San Paku

At Boomland 

Week before Labor Day, 1989

Here I am at the summit of Independence Pass in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.

I haven’t been back for a few years and I’m really pining (pun intended) for the High Country.

The aspens will be adding splashes of golden color to the mountainsides in a few weeks and it won’t be long before the snow begins. The riding season there is short but glorious.

I shall return.

Wednesday morning report

Back at my usual table at Panera after riding in to town to gas the K75S, get a haircut, surf and blog, and take Maria to lunch.

The heat index is 90 and will probably be significantly higher before I return home, so I chose to wear my Firstgear MeshTex riding pants with my fluorescent Fieldsheer mesh jacket. The effect on a hot day is like riding in shorts and a t-shirt, but with the protection of leather or heavier textiles. I chose the K75S over the K1200GT because the K75S has a smaller fairing and thus better air flow.

Hot weather notwithstanding, I mowed the lawn on Monday and weed-whacked around the perimeter of the house and blew the driveway clean of clippings and debris yesterday, so the place looks well cared-for, at least for awhile until Nature tries to reclaim the property and make it part of the woods again.

Remembering Breckenridge Chalet Week

The Indianapolis BMW Club used to rent a chalet in Breckenridge, Colo. for a week every summer from around 1987 to around 1999.

Except for years when the BMW MOA rally was in the west, we gathered there the week before Labor Day. The MOA rallies are in July, so in the years when it was in the West – 1990 in Rapid City, 1991 in Flagstaff, 1998 in Missoula – Chalet Week was scheduled either immediately before or right after the MOA rally.

The place was spacious and slept 19. Since it was the off-season, the rental was cheap – $60 per person for the week, if memory serves. You couldn’t stay home for that kind of money.

Tim and Linda Balough, who have since retired and moved to neighboring Alma, Colo., coordinated the rental and we always had money left over for groceries.

The 1990 (I think) Chalet Week group.

Most of us would head west from Indianapolis on Saturday morning, taking either I-70 or U.S. 36 and stopping for the night somewhere in central Kansas. That positioned us to arrive in Breckenridge sometime Sunday afternoon. After we emptied our saddlebags and other baggage, several of us would ride down to the City Market supermarket on the north end of town and stock up on groceries for the week, usually including some low-octane grocery store beer.

There were a couple of times when guys made the ride from Indy in one shot – Rich Nathan and Bernie Heidt come to mind. It’s 1,163 miles via I-70, which is do-able, but you end up arriving in deer and elk country after dark.

In the mornings, everyone would rustle up his or her own breakfast and plan where they would ride that day – sometimes up to Steamboat Springs, sometimes over Independence Pass to Aspen and Glenwood Springs, sometimes up to Rocky Mountain National Park. I think we rode ever significant road in that part of the Rocky Mountains at one time or another during the decade-plus that we did Chalet Week.

Dinner would be orchestrated by one or two volunteer cooks. I liked to make jambalaya, although cooking rice at close to 10,000 feet is a bit tricky. One night we might all go out to dinner at a local restaurant and one night we usually ordered Domino’s pizza for dinner.

We lost the use of the chalet in the early 2000s when the owners decided to move back in after living several years down in Buena Vista.

Tim and Linda moved into their big chalet-style A-frame about this time and hosted Chalet Week on a reduced scale for a few years, but finally gave up when interest dwindled.

It was a great time and a fabulous perk for being in the Indianapolis BMW Club and I really miss it around this time of year. If I didn’t have a commitment for this Labor Day, I would have seriously considered imposing on the Baloughs’ hospitality one more time.

Maybe next year.

The 2005 Chalet Week gang at Chateau Balough in Alma.

JUST PASSING OUT

The outdoor sequence was shot at Sean's Rock & Roll Bed & Breakfast on Sauvie Island.

Labor Day Weekend, 1988

Here I am, somewhere in southern Missouri or northwest Arkansas, on a Labor Day weekend ride to the Ozarks with Indianapolis BMW Club friend Rich Nathan.

I was riding my 1981 BMW R100RS and Rich was on his BMW K75.

I know we camped a couple of nights, but the only one I recall with any clarity was on the shores of Northfork Lake east of Mountain View, Ark. after we rode through Branson and explored some of Table Rock Reservoir.

Here’s Rich as we left the Northfork Lake campground.

It was a fun weekend riding some extremely twisty and well-maintained state roads.

