle called the "Golden Pot" for burning the prayers. In case you are not aware, as I was, the Buddhist have theses papers with prayers written on them and each morning or whenever deemed necessary they burn them in the Golden Pot, which looks like it would make a fairly good Bar-B-Q pit and a charming place for a picnic to roast some marshmallows and a few hotdogs. I guess this is where the expression Burnt Offerings comes from. The smoke is supposed to rise carrying the prayers with it to heaven. Each sheet of paper has one prayer written on it, so the more you burn the more prayers are sent, which is actually not very efficient, as there are not many trees left in Taiwan. I don't know why they just couldn't say that each paper was worth, say, a million prayers and just burn one. Wait, I just got an incredible idea, since the Chinese love to smoke, why not write the prayers on the cigarette paper so when you light one up, you'll be sending a prayer at the same time. Perhaps a prayer asking not to get lung cancer! Sometimes I amaze myself. This could be worth millions! Anyway I asked Mr. Su about the temple and he said.

"You can pray for your safety by sending up a few prayers to Buddha before you jump off the mountain."

To which I inquired, "Does it help? Should I burn a few?"

He looked deep into my eyes and said. "I don't know…I'm a Christian!"

By the time we were ready to go, that one cloud I mentioned awhile back had grown considerably and turned a nasty shade of black and the wind started to blow a little too hard so we packed everything back up and headed back down the mountain. When we arrived at the flight park the wind was howling and within fifteen minutes about three inches of rain had fallen! It was a freak tornado! The wind picked up three of the ultra-lights and flipped one on top of what was left of the roof. In a matter of minutes all the ultra-lights were destroyed. And just like that it was over! But the damage was done, two of the planes were total wrecks, and the other two would probably fly again some day, as long as you didn't want to go over twelve feet in the air!

Mr. Su picked me up the next day, and we returned to the flight park. This time the weather was perfect so we drove back up to the launch pad, and unpacked the chutes. Mr. Su had brought along an assistant instructor by the name of Mr. Wu. Normally when you learn to Para-glide they have a special double chute that allows you jump with the instructor. Needless to say I was a little surprised to learn that the plan was for Mr. Wu to jump first and when he was at the landing zone he was going to talk me down with a hand held radio! I figured they must know what they were doing, as I hadn't observed a big pile of bodies at the bottom on the mountain. After a quick check of the gear we're ready to go. I handed my camera to Mr. Su. Don't forget to take pictures, lot of pictures! Mr. Wu jumps off first and flies down to the landing zone.

Just a quick word here about the landing zone. From 1,250 feet, the landing zone is about the size of postage stamp, if you're looking down at one while standing on a ten-foot ladder! The entire area immediately surrounding it and extending out for miles in every direction consists of mainly farms of twenty-foot high Mango trees, with rows of pineapples nestled in between.

Ok, it's my turn. Mr. Su gives me a last minute instruction, which was. "Always remember to pull on these two lines." Or perhaps it was, “What ever you do, don't pull on these two lines!" I wasn't quite sure just what he was trying to communicate, so I smiled if he smiled and frowned if he frowned, and gave the universal sign for "ok" when he did, besides I figured I find out for myself soon enough. I grabbed the lines, ran forward three or four steps, the chute filled with air, two more steps to go to the edge and, and the chute lost air and collapsed! Damn!

Not very reassuring when you're about to jump off a 1,250-foot cliff, but it's all right, let’s try this again. This time the chute filled with air and off I jumped! The second thing you notice when you jump off a 1,250-foot cliff is how grand and beautiful the mountain is; the first thing that grabs your attention however is nothing! A whole lot of NOTHING! Nothing underneath you, nothing next to you, nothing on top of you, just a whole lot more of nothing than you care to have.

