BMW Motorcycle Rally Pin of the Day

From the 2015 BMW Riders Association national rally Oct. 1-4 in Harrison, Ark.

A nice little rally with lots of riding opportunities, especially for dual sport GS bikes.

An abbreviated BMW RA Rally

Where have I been?

Harrison, Ark. for the BMW RA Rally. I pre-registered in July at the BMW MOA Rally in Billings, Mont. It seemed like a good idea, being in the Ozarks and all and I expected to see lots of my Indianapolis BMW Club friends there.

Nope.

I was one of only seven Indy folks in attendance – two couples who were staying in motels and a couple of guys who ride GS bikes and like to bash around on fire trails and gravel.

The weather was good – chilly, but sunny. I studied the forecast and chose my equipment well. The heavy-duty Browning sleeping bag was just right for Thursday and Friday nights when the temperature dropped into the mid-40s. Friday morning’s low was 45° and this morning’s low was 47°.

I didn’t go on any rides because I was more into hanging out. Unfortunately, this rally wasn’t much for hanging out and socializing.

The most adventurous thing I did was add another stamp to my National Parks Passport when I discovered I was camped within two miles of the Buffalo National River offices. I think it’s the first stamp I’ve added in a couple of years. I carried the passport to Billings, but never bothered to look for stamp opportunities.

My Willis & Geiger Diaplex windstopper pullover turned out to be the perfect all-around comfort garment for chilly evenings and cool motorcycle rides.

I decided I’d had enough boredom this morning and struck camp. I was on the road a little after 11 a.m. under sunny skies and temperatures in the low 60s. But somewhere east of Mountain Home, the mercury began dropping and the sky clouded up. I was reasonably comfortable except for my hands. Somewhere west of Hardy, I pulled over and put windstopper glove liners into my gloves, which seemed to help along with the heated grips.

I rolled into my garage about 2:45 p.m. and thawed out with a hot shower.

I think most of my rally-going Indianapolis friends chose to skip the RA rally this weekend and, instead, go to the Falling Leaf Rally next weekend in Potosi, Mo. I have to pass on that one because I’ll be dog-sitting.

It’s a miracle!

I had pretty much resigned myself to not having full functionality in my free install of Windows 10.

Then everything slowed down and finally my screen went black and unresponsive.

Filled with trepidation, I did a hard reboot of my computer – the first complete reboot since I installed Windows 10 a week or so ago.

Then, wonder of wonders, I started seeing things that I had only seen on other people’s Windows 10 computers and can now say with reasonable confidence that everything that wasn’t working is working now.

Even Cortana, the “personal assistant” who responds to my voice commands via the microphone in my web cam.

Where have all the paper funnels gone?

Riding home from Billings, Mont. last July, I stopped for gas at a Kum & Go station in Elk Point, S.D and finally got around to checking my oil sight glass.

I found there was no oil showing. Fortunately, I had an unopened quart of BMW motor oil. Unfortunately, the paper funnels I stashed under the seat years ago fell apart because the glue was cooked and dried out. Fortunately, the clerk had a couple of paper funnels, one of which worked perfectly.

I had a little time on my hands this afternoon and decided to ride to an auto parts store and buy some fresh paper funnels.

I got the deer-in-the-headlights treatment at Auto Zone. The counter guy at O’Reilly Auto Parts said he thought they had some back with the plastic funnels next to the motor oil.

They did not.

I was in no mood to ride deeper into town to see if Advance Auto Parts had them, so I just bought a $1.49 yellow plastic funnel and resolved to look for paper funnels online.

Likewise, Academy Sports and Outdoors, which sells tents and camping gear, does not have tent guylines or tighteners.

Adios, iPhone 5

My faithful 43GB iPhone 5 went into service on Saturday, Dec. 29, 2012 and was finally replaced yesterday with a 64GB iPhone 6.

I wiped the memory clean this morning, photographed it with my new phone and listed it on Ebay, along with the Otterbox Defender case that kept it in pristine condition for nearly three years.

New iPhones

The new iPhone 6s became available last Friday, which means the price of the remaining examples of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus dropped by $100.

Maria and I went to the Sprint store on her lunch hour expecting to be in and out with new phones in short order.

We were out of there sooner than expected because the two young women working there insisted that the low cost of new phones by signing a new two-year contract was no longer available. The only way we could get new phones would be to pay insanely high prices up front or agree to add about $70 a month to our already exorbitant monthly bill for two years.

We had more questions than they had answers, so we drove across the street to the Best Buy store where a helpful Air Force veteran named Randal told us, yes, Sprint is phasing out the two-year contract deal.

But, he discovered, it’s not quite gone and he signed us up and gave us the deal we’d wanted. Maria got a 16GB iPhone 6 and I got a 64GB iPhone 6. Yes, the iPhone 6s is cool, but not that cool to us.

The iPhone 5 is on the left and the iPhone 6 is on the right in the photo above.

They’re back!

My in-ear monitors are back from being repaired and I’m a happy camper.