Just so I can say I posted something…

The blazing summer heat we hoped we avoided is upon us here in northeast Arkansas.

The 3 p.m. temperature is 95 with a heat index of 108 and the forecast is for hotter weather over the weekend.

So I am hunkered down in the air conditioning with no plans to go anywhere for the rest of the afternoon.

I got out early to ride down to the electric utility office to pay our bill, which was due today. I would have mailed the check earlier, but I spaced it.

After dropping off the payment, I cruised by Panera for a cheese Danish and cup of coffee, but couldn’t think of anything interesting for a blog entry.

I still can’t, but people stop reading you if you don’t post new content every day or so.

As we were drifting off to sleep last night, I got a call from my son Sean. I knew it was him because of the ringtone I’ve assigned to his number. (If you have an iPhone, you’ll recognize it as the one named “Robot.”)

He was at a restaurant and realized he didn’t have his bank debit card with him and wondered it I could shoot him some money by PayPal so he could buy dinner with his PayPal credit card.

No problem. I went up to the office, signed into my PayPal account and threw $50 into his account.

Our lawn needs mowing – one particular variety of grass in the front yard has reached about 12” in scattered spots and is going to seed – but there is NFW I’m going to mow in this weather. Maybe tomorrow morning if the dew evaporates before the temperature rises into the 90s.

Here’s a photo of Sean I scanned yesterday. It was the summer of 1970 – a few months before his brother Steve was born – and we lived in half of a double at 4829 N. College Ave. in Indianapolis.

Flora family politics

I got an email today from my cousin Eric. We exchange emails on conservative subjects frequently and today’s missive had him wondering how our Grandfather Irvin Flora became a Democrat, as did our fathers.

Here’s what I wrote in reply:

I think my dad's politics, and probably our grandfather's as well, grew out of an impulse to root for the underdog, to look out for the little guy.

One of dad's first jobs was working for the Federal Land Bank, which was a subsidiary of FDR's Farm Credit Administration. I think that's what he did after leaving the Carroll County Treasurer's office when Grandpa Flora's term as treasurer ended and before he became an insurance agent.

I don't remember him talking that much about FDR, but he really identified with Harry Truman. He took us on a family trip to Washington, D.C. around 1950 or '51 and I think the fact that Truman was in the White House was a factor. Truman was a farm boy like our fathers and, even though he was a Missouri Democrat Machine candidate, he rose above machine politics.

I'm pretty sure my dad and his father would not recognize what the Democrat Party has become. I was raised in a Democrat household and considered myself a Democrat of varying levels of enthusiasm until the 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern. It wasn't until then that I realized the Democrat Party had been taken over by and was pandering to a constituency that I couldn't identify with and that I had more in common with the GOP.

Even so, Nixon certainly didn't inspire me, neither did Ford or Carter. I bitterly regret that I didn't fully appreciate Reagan when he was in office and I worried about George Bush's judgment when he picked Dan Quayle as his running mate. Quayle was well-known to those of us at The Indianapolis News, since our managing editor, who was also the Adjutant General of Indiana and head of the Indiana National Guard, pulled strings to get Quayle - a relative of the publisher - a safe berth in the Guard during Vietnam.

Bill Clinton's style revolted me and, although it was painful to listen to George W. Bush speak because his mannerisms invited ridicule by people who thought they were smarter than he, I recognized that he was and is a genuinely good man.

In contrast, Obama hates the America we love and his presidency is all about race and revenge.

I liked Mitt Romney, but felt he was too nice and too kind for the savage race he found himself in. That said, I fully believe the Democrats stole the 2012 election through widespread and well organized voter fraud. It the votes had been counted honestly, I have no doubt that Romney would have won.

That's my worst fear going forward - that the Democrat network of voter fraud is so well coordinated and financed, especially in key states and precincts, that they can thwart the will of the people. With the mainstream media refusing to expose them, it may not matter how people actually vote.

Cat poop coffee

I'm trying Starbucks Sumatra dark roast coffee in my mocha cappuccino this morning.

I noticed that the bag has a picture of a tiger on it, which may or may not be a subtle attempt to make you think it could be the rare and expensive "cat poop coffee" of Sumatra.

But at only $6.99 a bag from Kroger.

Coffee and conversation on a humid Tuesday morning

I finished another bag of Starbucks coffee when I made my mocha cappuccino this morning, so here I am at Starbucks in Jonesboro, where I cashed the empty bag in for a free cup of dark roast. It just seemed like the thing to do.