A Para-glider chute is elliptical in shape and when filled with air takes on an airfoil shape, allowing for lift, not unlike the wing on an airplane. Attached to the chute are lines, my guess is about 7,569 of them which though the magic of macramé reduces down to eight, four on each side, that are called A, B, C, and D rings. With two additional lines for steering called Risers. The rings are attached to the harness and consequentially to you and is (the harness) designed so that you can actually sit in it. All you have to do, after you jump, is to let go of all the lines grab hold of the harness and pull yourself up and in. This in theory is quite simple. But in real life involves actually letting go of all the lines grabbing the harness and pulling yourself up and in, while dangling 172 million miles in the air! Since I'm right handed I'd figured that I'd let go with my left hand first, so in case something happened I would be able to hang on with my right hand for, say, maybe three milliseconds before plummeting to the jagged rocks below. But to my amazement nothing happened and I was able pull myself up and sat back. I made a slight turn to the right by pulling on the right riser and then pulled on the left riser and came around to the left until I was flying parallel to the mountain. It was about that time that I hear on the radio.

"Hello, Rainy. Come in Rainy.... Rainy can you hear me?"

"This is Rainy…I mean Lenny. Is that you Mr. Wu?" (Like who else would it be?)

“Oh, you doing berry berry good."

Under the excellent tutelage of Mr. Wu I head out from the mountain and over to the landing zone. When you land you are suppose to pull on both risers simultaneously which acts as a brake and slows you down. My first landing was not bad, but I didn't use enough brake so I was a little too fast. I landed on my feet but fell onto my hands, but other than that it was pretty good. As I packed my chute up two other students arrive for their first jumps. One was a short Taiwan police officer, who wanted to prove something, and the other was some guys girl friend who absolutely, positively did not want to do this, but her boyfriend wouldn't let her back down. When we arrived back up at launching pad Mr. Su and Mr. Wu are huddled together talking is low tones, (as if I could understand), soon Mr. Wu comes over and says. "Ah Rainy, Mr. Su say only have two radios, so can do by self?" I glance over to the short police officer,

"Sure no problem."

"Ah, berry berry good…you go first!"

I strap myself in again, verify that everything is in order, most importantly that Mr. Su has the camera, fill the sails with wind and jump. "Nothing to this." I say to myself as I gently glide out. "Watch this shorty" as I let go with both hands and pulled myself up and sit back in the harness. "Radio? I don't need no stinking radio!" I initiate a few gentle turns, look around, locate, and then make my way out to the landing zone. It was about this time that something was trying to creep from the back corners of the side on my brain that I hardly ever use and work its way to my unconscious and then oozes finally into my consciousness. It was an expression! An expression that goes, "You can't get there from here!" Damn! I’m not going to make it! I going into the wind and there's no way I'm going to make it back! What was it that Mr. Su told me about not being able to make it back to the landing zone? Nothing, the bastard didn't tell me anything about that. Or perhaps he did when he was frowning, I don't know, but it didn't matter at this point. Ok, don't panic; simply find an alternate place to land. There's something just about five hundred meters short of the landing zone, it appears to be some sort of clearing in the Mango trees about one inch square! So, lets see, there's a simple formula to determine just how large in fact the clearing is. You take the apparent size of the cleaning in inches and multiply that by my current altitude in kilometers, then divide that by six, No wait, that's not it, you divide by any number other than six. Never mind, I'll look it up after I land. By this time I can clearly make out the rows of pineapples between the Mango trees, and I turn to line myself up with one and head for the clearing. Only four Mango trees to clear and I'll make it…three… Damn! Number Two-Mango tree is rushing up it me real fast. I tuck my legs up under me and skim past the top on number Two and drop down behind number One. Hey, this isn't so bad! Now there's one more thing I should be doing about now…Oh, yea…BRAKE! BRAKE!!...I pull down on the risers and the chute fills with air and I gently land on my feet between the two Mango trees. Not a scratch, a perfect landing! I unhook the harness and remove the half a dozen or so Mango tree branches from the laces on my shoes. Cool!