They are custom molded earplugs with stereo speakers and they take the tedium out of long motorcycle rides, especially on Interstates.

They were made for me in the summer of 2002 by Miami audiologist Marilyn Navia at the BMW RA Rally in Red River, N.M. (see photo below.)

Marilyn has repaired they a few times in the intervening 13 years when I clumsily yanked a wire loose. I had her upgrade them to dual drivers last winter.

The right speaker went wonky on me riding to Billings, Mont. in July. I showed them to Marilyn at the BMW MOA Rally in Billings and she asked me to send them to her in a couple of weeks when she got home from the rally circuit.

I did. She called a few weeks ago to say she was having trouble replicating the malfunction but would persevere. I guess she got it sorted out because she mailed them back to me this week.

Now I can ride to this year’s RA rally with SiriusXM satellite radio and the prompts of my Garmin Zumo 550.

China? China??? Really?

The last rallies of the season are looming, so I ordered some fluorescent guy lines and some guy line tighteners from Amazon.com to help stabilize my Eureka! Tetragon 5 tent, should the weather turn windy.

Checking projected delivery dates, I see that both products are coming from freaking China and may not be here until somewhere between mid-October and November.

I went back and examined the listing and can’t find any clues about these having to come from the other side of the planet.

Unless they show up miraculously early, I foresee a trip to Academy Sporting Goods.

50 years ago today

Fifty years ago today, I raised my right hand at the Armed Forces Induction Center in Indianapolis and took this oath:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Then my fellow U.S. Air Force inductees and I were bused to Weir Cook Airport where we boarded a DC3 to fly to San Antonio, Texas, with stops in Shreveport, La., and Houston.

We arrived in San Antonio around 2 or 3 a.m. and were bused to Lackland Air Force Base where we were assigned to barracks organized into flights and squadrons.

I was in Flight 1499 of the 3703rd Basic Military Training Squadron.

And thus began my 41-day career in the Air Force, cut short by a medical discharge based on the results of tests at the allergy clinic at Wilford Hall Air Force Hospital.

Here’s what we looked like after a week or two of basic training.

Click the photo to see a larger version. That’s me in the red circle.

Pinkeye

I’ve felt the first twinges of conjunctivitis (pinkeye) coming on for a few days now.

It prompted me to switch from contact lenses to glasses late yesterday, but it wasn’t any better when I woke up this morning, so I headed down to Clopton Clinic for 8:30 a.m. sick call.

The nurse practitioner concurred with my diagnosis and prescribed antibiotic eye drops – one every four hours for five days.

I wear my glasses only rarely and the transition from contacts to glasses always leaves me with a period of borderline dizziness – not enough to fall down, but enough to keep me off of a motorcycle.

It should clear up by the weekend.

Steve!

Here is the orchestra for Steve Wynn’s Showstoppers at the Wynn in Las Vegas.

My son Steve plays bass (red box).

Click the photo to see it larger.

If it’s not broke, don’t fix it

A little more than 24 hours after I “updated” my desk top computer from Window 7 to Windows 10, I have some serious regrets.

Happily, all of my old programs/apps that I’ve tried still work under Win10, but with some unwelcome changes.

A lot of it can be traced to the fact that I do not have full Win10 functionality.

I can’t use the built-in browser, so I continue to have Chrome as my default browser. The little Windows icon in the bottom left corner does nothing except turn green when I click it. Likewise, the text box next to it is useless. And Microsoft Edge doesn’t do anything at all.

Formerly, when I connected my card reader with a memory card in it, I’d get a little screen offering several options including to download the contents to Adobe Bridge, which is my go-to photo organizer.

Now I have to open Bridge and sort through the various folders and sources to find the card reader and its contents.

Likewise, when I download an image from the Internet, it goes to the non-functioning Microsoft Edge – or at least it tries to – instead of my preferred destination of Photoshop.

And I can’t find my games, so I can’t play Freecell.

The bottom line – I have reduced functionality. Win10 turns out to be worth what I paid for it: nothing.

Win10

Maria and Morgan stepped up to Windows 10 this week and seem to love it, so I did the free install this morning.

I think I’ll like it, but I’m not sure yet.

New tent poles

Tent poles arrived this morning to replace fractured fiberglass pole segments that were damaged the afternoon of July 22 in Billings, Mont.

Shortly after I arrived at the BMW MOA Rally venue and set up my tent, a powerful windstorm swept in and threatened to destroy my tent. Happily, a couple of my Indianapolis BMW Club friends came to the rescue with guy lines and extra stakes, but I discovered later that a segment of one of the two cross poles that form the dome of the tent was fractured. The photo shows the tent being deformed by wind even after the guy lines were in place.

Two shorter poles shape the fly into a kind of an eyebrow over the front and back of the tent. I forgot that they extend from front to back and in my road-addled condition, tried to flex one to fit both pockets at the rear of the fly, fracturing one of the fiberglass segments. Happily, it held together for the duration of the rally, which included a couple of smaller wind episodes.