A guy in a neon green safety vest and Centerpoint Energy hardhat accosted me as I parked in front of Starbucks, observing that I had an Arkansas license plate and an Indianapolis BMW Club sticker on my K1200GT.

Turns out it was Mike Causey, a friend of Charlie Parsons, who also rides a BMW motorcycle. He, too, was at the BMW MOA rally last month in St. Paul, Minn., but he took a more circuitous route up across the Mackinac Bridge to Duluth before cruising down to the rally. He was making sure the crew widening Red Wolf Boulevard didn’t dig into the Centerpoint gas line that parallels the roadway.

It was his second BMW MOA rally, having been to the blazing hot 2012 rally in Sedalia, Mo. And, like me, he plans on Billings, Mont. next year.

BTW, images get distorted if you don’t pan the camera straight and level when shooting a panorama photo with an iPhone, which is why my eyes and glasses look a little whopperjawed.

Still planning on Billings next July

The usually calm BMW Motorcycle Owners of America Facebook page occasionally lights up with acrimonious debate over non-motorcycle issues.

Such was the case this morning when a member posted her disappointment that the Billings, Mont. City Council recently voted 6-5 against an ordinance that would attempt to enforce diversity through a non-discrimination law.

As nearly as I can tell, the issue had its genesis in a complaint from a woman who wanted to use a men’s restroom.

This is germane because next year’s BMW MOA Rally will be in Billings.

In a matter of minutes, the page was ablaze with self-righteous proclamations from liberal types that the BMW MOA should not have its rally in such a bigoted and intolerant place. Our rallies inject a lot of money into the local economy and most cities that have hosted us hope we come back.

Some went so far as to announce they would not attend.

That suits me fine. I don’t care to listen to yammering fools who flaunt their liberal ideology in public, just to make themselves feel smugly superior. Let them stay home, or go march in solidarity with their oppressed brothers and sisters in Ferguson, Mo.

I suspect that, despite the vote against the measure, the majority of the council members are fair-minded good people whose chief concern was that such an ordinance could involve the city in pointless costly litigation – something most rational taxpayers are happy to avoid.

Happily, the BMW MOA Facebook page administrators took the conversational thread down a few hours later.

Scanning negs again

I’ve been digitizing some 35mm negatives today, staying put, not burning gasoline, doing stuff that doesn’t cost anything (much).

One of the best images I’ve rediscovered is this shot of my parents on the occasion of Thanksgiving, 1986 at their home in Delphi, Ind. They looked pretty happy and chipper and that’s how I like to remember them.

Here’s another photo from that day, Sean and Steve getting ready to take Grandma Flora’s 1964½ Mustang for a spin. I loved it that Dad had the vision to buy the fifth Mustang ever sold in Carroll County. It was a great little car and I honed my standard transmission skills on its three-speed stick shift before I bought my first car – a 1965 Volkswagen beetle – in August, 1966.

And this is me with Webb Bernhardt and Cindy Fort in July, 1995 at Hunter S. Thompson’s favorite watering hole, the Woody Creek Tavern, west of Aspen, Colo. I got the Staintune t-shirt a week earlier at the BMW MOA National Rally in Durango where I lent my K100RS to the Staintune exhaust system guys so they could fire it up and show prospective buyers what the Staintune sport pipe sounded like.

After the rally, Indianapolis BMW Club members regrouped and gathered at a chalet in Breckenridge for another week in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The ride over Independence Pass to Aspen, with lunch at Woody Creek and a soak in the thermal hot pool at Glenwood Springs is one of my favorites.

Here are some of the club members at the chalet we used to rent for a week every summer. They are (from left) Irmgard Burford, Cindy Fort, John Rode, Webb Bernhardt, and Diana and Wendell Owen.

The bike on the left is mine and the other – also a 1991 K100RS – belonged to Archey Shearer.

Hear here

A woman on an Indianapolis nostalgia Facebook group last week opined that patients at a closed mental hospital were probably put out onto the street “to fin for themselves.”

That got me thinking about people using mis-heard words and expressions and cluttering up the spoken language with stupid utterances that could have been avoided if they read more.

Like saying “high tit” when the expression is “hind tit.”

Or saying “would of” instead of “would have.”

A few minutes of Googling turned up this list culled from various sources:

"Different tack," not "different tact"

The tack in this case is the direction in which a ship is travelling. It's not an abbreviation for "tactic."

