Ahhhhhhh!

This is dangerously close to at least one version of my perfect morning.
The sun is shining brilliantly in a perfect, cloudless blue sky, the temperature is a comfortable shirtsleeve 66 degrees and I'm sitting on my upstairs balcony porch blogging on my VAIO via our wireless internet connection.
I have a cup of coffee at my side and Ruthie the Wonder Dog is surveying the world from her dogservation post just outside the porch railing.
The only sounds are the birds chirping, the distant hum of traffic on the highway some five blocks away and the voices of children on the playground equipment at the park a block south. Every now and then, someone - usually a farmer in a pickup truck or on a tractor - drives past. I can also hear the distant groan of the Smith Trash Service packer truck compacting someone's trash. Friday is trash day here and ours awaits the truck at the curb.
If I listen very closely through the haze of background sounds, I can hear the snap of the flag as the wind billows through it on the nearby Little League baseball field.
This is what the folks who built my house 100 years ago had in mind when they designed a small balcony porch just off the master bedroom. Of course, the view was mostly farms and forests when Pearlsend was constructed in 1905. And the builders would have found the idea of a wireless notebook computer and the internet to be completely incomprehensible.
I grew up in a town of 2,500 and remember quiet June mornings like this from when I was a kid so, despite my 34 years in the Big City, I feel very much at home here.
That said, I'm more than ready to load the Subaru Forester with camera and camping gear and head for Colorado, Utah and points west a week from next Sunday.
Even more than I, Maria desperately needs a vacation. She's been working endless hours of overtime and is fried to the point where her publisher and her editor have threatened to confiscate her key to the newspaper office if she doesn't take a vacation.
We're photographing a wedding on Saturday, June 25 and the plan is to get out of town either that night or early the next morning. I favor a well-rested morning departure, but I understand Maria's eagerness to get on the road. The VAIO will make it possible for me to edit the wedding photos and post them to our Printroom.com site where the bride and groom and their friends and families can order prints of whatever images they like. All I need is a WiFi hotspot somewhere in Missouri or Kansas to upload the images from the road. And, of course, check e-mail and blog.
We plan to return to the canyonlands of Utah - Moab, Bryce Canyon and Zion - with a foray through Monument Valley before looping back to spend time with our friends Tim and Linda in Alma, Colo.
It remains to be seen if and when I do my 20th Annual Mid-Life Crisis Tour on the motorcycle. July has filled up, August is loading up as well and September may be the only time when I can get away.
But in the meantime, I'll sit here with a dozing dog at my feet, sip my coffee and surf the internet.

Bride of Frankenstein? I found this in my archive of negatives from my newspaper days. This woman was working on a community quilt to celebrate the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976. The completed quilt now hangs in the rotunda of a courthouse. Nice hair. Nice scarf. How very '70s. 

Michael Jackson

"Not guilty" does not mean "innocent."
Would you send your kids to his house for a sleepover?

Anyone here old enough to remember Paul Revere & the Raiders? They were big in the mid-60s and they were also the first to record Louie Louie, even though another Portland, Ore., band - the Kingsmen - had the huge hit with it. Mark Lindsey (circled) was the lead singer. Paul is still performing with the latest version of the Raiders and Mark is a solo act. 

VAIO con Dios

So here I am at the Subaru dealership, having turned our ‘02 Forester over for an oil change and lube and also to have the service technicians check out a jerkiness that has developed in the transmission.
I thought I noticed a problem a week or so ago and it was particularly pronounced on the interstate drive to the dealership, which is about 30 miles from my home.
The interstate was full of cars and trucks all headed the same way I was and it made for lots of changes in speed - plenty of acceleration and deceleration. When I let off the gas at 80mph, the severity of the engine braking felt more like I was driving a standard transmission vehicle. At other speeds, the transmission seemed to be “searching” for the right gear. There was also a noticeable lag between the time I pressed on the accelerator and when the vehicle responded. This all probably adds up to something very expensive, but I fervently hope not.
That’s because of this Sony VAIO FS660 notebook computer I’m using at the moment.
Maria and I had been having notebook thoughts for a long time, but two things pushed us over the edge.
My son Steve showed us his new Apple Powerbook G4 with all of its slick software weekend before last when we visited him and his family.
Our friend Rich, a world-class photojournalist who is recently expanding his wedding photography business as a means of escaping from Gannett wage slavery, told us how he uses a notebook as a powerful selling tool. After the wedding ceremony, he downloads his photos to his notebook computer, then sets it up to play the pictures as a slideshow at the reception. He puts a stack of his business cards next to the notebook.
So after Maria’s quilt shop visit last Saturday, we went computer shopping. Fresh in my mind were an admonition from my computer guru friend Tim that all of my software investments have been in Windows format and the recollection of having seen a really killer photo demo running on Sony VAIOs on a couple of occasions.
A visit to the nearest Best Buy gave us a chance to compare notebook screens and the VAIO was the brightest and sharpest of the bunch. So we pulled the trigger.
I’m what you might call a decisive shopper. I go into the marketplace with a fairly clear idea of what I want, can assimilate the data at hand quickly and don’t take long to make a decision. I have friends who seem to enjoy prolonging the shopping process - endlessly weighing the pros and cons of various products and to-ing and fro-ing from one store to another in a protracted search for the best deal.
The older I get, the more aware I am that time is the only irreplaceable commodity I have, so I’ve become increasingly concerned about wasting time. I guess I’d rather waste money than time. Sounds like an Attention Deficit Disorder issue, doesn’t it?
Anyhow, I figured we could use the VAIO right now. We have a wedding coming up on the 25th and want to leave immediately afterward for our photo vacation in the West. The VAIO will let us do the Rich-style slideshow at the reception and, with its wifi capability, will let us edit the wedding pictures on the road and upload them to our online sales site, probably from somewhere in Missouri or Kansas.
Since there is a bit of a learning curve involved, the sooner we get our hands on a notebook computer and get familiar with it, the better off we’ll be, I reasoned. Fortunately, Maria thinks about this the same way I do and we were congratulating ourselves on our decisiveness as we carried our new VAIO from Best Buy to our car.
We were eager to see if our photos display as well as the VAIO demo shots. They do! It’s an absolutely spectacular display. Rich uses a 17” Powerbook, but we settled for a 15.4” screen after deciding that the 17” notebook is a bit unwieldy and that extra 1.6” isn’t worth the extra money to us.
So what we got is 1 gigabyte of RAM, an 80 gig hard drive and a really fast (I forget how fast) Intel Centrino processor which the sales guy says is much easier on power consumption than other processors. The estimated battery life on a charge is between 5 and 6 hours.
Maria had been agitating for a portable DVD player for her birthday (which was yesterday) and, since this plays DVDs magnificently and on a much bigger screen, she’s a happy camper and is looking forward to traveling with it.
The touchpad substitute for a mouse is a little hard to get used to, but I’m sure I can master it. I recall my friend Tim bought a mouse for his first laptop, but the last time I looked, he was no longer mousing. I miss the mouse mostly when I’m doing a lot of point-and-click fixes in Photoshop.
The ergonomics of the keyboard have forced me to take off my watch while typing for fear the stainless steel bracelet band on my Breitling Chrono Avenger will scar the area below the keypad.
On another front, I finally heard from my tenant who had asked me to hold her rent check until her next paycheck on June 10. After I called and left a voicemail for her on Friday noting that I had not yet seen this check I was supposed to be holding, she phoned on Saturday afternoon to tell me she’d spaced it - actually she was planning to give it to me in person when I came up to clean the gutters - a task I haven’t been able to perform since I haven’t been able to borrow my father-in-law’s pickup truck to haul a ladder to the house. She assured me it was now in the mail and that she had added $25 as a late fee.
I’m relieved, but I will be even more relieved if I find the check in my mailbox when I get home from Subaruland. My experience with the Tenant from Hell prior to this one has left me extremely nervous about this whole landlord thing.
Maria’s daughter bought her a new wallet/checkbook combo for Maria’s birthday because she’s a conscientious girl who takes after her mother. Her son, who takes after his idiot father, returned Maria’s phone call yesterday, but made no mention of her birthday. We’re sure he has no idea that his mother had a birthday. She misses him since he moved to his father’s house after graduation, but I must confess I don’t. I wish him well, but my goal in life right now is a truly empty nest.
**********************************
We dodged the bullet on the Subaru transmission. The service manager test drove the car and said the lack of smoothness is a common thing for Foresters with 70,000 or more miles (88,000 on ours) and he’s never seen a transmission fail as a consequence of this symptom. So I got off with just $20.80 for the oil change and lube.
However, there is a lubricant leak around the timing belt. The service guys said I should plan to change the timing belt at the next oil change - 91,000 mles - which will be on the other end of our photo trek through the West.

