2008
Coon Family
Reunion

Kai has a very inquisitive mind and we all agreed that he would probably get a kick out of going to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. And so, on Thursday, July 24, 2008, we took a trip to OMSI!

Just perhaps, you might be seeing a trend arising. Here are Dad and Grandma, each with a mermaid labeled (even if the label is covered or turned) cup in hand. Above you can see the "STA" of the Starbucks sign. The caffeine monster has struck again! Kai's response was, "Coffee makes you crazy!"

Grandma, Dad, and Grandson, or is it Mom, Son, and Grandson, or Dotti, Glenn and Kai? I am so confused! (Note to self: Get a grip Grandpa!) We have arrived at OMSI, and are just about to enter. Lot's of fun was waiting for us behind those doors!

We stepped inside and looking up there was a pterodactyl swooping down towards us, right over the OMSI sign! What can we do? Being 65 million years old, not to mention being extinct, he is really slow, so there are no worries really.

Doing his best impression of a T-Rex, Kai attacks Dad with a vengeance. (Did T-Rex know how to do a Full Nelson?)

Kai and his dad, with dinosaur bones, the Willamette River, the Marquam Bridge and downtown Portland behind them. Grandma was in line getting our tickets while we were taking advantage of this photo op.

Everyone is smiling so far, that is a good sign!

Grandma was taking sniper shots from over at the ticket counter, just when Grandpa thought it was safe to look at the pterodactyl. Dad and Kai weren't taken by surprise though and spotted the sneaky photographer.

They let me know I was on candid camera and I finally spotted my lovely wife with her itching shutter finger.

Dad was explaining to Kai that Dad had one of these bones damaged in a childhood fall.

Kai is trying to identify different sounds coming through the headphones. One of the photos representing the sounds is of a cat that has many of the same marking as our Frostbyte has.

Grandpa explaining how a wave moves, while looking at the machine that demonstrated wave motion. Kai is operating the crank that generated the waves.

And here is the machine from the side. A wave can move through many mediums, including a spring, as shown here, and air, water, or even rock, as is demonstrated with and earthquake. Sound is just a wave moving though the air, and that is why you can't hear sounds in a vacuum like exists in outer space.

"Operator, can you connect me to Yokosuka?" Actually this is a demonstration of what it is like to be hard of hearing. Since real life is slowly giving me a taste of that condition, I prefer to avoid any further examples.

Still at the hearing loss exhibit, Grandma took this shot from a different angle and caught Kai looking at her. I don't this this exhibit was his favorite, judging from the look on his face.

What shall we look at next? The dinosaur bones are still on the other side of the exhibit hall, and there are things, brightly colored all around.

Oh! What is that over there? It looks interesting!

"Hey Dad, how did they find such a cute kid to pose behind this glass?"

Dad is having a good time too!

Dad is helping Kai set up his puppet show, while Grandma looks on.

Well, actually, Grandma was slyly setting up a photo shot at the same time, of a mirror reflecting Grandpa and the puppets. (Notice the holes beneath the stage that allows the performers to view their work in the mirror.)

"Why can't everyone just get along?" appears to be a really old question, based upon these bones. Or maybe it is rather, "Dinner is served!"

Kai is brushing the sand away from a fossil, sharing in the excitement a paleontologist must feel when he first discovers a new creature in the soil—one that is unknown up until now, and whose remains have set undisturbed as many geologic epochs passed. An Egyptian mummy is a fresh artifact, almost still warm and living compared with a dinosaur fossil; a fossil is not biological at all, because it has gone through a chemical metamorphosis, with all of the biological competent parts being replaced by more durable material. It is very much like a sculpture's work really. But it is performed by nature, using natural processes, but unlike an artists work, the original model is consumed by the process, and not allowed to get up, change into her street clothes and go on her way. On the other hand, no sculptor's work has yet lasted 65 million years, so nature has set a high standard for durability.

Dad is pointing out to Kai that the Dilophosaurus is the "spitter" in the movie Jurassic Park. As is so often the case with movies, the portrayal was wrong, for this dinosaur didn't spit poison, was far larger than the movie version, and it did not sport a fan on its head. However it appeared a long time ago. It was here when the super continent Pangaea was here. As far back as the end of the dinosaurs was 65 million years ago, this dinosaur existed more than twice that time before the end: nearly 200 million years ago! Dinosaurs were around for an incredibly long time before they went extinct—hundreds of times longer than man has been here. It gives one pause to think that such a stout group of animals could be suddenly removed from planet earth, leaving only fossils to tell us of their existence, that and some feathered descendants. We were destined to meet the Dilophosaurus again in about a week at the Oregon Zoo!