"Moot point," not "mute point"

"Taking up the reins," not "taking up the reigns"

The expression is about riding a horse, not about forcing your mother to abdicate so you can rule the kingdom.

"Eke out," not "eek out"

"Beyond the pale," not "beyond the pail"

The meaning is clear — something that's generally unacceptable — but the origin isn't. This has nothing to do with the color of your skin or where a bucket might be located on your property. Here's the origin per the Macquarie Dictionary:

In English history, a fence around a territory and by extension the limit to which a jurisdiction extended; hence the Irish Pale, the part of Ireland ruled by the English in the 14th century and in which English law held sway. Anyone living beyond this boundary was thought to be beyond the bounds of civilization.

"Mine of information," not "mind of information"

"Just deserts," not "just desserts"

"Wait with bated breath," not "wait with baited breath"

No, your breath doesn't stink like fish while you're waiting. Bated in this case is the shortened form of abate, meaning to lessen or withdraw.

"Due respect," not "do respect"

"For all intents and purposes," not "for all intensive purposes"

“Toe the line,” not “Tow the line”

“Shoo-in,” not “Shoe-in”

Different kinds of errors:

"To beg the question" means to assume a fact that has not been established. It does not mean "to prompt the question."

"Uninterested" means not interested.

"Disinterested" means impartial.

"Irregardless" does not exist.

"Discreet" means having or showing discernment or prudence.

"Discrete" means separate.

“If I had known,” not “If I would have known.”

"Supposebly" does not exist. The word is "supposedly".

You don't cut off your nose "despite" your face. You do it "to spite" your face.

"Hunger pangs" not "hunger pains"

"Powers that be," not "powers to be"

"Buck naked," not "butt naked"

“Take it for granted,” not “Take if for granite.”

“You've got another think coming,” not “You've got another thing coming.”

“Espresso,” not “Expresso.”

“Losing,” as in, I'm losing. Often written as “loosing.”

“Et cetera,” not "eckcetra/ect."

Ensure/Insure - Ensure: Make certain of something. One must ensure that one has one's wallet before leaving the house.

Insure: Buy insurance coverage for. Insure your car before you drive it.

And the list goes on and on…

43 years ago this month

I spent August, 1971 on the campus of Humboldt State College in Arcata, Calif. on the first half of a course to become a teacher of Transcendental Meditation.

I learned TM in November, 1969 on the first TM course ever offered in Indianapolis and felt drawn to become a teacher.

The course was taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement. He lectured at length at least twice daily in the Humboldt State College (now University) Fieldhouse. I was one of about a half-dozen folks from Indiana in attendance and we gathered in the afternoons in one of the student apartments where we were billeted to discuss the content of Maharishi’s lectures. That’s where this photo was shot.

Notice that I had an ashtray and a pack of cigarettes (Viceroy) at my side. It was another six years or so before I quit smoking for good.

I’m sure I reeked of cigarette smoke,

which is probably why Maharishi shot me a disapproving look when I sat down next to him to receive instruction in an advanced TM technique about half-way through the course.

I never made it to the second half of the teacher training program, which was held the following year on Majorca, an island off the coast of Spain.

I did, however, take the TM-Sidhi Course in the late 1970s and learned to “levitate.” You can read about that here.

And I also shot about 300 black-and-white and color images during the course.

Progress

A roofing crew was busy at Morgan’s house this morning replacing the roof damaged by freakishly high winds on June 5.

The storm hit just as a cleanup crew went to work in the wake of a flood caused by a broken PVC supply line to the master bedroom toilet. It was not a good day for my stepdaughter.

After a couple of months of assessment and estimating, work began this week to put her house back together. In the meantime, she’s living with us.

A Guide to U.S. Newspapers

I got this insightful guide from longtime BMW riding friend Rich Nathan:

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however like the smog statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave L.A. to do it.

6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.

7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country, and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.

8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

9. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority, feministic atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from ANY country or galaxy as long as they are democrats.

10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

11. Nobody reads The Indianapolis Star or the Jonesboro Sun. (I added this one.)

You don't have to know Spanish to love this

Santana's latest album, "Corazon," is the best thing I've heard in years.

Free music, free coffee!

Starbucks offers a free music download weekly and a free cup of coffee in exchange for an empty Starbucks coffee bag.

I’m all about free, so here I am blogging about it on the free Starbucks Wifi.

