Mattes's Musings by KC2GIK

Hello Friends and Family Over the past few days I am sure you've gotten your share of holiday greeting cards. I have receive greetings from friends and family.. I enjoy seeing kids group, although it makes me feel old. Especially when I realize my nephew Zander is approaching double digits.. He'll be 10 in July! My niece Quinn will be e-eight the month after and I just wonder why does time move so fast? Then I realize how much happened in just ,one year and then it all becomes clear... First things first my brother Chris, his wife Natalie and their children Zander and Quinn are doing well. It seems both Zander and Quinn have inherited both parents genes. They are tall and healthy. I got to see both of them play soccer this season and am amazed on how they have matured as players. Chris and Natalie were coaches, they are both natural leaders. I see a lot more Chris coming out in Zander this year, confident but reserved. While Quinn is truly her own girl, she is very indepen...

For the last year I have been submitting a few articles to  1 st Responder News Network. The Editor Lindsey Palmer was really impressed with my skills.  When I found out she was going to be in Wilwood during the NJ Firefighter's Convention, I knew I had to meet her. Lindsey has been nothing but supportive of all my work. She put a photo of mine on the front page of the September 2019 edition. A copy of it is hanging over my desk. anyway below is the email exchange over a few weeks. We  really had a profound impact on each other as you can tell ---- Original Message ---- From: "Justin Mattes-KC2GIK" Sent: 9/16/2019 5:38:25 PM To: "Lindsey Palmer" > Subject: Wildwood Lindsey, I have to keep reminding myself you must be very busy in the office today. It was great to finally meet you in person last Friday. I know my speech is very difficult to understand but I again want to thank you for allowing me to contribute to 1st Responder. You have give...

Every so often some silly quiz pops up on Facebook to get to know people better. Then people started realizing that some of the answers could be used as questions to reset passwords. However I scanned this latest quiz and realize there isn't one piece of information I gave that could be used for a password so here are my answers A- Age: 41` B- Biggest Fear:Dying without ever falling in love C- Current Time: 9:15 D- Drink you last had: milk E- Easiest Person To Talk to:  Sean Sokoly F- Favorite Song: Fire and Rain (by James Taylor) G- Ghosts, are they real: Yes H- Hometown: Woodcliff Lake I- In love with: shall remain unknown J- Jealous Of: No one K- Killed Someone? NOPW L- Last time you cried? Yesterday morning M- Middle Name: I DON'T HAVE ONE N- Number of Siblings: 2 O- One Wish: TO KEEP WRITING AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE P- Person who you last called: My Brother  Chris Mattes Q- Question you're always asked: How did you get bed R- Reason to smile:Being an honorary member o...

"For about a year or two cities have been slowly banning single use plastic straws to reduce the environmental impact. hey whine about how all plastics are harming marine life and need to be banned immediately.No phasing out, just banned, thanks to Mayor DiBlasio, New York City is leading the way along with Berkley and Oakland in California. Ironically in San Francisco it's easier to get drugs than it is to get a plastic straw. Monmouth Beach in my home state of New Jersey are following the lead. Guess I;m not going to Monmouth Beach any time soon.  If Cape May tries to issue a  citywide straw ban you bet I will be right there to protest it!!! Big companies like Starbucks and the ice cream giant Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream have "gone green" with their paper straws!! Some have even stopped giving out straws completely you need to ask for  just a paper straw and then you are looked at like you just asked for drugs.  Well if plastic straws are worse...

I convinced my folks to drive out to my brother Chris's   house by Trenton to meet Ed instead of having Ed drive down to Cape May! As I said in the previous entry , Ed explained  in an email he wanted to do some sightseeing on the way down to Knoxville. I was a b it concerned ' a long four day car ride wouldn't be good for my back, but I figured I would give it a try.  Some of the members of the license plate group are also members of the Extra Miler Club which is a group of folks that try to visit every county in the United States. There's a website called mob-rule.com which allows you to keep track of how many counties you visited.  I have been trying to keep up and remember all of my travels. Ed mapped out our route to maximize the number of counties we could complete between New Jersey and Tennessee. That's why you see we dipped into Ohio and Indiana which were also two new states under my belt.  The back roads were windy  but ...

