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Category: honorary borderline sociopaths

Spam, Oatmeal, And Brandy

Spam, Oatmeal, And Brandy

If you’re searching to place the accent, he was in the Italian Boy Scouts.

John Henderson passed away at 74 this week, at his home near Las Vegas, Nevada. He was something of a loon, a wildman, a gambler and an adventurer. In short — a duke in the kingdom of the Borderline Sociopathic Boys.

He crossed the Atlantic because it was there, and the Pacific because it was also there.
He made both crossings in a rowboat because it, too, was there, and because the lure of sea, spray and sinew, and the history-making chance to traverse two oceans without steam or sail, proved irresistible.
In 1969, after six months alone on the Atlantic battling storms, sharks and encroaching madness, John Fairfax, who died this month at 74, became the first lone oarsman in recorded history to traverse any ocean.
In 1972, he and his girlfriend, Sylvia Cook, sharing a boat, became the first people to row across the Pacific, a yearlong ordeal during which their craft was thought lost. (The couple survived the voyage, and so, for quite some time, did their romance.)(read more here)

You have to love a guy smoking a cigarette while telling you about rowing across an ocean. Insouciant is the word, I think. He was just sort of a free-spirit knockabout waif, but at the same time deadly serious about everything he was doing, while laughing and joking about it. He is the Dos Equis man for real.

Seeking to give her son structure, his mother enrolled him at 6 in the Italian Boy Scouts. It was there, Mr. Fairfax said, that he acquired his love of nature — and his determination to bend it to his will.

On a camping trip when he was 9, John concluded a fight with another boy by filching the scoutmaster’s pistol and shooting up the campsite. No one was injured, but his scouting career was over.

His parents’ marriage dissolved soon afterward, and he moved with his mother to Buenos Aires. A bright, impassioned dreamer, he devoured tales of adventure, including an account of the voyage of Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo, Norwegians who in 1896 were the first to row across the Atlantic. John vowed that he would one day make the crossing alone.

At 13, in thrall to Tarzan, he ran away from home to live in the jungle. He survived there as a trapper with the aid of local peasants, returning to town periodically to sell the jaguar and ocelot skins he had collected.  (read the rest here)

God rest ye, merry gentleman, whether he exists or not. After hearing about you, I’m not sure I believe in you, either.

(Thanks to Sam in Astoria for sending that one along)

If You Hear Chinese Whispering, Stop Digging

If You Hear Chinese Whispering, Stop Digging

It’s cold in the winter in Saskatchewan. People find all sorts of things to occupy themselves in the dead of winter. Ten years ago or so, Joe in Saskatchewan had a little cave-in in his basement, and decided to clean it up with has radio-controlled miniature excavation and earth-moving equipment. Then he decided to keep going:

Early August of 02 it rained 8″ in 7 days and I had forgot to replace the eave extension on the NE corner of the house after cutting my grass the wk or so before. Alot of moisture soaked up in the NE corner of the basement & a month or so later a big chunk of the dirt wall fell off & was strewn acoss the floor, partially blocking the entry way into my water well.

I got started in this radio controlled heavy commercial hobby in the Spring of 97 with a Tamiya King Hauler & flatbed trl. By the time of this “cave in” in 02 I had aquired a bulldozer & trackhoe rc models from Germany & worked away at cleaning up this mess with them during the winter months when things are slow on the farm. I trucked the dirt to another corner of the basement, out of the way.

I found it to be great entertainment & after getting all of it cleared away…. well…. then there was just another mess in the other corner of the basement. LOL I had to do something with it & I also thought I’d better crib the walls with wood to prevent any future cave-ins that could affect the foundation. While I was at it, I thought I’d make the area down there a little larger too by trimming back the dirt walls a couple of feet & when it’s finnished a couple of yrs from now, then I’ll pour a cement floor too.

It’s been a great hobby thus far, dreaming up – building all sorts of different minature equipment from kits or from scratch for this “mining” project. If it wasn’t for this mining project I probably would have lost of interest in this hobby by now b/c once the models are built – the novelty of how they work & perform would wear off with no task to be accomplished them.

I have a yellow dump trk (Tamiya Mammoth) and I trucked dirt out of the basement, approx 2 cu yds the summer of 05, up a wooden ramp 16″ wide, most of that dirt being what had originally fell off the wall to begin this excavation.

The summer of 06 I built a 4″ belt conveyor & moved out over twice that amount. And so far I’ve only accomplished mining the east wall. The south wall (longer part of the house) has nearly twice the material to be mined away. I won’t be finnishing this “project” anytime soon.

There’s dozens of additional videos of Joe Dirt here. Joe’s my kind of videographer. There’s no bad music and no narration. All action. Go, Joe!

(The Borderline Blog for Boys digs Gerard Van der Leun for sending that one along)