Minnie Doane and the Fair Train

Since it’s State Fair time in Indiana, it seems appropriate to post this August, 1985 photo of longtime Carmel City Councilwoman Minnie Doane christening the 1985 Fair Train with a bottle of Night Train Express, a fortified wine by Gallo that has long been a favorite of trainyard hobos.

Back in the mid-1980s, the Carmel City Council was discussing an ordinance creating a peddler’s license. During the discussion, Minnie opined that such an ordinance would spare Carmel residence the worry about “darkies” showing up at their door.

City Attorney Steve Andrews, who was sitting at the council table, shot me a horrified look, worried that I might quote Minnie in my story in the next day’s Indianapolis News.

He needn’t have worried. I recognized that Minnie, who was 75 at the time, was a product of her generation and meant no malicious disrespect. I knew that quoting her would create a needless shitstorm of controversy and figured that wasn’t why I was there.

Besides, my forbearance made a longtime friend of Andrews and the other members of the council that gave me insights into Carmel politics that I would never have gained otherwise.

Minnie died in 1992. The gazebo in front of Carmel City Hall has been named for her.

Here’s a photo of a young rider on that Fair Train that ran from Carmel to a point just west of the Indiana State Fairgrounds for several years.

The tracks were later abandoned and removed to make way for the Monon Trail, a hiking and biking route. Today’s Fair Train runs from Fishers to a site on the east side of the Fairgrounds.

Remembering Moselle Schaffer

This is my friend Moselle Schaffer with one of her pet Siberian tigers.

Moselle, who died July 31, 2000 at the age of 75, was about 50 when I shot this photo.

She was an elegant, witty, strong woman with a sharp sense of humor and tons of Southern charm. She was eccentric in spades and lived life precisely on her terms. If you can track down her quirky, funny book titled “Camel Lot: The True Story of a Zoo-Illogical Farm,” by all means, buy it.

Moselle also did a lot of freelance writing and she gloried in animal stories. She wrote several for The Indianapolis News at a time when I was chief of The News' Metro North Bureau, covering the two north suburban counties that included Camel Lot, her exotic animal farm and bed-and-breakfast on 50 acres in Hamilton County. Her menagerie included tigers, llamas, zebras, ostriches, monkeys, goats and camels.

I also discovered along the way that she had been a close friend and confidant of the late Frances Farmer, the ill-starred actress whose tragic life included a final chapter as an afternoon movie hostess on the former WFBM-TV in Indianapolis.

Before she died of cancer in 1970, Frances gave Moselle a charm bracelet she had received when she was featured on the old Ralph Edwards "This is Your Life" TV show. All of the female subjects of the show, which was a kind of precursor to today's "Biography" but featured surprise reunions with people from the subject's past, received a charm bracelet with miniature representations of important places or events in the woman's life. She confided to Moselle that she never liked the bracelet. Miss Farmer is entombed in a Fishers, Ind. cemetery mausoleum.

Moselle also held a commercial pilot’s license and was a member of the Aero Club of Indianapolis.

She is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, Ala.

Sabotage

The word sabotage comes from the French word for shoe, which is sabot. The word came about when disgruntled French factory workers wrecked machinery by throwing their wooden shoes into the gears.

Here’s an example of another sort of sabotage – sneakers flung into the wires above East 50th Street, just east of College Avenue in Indianapolis in December, 1985. I lived just up the street at 5009 N. College at the time.

69 years ago today

This B-29 dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan on this date in 1945, pretty much obliterating the city of Nagasaki.

It can be seen at the U.S. Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio.

1977 flashback

I had an impulse to scan some negatives after dinner this evening and found an Indianapolis News neg envelope dated Oct. 3, 1977 that contained a few interesting images including this one.

The scene is my den at our home at 5009 N. College Ave., in Indianapolis and the guy in the chair is Mark Wadleigh, a friend from my Transcendental Meditation days. Mark and the other guy, Michael Lindberg, were TM teachers and we all hung out together.

Mark is now an instructor in the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. His father was a professor of speech and theatre at WSU.

Michael, who was born in Thief River Falls, Minn., was bright and talented but he had his demons and they drove him to blow his brains out with a .357 magnum revolver on a Seattle park bench one night in the 1980s. I have the coffee table he made as a high school shop project and it’s on loan to my stepdaughter.

Hilarious

This is absolutely hilarious!

The first paragraph tells it all – use this device to fake mileage on your trailered motorcycle.