I got this tent for Christmas and love it for its extravagant 9x9-foot roominess and the fact that I can stand up and not hit the 6’ high ceiling with my head. There’s even room inside for a camp chair next to my riding gear and sleeping kit.

When I got home, I hung up the tent and fly in the garage to let the Montana dew dry before packing them for the next rally. I went to the Eureka! (the exclamation point is part of the name) web site operated by Johnson Outdoor Gear Inc. and ordered some pole replacement segments, found them to be the wrong size, sent them back and ordered another set that also proved to be wrong.

I had several back-and-forth email exchanges with customer support which culminated with a request to check the tent for a tag indicating the lot number. I did: YF-259-2314. I was advised to continue the conversation by phone.

I got around to calling the company’s customer service folks on Wednesday morning and found myself talking with a very helpful woman named Tammy. She determined the appropriate pole lengths and graciously offered to send replacement free. I accepted gratefully.

The FedEx driver delivered them to my front porch this morning.

I bought extra stakes at the rally and now I need to add guy lines to the package. I think I’ll look for glow-in-the-dark lines. (A hapless drunk rode a bicycle into one of my guy lines one night during the rally.)

Calamity averted

About 24 hours after I updated my iPhone 5 with iOS9, I grabbed my phone to photograph a couple of Amazon purchases that arrived today for Morgan.

But it would not turn on. And it would not reboot. And it would not connect with iTunes to do a restore.

I jumped to the conclusion that some fatal flaw in the new operating system had turned my phone into a brick.

I went online and asked my Facebook friends and members of the Apple Forum for advice. None was forthcoming.

Finally, out of desperation, I held down the home button and power button simultaneously for a minute or more. Presently the white Apple logo appeared on the black screen, signifying a reboot was underway.

It was a very long reboot – a couple of minutes that seemed like hours – and then my familiar startup screen lit up.

Now, I’m feeling a bit sheepish for freaking out and decided my phone was hosed.

At last!

Pardon my absence. I’ve been busy and our internet provider has had prolonged outages this week.

You may recall that the 1TB hard drive in Maria’s laptop computer crashed recently – irretrievably, it turns out.

So I got a newer version of the drive and installed it, but we seem to have mislaid the backup software to restore the operating system.

After two nights and days of fruitless searching, I bit the bullet yesterday and bought a copy of Windows 10 from Best Buy.

But when I got it home, I found the software was on a USB drive and not a CD/DVD as in the past. I plugged in the USB drive, fired up the computer and hit F12 for Boot Options. That’s where my day went to hell.

The Dell did not offer a USB port as a boot option.

I called my unofficial IT guy, Tim Balough, in the highest incorporated town in the United States and he suggested trying to copy the contents of the USB drive to a DVD. I did and it failed.

I woke up this morning ready to throw in the towel, sell the Win10 software at a loss on Ebay and buy a copy of Windows 7 on DVD.

Then Maria suggested checking with the Best Buy Geek Squad. So when my internet service was finally restored about 10 a.m., I went online to the geeksquad.com and had an on-screen chat with Agent Samantha.

No worries, she said. Just take it to your local Best Buy and they will install Win10 for you.

Really?

Down at Best Buy, the Geek Squad guy plugged the USB drive into a different USB port and, wonder of wonders, it showed up in the boot options.

No charge.

Back at home I plugged the USB drive into the port the Geek Squad guy had used, but it didn’t appear in my boot option choices. I repeated the exercise about six time until the USB port finally appeared.

Now we have a new hard drive running a new operating system that is nothing like what we’re used to.

Happily, the Amazon Vine program picked today to offer me an introduction to Windows 10 book with instructional CD.

We’re gonna need it.

Can’t beat it

Our neighbors listed this property – two lots with an in-ground pool and a detached shop – for sale last May and spent much of the summer looking for a place they liked better.

They couldn’t find any location (read:neighborhood) they liked better and finally took their house off of the market.

That’s a ringing endorsement of our little wooded subdivision. We absolutely love it here. We looked at dozens and dozens of houses eight years ago before we found the house you can see at the top of the drone photo.

We stopped looking the day we toured this house – Sept. 29, 2007. We knew immediately that we had found the home we were looking for. We made an offer the next day and it was accepted that evening. We took possession Oct. 28.

Seriously…

Has anyone in all of recorded history seen a dog barf or poop on tile, vinyl, hardwood, or concrete if there was carpet nearby?

Sean at work

https://vimeo.com/138790937

64 years ago today

That’s me on the left, then Jeannie Taylor and then Susan Kent.

I looked worried, but the day turned out okay.

It takes SpinRite a long time to sort out a 1TB hard drive

Maria’s laptop didn’t heal itself after all, so I opened it up this morning and removed the 1TB hard drive, put it into an external hard drive station and turned SpinRite loose on it.

I don’t expect to be thwarted by problems with the motherboard because it’s not working through the laptop motherboard.

