Endangered Species Act (Human Version)

This is a letter I wrote today to a member of our (Oak Island, NC) town council and mayor. I posted it here as an open letter to all members of the town council and residents of Oak Island…

Good morning Mrs. Bell and Mrs. Brochure. I am writing today to request your help in providing protection to the volunteers that make up the Oak Island Sea Turtle Protection Program. Through federal and state law, and local ordinances, we have excellent protection for the sea turtles that many of us work very hard to protect.

That is great, but what we are lacking seems to be legal protection for the volunteers that perform this work. I am referring currently to an incident last night (8/21) that I experienced while working on a nest at 10th Place West, where we had 2 intoxicated men smoking cigars and harassing the female volunteers. I stepped in to redirect their attention towards me, and after several minutes of “lively” confrontation, their wives talked them into leaving and we continued with our work of handling the hatching turtles in relative peace. I say relative, because we had at least one woman who refused to turn off her cell phone when requested (a very common problem), creating additional white light that can confuse and disorient the turtles. The 2 men previously mentioned also made it a point when they returned to the rental home near the nest to turn on their very bright back porch light. We were too busy at that point with the turtles to call police or request help. To make matters worse, one of the men claimed to be a game warden, though I highly doubt that claim.

The previous nest a few weeks ago, there was also a drunk kid causing problems. He was well past the “do not cross line” we had established, and was carelessly walking around the area while over 100 hatchlings were scattered around and trying to make their way to the ocean. I was able to remove him myself, and avoid stepping on any turtles, but during this time all volunteers are extremely busy and taking time to deal with issues like this is unsafe, for both the volunteers and turtles.

What I am requesting is that the town create new ordinances for the protection of our volunteers. This should include harassment of volunteers, failure to follow directions, harassing or bothering volunteers or others trying to enjoy to the hatching process, and generally being a nuisance during the very busy 30-60 minutes of active hatching. I did not have time last night to call the police or I would have, the turtles were already out of the nest and making their way to the water when we started having problems with some of the guests. It would be nice to have a police officer present during any hatching, but I feel that having at least town ordinances with financial penalties may suffice. A warning to visitors about the ordinances may be enough to settle them down.

I work with the police department issuing parking and beach violations for town ordinances on a part time basis. On my nests, I could write violations if the ordinances existed, though I realize this is not a viable solution for all the other nests. And, of course, I could not write them anyway while I am busy with my volunteer work of getting the turtles to the water. They would have to be issued after the turtles are safely in the ocean. But a police officer could write those citations, as well as handle more serious matters such as intoxication and communicating threats.

I hope you will take my suggestions seriously before we end up having a serious problem involving our volunteers. I believe we need just a little “teeth”, an actionable ordinance that we can use to educate our visitors, and punish when needed.

Thank you both for your time,

Todd Osborne

Donating Blood Pressure

I often donate blood, have been doing it for 3 decades now. My blood has an enzyme that is needed for treating premature babies and burn victims, so I try to always make myself available when the vampires (Red Cross) call, something they never seem to forget! I have often been curious if donating blood lowers (temporarily) your blood pressure, so I decided today to do a little test. I have a blood pressure monitor that I use everyday to keep me inline, doctor’s order, so I hooked myself up this morning at it was 122/74 with 50 heartbeats per minute, slightly elevated. The Red Cross checked it before donating as well, 124/70 with 54 beats/minute. After donating blood, and eating lunch, I tried again. Now it is 115/63 and 59 beats/minute, normal pressure. I realize this is anecdotal, subjective, and not very scientific, but following the blood donation my BP was in the normal range, something I have not seen in months.

So here is my plan. Instead of taking my blood pressure medicine, I will just drain a pint of blood each day, I seem to have too much 🙂

Remember, always give 100%, unless you are donating blood!

A Little Catching Up…

I know I have not been great about keeping up my blog, and as always, I will try to do better. That said, this post will try to bring it up to date so that going forward only daily updates and news will be needed.

As for my airplane project, I have completed the Zenith CH650 tail kit and have disassembled the Corvair engine that I bought in Chicago over Christmas. I am in the process of cleaning and painting the engine now, at which point it will be in storage for a while until it gets closer to the time I need it. I plan to attend a Corvair College to assemble and test the engine when that time comes. I ordered the rest of the airframe kit from Zenith in July and was given a ship date of September 22, 2018, so I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of a whole lot of aluminum!

My experimental avionics package, GlassPack, is done for now. I have it working quite well and will be adding more features to it in the future, but unless some community support develops around it, I will likely only be building this for my own plane.

I joined the Oak Island Water Rescue Team a few months ago. I am still very much in training, but learning quickly. This is a great team of 20 volunteers that respond anytime someone calls 911 for people struggling in the ocean or waterway, boat accidents, and basically any time rescue on the water is needed. We also have a U.S. Coast Guard station on the island. They are used more for offshore rescue since their boats need 16′ of water depth to operate. We handle the shallow water calls and so far I have been on about 20 of them. Fortunately most were not serious.

I also joined the Oak Island Police Department, originally as a volunteer to do parking enforcement on the weekends. The town council decided they wanted us to be part-time employees and migrated us to employee status. The Police Department also trained us on ATV’s and we now do enforcement of many town ordinances on the beach as well as parking. We also help patrol the island and assist police officers with their calls.

Lastly, I volunteer with the Oak Island Sea Turtle Protection Program. I have been assigned to 2 nests so far this year, with the first nest hatching a couple of weeks ago. We helped 117 baby Loggerhead turtles make their way to the water. This is an important program because these turtles are very endangered and because Oak Island is a prime nesting place for Loggerheads. In a normal year, about 8,000 Loggerheads are hatched on Oak Island, and only about 1 in 1,000 will survive to adulthood, primarily due to predation. We will be setting up the second nest this evening.

So, I am managing to keep myself very busy, but I like busy. The volunteer work with Water Rescue and the Police Department will go way down in the off-season, and there will be no turtle work once the season ends. My free time will then be dedicated to building the Zenith CH650 kitplane and suffering through the 50 degree cold North Carolina winters. Sorry Wisconsin peeps!!!

BuildLog is Now Available

I just released a new (free) software application named BuildLog that makes it easy to track time worked while building an experimental aircraft. Please feel free to download it and let me know what you think. I created it for myself to use while building my Zenith CH650 kitplane and am hoping it may be useful to other homebuilders. The web site is https://toddosborne.net/BuildLog.aspx