The chute however is caught up at the top of the Mango tree, so I climb up and try to pull in down, but the lines are hopelessly caught in the branches. That's when six Taiwanese farmers came rushing out of nowhere yelling and shaking sticks and other hand held farm implements at me.

"Don't shoot…don't shoot, me fall from sky from big silver bird, er...from big mountain… There…Big mountain over there...big!"

Evidentially I wasn't the first dummy to land in their fields and they wanted to let me know just how upset they were and that I'd have to pay considerable more than fair market value for fresh picked Mangos. However when I demonstrated how I expertly landed between the Mango trees and had not, in fact damaged even one Mango, they calmed down and helped me retrieve the chute. By the time Mr. Su arrived we had the chute down and were the best of buddies and they even gave me a few choice hand picked Mangos to take home.

The police officer had already landed and we were waiting for the girlfriend. She was coming down a little too fast and she had decided that the best way to steer the Para-glider was not the conventional way by pulling on the risers but by the rather unprecedented method of screaming at the top of her lungs. Even the Mango farmers, who by this time had seen it all, dropped they sticks and hand held farm implements and gazed up in amusement. She hit the ground and did about thirty-seven various flips and tumbles and eventually came to a grinding stop surprisingly close to the middle of the landing zone. It soon became apparent that she was not going to do another flight that day or any other day for that matter due to the fact that she didn't move a mussel for nearly twenty minutes and was thinking very seriously about perhaps getting another boyfriend, so we decided to call it a day.

Next day found me heading back up to the launching pad, but I couldn't help but think that it was a pity that there was nobody around to witness this monumental occasion. This thought soon can to a screeching halt however, as when we turned the final corner there were two busloads of high school Taiwanese schoolgirls! I think it must have been the first time some of them have ever seen an American because as we unpacked the chutes they were going crazy, laughing, giggling and pointing. As a group they all said, "Hello, how are you?" Giggle, giggle!

To which I replied. "I'm fine, How are you?"

Their teacher said. "Ah, Berry berry good, English lesson!"

The pressure was on. I had to make this jump my best! The chute filled with air and I took two steps towards the cliff and jumped. The wind was just perfect providing tremendous lift and up I went. The schoolgirls were cheering and waving madly, and from far below I heard perhaps thirty or forty of them shout, “We love you!" I made a mental note to check with their teacher to find out when and where their ten-year high school reunion was going to be. Mr. Su was a busy taking picture and I was climbing higher and higher. I sat back in the harness and made 360 degree circles and still I ascended into the heavens. Soon I had reached an altitude that even the launching pad was the size of a postage stamp! I looked down between my feet. Wow, look at all those people down there; they look like ants scurrying around looking for breadcrumbs. No wait, those ARE ants! Ants on my shoes! How did they get there? By now I was way up over the top on the mountain, and I could see for miles, and miles in all directions. That teeny tiny minuscule white speck was Mr. Su car driving down the mountain to the landing zone. The lift was so great that no matter what I did, I keep going up. Mr. Su had told me through Mr. Wu that if I needed to lose altitude fast I could pull on the "B" rings. Ok, so let’s see here, if these ones are the "A" than this makes these the "B's." Simple enough, so I slightly pulled on the "B” rings and...Nothing I'm still going up! Yank a little harder…nothing. I'm pulling with all I got and I'm still on the way up. Something not right here! Ok, I get it; I'm so high that the lack of oxygen to my brain is limiting my ability to reason. Let's start over, but this time from the other side, if THESE are the "A" rings then these have to be the "B's"…Nothing! Damn, I'm pulling and tugging on the "A's" and the "B's" with a few "C's" now and again, and hell, why not a few "D's" just for the fun on it. Maybe a combination of "B's" and "D's" This isn't working!!