SpinRite estimates the process will take 6 days and 20 hours, so my netbook will have to fill in while my desktop computer is occupied. When Maria’s hard drive is finished, I should probably run SpinRite on my desktop as a routine maintenance procedure.

It’s been hung up for about an hour with no sign of activity, except I can feel the hard drive spinning when I put my hand on it. Tim Balough reassured me that it’s not unusual for SpinRite to do that while it chews on data in a particular sector.

In the meantime, I called the audiologist in Florida who made my in-ear monitors back in the summer of 2002. The right speaker went wonky during my Montana trip. She looked at it at the BMW MOA Rally and told me to sent it to her when I got home. I did but now she can’t replicate the problem. I told her I’m not freaking 0ut, but I would like them in time for the BMW RA rally in October.

++++++++++++++ SpinRite crapped out after chewing on the same sector for nearly a whole day. I think the drive is hosed.

Labor Day, 99 years later

It was 99 years ago when my dad, then 6 years old, took the history of Democrat Township of Carroll County, Indiana from his father, Democrat Township Trustee Irvin M. Flora, and placed it into the time capsule in the cornerstone of the Carroll County Courthouse.

My family goes way back in Carroll County history. Floras were the first white settlers in the county.

Free sample, what could possibly go wrong?

The sample dispensing machine detects movement nearby and propositions passersby with, “Would you like a free sample?” in a friendly female voice.

All I had to do to get a free packet of delicious Lance cheese crackers was scan my Sam’s Club membership card.

Here’s what I got:

I left it in the hopper.

Fast food kills trees

This is how the intersection of U.S. 49 and School Road in Brookland looked from space 18 months ago.

The red box is now a Valero gas station and Taco Bell that opened in the spring and the blue box is now a Sonic Drive-In that opened this week.

All of the trees on the west side of the intersection are gone.

Fixed?

After consulting with the SpinRite folks and my personal IT guy, Tim Balough, I concluded the only way to do a complete SpinRite scan of Maria’s laptop hard drive would be to remove the drive and scan it without working through the problematic laptop motherboard.

I left the computer running last night – blank screen with just the cursor arrow showing.

When I returned to it this afternoon with the intention of performing surgery, I found Windows 7 running and asking for a password. I obliged and a minute or so later I had a screen full of icons presumably ready to do whatever I asked.

The only thing I can think of is that Windows 7 spent several hours sorting out what was ailing it and finally fixed itself.

We shall see. For Maria’s sake, I hope it’s a good solid fix.

Irked

I occasionally get products through the Amazon Vine program that my wife might use.

I let her try the product and she gives me comments that I incorporate into my Amazon.com review.

Recently, I shared her observations about a Black & Decker steam iron:

I got this iron for my wife, who is an avid quilter and uses an iron in the quilt-making process. Here are her observations:
"This has absolutely the most intense steam I've ever seen come out of an iron.
"The sales pitch claims it will steam wrinkles out of hanging clothes in an upright position. I did the ultimate test. I hung a linen blouse that I'd taken from the dryer without ironing and worn TWICE. The 3/4 sleeves were especially wrinkly where I bend my arms, and the whole thing looked like it had been wadded.
"The iron relaxed all the wrinkles in the arm with one blast of steam. I would never have believed it.
"The point has a brilliant taper that allows entry into smaller spaces on clothing.
I primarily use irons for quilting and have had many. This one heats incredibly fast. I could use it in under a minute, even though the signal light for full heat wasn't on yet. I even got hard-core steam in under a minute.
"A warning: you could burn yourself on this steam. It is intense and fast. I would not let the grandchildren use this one on steam setting. The automatic shutoff is handy, and the iron reheats incredibly fast when you return to the ironing board. I had no disruption of work and did not have to wait for the iron to reheat between quilting tasks.
"The only drawbacks for me is that it is a dark color, which makes it a little hard to read the water level setting, and the icons are small for my older eyes. But neither of those issues is a deal breaker for me.
"It also has the easiest to use pour spout I ever encountered.
"This is a fantastic iron for this price point. I spent far more for less."

Sometimes people comment on the reviews and they’re almost always positive or at least constructive. I was startled this afternoon when a guy from New Jersey named Garrett J. O’Keefe wrote this:

Grandma using a term "price-point"?? The point has a "brilliant taper"?? "Relaxed the wrinkles"?? Almost had me with the "I wouldn't let the grandchildren use it on the steam setting", but Gotcha "grandma"!! Another phony review!

I looked his profile up and noticed that he has reviewed a whopping nine products on Amazon.com. Here’s my reply:

"Grandma" is a 52-year-old newspaper editor with a vocabulary that apparently surprises you. She can also ride a motorcycle and handle a pistol or a shotgun and has been published in quilting magazines. I find your comments presumptuous and insulting. And I can assure you that this is a legitimate review. If you read more of my 357 reviews, you'll find plenty of instances where I recommend against buying products.

Ruh-roh!

I have dutifully reported this to Steve Gibson. If it doesn’t result in a fix for our laptop, maybe it will be useful for his research.