Hello Mr. Dilophosaurus, we were just leaving... What do you think? Does he look hungry?

Grandpa is looking over their shoulders as father and son puzzle out what is being taught at this exhibit. Kai is good at reading English generally, but it is a second language for him, so a little help is sometimes appreciated. Kai has definitely inherited his grandpa's love of science!

And you thought giraffes had long necks! Can you imagine what a sore throat would be like with that much throat to work with? The food he ate would properly aged just moving from his mouth to his stomach. I have to assume that these guys were treetop grazers, and I wonder what the stress level was at the point where neck and body came together. Just holding up the head in the position here would require a tremendous amount of strength of bone and muscle. (Imagine trying to even hold a broomstick that long and at that angle. Now add a 5 pound weight on the far end and either your hands give way or the stick breaks. Even a metal rod would bend.) And these dinosaurs lived out their lives living with those forces action on their bodies all of the time. The body of this guy towers over the people standing around and looking at it. Even from this distance it is huge. An elephant would be dwarfed in its presence. Today, an elephant has no natural enemies, other than man. In the Jurassic period, if it has existed, it would have had many predators capable of feasting upon it.

Glenn took this puzzle on as a personal challenge. He worked on it while the rest of us went around the other puzzle tables and tried our hands at them. A Navy Chief Petty Officer, and an electronics technician as well, he wasn't going to let two rings and a hunk of rope get the best of him! Later on we will see how he fared.

Grandpa and Kai are looking on as Dad starts his solving efforts. It looked pretty tricky and so we left him to his search for the solution.

This is the state this puzzle was in when Dotti began playing with it. She not only took it apart but she put it back together again. She is a smart grandma for sure, because she got the ring off and then put it back on again. I actually took this picture when she was all done and she was triumphantly showing that she had returned the ring to its place between the horseshoes.

Here my bright wife had just extricated the ring from between the chained horseshoes. She had that look on her face that she had known she could do it and by golly she did do it! You go girl! She then proceeded to return the ring to its original position, as was demonstrated in the previous photo.

Grandpa, pockets filled with brochures for Grandma, is intently working beside Kai, who takes a moment's rest from working on his puzzle to smile at the camera.

In the meantime, Dad is making progress on his puzzle and approaching victory.

This is a puzzle that all four of us got into the action in solving. The puzzle uses the nine digits from 1 to 9, each once and only once. The difference between two of them is multiplied together with the quotient of two more of the numbers, and the result is the same as the sum of the final two numbers. Sounds simple enough doesn't it.

First off it was Kai who sat down and took this particular bull by the horns. He was trying out various combinations when I walked up and took this picture. But it was about this time that his dad called us over to have look at what he had done.

Success! The idea was to move the two rings from one of the loops over to the other loop. They had been on the right when he started and he moved them over to the left loop. Well done Son!

Dotti was working on another puzzle as we men were reasoning out the puzzle Kai had taken on. For example, we figured out that the 1 couldn't be on the second row because that was a division problem and if you used one anywhere on that row, it would require a duplication of a number, which wasn't allowed. The same was true of the right hand vertical column, because to use a one in multiplication would produce the same problem. That only left 4 possible locations out of the nine for the number one. The number 2 had to be one of the multipliers in the right column because, after eleminating the number 1, any other number would be too large as the small number. And that meant that the bottom right had to be even (either a 6 or 8). And so on. We were having a ball!

Kai deep in thought on the problem.

The same goes for Dad!

We had it down to the last three numbers when Dotti came up, took a look at it and said, "Why not try this?" And set the final numbers in place. That's my girl! So this puzzle got us all involved in order to solve. (The bottom row could be either 7 + 1 = 8 or 1 + 7 = 8, but the rest of the board is locked in as you see it.)

When Glenn and Kai flew into Portland, in addition to seeing Mt. Hood, they saw Mount St. Helens, and Kai called it "The Devil's Chair." Here he has his hand resting in a model of that chair, with another model of what Mount St. Helens looked like before she blew her top.