I’ve always thought that most guys who trailer their bikes are pathetic posers, but this is a way to be even more pathetic.

And at the same time, all of those bogus extra miles reduce the trade-in or sale value of the motorcycle.

I suspect it’s a joke because the listed website – www.trailerboyz.com – seems to not exist.

Oooops

When I went into the garage this morning to fill the Aussies’ food bowls from the plastic bin of Fromm dog food, I found my way barred by a logjam of coolers.

The smaller cooler, it turns out, was full of rotting food – bags of once-frozen lima and pinto beans and a package of sliced Munster cheese, all from a Sam’s Club shopping trip at least three weeks ago. Apparently Maria or I put the cooler in front of the freezer with the intention of transferring the contents into the freezer, but promptly forgot it.

After photographing the stinking contents, I dumped the stuff into the trash can and hosed out the cooler, leaving it open in the driveway to dry and air out.

Happily, the large cooler was clean and empty, so I put it up on the shelf where it belongs.

In other garage news, we now have a generous supply of Tide detergent, Kraft salad dressings, Planter’s peanuts, Red Gold tomato products and other items purchased at insanely low prices, thanks to Morgan’s couponing prowess.

And speaking of Tide:

Thanks again, Paul

Thanking Gen. Paul Tibbets for what he did 69 years ago today.

Chances are my first wife and our two sons would not have been born had he not flown the first atomic bomb mission and destroyed Hiroshima.

In later life, he drove Toyotas. It wasn’t personal.

New router

I spent a couple of hours this morning installing a new router – a Linksys AC1900 Wi-Fi Wireless Dual-Band+ Router with Gigabit & USB 3.0 Ports, Smart Wi-Fi App Enabled to Control Your Network from Anywhere (EA6900).

It lists for $199.99 and sells on Amazon.com for $160.99, but I’m testing it for a review on Amazon through the Vine program.

It replaced a Linksys E2000 Advanced Wireless-N Router that I bought on June 13, 2011 on clearance at Best Buy when my previous router went belly-up.

The setup was startlingly easy and most of the time was spent getting various devices in the house to sync with the new router. I never did get the smart TV in Maria’s sewing room to recognize it, but so far it syncs with my iPhone, my Kindle Paperwhite, my netbook, our Sony Blu-Ray player and Maria’s laptop. When they get home, I’ll get Maria and Morgan’s iPhones and Kindles and Morgan’s laptop connected as well.

I think the coverage is a little better in the living room than with the old router. The new unit has three antennae that presumably can be adjusted to focus the signal. Our desktop computers are hardwired into the router and mine seems to run a bit faster.

David Irvine

David Irvine is an artist/illustrator who improves old and thrift shop artwork by adding images to them.

Check out more of his work here.

Wonky starter button

This is what happens when I want to start my 2003 BMW K1200GT after it has saw idle for a day or two, or sometimes just overnight.

Until today, the record was 21 button presses. Now the record stands at 33.

Once the engine is warm, it restarts readily on the first or second starter button push.

My dealer replaced this control cluster a few years ago. Then this problem developed. They refused to replace it again under warranty because they couldn't replicate the problem.

Still a mystery

This is the most interesting thing my new trailcam has captured so far.

Whatever it visiting my yard triggered it late Wednesday and Friday afternoons but I can find nothing in the frames that looks like man or beast.

Maybe if I put out some kind of bait…

Dora goes to the vet

I took Dora to the vet this morning for her annual checkup and shots.

She is now current on her rabies, parvo, and Dhp vaccinations.

Dr. Huff said she is “healthy as a horse.” She weighs a dainty 35 pounds.

Post office encounter

Approaching the post office on the K75S this morning, I noticed a pickup truck with camper shell pulling into the parking lot through the exit, which is clearly marked “DO NOT ENTER.”

I parked a couple of spaces to the left as the driver opened his door and looked around like a deer in the headlights while his passenger, a grizzled looking little guy went inside to check a box.

When I emerged with my mail, the driver asked, “Whut kind of motorsickle is that?”

“It’s a BMW.”

“B and W?”

“BMW – like the cars – only they’ve been making motorcycles longer than they’ve made cars. The first was in 1923, so were coming up on 100 years,” I said, hammering home the point that he hasn’t been paying attention.

“Well, I don’t think I ever seen one before,” he offered.

So ended my first exchange of the day with one of my fellow Arkansans.