SpinRite at work

Maria’s laptop computer went all wonky this evening. Windows 7 spent several minutes trying to sort things out, but didn’t seem interested in launching Windows when it restarted.

I’ve had great results with Steve Gibson’s SpinRite. It rescued my 1TB hard drive in November, 2011 when I was afraid all was lost and it continues to work (knock on wood) today. Maybe I should run SpinRite on it as a maintenance measure…

Anyhow, I set Maria’s laptop up to boot from the CD drive, loaded SpinRite and put it to work on two segments of the hard drive that have significant data. It’s doing the smaller segment that represents about 2% of the drive data right now and will probably finish that job in about 20 minutes. Then it will work on the remaining 98%, which will probably take all night.

The cost of staying mobile

I’m hanging out at Panera with a cheese Danish and coffee this morning, having driven Maria to work because the Subaru is in the shop.

I drove the Subaru in to town yesterday morning to get a prescription filled at Sam’s Club. When I parked at Sam’s Club, I noticed steam rising from the hood. I popped the hood and found water/coolant sprinkled about the engine compartment.

After getting my prescription and a 50-pound bag of IAMS dog food, I took the car to a nearby Gateway Tire shop where we have most of our auto service done and left it for diagnosis, hoping it was just a cracked radiator hose. After all, the car is 13 years old with nearly a quarter-million miles on the odometer. The rubber hoses have to be showing their age.

One of the Gateway guys called me later in the day with the bad news – I need a new radiator for $385. Considering that I paid about $500 for a radiator for my 1995 Honda del Sol a few years ago, I figure this is a reasonable figure.

So I will to and fro in the Lexus today until I get word that the Subaru is fixed.

Happy 4th Birthday, Jack

Our boy Jack, aka Briarbrooks Gentleman Jack Flora, is four years old today.

His forebears include two Best of Breed winners at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, so he comes by his good looks naturally.

We waited more than a year to send in the AKC registration paperwork because we couldn’t settle on a name.

His kind nurturing behavior toward Dora when she came to us as a 6-week-old puppy made it clear that he’s a true gentleman.

It opened this morning

The new Sonic Drive-In at the northeast corner of U.S. 49 and School Road in Brookland opened this morning.

I am amazed at how quickly the site went from a residential neighborhood with a couple of houses to a functioning drive-in. I guessed the franchisee had a Sept. 1 target date for opening.

They made it with a day to spare.

Testing a new printer/copier/scanner/fax

The Amazon Vine Program offered me the new (scheduled to be released on Sept. 1) Epson XP-630 earlier this week and it arrived on my front porch this morning.

It only took about an hour to unpack and set up and the print quality is everything I would expect from Epson – photo lab caliber. Here are the first two prints.

And it’s wireless, so I can print from anywhere.

It will sell for $149.99 when it becomes available on Amazon.com.

A belated Frohe Geburtstag to Leni Riefenstahl

I neglected to mark the 103rd birthday last Saturday of cinematic genius and pioneer and genuinely liberated woman Leni Riefenstahl.

I’m proud to own an autographed photo of her:

Dora’s checkup and shots

Dora had an 8:30 a.m. appointment with Dr. Heather Curry at the Animal Medical Center in Jonesboro today.

She is usually an OK car passenger, but this morning she shook like a leaf as we headed south on U.S. 49.

She did fine at the vet’s office though and was pronounced healthy and free of parasites. She got her rabies booster shot and a tag to prove it, along with some other immunizations.

The ride home was much calmer and she didn’t freak out when I left her in the car (windows cracked for good ventilation) while I took about 2 minutes to duck into the post office for my daily quota of junk mail.

And, of course, she was eager to get back into the back yard with Jack.

Going up

The sign went up today on the Sonic Drive-In under construction at the northeast corner of U.S. 49 and School Road in Brookland.

We’ve been here almost eight years and we’ve seen lots of construction on U.S. 49, but this Sonic has gone up faster than any other development in the area. I’ve been wondering for a month or so now if the target date for opening is Sept. 1 – a week from today. That’s starting to look like a real possibility.

Maria is a big fan of Sonic’s afternoon drink specials, so this is kind of a big deal for her.

Cryptic observation on a lovely late summer morning

There comes a time when one must forget about wanting to be a “nice” person and sound the Deguello.

Trash talkin’

It was a glorious clear 60º when I wheeled our trash container to the street this morning where it and its brothers will stand silently as they await the packer truck.

I spent a good part of the summer of 1962 riding on the back of a similar packer truck, picking up trash in Delphi, Ind. It was a rather pleasant job and you got to learn a lot about your neighbors from what they put into the trash. In particular, you learn where all of the town’s alcoholics live based on the empty booze containers in their trash.

In those days, most people in Delphi put their trash into 55-gallon steel barrels along the alley behind their home. Many people burned their trash in the barrels, so there was always the possibility of hot embers starting a fire in the enclosed bed of the packer truck, necessitating a quick trip to the city dump to disgorge the burning cargo.

