[DeTomaso] Leaving end of month

Tue May 4 13:38:23 EDT 2010

AMEN

Mad Dawg Antenucci 
Team Pantera Racing 
The 1st & still the only vintage race team in open road racing 
www.teampanteraracing.com

________________________________
From: Kirby Schrader <kirby.schrader at gmail.com>
To: MikeLDrew at aol.com
Cc: teampantera at yahoo.com; eb20erik at yahoo.com; pmenyhart at msn.com; detomaso at realbig.com; gndplne at yahoo.com
Sent: Tue, May 4, 2010 4:26:36 AM
Subject: Re: [DeTomaso] Leaving end of month

Indeed... never been to Afghanistan... Your raise wins.
And that PowerBook has probably visited more countries than all of us! 

:-)

On 3 May 2010, at 10:31 PM, MikeLDrew at aol.com wrote:

>In a message dated 5/3/10 19 52 15, kirby.schrader at gmail.com writes:
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>>OK, OK... I'll admit it... You won the foot race that day, but _I_ have been in more sheeeitholes.....
>>
>>http://web.mac.com/kirbyschrader/tws/tws3/therealrace.jpg
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>>The crappiest places I've been are:
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>>Iraq
>>Eastern Turkey
>>The Sudan
>>Peruvian jungle (Iquitos)
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>>just to name the worst ones.
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>>You had it easy in Saudi... Very civilized there.
>>:-)
>>
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>I'll see your sheetholes listed above, and raise you a Mazar e Sharif, Afghanistan. :>)
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>http://www.poca.com/index.php/gallery/?g2_itemId=20100
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>This was taken Thursday.  I was passing through Afghanistan on the way down to Iraq (no Disneyland either!), and just as we were about to start engines, BLEAH!, ten gallons of hydraulic fluid poured out of the wing onto the ramp.  We'd blown out a Wiggins fitting (a kind of AN connector used to connect two hard pipes), and there were no Wiggins fittings anywhere for hundreds of miles, nor was there anybody capable of installing one.  So the whole crew got to camp out in a big tent for two days while they flew in a team of maintenance specialists and the necessary fitting, and got to the job of fixing things.
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>I put the time to good use, and spent many, many hours banging away on my laptop, both answering e-mails and working on Profiles. :>)
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>The US Army had been there for several years, and their camp was awful. Like a third-world refugee camp.  The Air Force had only been there for 60 days, but in typical Air Force fashion, they built their own camp-within-the-camp and their tents all had wood floors and were all air conditioned, and we had hot showers, internet, big-screen TV, video games, movies, etc.  No golf course yet, but give them time.  The golf clubs were already there. :>)
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>There was a big fence surrounding the whole Air Force compound, topped with barbed wire.  Not to keep Al Qaeda out--to keep the ARMY out! :>) :>) :>)
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>On the other hand, sometimes things work out in my favor.  We left Afghanistan in the middle of the night, had a super breakfast in Iraq (chow halls are *nothing* like what they used to be!) and got to Spain Saturday afternoon.  Sunday morning I was supposed to be flying back to California.  When we got to the airplane, it was raining hydraulic fluid, this time from the opposite wing.  Inspection revealed a two-inch diameter hydraulic pipe had been rubbing against a wing spar for days/weeks/months????  It finally cracked, and BLEAH!
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>The pipe is buried deep inside the wing, and no replacement parts exist.  Instead, the mother of all tubing benders is needed to fabricate a replacement, in the USA, then it has to be flown out here, the wing has to be taken apart and it has to be installed.  And since airplanes are hand-built (and hammer-built!) there's no guarantee that the part will actually fit, without some, and perhaps considerable persuasion.
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>Anyway, the moment I determined we weren't flying that day, I rallied the crew, we ran away from the airplane like it was on fire, quickly changed clothes, rented a fan, and blazed to Jerez, only 20 minutes away, and by noon I was here:
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>http://www.poca.com/index.php/gallery/?g2_itemId=20103
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>In the grandstands for the 2010 Spanish MotoGP race!
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>Afterwards we went to the nearby town of El Puerto de Santa Maria, pulled up in a corner of a sidewalk café on a quite little cobblestone square, and enjoyed tapas and drinks:
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>http://www.poca.com/index.php/gallery/?g2_itemId=20106
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>It's a long way from Afghanistan and Iraq.
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>I'l be here in Spain for another few days (perhaps until the end of the week?) so I'm making great headway on Profilesduring the day--and enjoying the local culture and cuisine at night. 
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>War, as they say, is hell. :>)
>
>Mike 