Feeling smarter, faster

I doubled the memory in my desktop computer today and can finally run Photoshop CS at something approaching a reasonable speed.
I have a Dell Dimension 8200 that came with 512MB of RAM. That seemed like plenty until I installed Photoshop CS a couple of months ago. It loaded like molasses and took a little short of forever to load its browser with images from our Nikon D100s.
So I went to the Dell site and determined it would cost me $349.99 to kick the memory up to 1GB.
I complained to my computer mentor Tim, who does a brisk business helping his neighors in Alma, Colo., sort out their PC problems and he suggested I shop around. He also sent me a copy of a diagnostic program that helped me determine precisely what kind of memory my Dell needed.
My shopping led me to memory4less.com and what appeared to be the very same Samsung memory Dell was offering, but for only $195. I placed the order Monday and it arrived in today's mail.
It took me all of 5 minutes to shut down the computer, open it up, snap the new memory into the two remaining memory slots and fire up the machine.
It noticed the new memory right away and put it to work immediately.
And I'm enjoying the $155 I saved by not paying Dell's price.
The bad news in today's mail was the absence of a rent check from my tenant - the one I gave a break to two weeks ago when she said her paycheck was short due to a medical absence from work.
Our arrangement was that she would send me the rent check straightaway and I would hold it until today, which is when she gets her next paycheck.
Well, here we are on check-cashing day and there's no rent check. I was even such a sympathetic sap that I waived the $50 late penalty that is provided for in the lease.
What a dope. No more Mr. Nice Guy. From now on, it's purely business.

Wondering

I wonder what it would be like to get through a whole day without a single credit card offer in the mail or a single Liberian money scam in the e-mail.
Jesus! These people never quit.

Feeling stuck

I feel stuck today - hanging out in a holding pattern and waiting for things to happen.
Our cash flow is out of whack because our tenant is two weeks late with the rent. She called me at the end of last month and explained that she'd been off work for throat surgery - possible cancer of the larynx - and her paycheck was too short to make the rent payment. I agreed to her request that I hold her rent check until June 11 so her next pay period will cover it. However, it is now June 9 and I still haven't seen the rent check I'm supposed to be holding. Considering my experience with my previous tenant, this makes me a little nervous.
Maria's birthday is Sunday and we still haven't settled on what she would like for a present. At the moment, it's narrowed down to $150 worth of quilting supplies - which comes in a special shopping bag that gives her the status of a Bag Lady at the quilt store and confers special privileges and benefits - or a personal DVD player for use while traveling.
We're also trying to blast her loose from her job for a vacation in the West. The plan is to combine a photo expedition to the canyonlands of southern Utah and Monument Valley with a visit to our friends in Alma, Colo. The only problem is that Maria is sometimes calendar-impaired and inadvertently schedules multiple activities for the same day and time. She also has a hard time asserting her right to a vacation. Since we're planning to cover a lot of ground in a short time, carrying photo gear and in probably hot weather, this will be done in the Subaru Forester rather than on the bike.
I ordered 512 megabytes of memory for my computer this week in hopes of making Photoshop CS run faster and be more manageable. I'd love to be installing it this afternoon, but it didn't come in today's mail.
As soon as I get the memory boost, I can start ascending the learning curve of the Creative Suite of programs that is the CS in Photoshop CS. It includes the tools to make the website Maria has been wanting for our photography business and I'm eager to get going on it.
We've got our first "paying" wedding scheduled for June 25. We're only charging $200 plus prints because the father of the bride is a police detective who is also an excellent source for Maria and her newspaper.
We're scheduled to have a phone conversation tonight with Rich, probably the best photographer on the major daily where I used to work, about the dos and don'ts of the wedding photography business. Rich has been doing weddings as a sideline for a few years now and seems eager to share his knowledge and experience with us.
We're also signed up to have a booth in a community arts fair on July 9 - a scant 5 days after we get home from vacation - so we need to figure out what to include and get most of the preparatory work done before we leave.
When I went out to check the mail Monday morning, I found two guys from a tree service standing in the alley that is our driveway, looking up at the three trees the town council finally admitted responsibility for. They looked pretty intimidated by the prospect of working on three 65-foot-tall maple trees that are within 20 feet of my house. At least now I know that the town council followed through and contacted a tree service about the job. I worried that they would just let it fall between the cracks until a storm puts a tree on my house. Of course, now that they see the scope and complexity of the job, they may never come back. We shall see.

Check it out

Check out the University of St. Andrews Face Transformer:
http://www.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/%7Emorph/Transformer/index.html

Not coming back

I got a letter today from Charles Piermarini, president and CEO of Harrisdirect, a stock brokerage with whom I had an account for four years.
It was, of course, a form letter intended to lure me back into the fold with glowing statements like, "To help earn back your business, we have made significant changes in our pricing structure to ensure that you get the most value for your money," and offering me 20 free online equity trades and a $75 account credit when I transfer $10,000 or more in assets.
Ordinarily, I wouldn't have bothered to open the envelope. I'm not sure why I did. But the first line - "It has come to my attention that you have closed your account with Harrisdirect..." - annoyed me so much, I sent the following letter to Mr. Piermarini:

Dear Mr. Piermarini,
I received your letter today asserting “that you have closed your account with Harrisdirect and I would like to do everything in my power to persuade you to come back.”
The fact is, Mr. Piermarini, I did not close my account with your firm.
Without consulting me, Harrisdirect arbitrarily closed my account and confiscated my 10 shares of Cirrus Logic.
Let me explain further.
I bought the stock on Oct. 11, 2000 when it was valued at $40.375 a share. That is to say, I invested $403.75 in Cirrus Logic.
Like many stocks, Cirrus Logic was hit hard by the post 9/11 market slump and I watched as my stock plummeted in value. Recognizing that the only way to lose money in the stock market is to sell short, I determined to hang onto my stock until it regained value or until the company went out of business.
Harrisdirect apparently took a different view. Citing account maintenance fees and without warning, Harrisdirect terminated my account and, in my view, stole my 10 shares of Cirrus Logic on Oct. 13, 2004.
Whether I would ever have recouped my $403.75 investment remains to be seen, but that opportunity was denied me by Harrisdirect.
Will I come back to Harrisdirect? I think not.
Will I use whatever influence I have to dissuade investors from doing business with Harrisdirect? You may be sure.

Maria gives granddaughter Lisa her first digital photography lesson. 

Insufficiently Conservative

I created a sampler wedding album as a promotional tool for the wedding photography business Maria and I are trying to build.
It has photos from both of my sons’ weddings, a wedding of an in-law and some shots of a Hispanic bride dressing at home for her wedding.
We happened to get a chance to shoot the Hispanic girl’s preparations because Maria is good friends with her parents, a delightful immigrant couple from Mexico who operate a couple of Mexican restaurants in this area.
I love the images and think they fit well with our portfolio.
During the post-graduation open house for my stepson on Sunday, the album got passed around and a couple of the aunts who are in their 70s were startled to see non-Anglo faces among the photos.
Maria told me later that she overheard one aunt saying to the other that, “I don’t think he’s as conservative as we are.”
And I overheard them going on about how alarmed they are at the influx of Mexican and other Latino immigrants, legal and otherwise.
This from a bunch of women whose parents were born in Italy.
I had to chuckle when I heard suggestion that I might be more liberal than they. Truth be told, on most issues, I’m probably too conservative for their sensibilities.
But when it comes to slamming the door on people who want to escape from oppression or crushing poverty to live the American dream, I have to part company with people like Maria’s aunts.
My own mother was of the same mind as those women. I remember Maria and I taking her out for lunch the Easter before her October, 2000, death. We were driving through the small town where she had lived all of her adult life. It’s a community of about 2,500 mostly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant folks that, in recent years has seen an influx of Mexican families, drawn by the prospect of jobs at a new pork processing plant on the south edge of town.
“Just look at them, laying around and not working,” she hissed. “I’d like to kick their teeth in.”
Needless to say, we were startled. And, the vision of my 80-year-old mother being able to kick anyone’s teeth in was hopelessly bizarre. And, why would they be working on Easter Sunday?
I reminded her that our German and Swiss forebears came here for the same reasons the Mexicans do and it’s a damned fortunate thing for us that our ancestors weren’t shut out.
The subject got a good treatment recently in an episode of South Park when the townspeople were up in arms over space aliens coming to live in their town. The battle cry was a barely coherent, “They took our jobs!”
We hear that a lot from unmotivated losers who freak out over the idea of people they think are inferior having the ambition and gumption to make a success of themselves.
Immigrants have always given this country a booster shot of vitality that only underscores the genius of our brand of democracy and freedom.

Awwwwwwk!

This sounds like an urban legend to me, but one of Maria's aunts swears she knows the woman to whom this happened.
A woman named Julie had a talking parrot whose wings were clipped, preventing it from flying. She was on her backyard deck with the parrot on his perch and a hawk suddenly swooped down and snatched the parrot up in its talons.
As the hawk carried the parrot away to its doom, the owner heard the parrot screeching, "Julie! Julie! Julie!"

Today is my granddaughter Lisa's first birthday. Here she is at 10 months with her mom, Nicky. Live long and prosper, Lisa. 

