A Visit to the Spruce Goose

It was a wet, wild, and at times windy ride this afternoon as I rode to McMinnville, OR to see some accounts.  McMinnville, more commonly known as "Mac", is home to the Howard Hughes Spruce Goose.  The H-4 Hercules Flying Boat was moved to this site from Long Beach, CA in February of 1993 by Evergreen Aviation.  If you enlarge the photo above and look through the glass you can see her.

 

Evergreen has built a nice aviation attraction around the Spruce Goose centerpiece.  The jetliner above was recently added on top of this building which is an indoor water park.  This summer you'll be able to slide out of the 747 into a pool. 

Next on the plans for this popular attraction is a resort.  Whether you're an aviation buff or not this museum is a must see if you're in the Portland area.  In fact, the BMW International Rally last year had a kick-off visit and luncheon here before the Rally.  It was well attended by many motorcycle enthusiasts.

The Spruce Goose is about 3 miles east of town. Here is downtown Mac on 3rd street. As you can see, the afternoon traffic here is almost unbearable. Both sides of the street are lined with quaint shops along with unique restaurants and pubs.  This is a college town so Friday and Saturday nights are busy here.

When I see one of these I can't resist stopping.

I think almost everything they sell is healthy and it's very good.  These fruit bars are irresistible for a hungry traveler.

After I took this photo it would have been nice to get in the blue rig, twist the key and take off.  I had all the gear on so it was doable.  I guess I'll just have to settle for dreaming about it.

God's speed.

Computer Woes

Yesterday afternoon my 5-1/2 year old desktop computer crashed. It's been showing signs of aging so it wasn't a complete surprise. I've been trying to squeeze every bit of life out of it. My laptop is a Mac and I prefer using the Mac operating system. The catch is, my employer's platform is PC based and even though the Mac can operate on Windows there are some complicated issues that are to boring to include here.

I spent the day working from home trying to patch the PC back together. Today brought back the adage of how the thought of losing something that has become such a part of life makes you appreciate it a whole lot more. That's the second time I've written that recently. I've got to stop and appreciate things more.   

In my work I do a lot of searches on Google to research maintenance parts for customers. I relied on it today for help with the computer. A couple of weeks ago in a post I asked the question, "what did we do before cell phones?"  It's also hard to imagine life without a computer.

I wish your computer input/output operation well...