One of the best posts in our kick-ass forum. Sorry we butchered it with the Marilyn Manson cover title song.
As for the Central Park part, you can have a lot of fun showing up there with an RC sailboat and radio on a Saturday morning. Not in sailing, but in fighting with the yahoos that take their RC sailboat racing very seriously.
Here’s my attempt at shortening a long story.
– Father in-law sends me an RC boat for Christmas with a note about wanting to seeing it sail
– 2 months later father-in-law is diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer
– about a month after diagnosis, it’s clear that things won’t be getting better
– marathon weekend sessions to build the damn boat, finally get it done
– enlist an old college buddy to video the maiden voyage in the Central Park pond where they allow RC boats.
– show up at the pond with boat
– yahoos start screaming at me about using the radio and potentially messing with their precious race
– after screaming back, decide this is better handled face to face and walk around to confront the screamers who bravely retreat into a small pack
– friend arrives, see the antics and decides is amused enough to record the streams of profanity, hostility, and vitriol that spew forth
– crazy people back down and a tentative truce is formed
– boat sails beautifully, video is captured, etc.
– friend packages video for me and trip is taken to left coast to share with father-in-law
– lots of smiles and pride on his face as he watches the boat sail, he develops more energy than he’s had in weeks
– several comments about how he (who has never sailed at all) would be able to beat all those bastards
– leave for the evening, come back the next day
– smile on his face is bigger than ever. It turns out my friend added the “confrontation” to the end of the video which I hadn’t watched. He also added some of the many female sights that he captured in the park while waiting for me to get the boat ready
– Father-in-law had watched the video 3 times on a portable DVD player we had given him.
– he commends my use of profanity and gives me “the nod” for caring for his daughter
– when I mention that I bought half a dozen crystals (the things that control the frequency the RC transmitters transmit on) the evil grin returns to his face and he shakes my hand again
– he passes a few weeks later
– spent some Saturday mornings that summer sitting behind a tree up the hill to the west of the pond randomly inserting crystals into the transmitter and making random movements with the controls.
– my father-in-law would have wanted it that way. Thread here.
