Monday crap

Most of my Ebay transactions go off without a hitch, but I'm dealing with a couple of major exceptions today.
I've been disposing of a set of dishes that Maria no longer wants and am happy to report that we've made more from them on Ebay than she paid for them and that almost all of them have gone through the mail stream without damage.
Except for the cup and saucer bought by Betty Mapes of Nebraska. She said they arrived broken. So I carefully packed a replacement set this morning and will mail them presently.
And then there's Maria's Nikon D100 SLR digital camera.
I sold it on April 25 to a guy in Colorado who was slow to respond to emails and welshed on the deal. He claimed he mailed a check, but it never arrived and I'm willing to bet that it was never sent.
So I voided the deal and re-listed it.
This time the buyer was a guy from India, living in Canada, who writes in very broken English. To his credit, he paid promptly by PayPal. But a few days ago he wrote to say the camera wasn't what he expected and he wants to return it for a refund.
I have been selling on Ebay for 10 years and have 568 comments in my profile - all positive - and I have always striven to make sure the customer is satisfied. So I agreed to let him return it with the stipulation that the camera, batteries, charger, and manual all arrive in the same condition in which I sent them.
And I will refund his money via PayPal.
I've been asked to shoot photos for the BMW MOA rally in Gillette, Wyo. next month and I was originally planning to take my D200, but now I think I'll spare the more expensive camera from the dust and vibration of a motorcycle trip and carry the rejected D100 instead.
For the record, the guy in Colorado has only 5 comments in his Ebay profile - the sign of an Ebay novice or a crook. From now on, I sell no big ticket items to bidders with less than 100 positive comments in their profile.
And I'm not crazy about the hassle of international transactions, either.
Now, I'm off to the postoffice and to take my Honda del Sol in for an oil change and lube and to get the hood latch repaired.
It's always something.

Back to Devil's Tower

I'll almost certainly pay a visit to Devil's Tower while at the BMW MOA International Rally at Gillette, Wyo. in July.
I shot this the last time I was there - in July, 1995, when I was riding Western highways to Portland and to the BMW MOA International Rally in Durango, Colo.
My first visit was in 1990 during the 'MOA rally at Rapid City, S.D.

Planning

If the weather forecast were more favorable, I would be somewhere in central Tennessee right now, heading for the Georgia Mountain Rally near Hiawassee, Ga.
But the storm warnings are out and I'd the focused on keeping ahead of the rain, only to greet it when it arrives at the rally tonight or tomorrow. Rainsuit rallying is not my thing.

So I did the next best thing this morning.

I went online and registered for the 36th annual BMW Motorcycle Owners of America International Rally July 17-20 in Gillette, Wyo.

I was forced to miss last year's BMW MOA rally in Wisconsin because Maria and I were contracted to shoot a July 14 (my birthday, too) wedding. That's the one for which I finally completed the album this week.

Gillette is about a two-day ride from here with an overnight somewhere around Omaha or Sioux City, S.D.

Now the challenge is to block out time on either side of the rally for some fun riding in the West. Other than a week in the Colorado Rocky Mountains with my Indianapolis BMW Club friends last August, I did very little riding last year.
I haven't seen the Pacific Ocean from a motorcycle seat since July, 2004, and I'm really itching to get back to Big Sur. Plus I'm overdue for visits to my sons in Portland, Ore., and Las Vegas. Clearly, I have some serious motorcycle riding to do this year.

And I aim to do it.

Raphael in Amishland

I finally got around to listing my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle costume on Ebay yesterday. No bids yet, but I can't imagine this fabulous item going unsold. You can check it out here.
That's me in the costume in the Ebay listing, but the photo above is my stepson Austin in the costume at his cousin Isaac's 5th birthday party.
Isaac, his six brothers and sisters and his parents - and the dog too, I suppose - are Amish. Considering that the Ninja Turtles were popular in the 1980s and that Isaac and his family don't watch TV, all of the popular nuances of Raphael and his compadres were completely lost on the kid. Nevertheless, he seemed pleased and amused to see a big-ass masked turtle show up on his birthday and was even more pleased to discover it was Austin under that goofy suit.
Speaking of goofy suits, I'm reminded of Chris Biddlecombe, aka Cookie Monster, who used to show up at BMW motorcycle rallies in a Cookie Monster suit.
Here's a photo I shot of him in the camping area of the 1990 BMW Motorcycle Owners of America national rally in Rapid City, S.D. That's a BMW R100CS he's riding.
Cookie, as most of us know him, is a longtime member of the Indianapolis BMW Club, but lived the last several years in Huntsville, Ala. Local BMW rider Charlie Parsons told me over the weekend he had heard Cookie moved back to Indiana. I assume he still has the fuzzy blue suit, but I haven't seen it in years.
Tim Balough suggested recently that I pick up where Cookie left off and wear the Ninja Turtle suit at rallies. It's an intriguing thought, but the thing is just too bulky to carry on a bike in addition to my usual camping gear and other stuff. (I'm using a 30x18x18 box to ship it once the Ebay auction closes and there's no freaking way I'd lash something that big on the back of my bike.)