Lunch With George!

June 13, 2002 - Rock Bottom Brewery

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Agenda

Rock Bottom Brewery
Sailing
Hiking Stick
Blame it on the Model Train Enthusiasts

Rock Bottom Brewery

George and I are still discovering places we haven't eaten at Desert Ridge Marketplace. This week, we ate at a micro brewery restaurant called Rock Bottom. The place is pretty big! It has a large bar area (with a lot of booths-- you can be served there), a patio (too hot this week), and a dining room. The walls are adorned with framed images of rocks-- the most notable being some great views of TBD canyon.

We had a pleasant server who was also pretty helpful. George tried the Sizzling Shrimp Salad, and I had a grilled chicken breast sandwich with honey mustard (with some excellent cole slaw on the side).

It was a pleasing experience, and I'm sure we'll try it again.

A Day at Lake Pleasant

An unrelated photo of a sailboat

George met another J/24 owner, Dave, at the Arizona Yacht Club meeting last month. At the time, Dave said he would call George when he needed an extra crew member, and the call came in this last week! George spent the whole day last Sunday sailing around lake Pleasant on Dave's J/24 (no photos, though!). George really enjoyed it! Dave keeps the boat in dry storage, but is able to launch or recover the boat all by himself in about an hour.

The winds blew at around 10mph for most of the day. Since Dave has done a lot of the work himself to keep his J in ship-shape (sorry), he'll be a great resource as George continues his search for a boat, and after he finally gets one (although I don't think he wants to do any major maintenance himself).

Hiking Stick

George has ordered a new hiking stick from Eastern Virginia Hiking Sticks, which is a fancy name for a guy who finds free branches and whittles 'em down sitting on the tailgate of his pickup. Nathan Nelson, the proprietor, custom-selects a piece of hickory for each buyer.

George can't wait! His new stick will be much more adjustable than my new trekking pole (as discussed last week)-- just move your hand to a different place on the stick!

Where did Hackers Come From?

George was telling me that he was reading about the first computer hackers... and that it all started with the model train club at MIT! This group had originally coined the term "hack" to mean a clever modification to a system which did not alter the design of the system but succcessfully enhanced or corrected its behavior (the change was often not elegant, however). The book Hackers, by Steven Levy, credits the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club as the primary source of the Hacker Culture.

Checkout their web site-- it's pretty amazing.

Last modified 07/26/2002.

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