The opaque woman and the transparent woman side by side.

Glenn posing beside the skeleton in a display box, which had been "hanging around" since at least before we took our cruise in 2006, because Jim and I saw him then. (We tend to forget that underneath it all we look like that, and that is probably a good thing.)

Dotti took a number of pictures of the little creatures on display in this room, and I had to include one of them. I thought this one was really cute!

Here Dad is showing Kai how to use the macro camera, and seeing what various items look like up really close.

Portland has been invaded by dinosaurs! I took this picture through the window from the second floor, and this large model of a dinosaur still took up most of the frame from this distance. Both the OMSI and Oregon Zoo have dinosaur exhibits on display right now.

The light projected dinosaur image on the floor was rotating and the mouth was coming around towards Kai's leg as he bravely steps on its leg.

Walking down the hall to the Planetarium, where we were about to see "The Stars of the Pacific Northwest" presentation, Dad noticed the Gravitram off to the side and was pointing it out to Kai.

Kai was contemplating the upcoming star show while resting on the bench. He had brought homework all the way to America from his Japanese school, and part of that was to find some of the stars that are visible in our skies here. I took him through a computer program I have that shows all the constellations, and later, down at Great Grandma's house we were going to look at the stars with no city lights interfering, but today we were going to see the stars in the Planetarium.

Kai decided to go over and check out the rolling balls and elevator motors of the Gravitram. You can see that the kids were all enjoying the interesting creation.

Dotti's hip was hurting and so she decided not to join us for the sub tour, where we have to go up and down ladders and through small hatches. She has done the tour before and so she didn't mind enjoying the sunshine and the scenery while the three guys headed inside the sub. Here is a diagram of the USS Blueback, and the cut away shows the areas where we went on the tour. Forward is the torpedo room, and just aft and up from that was the control room with its red lights. We saw the galley and the berthing compartments, as well as the engine room.

Kai was ready to go aboard the sub, but grandpa asked him to pause in front of this sign for a moment. Always agreeable, he complied with a smile.

This was our tour guide, with the sub tower rising up behind him. Dad, being a proud Navy Chief Petty Officer, is wearing his "FORGED FROM THE DECKPLATES—U.S. NAVY CHIEF" tee shirt while looking on at the guide. Kai is listening intently to what the man is saying.

Posing for Grandpa. After serving on an aircraft carrier, that sub looks mighty small in the background! We had room enough to fit a number of those boats on our hanger deck alone. I imagine that a few months out on one of these would make you ready for the nice padded room with the "I love me" jacket." Tough duty.

Kai is patiently waiting for the people ahead to move on so he can enter the sub on the tour. They did a "ship alt" on this sub to allow the average guy to be able to walk onboard without having to traverse a little hatch and ladder. They even have handrails, and a nice big entryway. Of course the sub is no longer capable of submerging and resurfacing, but its cruising days are over anyway.

In the control room, with red lights on, and the periscope assembly to the left while Dad and Kai listen to the guide standing over by the ship's controls. One advantage of red light is that it doesn't carry as far, and another is that your eyes will adjust to darkness quicker from a red light environment than they will from white light. So, when a sub surfaces and the officers are going up for a look around, the sub won't be seen by light escaping from the hatch (or through the periscope), and the captain, etc. will be able to see as much as possible as quickly as possible when going topside, or looking through the scope.

On the way to the control room we passed the "radio shack" and there it was: the equipment I used to teach at the Fleet Training Center in Norfolk, in "C" School. It is a URT-23 HF transmitter and R10501 receiver. For over 3 years that equipment was my life in the Navy. I could fix most component level problems in that gear without schematics by the end of my tour of duty. It spoiled me for working on other equipment, because I loved knowing the equipment that well when I had to fix it. (Normally an ET spends a lot of his time working on equipment he never even went to school on, let alone got to the point of teaching it.) Given a good "bounce" off the ionosphere, with this 1000 watt transmitter, it is possible to talk around the world with its HF frequencies. It covered the CB frequencies with a tiny part of its range, and that could shake up the truckers. ("Breaker, breaker, this is the USS Blueback, what's your 20?")