Here's how Lisa's dad, Steve, celebrated his first birthday. That's my parents in the background. My mother clearly disapproved of Steve getting to maul his cake. The rest of us thought it was great fun. 

Here's Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (on the right), shooting the breeze with lunchtime patrons of the Spartan Inn, a cafe in Wingate, Ind., that boasts the best breaded pork tenderloin sandwich I've ever tasted. Mitch was on his way back to Indianapolis after a morning speech at Purdue University. He had visited the Spartan Inn last year while campaigning for office and just had to come back for another tenderloin and fries. For the record, the governor likes his tenderloin with mayo, tomato slices and ketchup. He's also a motorcyclist. 

Walking Psycho Jack before he imploded. The guys at the shelter weren't surprised to see him coming back. Sorry, Jack. 

A belated happy birthday

Pete Townshend turned 60 last Thursday.
Since I'll reach that milestone on July 14, I feel a certain kinship with the guy I consider the greatest talent in the history of Rock & Roll and a founding member of the greatest band in the history of R&R.
Just like his creation, Tommy, Pete drew his first breaths while England was still celebrating Victory in Europe. Tommy and Quadrophenia were largely autobiographical works for Pete. I found Tommy a bit too dark and disturbing for my taste, but Quadrophenia hit me right between the eyes, or ears as the case may be. It's my "desert island" album and hardly a month goes by that I don't listen to it in its entirety. It speaks to me in ways I can't begin to articulate and I was delighted to hear Eddie Vedder cite it as a pivotal musical experience in his life.
Every now and then, I get out the Concert for New York City DVD, made in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and find myself smiling through the tears as I watch Pete thrashing and windmilling with all the fire and fury of a guy one-third his age.
"I hope I die before I get old."
Yes, Pete. Me too. But that's not going to be for a long, long time for either of us.

Psycho Jack, trying to merge with the Berber carpet on the stairway landing Tuesday night. A mopey, depressed dog is a terrible thing to see. 

Hit the road, Jack

I’m returning Psycho Jack, the red heeler, to the Animal Welfare League shelter this morning.
Jack seemed to be coming out of his shell on Sunday and Monday. His ears and tail were up a fair amount of the time and he seemed to have a spring in his step.
But yesterday, he imploded. He seemed less perky during the morning walk in the park and, as the day wore on, became increasingly morose and depressed. By late afternoon, he didn’t want to come out of his kennel and when I took him outside, he sought out secure-looking spots behind bushes and in porch corners to hunker down and hide.
By dinnertime, he had retreated to a dark corner in Austin’s room and had to be picked up and carried back to his kennel. I’ve never seen a dog so depressed and emotionally shut down.
Ruthie didn’t help any. From the moment of his arrival, she growled and barked whenever he tried to eat or drink, even though it was from bowls we had designated as his and separate from Ruthie’s. She apparently decided there was a real danger that we would run out of food and water and, consequently, all of the food and water in the house belonged to her.
We tried to give Jack a wider run of the house Sunday evening and, when we sat on the couch to watch TV, we invited him and Ruthie to hop up and join us.
When Jack tried to climb onto the couch, Ruthie barked angrily and forced her way between him and us.
Throughout his four-day stay, it was clear he was intimidated by Ruthie and he went out of his way to avoid her.
By last night, we had concluded that Jack is too emotionally fragile to make it in our home as long as Ruthie is here. If he is to be helped, I think it’s going to have to be in a home where he’s the only dog and has no competition.
Maria decided she’ll write a column about our experience with Jack, including a sympathetic photo, and hope that the right people come forward to adopt him.
I hate it that it didn’t work, but maybe we can still be part of the solution by getting him properly placed.

Chaos and a 200-mile motorcycle ride

We picked up the red heeler, aka Australian Cattle Dog, at the shelter Saturday morning and brought him home.
As expected, he was pretty freaked out by the ride, new surroundings and Ruthie: ears down and tail between legs.
We quickly discovered he was never taught not to "mark" his territory indoors when he lifted a leg and whizzed on the floor scrubber parked by the kitchen door.
Ruthie decided he posed a grave threat to her food and water supply, i.e. all of the food and water in the house. Much angry barking and growling whenever the new dog - we're calling him Psycho Jack, or just Jack for short - tried to eat or drink from his own bowls.
Ruthie also took to staying in her kennel all weekend so she could guard her supply of food and water.
We had much to accomplish over the weekend - chiefly beginning the massive cleanup for Austin's graduation openhouse next weekend and doing concrete planning for a website for our wedding photography business. We got pretty much nothing done because of drama associated with having a new dog in the house.
Maria's mother had been in the hospital for three days after being diagnosed with a viral pericarditis, an inflammation of the membrane around the heart. That explains why she's been short of breath lately. The treatment was rest, and lots of it. Visiting her Saturday evening and photographing a restaurant our neighbor is revitalizing were piled onto the plate. We got to the photo shoot but missed visiting hours.
She was sent home for a few more days of bedrest Sunday and Maria took her parents some pancakes and other breakfast food.
Having complained about yet another good motorcycling weekend being stolen from me, I proposed to go for a ride while Maria and her daughter catered breakfast.
I headed west on I-74 in glorious sunshine without any particular destination in mind. After a few miles, during which I watched the odometer on my '03 BMW K1200GT roll over 20,000 miles, I decided to find Twin Cities BMW Motorcycles in Savoy, Ill.
With the demise of my local dealership, Twin Cities at a distance of just under 100 miles, is now my nearest BMW motorcycle dealer.
The ride was pleasant, made all the more so by conversations with strangers at a couple of rest areas. At the first stop, I emerged from the restroom to find two guys admiring my bike, which led to a conversation about the various features and qualities of BMWs.
At the second stop, a guy from Peoria, Ill., who was en route home with his wife and kids, complimented my bike and mentioned he had an '04 R1150GS. He was wearing a t-shirt from my late lamented local dealership and it turns out we were both at Spokane for the BMW MOA national rally last July and know many of the same people and places.
I found Twin Cities BMW right where it was supposed to be - on U.S. 45 south of Urbana - and had a quick lunch at a Subway near the dealership. The dealer was, of course, closed on Sunday but the point of my mission was to go for a ride and locate the place.
Having done that, I headed home, somehow missing a turn of U.S. 45 through Urbana and ending up taking a local road east to St. Joseph where I re-joined the interstate.
All systems worked perfectly and the XM radio made the ride all the nicer.
But I was coming home to chaos.
Maria and I had planned to hash out wedding photography stuff after dinner. But the girl laying out Monday's edition of Maria's newspaper called as we were clearing the dishes to announce she had a serious shortage of photos and stories. So Maria ended up shooting photos of the neighbor kids on their backyard trampoline, then dragging me to the office where we prepped the photos and wrote a couple of stories to fill holes in the paper.
On the drive home, Maria sensed something was wrong and asked. I unloaded, saying the new dog in the house has put me into sensory overload, especially coming at a time when our energies need to be on other things - like making money.
She has become very attached to Jack and encouraged by the way he's come out of his shell since arriving at our place, but she especially hates the thought of having to take him back to a shelter which very obviously bums him out.
I agreed to try to give the situation a few more days.
But Jack has spent the morning locked in his kennel because I have much work to do and can't spare the time to walk him or keep him from whizzing on the furniture.
Maria, I fear, didn't think this through to the point of realizing that the burden of keeping Jack entertained, educated and out of trouble, falls on my shoulders, since I'm the one who's at home during the day.
I hope, for her sake, we can make this dog thing work, but I'm not terribly optimistic.
We shall see...

The red heeler is coming home with us for a weekend visit today. If it works out, he'll stay. We haven't settled on a name for him, but considering his abandonment issues and depression, I'm lobbying strongly for Psycho. 

Ruthie and the red heeler temporarily named Rusty. They seem to be a better match. He came out of his blue funk once he got into the play area with us and looks like he can become a happy dog with the right care. 

Ruthie, me and Reno during a meet-and-greet yesterday at the Animal Welfare League shelter. Reno is too hyper for Ruthie and for us, too, probably. 

Power. Max Power. Will he make the cut and join our pack? 