The prospect of getting the contents of a full 55-gallon barrel into the maw of the packer truck seemed daunting at first, but I quickly learned to tip the barrel and roll it on its base rather than carry it to the truck. Once there, the trick was to lift it from the bottom, then roll it from side to side to dump the contents into the hopper. Leather work gloves were a necessity.

I was just summer help, working with a couple of guys who were the city’s fulltime water utility and sanitation crew. I don’t remember their names, but one of the guys had the curious quirk of pronouncing “truck” as “cruck.”

And I particularly enjoyed the mid-morning breaks at a little café called the Delphinium where I always got coffee and two chocolate-iced cake donuts.

Two down, 1½ to go

Just like every other year for the past eight years, I put four BMW rallies on my calendar at the beginning of the year, not counting Daytona Beach Bike Week, which is always iffy because of weather.

They are:

1. European Riders Rally in Burkesville, Ky.
2. BMW MOA National Rally, in Billings, Mont. this year.
3. BMW RA National Rally, in Harrison, Ark. this year.
4. Falling Leaf Rally, in Potosi, Mo.

So far, so good. I made it to the first two and am looking forward to the last two. At least I was until yesterday when Maria finally gave me the dates for her planned trip to Indiana to see her parents and attend a baby shower for Morgan’s step-sister.

Even though I have repeatedly announced I had rally plans for the first two weekends in October, Maria isn’t as tuned in to the calendar as I am and didn’t make it clear until yesterday that we can’t both be gone the second weekend in October because someone has to look after our combined pack of four dogs.

Or can we?

After a few hours of angst, I awoke from a nap yesterday afternoon with a solution. It’s 175 miles from here to Potosi – a three-hour ride. I can ride up on Saturday morning, register and get my rally pin and ride home that afternoon. Pretty much the same as riding up to Cape Girardeau for a bike service at Grass Roots BMW in one day.

Yes, I’ll miss two nights of camping and hanging out with my Indianapolis BMW Club friends, but at least I can say I was there and have a rally pin to show for it for my collection. And I won’t have to pack camping gear, toiletries or changes of clothing.

New Mexican restaurant

We had lunch today at La Casa de la Fiesta on Phillips Drive in Jonesboro.

Authentic Mexican cuisine, spicy enough to be interesting and bursting with flavor. I had 2 beef enchiladas, a beef taco and rice.

Lunch specials at $6.99. I think we were the only non-Spanish-speakers in the place.

TCB

It was a great afternoon for a motorcycle ride, so I cruised down to the Tractor Supply Co. and treated myself to a $1.99 set of 72” laces for my Bates waterproof boots.

Yessiree, livin’ large in the mid-South.

Turtle therapy

Maria came home from work last evening to find this guy strolling down the middle of our road, headed for its T intersection with a major county road.

She gave him a lift to safety and noticed that she suddenly didn’t feel depressed anymore.

Helping others will do that.

Janie!

I just posted a set of four color photos, including this one, on Facebook – all of Janie (Woods Hodges) at the Indiana State Fair in the mid-1970s.

I posted them on an Indianapolis nostalgia page and they are generating a frenzy of “likes” and comments.

Janie hosted a kids’ cartoon show from 1963 to 1988 called Popeye and Janie on WTTV in Bloomington and Indianapolis. She was also a music teacher in the Indianapolis Public Schools.

From the Brookland, Ark. post office bulletin board

The awful truth about TripAdvisor.com reviewer points

I enjoy sharing my experiences and one of my favorite outlets is writing online reviews.

When it comes to reviewing products on Amazon.com, I’ve written reviews of 352 books, movies, and other products. I currently rank 8,118th in the Amazon pantheon of reviewers. They noticed my zeal for reviewing stuff a few years ago and invited me to join their Vine Program under which they offer me books and other products to read or use and review.

Likewise, I have attained the lofty status of a Level 6 Senior Reviewer on TripAdvisor.com, with reviews of 98 hotels, motels, restaurants and attractions all over the United States.

And according to the TripAdvisor.com tally, I have earned 11,603 points.

I’ve been watching the points pile up lately since I got home from my recent trips to Billings, Mont. and Las Vegas with several places to write about.

I’ve been wondering what the points are good for. Free lodging, meals?

The TripAdvisor web site makes no mention of the value of points or if they can be redeemed. Finally, I found the answer in the TripAdvisor contributors’ forum.

They’re not worth a damned thing. Completely useless. Nobody seems to know why the site compiles them.

Oh, no! A summer cold!

The cold we caught on the airplane coming home from Las Vegas last week finally pounced on us full blown last night.

Maria and I have been sneezing and wheezing for several days before the virus mounted an all-out attack on my respiratory system last evening heralded by non-stop sneezing and my nose running like a faucet.

I went to bed early after taking a couple of Benadryl allergy caps. They dried up my nose, but left me wired and restless for much of the night.

Memo to self: never take two of those Benadryl caps before bed.