Forty five minutes have gone by now and even the high school girls have gotten bored and returned to their buses and left, leaving me all alone in a stationary low earth orbit. The ants have jumped off my shoes figuring they had a better chance of surviving a fourteen-kazillion mile fall than to continue on with this flight. "Houston ...Ah, Kaohsiung, we have a Problem!" I decided that the best plan of action would be to simply fly far enough away from the mountain to be out of the lift, then head straight out and over to the landing zone. This worked out well and soon I was high over the landing zone making "S" turns to bleed off excess altitude. I made a perfect landing right on the "X", turned my body 180 degrees and let the chute gently drop to the ground. Strangely enough I had landed on an anthill where a large gathering of ants appeared to be staging some sort of family reunion. Both Mr. Su and Mr. Wu were greatly impressed, or at least I think they were, but no matter I had impressed myself again as with so many times before.

We packed up the chutes and drove back to the flight park, all the time I keep thinking how great the pictures were going to be. It was getting late and its time to head back to Kaohsiung and I looked around to make sure I'd had not left anything behind. "Mr. Su, where's my camera?" Mr. Wu said that my camera was in the car but when I looked I couldn't find it. We searched from one end to the other but still no camera! Damn, I don't care about the camera, it's the pictures! It must have been left back at the landing zone, so we drove back, but even after three complete searches of the area we came up empty handed. I can't believe it! We had no choice but to drive back up the mountain. By the time we got back to the launching pad the sun was just starting to sink below the horizon and with it just about any hope of ever seeing the camera again.

We covered every square inch, I even climbed down the side of the cliff hoping that maybe it fell off and was caught on a tree branch or something. But all to no avail. Mr. Su felt pretty bad, but there was nothing he or anyone could do, if it's gone, it's gone! We all got back into the car and started the long dive back down, but there was something that kept creeping back into my mind. "Wait, Stop the car!" I jumped out and ran inside the Buddhist temple, and there on the alter, sitting on top of a small pile on prayers, all by itself, was my camera! Someone had found it and left it there in the temple! Unbelievable I thought to myself, but then again that's what I would have done, had I found a camera and didn't know who it belonged to, and if it wasn't one of those expensive Nikons! I picked up the small pile of prayers and using the lighter, that were also left for whom ever may need it, I lit the prayers papers and dropped them into the golden pot and watched as the smoke rose up into the dark sky carrying the prayers. As I turned to walk away, I looked back and said softly so no one else would hear. Hey, Buddha, I take back that wise crack about the hotdogs!

#16 DOWN AND OUT IN LONG BEACH

2008-05-03T02:31:00.001-07:00

I go under the knife on July 2 at the veteran’s hospital here in Long Beach. They are going to strip (ugh) the veins in my legs. I've lived with them (the veins) since I was 21 and it's getting just to painful to stand for more than 10 minutes at a time. The doctor said I'd go "in," in the morning and "out" later that afternoon. It should take about a week to recover.

Hanging out at the Veterans hospital has given me mixed feeling about the operation, on one hand I want to get it over with but on the other hand, I keep having this strange feeling that there will be some simple mistake on my chart and they accidentally amputate both my legs and when I sue the hospital the judge throws out my case saying that "Oh well, you win some, and you lose some"

I then let my hair grow down to my shoulders, and wear a "American flag" bandanna, grow a beard, and hang out at biker bars living off hand outs and cleaning suv's windshields that stop at traffic lights with old news papers and "people" magazines that I dig out of old, beat up dirty trash cans. A big breasted Asian hooker with long black hair by the name of "Honey" takes pity on me and lets me move into her one roomed apartment with her two cats. One who slightly responses to "Boo-boo" and the other who hasn't quite figured out how the litter box works. Honey's single bed is too small and cluttered with old dirty laundry, for the both of us so I have to sleep propped up in my wheel chair with pillows that were given to Honey by a "has been" child TV star from the '50's.

