Asa @ 22 Off

Lake Cumberland

I put a few photos from the Lake Cumberland 2005 houseboat trip online. Read the problem list we kept to document all the problems with the SS POS 850 we rented from State Dock.
Hopefully, you find our adventure humorous. I was happy to return to work and looked back upon this experience as sort of like being on a bad reality TV show based upon houseboating in Kentucky.

Renting the Titantic

I went on a waterskiing houseboat trip to Lake Cumberland in mid-August. If you ever go to Lake Cumberland do yourself a favor and do not rent a houseboat from State Dock. I would have written about our houseboat experience sooner but I needed some counseling before I could broach the subject publicly. Let me begin with a quote that sums up our experience aboard the SS POS 850, "the Titantic had fewer problems."

We took possession of the SS POS 850 and proceeded to navigate it across Lake Cumberland to the slalom courses past Grider Hill marina (which is quite a haul). We parked the houseboat in a nice cove with close proximity to the slalom courses. We skied until almost dark and returned to the houseboat for a relaxing dinner and looked forward to a dip in the hot tub.

My comrades tried to light the upstairs grill and there was an explosion which resulted in fire coming out the sides and top of the grill. Luckily, Doug stepped back when the flames violently spewed out the front of the grill almost singued his swimming trunks and personal equipment. Fortunately, we had a second grill on the first floor and found another brave soul to light it. The other grill fired up without serious incident and we were off to the fridge for some meat. That is when we noticed that the fridge seemed to be unusually warm. We figured that the huge amount of food that we piled into it put a load on it and fixed dinner.

After dinner we decided to watch a little satelite TV. However, the tall cliffs surrounding the cove our houseboat was positioned within blocked the sky from the auto-tracking satelite dish. This wasn't an issue since we just wanted to watch a little satelite TV to show off how fancy a houseboat we rented for ourselves. We decided to play a DVD instead and loaded the player. However, the DVD player would not feed the TV. Therefore, the large TV and surround sound system were neutered useless.

It was definitely time to consult the ship-to-shore radio for assistance. The folksy Kentucky drawl on the other end helped us reset the fridge circuit breakers and promised to send help out the following day to get the DVD player and grill working. We were thankful for the help and were reassured for the moment. However, the fridge circuit breaker flipping off almost every hour left us a little uneasy since we came prepared with enough food for feasts every meal.

Not to be detered we decided to entertain ourselves with some Texas Hold'em. Those not electing to play Texas Hold'em went upstairs to relax in the hot tub. The hot tub was hot but describing the jets as anemic would be an understatement. I have seen picnic baskets more powerful! After a while the generator sputtered and eerily died. The AC kicked off, the hot tub stopped, and the lights fluttered. The battery system onboard was only large enough to run the lights and fridge for a couple hours. We tried to re-start the generator to no avail and concluded that the generator was out of diesel fuel. We began theorizing as to how this could have happened since the tanks are large enough for the houseboat to be out a full week without needing a fill up.

We beckoned the ship-to-shore radio for assistance but no one answered. It quickly became clear that we were out of luck until the State Dock people came in the following morning. Needless to say, tempers began to boil a little and the houseboat literally became an inferno. Then, those lucky enough to have a state room discovered that their fans didn't work (and later that they wouldn't work even if they had power). Everyone tried to sleep but it was like trying to sleep in a boiling hot cracker jack box, without any sort of prize. This was merely the 1st day...

The Red Light Running Crisis - Is it Intentional?

"There’s a hidden tax being levied on motorists today. In theory, this tax is only levied on
those who violate the law and put others in danger. But the reality is that the game has been
rigged. And we’re all at risk.
We are told to accept the idea that our laws should be administered by machines—not
human beings—because it is a matter of safety. We must accept this expansion of government
and this Orwellian threat to our privacy because cameras are the solution to the so-called red
light running crisis.
This is a federal issue, not just a local one. The federal government is promoting and
offering funding for this “solution”, because the safety benefits are supposed to be indisputable.
After all, who’s going to object? Nobody likes a red light runner. They endanger
themselves and others. They must be penalized.
But why have so many people become wanton red light runners all of a sudden? The
answer seems to be that changes made to accommodate camera enforcement have produced
yellow light times that, in many cases, are shortened to the point that they are inadequate. And
when people come upon an intersection with inadequate yellow time, they are faced with the
choice either of stopping abruptly on yellow (risking a rear end accident) or accelerating. The
options for those confronting such circumstances are limited and unsafe. But each time a driver
faces this dilemma, government increases its odds for hitting the jackpot.
This report suggests there is something that can be done to address this hazard. It cites
examples of problem intersections where yellow times have been raised by about 30 percent and
the number of people entering on red fell dramatically. It cites, in addition, controlled scientific
studies that confirm the hypothesis that longer yellows are better..."

Read the full report which is very interesting and includes lots of neat diagrams.

Disclaimer: This report is on a website that sells stuff you spray on your license plate that supposedly garbles your license plate number useless to red light cameras and automatic speeding ticket machines. However, the report seems believable. What do you think?