Dog tale

Maria has decided we need a second dog.
And she has decided it should be an Australian shepherd, mainly because she had an Aussie when she was a kid and was very fond of it.
I like Aussies too, but I wasn't feeling any particular desire for a second dog. , Now that she's stopped rolling in backyard poop, Ruthie the Wonder Dog is really all the dog I need.
My friend Skip, who retired from the newspaper about five years before I bailed out, has taken to adopting strays. He and his wife now share their suburban home with seven dogs and it's freaking pandemonium whenever a stranger comes to the door. We toyed with the idea of taking their most recent acquistion - a golden retriever named Belle - off of their hands, but Skip's wife Gloria isn't letting Belle go. Probably just as well, since shortly after her arrival, Belle demonstrated that she knew how to open a regrigerator and remove and devour whatever interested her inside it. She seems to favor dairy products - yogurt and cottage cheese, but finished off a pizza the other night. Skip has blocked the fridge door with planters and barstools to no avail. Belle just moves them and helps herself whenever nobody is looking.
I was taken with the novelty of having a dog that smart, but decided I have enough to fill my days without having to stay one step ahead of a refrigerator-raiding dog.
So when Belle left the picture, Maria began lobbying hard for an Aussie. She called friends with Aussie connections and she made the rounds of the animal shelters.
This week, she called me from work to say the Animal Welfare League had a year-old black Aussie they call Reno. Reno apparenly ran away from home a month ago and spent the last few weeks as a guest in another family's home. Over the course of his visit, his hosts discovered he is very smart and knows a bunch of tricks. Apparently Reno wasn't getting along with the host's dog, so he ended up in the shelter.
Maria and I went over to the shelter at noon Wednesday to meet Reno.
It's horribly distressing and depressing to walk past all of those caged dogs, all of them up on the chain-link begging you to "Get me out of here, for the Love of God! Take me home! Please! Please! Please!"
All but one red heeler, who lay in the back of his enclosure staring at the wall. Turns out his owners moved and left him behind, chained to his backyard doghouse. Neighbors gave him food and water and finally called the authorities when it became obvious the owners weren't coming back.
"He's depressed," one of the shelter workers observed. No shit. I don't think I've ever seen a dog so depressed. He gave us a disinterested sidelong glance and then turned back to his wall.
Dogs who don't appeal to visitors enough to be adopted are euthanized. That's a politically correct way of saying Executed by Lethal Injection. Unless he gets it together, the heeler is a goner.
Reno, however, is guaranteed a home on the strength of his personality. We took him and an interesting looking puppy out into the big fenced play area and he ran and leaped and rolled and had a grand time, his sleek black coat glistening in the warm May sun. He ran with me, came when I called him, jumped so high to greet me that his head was at my eye level and seemed enthusiastic about everything.
He is, in short, a terrific dog.
But he's an Aussie. They're bright, enegetic working dogs who need to herd things and have lots of room.
Our house sits on a 55x165-foot lot and we have nothing to herd, except ourselves. Since Maria works at her newspaper 10-12 hours a day, it would fall to me to entertain the dog and I don't know that I can spare the time. Reno deserves an interesting, fulfilling life and I worry that he would be bored to the point of becoming destructive if he lived here. His entertainment would hinge on how well he would interact with Ruthie. Ideally, they could become friends and entertain each other.
So we're taking Ruthie to meet Reno at noon today and romp around the play area see how they get along. If it's a good match, we can bring Reno home as early as tomorrow.
Maria didn't much care for the name "Reno" and I wasn't crazy about it either.
Standing in the shower yesterday morning, running through possible names, I recalled the Simpsons episode where Homer decides he needs a more glamorous name and has his name changed to Max Power. He also suggests that Marge change her name to Hootie McBoob.
So, if the sleek black Aussie comes to live with us, he will become Max Power.
Stay tuned.

WWJR?

This will probably be the only post you ever see here on my religious views, even tongue-in-cheek, so don't worry about being preached to. At least not about religion.
Paging through the current issue of BMW Motorcycle Owners of America's Owners News while eating my oatmeal this morning, my eyes fell upon an ad for the Missouri State Rally on page 101.
At the top of the ad was a profile photo of an R1100S and under it, in Times Roman capitals, the letters WWJR.
After a few seconds of puzzlement, I realized I was looking at a clever variant of WWJD (What Would Jesus Do). In this case, the question is What Would Jesus Ride?
As much as I'd like to believe Jesus would ride a BMW - after all, he had style and knew about taking risks - I think it's a theologically unsound assertion.
While it might make sense for the Son of God to choose the most exalted motorcycle brand in the world, that's not the image that comes to my mind. After all, we're talking about a guy who rode a donkey into Jerusalem. He wasn't affluent, hung out with the poorest of the poor on the edges of society and didn't have much to do with the rich and powerful.
As much as it pains me to say it, if you force me to pick the appropriate motorized ride for the man from Gallilee, it would have to be a clapped out Vespa or, at best (Lord forgive me) an AMC-era Harley-Davidson.

A year of blogging

I started this blog a year ago today. According to the profile stats, I posted 159 times - some text, others photos - and cranked out 53,498 words.
Like many folks in Blogland, I've had dry spells.
Looking back on what I've written, I like the travel stuff best. There's a lot of self-absorbed ranting and venting, but that's part of what this is for, isn't it?
I've seen other bloggers come and go as their interest in posting waxes and wanes. I've enjoyed reading it all and am looking for new favorites to replace some that have vanished.
Anyone have a fave they want to share?

Fountain pen in hand, Capt. Phil Kroon writes a letter home on the day of Victory in Europe. 

Capt. Kroon's V-E Day letter to his wife, Jean, written on Adolf Hitler's official stationery. 

Capt. Kroon's V-E Day letter

Sixty years ago today, Capt. Philip C. Kroon, an artillery officer with the U.S. Army's 144th Field Artillery Group, took pen in hand in the garden outside an Austrian hotel and wrote a letter to his young bride in Redlands, Calif.
It was V-E Day - Victory in Europe Day - and the young captain from Grand Rapids, Mich., had been in combat since his unit came ashore in Normandy a few weeks after the June 6, 1944, invastion. He was looking forward to coming home, but mindful that the war against Japan seemed far from finished and that he might be needed in the Pacific Theatre.
Here is what he wrote on a sheet of Adolf Hitler's personal letterhead, liberated a day or two earlier from the Führer's Berghof retreat at nearby Berchtesgaden:

My adored wife,
Finally the work of the past year for me and over three years for the nation is completed. The war here is over completely. Of course, we are glad it is over, but to us it is sort of an anti-climax. For nearly two months now, we have completely routed the Germans. During the past few days we have seen steady streams of German soldiers marching to the rear. At some places, even the super-highway is jammed. It was a sight never to forget and one that only happens once in a lifetime. I wanted to get some pictures of it, but my camera was stolen some time ago. I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry. I now have another very good German camera that I took from a German soldier, so am better equipped than before.
Now that we are no longer at war here, I should have more time to write you and expect to get off better than one letter every five or six days. In fact, it's now been seven days this time. I'm sorry, darling. I'll try to make it up to you.

About a week ago I went through the Dachau concentration camp. Any pictures you see or stories you hear are only a small part of the picture. The stench was indescribable as well as the actual scenes. I saw some of the toughest soldiers nauseated. I won't tell you any details for they shouldn't be put on paper. It was the most terrible thing I have ever seen.

In contrast, a couple of days ago I went through one of Hitler's palaces -not the one at Berchtesgaden, but an old Hapsburg palace that he took over. It was a paragon of beauty and symmetry. In the two main floors was not a sign of Nazi Occupation except that most of the furnishings had been looted, mainly from France.

The walls were covered with priceless tapestries, the floors with thick pile rugs. We were nearly the first soldiers in the place and looked through it by ourselves. We went snooping in the cellar and came across two storage rooms. One was nearly filled with medals, of which I have a few choice ones. I also found one silver knife (not table) in the house - the only one there, so I suppose it belonged to Hitler. In another room, we found some stationery, of which this is the choicest. His personal. I have quite a bit of it and will send it home. You can give a sheet to various people, but save some of each kind, especially this with just "Der Führer" on it. I also came across some other excellent souvenirs - One pair of field glasses - the best I have ever seen - fifteen power - this may not mean much to you, but they are two and ½ times as powerful as the ones I and Pop used to have The must be worth three or four hundred dollars. I also have a pair of Luftwaffe swords that are not in the best of shape but will look good fixed up and crossed in my den if I ever have one.

Guess what, Sweets. I shaved off my mustache today - because the war is over. No one noticed it so I guess it couldn't have been so good. I'm not making any plans for a quick return home, beloved, nor am I getting any fancy ideas about it. I would give anything just to spend a few weeks with you, but there is much to be done, both here and in the Orient and I'm sure I'll be one place or the other.

Some will get to go home on their way to the Pacific and rumors are already afloat, but I'm not counting on anything - then we won't have the disappointment.
These Bavarian Alps are really beautiful, dearest mine. They are all snow covered yet, although we are not very high and last week we had snow in Munich. Today was marvelous. The view of the mountains is similar to that from our front yard, though the mountains are much closer and not as high.

During the last mad rush we have been getting practically no mail and I'm way behind, although today I got the letter you wrote on the eve of our anniversary. Sweet - just as they all are - but why not, with the sweetest wife in the world writing them. I wish my letters would get there more regularly. You probably have had a batch since that time, but it is nicer when they come spread over a long time.

Darling, I adore you completely. I don't dream of you often, but that isn't my fault. When I'm awake I can control my thoughts and they always include you. Always I wish you could share the beautiful scenery and the old German cities - Worms, Nurnberg, Augsberg, Munich, Saltzburg and the rest with me. Maybe, in future years, after they are rebuilt we will see them together. Anything we could do together would be wonderful. One thing in particular - I miss you so, Jeanie. I'll always adore you.