I acquired my wheel chair from a extremely large black Salvation Army volunteer nurse, who although she was very friendly, had in fact never shaved any part of her body for the last twelve years; "Cause it just ain't natural"

There's an Old English pub "The Farthing" on the corner where Honey "works" most every night. Above the door is the large red neon sign that flashes on and off every few seconds, which no matter what I do, always manages to shines through a 6 inch tear in the curtain that drapes across the lone cracked window in the room. I wouldn't mine so much, only the "H" is burnt out. Since I can't reach the knobs in the shower Honey gives me a sponge bath with a washcloth every few days or so, which gives me something to look forward too. Lately she has started to wash the dirty dishes and me at the same time, she says it "saves water" I have to admit, she's smarter than she lets on.

Sometimes I hang out by the hospital parking lot and try and bum some placebo's off the guys coming out, I know they probably won't do much good about growing my legs back, but at least they take the pain away and help me forget. I don't think the VA gets the "good ones" as I have to take more and more, and the effect wears off after a short time. Yesterday I met an intern who says that for a price, she can get me some "sugar pills" Don't know if I want to experiment with something that strong as I read somewhere that they are very addictive, but worse than that they can cause "your face to break out" Honey insists that she 'Loves me, no shit" and I'm inclined to believe her. I know that she will leave me as soon as something better "walks by," but for now I'm counting my blessing.

I’ll let you know how the operation comes out….

#17 ALL ABOUT ME!!!

2008-05-03T02:28:00.000-07:00

I like scientific magazines.

Sometimes I cough in morning before I get up.

I was born in Orange, Texas

I've been to over 45 countries.

I moved from Texas when I was young so it didn’t effect me.

The world would be a better place without flies or chickens.

I cry in all the wrong places while watching a movie.

Almost all of my model airplanes crashed at one time or another.

I don't see my son enough.

I hardly ever get sun burned.

I wish I could sing. Or even carry a tune for that matter.

Fishing is very boring.

Red use to be my favorite color.

My first grade teacher didn't understand me.

The tip of my index finger on my right hand has no feeling.

It would be nice to remember all the things I said I would never

Forget.

From 1968-69 I was on a Diesel boat submarine. The Pomodon SS486

I can't believe that in the 21st century that people still pray to gods.

After fifty years I finally had the mole above my left eye removed.

I am neither gaining nor loosing weight.

My eyes are brown. But I have a small black dot in one of them.

Any one who accidentally shots them selves while cleaning a gun deserved it?

Mark twain was the greatest writer of all times.

I may be mistaken…It appears that I have gained 10 pounds.

Being on submarines was fun, being in the Navy sucks.

My first car was a 1952 MG TD. I really miss it.

My ex-wife is still beautiful.

I never liked to belong to any clubs.

The first time I made love was in the back seat of a car.

I lived in Rota Spain from 1960-63.

Because of being on a Submarine, I hate the smell of Diesel.

There is no devil. If there were he would have contacted me by now.

I don't drink coffee or tea.

I hate having to wear glasses, but I can't use contacts.

Parades are a waste of everybody's time.

Horses don't know who you are.

I can remember every joke I've ever heard, only not all of them are good.

I never get tired of looking at the stars on a clear night.

I should have gone to college.

I can't stand "fads"

Most people wear silly looking shoes.

Kissing turns me on.

My right ear does not hear as well as my left.

I never think about food unless I'm hungry.

My table manner are not as good at home as when I with company.

Intelligent women are attracted to me.

Second hand Cigarette smoke gives me a headache.

I'm convinced that the whole world does in fact speak English when I'm not around.

I don't have "Highs and low" and I feel that I'm missing out on something.

DVD's are much better than Videos.

If I could cook I'd probably be very good at it.

The last ten years have gone by way to fast.

High school was fun for me, but not for some of my friends.

How would you know if the number "6" was upside down?

I know I could run the country a lot better than who ever is running it at the present.

A little rain is ok.

I have never vomited or coughed up blood.