I forgot to post these series of emails to the blog!! Below is a  I have since been to Knoxville and back! Since this was written before  the trip I decided to do a number of posts about the epic trip I took to the 65th ALPCA Convention in Knoxville, Tennessee. I will devote a few posts to include the road trip with Ed Butler, a fellow New Jersey ALPCA member, the convention itself and the achievements I had along the way. Ed and I joined  ALPCA around the same time so we grew in the club together. He knew I wanted to go to this convention because the next convention is in Tulsa Oklahoma, a lot harder to get to from Cape May!! Knoxville was hard enough!! Like in previous post about travel I will break this down into multiple posts Ed and I casually talked about driving to Knoxville together  dates back to early April! As he mentioned in his e-mail we did indeed do some sightseeing, but more about that later!!!1 Ed's Original E-mail:  Hi Justin,  ...

As I( mentioned before t he scanning in Cape May is difference than the scanning in Bergen County. Fist of all Bergen County is divided into seventy towns, each, expect Teterboro has their own fire department and they have about 20 separate dispatch frequencies while Cape May has a countywide dispatch with a few notable exceptions, namely Upper Township. I haven't managed to memorize all the stations so I have a quick cheat sheet. Sadly some of the towns have gone to newer NJICS statewide system, When I first moved my two base scanners down here. Let's do the simpler scanner first I originally wanted to use the BCT-15 just for scanning Cape May City and marine traffic only but then I remembered I had the NY, Boston and DC Air Traffic Control Centers in there from up north. It became clear that the public safety and marine traffic might be limited so I decided to keep the Centers in there,, I added the local airports. Which is all I need. When something happens in Cap...

T o break up  the winter in Cape May  this year my mother planned a trip to Florida to visit my uncle in Jacksonville a few weeks ago! It was a different kind of trip; in that we didn't stay in one place we explored to entire East Coast of Florida. We spent the weekend with my Uncle Chuck who moved down to Jacksonville a few years ago for work. He has been back up north quite a few times but this year it was time to repay the visit. We spent a total of ten days in  Florida and spent most of the time at his house with a road trip to Palm Beach and then onto Key West in between. One of the unexpected excursion of the trip was a detour to the  Fort Clinch located on the St. Mary's River..  They have character reenactments and other demonstrations. I took the scooter all over t he grounds and explored the different buildings! The weather wasn't the greatest but it didn't interfere with my pictures too much as you can see above The major goal of the ...

During the last few days everyone has been taking sides over the standoff between Nick- Sandmann and  Nathan Phillips at the March for Life protest over the weekend. I have seen more footage =than most and my conclusion is Nathan Phillips, a supposed "elder" of an Indian tribe for whatever reason starting harassing Pro-Life high school students, some of them wearing Donald Trump hats. The students of course tried to ignore him but when it was obvious he wasn't budging, an "incident" occurred. I label it an "incident" because it seems to me Nathan Phillips went up to the students, started beating his drum and the students reacted. The actual interaction is up for debate, some called it an argument, while others said it was a scuffle.All I saw was Nick Sandmanmn just standing there while Nathan Phillips Truth of the matter is even with over an hour of video floating out there on the Internet, the "meeting" is still up for debate. Adding to the ...

I sent t he following e-mail to a select friends, then I realized I haven't written an entry in quite awhile!! Talk about killing two birds with one stone. It takes the place of about ten entries so if you're reading it have a happy and safe 2019! Justin Friends, Happy New Year-- 2019!! First and foremost this IS NOT a chain email! I'm not promising a million dollars for every time you forward this e-mail. Just want to wish all of you a happy new year and highlight what I have been up to in 2018. From getting my first article published about a fire here in Cape May, celebrating my 40th birthday with my dad, brothers, uncle and a handful of friends,to travelling with the family to Italy, it has been a wonder 2018. I won't dwell on each one too much but need to express both my gratitude  for th e past and hopes for the future As I turned 40 I realized I need to get into the 21st century so I traded in my LG SLIDE PHONE for an  Iphone 5S!! Yes ladies and gentleman ...