We had planned to host Charlie for dinner tomorrow evening, but decided our colds were a clear and present danger to his compromised immune system.

So we’re drinking plenty of fluids and getting lots of rest in the hope that this will go away soon.

Sonic thoughts

There’s a Sonic drive-in under construction a little more than a mile south of our house and it will be the first Sonic in the area to have a play space for kids.

Maria and I drove past the construction this morning on our way into town and two things crossed our minds:

1. The play area is right next to a busy four-lane highway. Will there be barriers to protect it from out-of-control cars and trucks?
2. Is there a more cynical motive behind the practice of adding play spaces to fast food restaurants other than to make them more attractive to kids and their parents?

Time will tell about the first matter, but as for the second concern, are the play spaces unintended or maybe intentional bait for pedophile customers?

After all, the real purpose behind ladies’ nights at bars and night clubs is to make them more target-rich environments for single guys.

Fast internet. Today, anyway.

I ran a speed test on my Fusion Media internet connection this morning and was startled to see I had a download speed of 14.21 megabytes/second, which is way faster than anything I’ve seen for more than a month.

It is interesting to note that I am paying for the highest tier of internet speed offered by Fusion Media, yet the readings I got on July 3 and August 2 were below the 4.0 Mbps that the Federal Communications Commission sets as the minimum for “High Speed Internet.”

I guess I should be glad that it’s working well today. Could it be an incentive to pay my monthly bill that’s due on Saturday?

Incorrectly attributed

One of my longtime newspaper colleagues forwarded this bold and politically incorrect column to me this morning with the following comments.

I think it neglects the profound damage the Great Society welfare programs did to the black family by incentivizing households without a father:

The Black Dilemma - FROM THE BALTIMORE SUN !!!!

"The Baltimore Sun" is definitely not known as a Conservative newspaper, this very well written assessment of the situation in USA comes as something of a surprise..

Some great thoughts about other races that have come to the USA and successfully integrated into our society.

This will obviously be called racist, and will upset the liberals, but they should really think about the message and this interesting point of view.

The Black Dilemma

"For almost 150 years the United States has been conducting an interesting experiment. The subjects of the experiment: black people and working-class whites.

The hypothesis to be tested: Can a people taken from the jungles of Africa and forced into slavery be fully integrated as citizens in a majority white population?

The whites were descendants of Europeans who had created a majestic civilization. The former slaves had been tribal peoples with no written language and virtually no intellectual achievements. Acting on a policy that was not fair to either group, the government released newly freed black people into a white society that saw them as inferiors. America has struggled with racial discord ever since.

Decade after decade the problems persisted but the experimenters never gave up. They insisted that if they could find the right formula the experiment would work, and concocted program after program to get the result they wanted. They created the Freedman's Bureau, passed civil rights laws, tried to build the Great Society, declared War on Poverty, ordered race preferences, built housing projects, and tried midnightbasketball.

Their new laws intruded into people's lives in ways that would have been otherwise unthinkable. They called in National Guard troops to enforce school integration. They outlawed freedom of association. Over the protests of parents, they put white children on buses and sent them to black schools and vice-versa. They tried with money, special programs, relaxed standards, and endless hand wringing to close the achievement gap. To keep white backlash in check they began punishing public and even private statements on race. They hung up Orwellian public banners that commanded whites to Celebrate Diversity! and Say No to Racism. Nothing was off limits if it might salvage the experiment.

Some thought that what W.E.B. DuBois called the Talented Tenth would lead the way for black people. A group of elite, educated blacks would knock down doors of opportunity and show the world what blacks were capable of.

There is a Talented Tenth. They are the black Americans who have become entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors and scientists. But ten percent is not enough. For the experiment to work, the ten percent has to be followed by a critical mass of people who can hold middle-class jobs and promote social stability. That is what is missing.

Through the years, too many black people continue to show an inability to function and prosper in a culture unsuited to them. Detroit is bankrupt, the south side of Chicago is a war zone, and the vast majority of black cities all over America are beset by degeneracy and violence. And blacks never take responsibility for their failures. Instead, they lash out in anger and resentment.

Across the generations and across the country, as we have seen in Detroit, Watts, Newark, Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and now Ferguson, rioting and looting are just one racial incident away. The white elite would tell us that this doesn't mean the experiment has failed. We just have to try harder. We need more money, more time, more understanding, more programs, and more opportunities.

But nothing changes no matter how much money is spent, no matter how many laws are passed, no matter how many black geniuses are portrayed on TV, and no matter who is president. Some argue it's a problem of culture, as if culture creates people's behavior instead of the other way around. Others blame white privilege.

But since 1965, when the elites opened Americas doors to the Third World, immigrants from Asia and India people who are not white, not rich, and not connected have quietly succeeded. While the children of these people are winning spelling bees and getting top scores on the SAT, black youths are committing half the country's violent crime, which includes viciously punching random white people on the street for the thrill of it that has nothing to do with poverty.