Living is “Snow” sucks

I'm trying to use the word "woman" instead of "girl." But sometimes it doesn't fit the situation.

I've been around water and boats nearly my whole life. I can't stand boats!

Airplanes are really neat!

I am repulsed by the word "shut up." I never use it.

I've never had a "Wet dream" I always wake up to soon!

I like people, but I hate crowds.

For some reason I count peoples toes on the dive boat.

I have never bought a woman a drink.

I got my Private flying license in 3 months.

Lately everything is starting to taste the same.

The one thing that the U.S. has done right is "Rock n Roll" No other country has figured it out. Well, maybe perhaps England has come close.

I haven't paid income taxes in over 15 years.

"Love" is a word that means a lot to me.

There was another shooter on the "Grassy Knoll!"

I like art, but have no ability to draw whatsoever.

I like high heels but I don't have a fetish or wear them myself.

High heels should never be worn with a bathing suit!

The Academy Awards are "Fixed"

Sometimes it may be nice to hear "voices."

Sexually aggressive women are the best.

Howard Stern is funny some of the time.

Early Elvis is better than I first thought. (Young Elvis)

Someone has been trying to poison me, or it may just be my cooking.

Spelling is rather difficult for me.

I have never voted in an election.

Who is the Vice President now?

Has anybody asked the Eskimos what they think about Global warming?

I once saw an UFO

There is a big brown spider living in my house. He likes to sit up on the wall when I'm in the bathroom. I'm thinking of naming him.

Chocolate may be nature's "perfect food"

"Size" does matter!

At times I feel like getting really angry and smashing things, but it soon passes.

"Kung Fu" movies are really stupid.

Why would anyone wear clothing with the manufacture's logo on it?

I don't particularly like poetry.

Most lyrics in songs make no sense.

My wife is extremely beautiful.

Making people smile makes me happy.

I played hopscotch when I was a kid.

I have never been in a fight over a girl, what's the point?

That the poor are happier than the rich is a rumor started by the rich.

I firmly believe that listening to a record being played backwards has ever made me want to go out and kill someone.

Lately I've been rushing home thinking that someone will be waiting there for me.

I work way to many hours.

I was a “DIVE Guide” in Palau for 10 years.

Some songs I can listen too over and over again and never get tired of them.

I use to have a lot more "Stuff" but I don't know where it all went.

My first SCUBA dive was in 1969 in Okinawa Japan.

When I was a kid I was fascinated by fire, which may be why I like candles.

I like women with long legs.

For some reason I count peoples toes on the dive boat.

I try not to "Judge" anyone on just the first impression.

You can tell a good SCUBA diver from a bad one from the size of his knife.

If cats could “fetch” everyone would want one.

My attention span is getting shorter….

When the Pacific Saving Bank closed in Palau I lost all my money

I ‘m not as tolerant as I use to be.

What the hell is the difference between “Loosen” and Unloosen”?

If I discriminated against “race” then I would be called raciest, so if I discriminated against “Creed” am I a “Creedest”?

I pretty sure all Catholic Priests have some kind of “sexual” hang up.

I often wonder what would happen to me if I stepped on a mirror while walking under a ladder while a black cat crossed my path.

I started dying my hair brown. Not dark brown but “medium” brown.

I learned to swim by jumping off a dock, but I didn’t want to learn how to fly by jumping off a cliff.

Tattoos are a waste of time and not really very “attractive” and why anyone would get one or want one is way beyond me.

Same can be said for “Nipple Rings”

#18 INOKI

2008-05-03T02:06:00.000-07:00

Pauline is due here tomorrow from Manila. She will be here until August when she has to go to Japan, I’ll probably go there to help set her up then we will decide what I will do from then on.

How's thing going on your end? I lot going on over here.....Some of this you may already know but here goes anyhow.

