Sunday, December 27, 2015

Tweaking the Blog

Bare with me as I tweak the look and feel of this blog a bit.  The avatar I've been using since my Geocities days (you can still find the old posts if you Google "rick407") was too low res in the way it's presented in G+ and here.  I was attached to it because it reminds me of myself when I got started with naturism.  Thin, fit, brown hair, stubble, just hanging out at the beach. Today, I have less hair and aren't as young, but I'm still sporting a closely cropped beard that I haven't shaved since before I visited my first nude beach in my early 20's.

The new profile photo is that of the warning sign at Haulover Beach, near Miami.  That may change.  If you haven't guessed, the last name isn't mine, but rather the name of a person who a nearby town is named after.  And for trivia's sake, 407 is the area code there.  Yeah, not very original.  The "b" at the end of my yahoo username came from somehow locking myself out from the original rick407 account about the time Geocities collapsed.  So much for history.

I intended this blog to be not about my thoughts in general, but just about my thoughts about nudism, naturism, nudity, or whatever you prefer calling what humans look like.  I'm likewise juggling around another blog that isn't linked with this username.  That one is purely technical and is likely completely lost in the noise.  I have personal Facebook and Google accounts, but those I just use between family and personal friends.  Really boring stuff which you'd have no interest in.

I keep them separate because they have different audiences, not because I'd be all that devastated if people put two and two together and they linked them to me.  There aren't that many people who don't know the opinions I express under any of those usernames.

Drones

As an active pilot, I have my own opinion on those noisy privacy robbing little hazards to navigation.  Except while landing or taking off, manned aircraft have to stay at least 500 feet away from any person, vehicle, or structure.  And unless the area is sparsely populated, we have to stay at above 1000 feet.

I'm often vectored over Haulover Beach (clothing optional beach northeast of Miami) at 1000 to 1500 feet.  Trust me, unless you're a passenger who knows what you're looking for and has a very steady hand with binoculars, you're not going to be able to tell whether people are clothed or not from that altitude.  OK, you can tell that for some reason there's a lot of dots in one area (the CO section) and hardly any, anywhere else. And you can make out the "snow fence" that separates the areas, but that's it.  Being down at 500 feet isn't much better.  Besides, most pilots don't like being that low and we're way too busy watching out for cell phone and radio towers down there to be spending time looking down trying to make out what people are, or aren't, wearing.  I know where almost all the clubs are in Florida because I've been to them, and for various reasons, I've flown over most of them.  Never once, in decades of flying and knowing where to look, have I ever been able to tell whether someone on the ground was naked or not from the air.  The same is true while landing and taking off.  The ground is whizzing by too quickly and we're way too busy to be noticing if you're sunbathing naked in your back yard.

Drones are another story.  Johnny's new toy is typically fitted with an HD camera and can be flow beyond line of sight using a live video feed or a preassigned GPS driven flight path.  They're supposed to be below 400 feet (to stay out of our way) and most of them can stay in a stabilized hover for a long period of time, taking very detailed pictures and videos.  The law hasn't caught up, and for now you can't do much if your neighbor, or your neighbor's kids, decide to spy on you.

Here in the US, all but the smallest drones are now supposed to be registered.  Whatever good that will do.  Manned aircraft have registration (tail) numbers, usually at least a foot high, painted across them.  Is Johnny supposed to drag a banner behind his drone with big enough registration numbers on it that people call in with it when they complain?  Good luck.

And good luck expecting the law to do anything.  The airspace above your property really isn't yours, and other than trying to make a general "disturbing the peace" complaint stick, there's not much they'll do about it.  Even in rural areas where discharge from a firearm isn't a problem, expect it will be a problem if you try to shoot one of them down.  You've destroyed  their property and they can often argue that they had a right to be there.

Until all that gets sorted out, we have two choices:  Stay indoors, or ignore them.  While I might be perfectly OK ignoring my neighbor's new toy, not caring if they see me naked or not, other people do mind.  Do we clear our beaches and run for cover when one shows up overhead at our clubs?  I hope not.  But we do need to press for laws that at least discourage people from doing that.  I'm fine with allowing people to fire at them with birdshot when they're over our properties.  But until that's allowed, expect the middle finger salute from this naked guy below.  I'm not going anywhere.

Saturday, December 26, 2015

This was one very hot Christmas

Here in Central Florida, there's usually only a dozen or so days a year one wouldn't be perfectly comfortable being outside nude in the middle of the day.  And maybe there's a couple of dozen nights a year when one dare not dash out to get the paper in the morning wearing less than long pants and a jacket.  But no.  Not this year.  We've had a few cool days last month when wearing long pants was more comfortable than wearing shorts in the evening.  But this year.  This... is something else.

It's been muggy and in the mid 80's during the day and mid 70's and humid at night for weeks now.  Day or night, being nude outside has been more comfortable than even wearing the traditional shorts and tee shirts we spend most of our winters here wearing in public.  Will it cool off by New Years Day?  Maybe into the low 80's, we're told.

Contrast that with a few Christmases of my youth (elsewhere in Florida at the same latitude) where it at least sometimes got below freezing for a few hours in the morning on or around Christmas Day.  Heck, once, we got up early in the morning not to see what Santa brought us, but because they said we might see a light flurry.  No such luck.

On another post, I mentioned a time when I was dating a member of Paradise Lakes near Tampa and she invited me to an outdoor New Years Eve party there.  Darned if that wasn't one of the freaky cold nights.  They had outdoor heaters set up and one could spend the hours huddled in one of their many heated pools and tubs.  But wow, it was cold that night (low 40's).  The club was clothing optional (I prefer nude only) and the party certainly was CO, so I grudgingly went wearing jeans, a sweat shirt and a jacket.

My date was more daring and was committed to going and staying nude.  It didn't stay that way and within an hour or so, she was wearing my clothes, and I was trying to make the best of it, buck naked.  It turns out that my clothes fit her perfectly.  We didn't stay long and well before the bell dropped, we were huddled in our room, warming each other up.

So here we are.  I'm off until after New Years and my wife, always thinking ahead, had the fence torn down Christmas Eve day to be replaced next week with a new (and much better) one.  The pool's now in the 80's (solar heated) and it would really be nice to be able to spend some time out in the sun back there.  But no...  We're exposed to the neighbors and they've suddenly found themselves without warning  being exposed to us for a good part of a week.  :(  At least my neighbors will soon be enjoying the improved privacy my new fence gives them.  And it fills in some gaps that made our privacy a little less than I liked.

Warm or cold.  Merry Christmas.  Whether you're celebrating the birth of Christ, or not.