The experiment has failed. Not because of white culture, or white privilege, or white racism. The fundamental problem is that American black culture has evolved into an un-fixable and crime ridden mess. *They do not want to change their culture or society, and expect others to tolerate their violence and amoral behavior. They have become socially incompatible with other races by their own design, not because of the racism of others - but by their own hatred of non-blacks.*

Our leaders don't seem to understand just how tired their white subjects are with this experiment. *They don't understand that white people aren't out to get black people; they are just exhausted with them. They are exhausted by the social pathologies, the violence, the endless complaints, and the blind racial solidarity, the bottomless pit of grievances, the excuses, and the reflexive animosity.*

The elites explain everything with racism, and refuse to believe that white frustration could soon reach the boiling point."---

"You can't legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government can't give to anybody anything that the government doesn't first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they don't have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

Ian Duncan

The Baltimore Sun , May 30, 2015

Snopes says this is incorrectly attributed:

While many online postings of the above-displayed article in June 2015 claimed that it had been recently published in Baltimore Sun, this article has actually been circulating on the Internet since at least September 2014, when it was published under the title “Ten Percent Is Not Enough” in the American Renaissance blog.

The American Renaissance posting was originally attributed to Anthony Bryan; but his name was stripped from versions shared via Internet forums, craigslist postings, and comments sections of several race-related articles. Several different authorial names have been attached to the piece, including “John S. Mosby” (a Confederate cavalry officer) and “Edmund Hughes,” but the article didn’t truly go viral until after the Baltimore Sun attribution was tacked on.

Tale of the Tetragon 5

I got home from the BMW MOA Rally in Billings, Mont. two weeks ago today, but my big-ass Eureka! Tetragon 5 tent and fly are still spread out over the treadmill and various other things in the garage where I laid them out to dry.

I learned as a fraternity pledge that there is no such thing as a good excuse. But there are reasons…

There was a nasty wind blowing when I arrived at the rally site and in my road-addled condition, I forgot how the two “brow” poles (circled in red here) are supposed to go – running from front to back – and tried to flex one to go front to front. The result was a fractured fiberglass pole that, when properly placed, held together for the duration of the rally but clearly needed to be replaced.

So I went to the Eureka! (yes, the exclamation mark is part of the name) web site and poked around for repair and replacement parts. The descriptions were ambiguous. The poles come in four sizes (diameters, actually, although the site doesn’t say so) 7.9 mm, 8.5 mm, 9.5 mm, 11 mm and 12.7 mm. Not having any kind of metric measuring device in the house (yeah, I was surprised to discover that too), I relied on the description that said the 7.9 mm kit would fit the Tetragon 5 so that’s what I ordered.

The kit arrived while we were in Las Vegas last week and I got around to opening the box on Saturday, only to discover that the 7.9 mm pole is too small. Never mind what the web site says.

So Maria and I drove down to Lowe’s on Sunday afternoon – she for hardware to be used in quilting (too complicated for me to discuss here) and me for a cheap caliper/micrometer. I found one for $18 and change and justified the expense with the notion that it will surely come in handy someday.

It turns out that the pole segments I need are the 9.5 mm ones, so I got a return order document from Eureka! for the smaller pole segments and ordered the larger ones.

As soon as I have a full set of functioning tent poles, I can put them back into the stuff sack and pack the tent and fly along with them. (It would be needlessly awkward to pack the tent and fly first and then try to get the poles into the stuff sack.

So the tent and fly will remain where they are for a few more days until the next set of pole segments arrives.

We were in Las Vegas

I haven’t blogged for almost a week because we’ve been out of town and weren’t eager to let anyone know that Morgan was at our house alone with our combines pack of dogs.

We flew to Las Vegas Monday morning to visit Steve and Nicky and granddaughter Lisa and were treated like royalty. The highlight of the trip was Steve Wynn’s ShowStoppers where Steve plays bass in the orchestra. (See red oval. Click on the photo to see it larger.) I found myself sitting next to the mother of Lindsay Roginsky, the girl on the far left of the frame.

Steve also chauffeured us around in their Tesla Model S to Hoover Dam and Red Rock Canyon.

It was Maria’s first visit to Las Vegas and it was a real eye-opener for her.

Steve and Nicky are supremely gracious hosts. We had a wonderful time.

We flew home yesterday, landing in Memphis a little before 5 p.m.

Looks like more miles in 2015 than in 2014

Here’s a photo Maria shot with her iPhone at 6:14 a.m. July 20 when I left for Billings, Mont.

This has been a rather modest motorcycling year, compared with a decade ago, but it promises to be better than last year.

I tallied my 2015 mileage to date yesterday – 4,767 miles – and found it’s only 308 miles short of the 5,075 miles I rode (on both BMWs) in all of 2014.

There are two more rallies on my calendar – the BMW RA rally in Harrison, Ark., and the Falling Leaf Rally in Potosi, Mo. – which will add at least 718 miles to my total.

Far short of enough to earn me a 10,000-mile award from the Indianapolis BMW Club, but somewhat less embarrassing than last year.