"Take her down Kai...dive! Dive! Dive!" You can see Kai twice in this photo, once right in the middle and once again in the view screen panel of Dad's camera as he snaps a picture too. The flash has wiped out the "red light effect," as you can see.

"I can see Grandma on the pier!" Kai was actually looking at downtown Portland through the periscope, and probably feeling pretty happy that he would be back outside before too much longer. Things get cramped on a sub pretty quickly. But it was exciting to be able to look through the scope!

The tour has moved down a deck and I am still standing in the control room area. Dad and Kai are moving along and I better get moving to catch up. We visited the engine room and galley and walked through the berthing area, and soon the tour was over.

Back outside the sun was shining brightly and so was Kai's smile with the USS Blueback behind him.

Grandma was up on the pier with her movie camera going strong.

The floating pier beside the sub extended out beyond the ship and we walked out on it to check out the view. Kai picked a sunny spot to rest for a moment and enjoy the view.

My son, standing on the pier, and giving me a big smile with the Ross Island Bridge, and southern Portland in the background.

And there is my Dotti up on the pier, waving and taking movies at the same time. We were just about to head back up to join her.

On the way back up we had "Dueling Cameras" going.

Positioned behind these two fine looking young men is the screw of the USS Blueback. This is the blade that transfered the power generated by the ship's engines to the water and thereby creating forward, or on occasion, reverse, motion for the ship.

Back inside OMSI, Dad is working with Kai propelling one of those green canisters up the track as high as possible. There were three steps to the process: 1) Filling the canister up with water; 2) Applying pressurized air to the canister contents; 3) Releasing the hold on the canister and allowing the created mixture of water and air to propel it upwards.

Grandma wasn't excited by pressurized air propelled water rockets, and so she went ahead and saved us a place at the front of the line at the Omnimax Theater where we were going to watch "Dinosaurs Alive" on the huge 180 degree semi-sphere screen. She was "camped out" in comfort right at the door, and saving a beautiful smile for my camera when we arrived.

The film was being loaded as we waited and Kai was trying to get Dad's attention while Grandpa kept clicking the shutter. The movie turned out to be really good! They used CGI to make dinosaurs come alive for us, and one particular event stood out in our minds afterwards. They showed two dinosaurs come upon each other and fall into combat and then somehow they were killed on the spot, and their bones were locked into position through burial somehow, and they fossilized in that combative pose. It seems incredible that two animals could be so set on killing each other that they would have been overwhelmed by something that was so quick and yet didn't pull them apart or adjust their position from where they had set themselves before whatever hit them arrived. It was spooky really.

Wishing we had more time and energy to spend here, our visit was coming to a close. Outside our huge friend was still standing watch, with OMSI's Planetarium area (with its Gravitram that Kai liked so much), and Interstate 5's Marquam Bridge in the background. The body of this dinosaur is kind of reminiscent of an elephant really, but it is hard to conceive of that long neck and its distant head working with that body, unless they were matched by the long tail for balance. The bones and muscles that would be required to position the head out so far from the body are simply amazing! A neck half that long would seem to be the limit to good design limits, but there it is, feeding our sense of wonder.

Google is the coolest software company in the world, in my opinion. It keeps adding more and more features, really cool features, and unlike the miserly, and mercenary, skinflint Microsoft, it uses customer service to drive profits rather than putting its customers on the rack in order to use a product they purchased from them. (Ebenezer Scrooge was Bill Gates uncle no doubt, from the way he runs his company.) In any case this is what Google has given us today. If you want to call the image up for yourself, just put: 1945 SE Water Ave, portland oregon into your Google Search Window, and then select satellite image from the choices at the top, and zoom in. You can even select the "Street View" and see photos of the entire area along Water St. (If you zero in on OMSI that huge dome to the east is the top of the OMNIMAX Theater. They "spared no expense," to quote John Hammond in Jurassic Park, and that screen is huge!) From above you can see the OMSI complex with its large parking lot to the east and the two building wings of the museum. The area in the lap of the "L" formed by the two buildings is where the dinosaur is mounted today. When this satellite picture was taken the dinosaur had not yet been placed. The dome on the eastern building is the OMNIMAX Theater. The Planetarium resides in the Northwestern building inside that circular structure. In the Willamette River you can see the pier and USS Blueback. The Marquam Bridge is to the northwest.