Your only Phil
P.S.
A little picture of you know who.


Capt. Kroon came home six months later. He made a career of the army, taking a reduction in rank to sergeant in order to remain in a downsized postwar military. His last duty post was as an instructor in the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Purdue University. Following his retirement, he worked for the U.S. Postal Service. He died of cancer in 1988. Diane, the first of his three daughters, was born Oct. 30, 1946, and grew up to be my first wife.

Bedtime story

I'm a Cancerian (7/14) and Cancer being a water sign, I've always had a certain affinity for water.
I chose an apartment and later, a condominium, because they were on small lakes. I've always felt a sense of exhilaration and awe whenever I see a large body of water, be it an ocean or one of the Great Lakes - anytime I can see water all the way to the horizon I feel strangely at home.
So it should be no big surprise that I was the first of my friends to have a waterbed when they showed up in the early 1970s.
My first wife (there were times when I called her that while we were still married) was, to a certain extent, a good sport and she went along with a lot of my ideas that she doubtless questioned and later probably regretted. Our first waterbed was just a big vinyl mattress that we filled with water. No internal baffles to inhibit wave motion, no liner, no frame and no heater. Just a big bag-o-water on the bedroom floor with enough blankets on it to insulate us from the chilly water within. We even used it to bring down our 2-year-old son's fever once - just laid him down naked on the vinyl and let the water draw the unwanted heat from his body.
Eventually, we built a frame, then stuck padded rails on it.
Hey, it was a new technology and we didn't really know what we were doing.
About 15 years later, in a moment of whimsy, we replaced it with what could only be described as a bordello waterbed: massive pine headboard and footposts supporting an overhead frame filled with six mirrors. I sat on a platform that afforded a half-dozen drawers and came with a heater.
When the marriage came unraveled in the late '80s and my soon-to-be ex found herself with a free hand to decorate as she chose, the monstrous bordello bed went to my son in Cincinnati. He and his wife still have it, sans overhead mirrors, in one of their guest bedrooms.
I bought a more conventional waterbed that I used in two apartments and a condo and eventually moved to the house my new wife and I occupied four years ago.
Over the last couple of years, we noticed the quality of our sleep declining. We'd both crawl out of bed in the mornings stiff and sore. My wife developed a work-related back and shoulder problem because of horrible desk ergonomics at the Gannett newspaper where she worked. It was further aggravated by injuries she suffered in a head-on collision with a blind woman a year ago.
I found I developed back pain if I stayed in bed too long.
We decided it was time for a new bed.
After shopping around and looking at all kinds of exotic and trendy beds - four-posters, sleighs, you name it - we decided we would be better served to put our money into a good mattress and then worry about the furniture side of the equation.
We ended up at the major furniture store in the state where the sales guy gave us a general overview of what they had, then suggested we consider Kingsdown.
Kingsdown has a pretty impressive sales system that includes a pressure sensitive pad you recline on to determine where your individual pressure points are and where you fall on the Kingsdown continuum of softness and firmness. My wife tested as a 2 and I tested as a 3 so the sales guy recommended we flop down on examples of each of the five mattresses to see if those numbers felt right to us.
We agreed upon a #3 kingsize with a basic metal frame.
And we swallowed hard at the final price of about $2,600. It comes with a 70-year warranty, so I figure I'm covered until I'm 129 years old.
It was delivered three weeks ago and I can say in all candor that we've both slept better during this period and anytime we can remember, individually or collectively.
My wife's shoulder pain, which she thought was a permanent feature in her life, is gone. We're both sleeping through the entire night with virtually no flopping around or tossing and turning. And if one of us does roll over or get up, the other remains blissfully unaware of it because there is no motion transfer.
And, of course, our dog loves it (see photo below).
The waterbed went out the second floor bedroom window in pieces and from there into the trash. I can honestly say there isn't anything about it that I miss.

Ruthie, who was allowed to nap on our bed this morning because she did not roll in poop after her morning constitutional. BTW, Maria made the quilt. 

You gotta see this

In case you missed it, NBC Nightly News had a story last night on a project undertaken by a jailer with the Multnomah County Sheriff's Department in Portland, Ore.
Jail Deputy Bret King, working the late shift, started looking up the mugshots of meth addicts. Since methamphetamine users tend to compile lengthy arrest records as the drug drags them down to an early death, the department's mugshot collection gives a graphic illustration of each person's disintegration as a functional human being.
It's absolutely stunning and horrifying and every kid or adult who thinks they can do meth and survive needs to see these photos.
They're on the sheriff's department website, along with text from part of the Portland Oregonian's stellar series on meth: Click on this link, check it out and pass it on to all of your friends. You may save a life.


http://www.co.multnomah.or.us/sheriff/faces_of_meth.htm

Ooops, she did it again

Ruthie the Wonder Dog is making me wonder.
I'm beginning to wonder what it will take to make her link the act of rolling in shit in the backyard with spending a lonely day in her kennel, followed by a bath.
I had a long soulful conversation with her this morning about how this disgusting practice makes everyone, including her, unhappy.
I think what she heard was, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
When I called her in from her morning constitutional in the back yard, she bounced up to the back door with an uncommonly large amount of dog poop matted into her fur.
So, while I wait a guy in Arlington, Va., to return my call to check quotes he gave me for that long-procrastinated airline story, Ruthie languishes in solitary.
Anyone have any dog training insights about how to stop this behavior?

A day for venting

I knew it was going to be a bad day when I caught a whiff of Ruthie the Wonder Dog returning from her morning constitutional in the back yard.
The brown smudge on her light yellow coat told the story - she'd been rolling in shit. This apparently is her idea of perfume - something she can do to make herself more interesting. She's done it at least three times in the past month, each time necessitating a bath before she's cleared to roam the house and share the furniture with the rest of us.
Today, she had the misfortune to do it on a day when the high temperature was only 52. The last time anyone bathed Ruthie in the house, we had to buy an auger and snake out the bathtub drain. From then on, all dog washing has taken place on the deck behind the house. I had plenty to do this morning and no desire to wash a dog in such chilly weather, so Ruthie was banished to her kennel in the kitchen.
Everytime I stirred from my office upstairs, I could smell her stench at the top of the stairs.
I doubt that she knows exactly what she did wrong, but she has a guilty look that tells me she knows she committed some terrible transgression.
I spent a fair portionof the morning editing images from an engagement photo shoot Maria and I did Saturday for a coworker of hers. It's a freebie - we're shooting the wedding gratis also - but once the CompactFlash cards are downloaded to my computer, it falls to me to color correct and size them, something I find increasingly annoying since we're hemhorraging money again.
The rehabilitation of our rotting front porch, which was estmated at $4,000 last summer, is mostly done and I have the contractor's bill for $5,975. Yes, that's a 50% cost overrun and if I didn't like the guy and his work, I'd be freaking livid. He explained that the cost of lumber has risen by 30% since last fall and reminded me that they had the unexpected task of shoring up the foundation where it was blowing out under the porch.
On top of that, they found an active termite colony under the porch. I called the exterminator and their guy estimated it would cost $1,200 to treat the whole property. When I gasped, he explained that it's company policy to do a complete treatment, whether it's needed or not. And then he quietly let me know, based on his inspectiono of the property which turned up no other infestations, that he thought all I needed was about 5 poison traps arrayed around the outside of the porch. And he happened to have a whole bunch of them in the back of his truck and his employer is very loose when it comes to inventory. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. I got his drift and asked if he could be persuaded to treat the porch at a reduced rate and not tell his boss. Sure, he said. So we agreed on $200 cash and I watched him install the termite poison traps.
Of course, there's no warranty here and all I have is his word as a 17-year bug man that it'll solve my problem. But then he has to trust me not to rat him out to his employer, too, so I'm counting on that bit of leverage keeping him honest with me.
I'm unaccustomed to under-the-table deals. The idea makes me very uncomfortable, but not nearly as uncomfortable as writing a $1,200 check when I hadn't planned to.
So I edited images and paid bills and stewed about our cash flow this morning.
Just before I left for the bank to shift some money from savings to checking and then on to lunch with Maria, I decided to run some food waste down the garbage disposal. When I turned off the water, I heard major spashing in the basement, a sure sign that something very wrong was going on.
I discovered to my horror that the PVC pipe running straight up from the sump pump to the pipe carrying kitchen sink/dishwasher outflow had broken at a joint midway up and all of the kitchen waste was falling straight down into the sump. Left unaddressed, it will create a terrible rotting stench that the furnace will suck up and distribute throughout the house. So we're cleaning out the sump and repairing the pipe this evening.
And, oh, did I mention that there's a leak somewhere around the downstairs shower? Maria mentioned seeing water on the basement floor after her son Austin showered the other day. I have no idea whether it's a caulking issue or a problem with the drain.
Take all of this stress and pile on top of it the fact that Maria's paper is shortstaffed and she may not be able to take a vacation this summer.
Maybe Ruthie has the right idea.
Maybe I should go out into the back yard and roll in dogshit and see if that makes me feel better. It seems to work for her.