Francis was over here with a couple of doctor friends (Plastic surgeons) they were doing some chartable work on the locals. In between time they went diving. I took them over to Blue hole, Blue Corner and your favorite, Jellyfish Lake. Over all they had a great time.

The Fish ‘N Fins photo contest was not too bad. Navot's not talking to me which is good in a way, but a lot of the guys are my friends and I didn’t t feel comfortable just going over there to say "Hi"

Mr. Inoki, Japan's living legend came here about one week ago. He’s actually the guy I’m working for now. What's he famous for you may ask? He was a professional wrestler, now he's a big time promoter. Go to yahoo and enter "Inoki Japan" as just see how many hits there are. He actually killed at least two guys in the ring!! Back in the 70’s he fought Mohamed Ali and beat him! But to save face they called it a draw. The Japanese goes crazy over this guy. It's really amazing. So I actually had to work on the weekend. Two days in a row, even! I don't think I signed up for this kind of manual labor, I have to look at my contract to see if that's in there someplace, more than likely somewhere in the fine print I would imagine.

We went to the Tototo restaurant (formally Mingles) the place was packed. When Mr. Inoki walked in the whole place went bananas. They all started clapping and cheering. Everyone (at least 50 or more) wanted to get his or her picture taken with him. I have to give him credit he was extremely friendly to everyone and even invited 6 girls up after we ate to sign autographs. I was the only "Round Eye" in the whole place, which was pretty strange in itself, but not enough for any one to ask for my autograph though. I only hope when I'm a living legend I can be as gracious as he was. I may limit the actual number of autographs or perhaps charge a nominal fee just to keep the thing under control and not get too out of hand. Then again I think that what the "My Agent" is suppose to do.

Anyways we spent today over at Inoki Island as well. I did a little snorkeling and took a nap. It's about 5:00 pm now and we are having dinner again at Tototo's at 6:30. This job is really tough; I mean I could hardly stay awake after eating lunch. But I do have an excuse the neighbors had some kind of party last night and were blasting their stereo until 4:00 am. I finally got some sleep when they started again at 7:00 this morning. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if they were playing some good music, but they kept playing the same song over and over again. All I can say is that they are very lucky that guns are no permitted on this Island!

Mr. Inoki says he has a "Machine" that puts out more energy than it takes in which is impossible. So we have a bet, if it works I'll shave my mustache! If it works it would be worth millions if not billions but off hand I'd say that I'm going to have my mustache for quite some time. It sounds like a classic con job. He has given the guy $100,000.00 so far. Speaking of which, I may go to Japan for a few days to see “The Machine” Mr. Inoki wants my opinion if it’s real or not. All his “people” are “Yes men” and are afraid to tell him “NO”

I am working on transferring me over to “Lights” which is his company. It's fine with Francis and believe it or not it's fine with Navot. Then again I have the Power of attorney so I’m just signing all the papers myself I'll still keep the power of attorney for Francis just to keep Navot on his toes.

Speaking of Navot he fired Steve. It was a real mess; he even called the police on him. Steve got a job over at Neco and went back to the UK to visit his girlfriend. Suppose to be back sometime next week?

Richard fell in Love with a Philippine lady and has run off to PI to get married! I never met the girl but I think she’s taking him for a ride. When she went back to PI she didn’t want him to see her off at the airport and when Richard said that he would go back with here she told him he had to wait for at least 2 weeks…Sound like she has at least one possible two husbands too me…

The plane's coming along real good still waiting for the tubing. I sent Alex (the tube guy) an email saying please hurry up and ship as I'm just about done all the things I can do with out the tubing. Been working on the wiring the last few days. One or two minor problems but nothing I can't eventually over come. If fact I am starting Palau’s first flying club. We had our first meeting this afternoon. Not a big turn out but it least it’s a start. When I get the tubing I will have it up and flying in about one week. The rest on the plane is completely done. Looks really cool. I’ll send photos…

Other than that, things about the same over here.

Ok, it’s about that time.

Take care,

Lenny