That's me in my then-new Nepenthe shirt in a composite shot with Maria at a seafood restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey. 

Shirt tale

I'm wearing my Nepenthe denim shirt this morning because it makes me happy.
My girlfriend - now my wife - bought it for me in July 1997 when we were on our first real vacation together.
Nepenthe is a restaurant along the Pacific Coast Highway about a half-hour south of Monterey. It's a magical place along what I've come to call the Holy Road - the most scenic stretch of highway I've found in my roughly 300,000 miles of motorcycling around North America.
The shirt is faded and frayed and Maria won't let me wear it outside the house anymore but I love the look and feel of it. Here's what I wrote about that trip a few years ago in Motorcycle Tour & Cruiser magazine:
I first visited this magical area in 1986 for a BMW motorcycle rally and I've returned several times in recent years, drawn back by that fabulous twisty road between Monterey and Ragged Point.
It dives and soars along the cliffs where the mountains march down to the surging sea in a collision of shapes and colors. The images never fail to amaze me.
Whenever I return to Big Sur and the majesty of this spectacular place, I always long for someone with whom to share the experience.
The longing was fulfilled in 1997 when Maria flew out to join me in Monterey.
I was already a dozen days into my Annual Midlife Crisis Tour at this point. I'd visited my son Sean in Portland, Ore., and we'd done a camping loop of the lush green Olympic Peninsula. From Sean's house, I tore down I-5 on my ’91 BMW K100RS in a two-day run to Palm Springs to visit an Internet friend.
It was early on a Tuesday morning when I rolled out into the mid-80-degree Palm Springs predawn darkness to make my rendezvous with Maria in Monterey.
Weeks earlier, I'd used the Internet to book a room at the West Wind Lodge in Monterey. As I rode through the empty streets of Palm Springs, I knew Maria was already in the air, winging her way west.
The sky was beginning to lighten when I blended into the stream of westbound traffic on I-10.
As I crested the pass at Banning, the temperature dropped about 15-20 degrees and I pulled in to a gas station to put the liner into my jacket. The attendant came out to chat and observed that mine was only the second BMW motorcycle he'd ever seen. I smiled and decided against commenting on his powers of observation.
The freeway traffic slowed to a crawl somewhere around San Bernardino. I sat in line briefly, resigned to my fate. Then a motorcycle shot past along the line separating the left two lanes, reminding me that lane-splitting is a way of life for L.A. area riders.
I watched closely, noticing the car drivers seemed to be cooperative. After another rider flashed past, I gingerly eased into the “bike lane” and headed past the slowed or stopped cars and trucks. It got a little tight in places and I took an occasional break by easing back into a lane, but over the next several miles, I figure I saved myself a half-hour or so. Sometime after I-210 swung west, I picked up the Ride Share lane and it was clear sailing all the way back to I-5.
I gassed a short time later and rode over the mountains that form the northern ramparts of Los Angeles, stopping for breakfast at Grapevine where I-5 descends to the floor of California’s great Central Valley.
After consulting a road map, I took Calif. 46 west to U.S. 101 at Paso Robles. It felt good to be back on El Camino Real and I relaxed into the ride up to Salinas. I found the connector route to Calif. 68 and soon motored past the Toro Place Cafe and Laguna Seca Raceway – places I'd gotten to know in 1986.
After a little fumbling, I found Munras Avenue and the West Wind Lodge. Checking in, I was pleasantly surprised to learn Maria was already here. As I dropped the sidestand in my parking place, my lady emerged from the room to greet me with a very welcome hug. We did a brief soak in the motel hot tub, then set out for Maria's first visit to Calif. 1 and Nepenthe, my all-time favorite restaurant.
Leather-clad and eager for the ride, we got onto southbound Calif. 1 and the road I dream about all winter.
The Carmel Highlands were in fog – it was about 4 p.m. by now – but it was still a glorious ride and we soon broke into bright sunshine.
Summer in Big Sur means fog much of the day. It’s not unusual for the coast to be shrouded in marine fog until midday, when the sun burns through, only to yield to fog again as afternoon becomes evening.
Nepenthe is a rare delight – a casual restaurant with a great, affordable menu and a spectacular view of the mountains and the Pacific. It grew out of a getaway Orson Welles built for himself and Rita Hayworth, but the two divorced before they got a chance to use it. The rambling complex that is Nepenthe consists of the Phoenix gift shop, surmounted by the Cafe Kevah on an expansive open deck cantilevered over the cliff. Up the hill from the cafe is an upper restaurant that offers a mix of outdoor and sheltered dining. Over the years, I’ve come to treasure Nepenthe as a perfect spot for a meal or a break. The place takes its name from the mythical Greek drug of forgetfulness and it's a perfect moniker.
The relaxed atmosphere, enhanced by the tinkle of wind chimes and soft New Age music and the subtle scents of sea and shore always lifts my spirits. It helps me shift gears from the rush of the road to reconnect with the silence within and the beauty around me.
The lower cafe at Nepenthe was closed for the day, so we went upstairs and had a wonderful dinner seated outside and facing the sea. I had salmon steak fresh from Monterey Bay and Maria ordered a shrimp and scallop salad. Nepenthe was the perfect welcome back to Big Sur and it put us in a mellow mood.
The ride back was one of the most amazing I've ever had. The fog was rolling in and every bend in the road brought a new fantastic scene: fog spilling into a sun-filled canyon to our right or plumes of mist welling up like geysers over the cliffs to our left.
We got back to the room happy but very tired – we'd both been up since well before dawn and Maria, especially, was running on empty.
We took our time about getting up the next morning, then hiked down Munras Avenue to Denny's for breakfast. We walked down to the harbor where we watched a sea otter preening himself in the water just below the harbor master's office. Leaving our furry friend, we strolled west along the shore, stopping to explore some of the shops at Fisherman's Wharf and sharing a peach frozen yogurt cone.
We continued on through Cannery Row to the Monterey Bay Aquarium where we marveled at the world class displays of marine life from the microscopic to the huge.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium is a must-see attraction for any visitor to the area. We stood mesmerized for what must have been a half-hour, peering through the largest aquarium window on earth at the giant fish that flourish in the million-gallon tank that replicates the offshore world of Monterey Bay. The place also features a spectacular multi-story kelp forest and an always entertaining colony of sea otters.
After a soak in the motel hot tub, we rode back down to Fisherman's Wharf for a generous seafood dinner at Rappa's Seafood Restaurant at the end of the pier. I was reminded anew that the seafood is yet another reason I love this place so much.
We rode back to the motel and bagged it about 9 p.m., very full and very tired.
We were up early Thursday morning and rode out to the Toro Place Cafe for breakfast. This is a pleasant little eatery near Laguna Seca. They serve a tasty breakfast and I love the eclectic décor, highlighted by an old-fashioned glass-topped gas pump that is home to a family of goldfish.
After topping off the tank near Laguna Seca, we returned to Calif. 1 and headed down the coast. The light fog soon yielded to sunshine and we stopped often to admire the colors, examine the plant life and take pictures.
This is not a road for hurrying. With some of the most glorious scenery in North America, this is a road to be savored – a ride to be stretched out as long as possible. The road cooperates with twists and turns that snatch you back from cliff’s edge, deep into a creek-cut canyon before hurling you back up the mountainside to yet another breathtaking view of wave-dashed rocks and swirls of blue and turquoise and aquamarine.
Mother Nature and the Pacific don’t want this road to be here and periodically they conspire to blast it with winter storms and landslides that carry away great chunks of it. The El Niño storms of 1998 were particularly bad and closed the road from February to May. Glancing down and to the right on the last tight switchback south of Ragged Point, we were startled to see a semitrailer truck on its side in the ravine – a grim reminder of why you seldom see big trucks on the Big Sur stretch of Calif. 1.
We made quick work of the 40 miles of sweepers north of Morro Bay and began looking for lunch. We chose the Galley for its view of the harbor and Morro Rock. Lunch was cheerfully served fried shrimp and clam strips. We watched the gulls and pelicans swoop and dive in the afternoon sun from our table by the window.
After lunch, we visited a nearby gift shop were Maria bought a ring for her daughter, Morgan. Standing by the bike, I heard Maria shriek and turned to see her splattered with pelican poop. It caught the right shoulder of her leather jacket, a dab on the top of her head and splashed onto the tank, fairing and handlebars of the bike. One whiff made it clear that pelicans like seafood, too.
We got some paper towels from the gift shop and cleaned things up as well as we could before gassing and getting out of town. The ride north went quickly because Maria was getting more into leaning into the turns. We stopped at Lucia for iced mocha and iced tea before pressing on north.
We reached Carmel and the beach near Point Lobos in time to dance with the surf and watch a golden sun set on a near perfect day.
After shedding our leathers, we walked down to a liquor store and picked up a six-pack of Pacifico beer, a bag of Tostitos and some jalapeno cheese dip for a few hours of television watching.
Another splendid day!
We returned to Denny's for breakfast the next morning and ran into two couples on matching white Honda Gold Wings from Tennessee.
Today's ride would be an inland exploration. After breakfast, we headed down Carmel Valley Road – a county road separated from Highway 1 and the ocean by the coastal mountain range. Lying in the lee of the ocean breezes, Carmel Valley is usually free of chilly maritime fog this time of year. About 10 miles down the road from Calif. 1, we shed our jacket liners.
As we cruised south, the road plunged into twisty canyons, following creeks and over-arched with ancient oak trees. I felt as if I had been transported back to old Spanish California as we rode mile after mile in the dense woods, seeing only the occasional car or pickup truck. We passed an isolated ranch with curious-looking signs requesting, “Please avoid newts crossing the road.” A little further down the road, a sign advised: Cattle Guards Next 11 Miles.
Eventually, the road climbed out of the canyons over vast brown grassy hills, affording vistas that opened onto mountains and valleys for miles. The road was designated G16 and, on an impulse, I turned right at a bridge and followed G17 toward Greenfield, past fields of grape vines flying silver ribbons to scare birds away from the ripening fruit. At Greenfield, we picked up U.S. 101 and rode north a few miles until I saw a sign directing us to Soledad Mission.
We found the mission a short time later west of the main highway. A BMW K75 belonging to another couple out for a day ride leaned on its sidestand in the parking lot.
The day was warm, but it was comfortably cool inside the thick adobe walls of the restored 200-year-old mission. After exploring the mission and wondering at an improbable statue of the Virgin Mary dressed in black lace, we lit a couple of candles and returned to G17. We followed the road north and west through more agricultural land where farm workers were packing lettuce in the fields.
Picking up Calif. 68 just west of Salinas, we returned to Monterey and the West Wind Lodge. We changed clothes and rode down to Fisherman's Wharf for a delicious dinner of seafood provencal at Ablonetti's followed by ice cream cones for dessert.
Even though it was a low-mileage day, these were quality miles.
We gathered up our dirty laundry and spent about an hour at the Del Monte Shopping Center laundromat, then capped the evening with a soak in the hot tub.
We rolled out about 9:30 Saturday morning and headed down Calif. 1 for one last coastal ride.
It was chilly and foggy and delightful.
We passed a large herd of Herefords on the plateau sweeping down to the sea just north of Big Sur. In a corner of the field were a couple of herdsmen, dressed as cowboys – one of them wheeling his mount in clockwise circles as we flashed by. We gassed at the BP station at River Inn, paying a stunning $2.30 a gallon for 92 octane premium.
Then, it was on to Nepenthe where we arrived moments before a large contingent of the California Pantera Club, out for a Saturday morning drive. Intent on beating the car club crowd, we hustled up to the Cafe Kevah, where I had an omelet and Maria had a tostada. We fed much of our sourdough toast to the Steller's Jays and the crows that patrol the cafe deck looking for leftovers or handouts.
We stopped a couple of times to take photos, finally drawing rein at Lucia for drinks and a $3 chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookie. There we passed a pleasant half-hour in conversation with another motorcycle couple from Indiana. Finally, we took our leave and headed back north, stopping a couple of places for Maria to get pictures of me on the bike with the coastline features in the background.
As we approached Carmel, we found ourselves in s-l-o-w stop-and-go traffic, stretching all the way past Carmel Valley Road. After several minutes of crawling, we were passed by a Harley rider on the berm and followed him past scores of cars to the open freeway.
Back at the room, I called a Yellow Cab while Maria changed and we packed her leathers. The cabby arrived within minutes and I followed the cab to the airport, catching up with Maria halfway through the terminal.
We hustled her to the gate and she was off to Los Angeles, Chicago and home.
I rode back to the Lodge, read some of Ted Simon's Jupiter's Travels, watched some TV and dined on pizza and Diet Coke from Domino's.
It was a hurried conclusion to a my best-ever visit to my favorite places and I realized that night that it would be a hard act to follow. I hit the road early the next morning for a ride home that took me through Yosemite, the deserts and canyonlands of Nevada and Utah and the mountain majesty of Colorado.
Solo travel has its merits, but once you find someplace special, it's even better when you can share it.

Stupid reporter tricks

There was a bank holdup Tuesday morning in a small town in the coverage area of my wife's newspaper.
The reporter for the competing daily - a pathetic, ineptly run rag that began publication about 5 months ago and only has a circulation of about 400 - is a clueless young woman in her first newspaper job out of college.
Rather than checking with police outside the bank, the girl walked into the bank, getting her fingerprints all over the place and pretty much mucking up the crime scene.
For those of you who don't know, this is a professional blunder of epic proportion. Any competent reporter knows you don't violate the integrity of a crime scene and that the worst thing you can do is interfere with investigators doing their work. Conversely, competent police investigators recognize that reporters also have a job to do and take care to give them whatever facts they can divulge without compromising the investigation. The detective handing this case for the local sheriff's department has an exemplary record of cooperating with the media, especially with reporters (like my wife) who have a proven record of accuracy and trustworthiness.
The detective gave the girl his card and asked her to call him on Wednesday to arrange to come in and be fingerprinted - just like all of the bank employees - so investigators could eliminate their prints and perhaps isolate those belonging to the perp.
Wednesday passes and she doesn't call.
This morning, she calls the detective to ask questions about the case. He says, "I thought you were going to call yesterday and arrange to come in and get fingerprinted."
Silence.
He goes on to explain in a non-confrontational way that she's not a suspect and it's just part of the normal procedure of eliminating all of the irrelevant fingerprints.
She finally tells him her editor said she didn't have to do it and if he has anything more to say about it, he should say it to their attorney.
No apology for compromising the crime scene or for not calling yesterday - just a brutally stupid refusal to cooperate.
I fully expect her and her paper to try to frame this situation as a Freedom of the Press issue. However, there is absolutely no basis in First Amendment free press rights or any other traditional journalistic practice to justify her non-cooperation.
In fact, she could be charged with tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice. And nobody, not even the American Civil Liberties Union, will be able to mount a credible defense.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Happy Birthday, Doreen Tracey! 

M-i-c, k-e-y...

Doreen Tracey, one of the original Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeers, is 62 today.
We've been acquainted since I did a story on her for my newspaper about 30 years ago.
I just got off the phone with her and am delighted to report she's happy and healthy and living large in her hometown of Burbank, Calif.
She's got a few pages in Paul Auster's book of true life stories titled I Thought My Father Was God. Auster, you may recall, has a program on National Public Radio.
Just for the record, Doreen says she doesn't plan to start drawing Social Security for another five years, even though she became eligible today.

Me and my 10-month-old granddaughter Lisa. 

Procrastination

I’m procrastinating and I know it.
I accepted a freelance writing assignment a month ago to do a piece about the future of airlines and how that will impact the myriad businesses that serve the airlines.
We’re talking about folks who build and sell airplanes, dealers in avionics equipment, spare parts, food suppliers – all the people the airlines turn to for the stuff they need.
Even though I have an American Airlines frequent flyer Master Card that earns me a frequent flyer mile for every dollar I run through it, I’m nowhere close to what you would consider a frequent user of airlines. I know very little about airlines and the problems they face, much less have a crystal ball to divine their future.
In short, I don’t know Jack about airlines.
But I do know about words, so I figured this is just a simple piece of journalism – figure out who has the information I need, call them on the phone and ask them to say a few words on the subject, lash the quotes together into some kind of coherent narrative, e-mail the sucker off to the publisher and watch my mailbox for the check.
But (at least) one thing is holding me back: fear of embarrassing myself with a piece that betrays a lack of knowledge of the subject. The last thing I want is to write something that will cause people in airline-related businesses to chuckle over my ignorance.
So, I’ve been putting off making those calls to high-level management types in the airlines – guys whose biographies have appeared in Fortune magazine. I hate to admit it, but it’s just flat intimidating.
I realize that they’re just people – mostly my age – who happen to have specialized in something outside my scope of knowledge. I expect I know more about motorcycle safety, long-haul motorcycle touring, journalism, the edged weapons of the Third Reich, and certain forms of meditation than they will ever know.
But I remain stuck and use other tasks and responsibilities to avoid making those calls.
A contractor was scheduled to have a crew here this morning to begin rehabilitation of the porch and balcony on the front of my 1903 Queen Anne Victorian house. The previous owners had a penchant for using untreated lumber, which led to water damage and rot that must be dealt with before the porch disintegrates.
Consequently, I waited and I waited, reasoning that I don’t want important telephone interviews interrupted by a contractor punching my doorbell button.
Well, the crew showed up about a half-hour ago and went to work without bothering me. I can hear the sound of nails being pried loose and of boards being ripped off and tossed to the ground.
Now that they’re here and the work is underway, I need a new excuse not to work on the piece.
I’ve run out of ideas for blogging, so I’ll have to look elsewhere for important alternative jobs.
Oh, yeah. I need to go to the bank and the postoffice.
That’s the ticket.

Another loose end accounted for

It’s hard for me to stay on track when I write.
I think of tangential stuff that might elucidate or amplify a point I’m making, but I worry that it actually detracts from the piece because it can spiral off into infinity.
So when I wrote the post about my first real girlfriend turning 60 this month and my fondness for connections with my past, I was tempted to throw in this story to illustrate the point:
Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for the spring of 1956. (Yes, I know that was almost a half-century ago. And yes, I realize that a reference to the 1960s cartoon series Rocky and Bullwinkle is lost on younger readers. And yes, I know this is one of those parenthetical digressions.)
I was recovering from a broken leg – the consequence of an unfortunate bicycle-car encounter in which my left femur was broken on the front bumper of a doctor’s Cadillac.
I was in plaster from waist to left ankle and spent the final month of my fifth grade year at home.
I don’t recall who it was but some friend of my parents decided I could use a pen pal to occupy my time. They hooked me up with an Australian kid named Winston Sleaford who lived in Kabra, a short distance from Rockhampton, which is situated where the Tropic of Capricorn crosses the east coast of Australia.
It was about as far away as one could be from my small Midwestern hometown – a land of exotic marsupials where everyone except a few Aborigines conveniently spoke English. Being about a year older than I, Winston was born during World War II and was doubtless among tens of thousands of boys throughout the British Empire named for wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
I don’t remember much about our correspondence other than that his first effort was on a commercial note card with a pen and ink sketch of a koala on the cover and that he included about a dozen eucalyptus leaves. I’d never seen or smelled eucalyptus leaves before, so it was pretty cool.
We corresponded for a year or two before he got busy with other stuff and stopped writing.
Over the years, Winston’s name and simple address - Kabra via Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia – popped into my consciousness whenever I thought about that part of the world.
Then, around Christmas 2000, I got an e-mail from Winston. He’d tracked me down with an internet search engine, apologized for being the first to stop writing and was eager to catch up.
He’d had a career with the Postmaster General's Department in Australia, had a wife and kids and grandchildren and was enjoying his retirement. I responded with a catch-up e-mail and photos of myself and my family.
Since then, we’ve exchanged holiday e-mails and I get the feeling that the re-connection has given him the same sense of tying up a loose end that it has for me.
How often do you get to renew a 50-year-old friendship with someone you’ve never met?

Remembering the first girlfriend

My first real girlfriend, the first girl I ever kissed, turns 60 this month.
As Hunter S. Thompson liked to say, it gives a man paws.
(I’ve got three months left in my 50s, but that dubious milestone has been looming large in my awareness lately.)
Her name was Ann and we met on Monday, July 9, 1959. I know the date because I kept a diary during that period.
We were at a Presbyterian youth camp and it was the summer before our freshman year in high school. I was from a small rural county seat town of 2,500. She lived about 20 miles away in a Big Ten college town of about 25,000. My dad was an independent insurance agent and Realtor. Her father was a professor of agronomy.
I had no way to know at the time, but the relationship formed the template for a series of unfortunate long-distance relationships later in my life.

But I was a week shy of turning 14 and all I knew was that I liked her looks and personality and we found each other interesting enough to begin a correspondence at a time before Zip Codes when First Class postage was a measly 3 cents.
We saw each other only rarely, being too young to drive and being at the mercy of our parents for mobility. My parents had relatives and shopped near where she lived, so I’d call her on the phone whenever I was in the neighborhood and got the chance.
Later it was car double-dates with older buddies who had a driver’s license, then solo car dates and “parking” at the university football stadium lot – a popular make-out location where you could steam up your car windows without fear of interruption by police.
We dated off and on until about the middle of our sophomore year when I got distracted by a girl who was a Candy Striper (volunteer nurse wannabe) in the hospital where I had minor surgery in October. The Candy Striper went on to become a nurse, my wife for 26 years and the mother of my two sons.
So, yes, I dumped Ann. I’m not proud of it. I’ve never taken pride in hurting people’s feelings.
We had a high mutual regard, but we just weren’t on closely parallel life paths.
The last time I saw her, she was a senior at a Quaker-founded college and I, having flunked out of college twice and earned a medical discharge from the U.S. Air Force, was in my first real job as a reporter on a small-town daily newspaper.
She married a college football star who went on to be a banker in a major – make that the major – Midwestern city. And she became an ordained Presbyterian minister and counselor.
My somewhat more profane path led me to a 34-year career as a journalist at the largest evening daily in my home state. I also renounced my somewhat nebulous Presbyterian faith and converted to Catholocism 12 years ago this Easter.
Some time ago, I Googled her up by doing a search for her rather unusual German surname. I found she's kept it, forming a non-hyphenated double last name including her husband’s more common surname.
I found her brief biography and a photo on a counseling center website and, despite the nearly 40-year span of time, immediately recognized her.
One of my most sharply defined Cancerian traits is my attachment to the past and to the significant people of my past, even if I lose contact with them for decades.
I’m fighting a strong urge to send her an e-mail, just to say, hello, happy birthday and remark on what a long strange trip it’s been.
I have no desire to see her or even have a phone conversation – just an impulse to check in and report that I’m still on the planet and that I remember her.
Should I let this blogpost serve as the resolution to that impulse or should I dash off an e-mail? Anyone out there have an opinion?

More encouraging words out of Iran

The deadly (to despots) contagion of freedom continues to spread:

Iran Press News: According to received reports from various cities in Iran, today which marks the first celebration of the Iranian New Year's Festival of Fire was met with celebrations as well as huge protests and demonstrations against the Islamic regime of Iran. The protestors chanted: "We need no Sheikh or Mullah, we curse YOU - RUHOLLAH!"

A report from Tehran: Young celebrants today set scarecrows in the likeness of various Mullahs, such as Khamenei, Rafsanjani, Khatami, Sharoudi, Jannati, etc. on fire in the streets. They cried out slogans such as: "Referendum, referendum, this is the people's dictum."

In various parts of the capitol, celebrations and parties rage on. As a part of this celebration which is held on the very last Tuesday night of the year, dry bundles of bramble and shrubbery are set on fire and people jump over them. This is in order to purge their spirits of all the sins and tribulations of the passing year, in order to start the new year, with a pure heart. This is an ancient Persian (Zoroastrian) tradition, one that the Mullahs have done their best to eradicate since their takeover in 1979.

An eyewitness reported that despite severe crackdowns by the Revolutionary Guards and storm troopers, people bravely came out of their homes to celebrate. The sound of bursting firecrackers (which is a part of the celebrations), fireworks, toy rockets, confetti and various other celebratory trajectiles can be heard all over Tehran and smoke has filled the streets.

In one of the grassy knolls, in a suburban area of Tehran, large bonfires were lit and people danced around it and continued chanting the various slogans in defiance of the Mullahs and their henchmen. It is reported that the local Mullahs in various areas of several areas have locked themselves in their mosques fearing the crowds who continually and collectively shout out their slogans.

In several other parts of Tehran, revolutionary guards who have blocked off roads in order to stop cars carrying passengers of various groups from joining others. However people have begun parking their cars and have joined their fellow celebrants on foot. The guards however have become frightened by the force of the people. In this specific area several non-Iranian journalists were also present with their film crews, reporting.

In another area of the city people took to setting the French flag on fire while chanting: "Europe is finished and so are their Mullahs." OR "Bush, Bush, where is Bush?" (In Persian this rhymes: Bush, Bush, kush, kush!).

Like last year's celebration, the brave women who also participating in the celebrations removed their headscarves, stomping and dancing.

In the town of Karaj, near Tehran, people chanted: "Death to Khamenei" as the brutal revolutionary forces took chains and batons to people, severly beating and injuring many.

In the Southern city of Ahvaaz, on the Iran/Iraq border and the surrounding townships celebrants also came out in droves, confronting the regime's thugs. In the Shi'ite holy city of Mash'had, the city closest to the border of Afghanistan, where anti-regime and anti-Mullah fervour has always been most impressive, large groups of celebrants were arrested and detained.

My Amish niece Mary being delighted to have a glamor photo of herself in shades and fuzzy turquoise slippers. 

My maternal grandmother. She died six years before I was born. Cover one half of her face, then the other - two different faces. I wish I had known her. 

Maybe they'll fix it themselves

I just read a report about the Pink Revolution in Iran in which more and more Iranians are expressing their disapproval of their Islamist rulers by adopting colorful clothes and styles and mannerisms more suited to the modern industrial world than to Middle Eastern feudalism.
Those brave folks who defy the mullahs must surely be encouraged and inspired by the democratic elections next door in Iraq.
With any luck at all, they'll throw out the Islamists and install a more enlightened (maybe even democratic) regime, thus ending the developing need for us to step in and shut down Iran's nuclear program.
One can hope.

Yanked back

I had lunch with a longtime friend yesterday - a guy named Skip who started his career at "our" newspaper in 1967, the same year I did. He's a fellow Cancerian, also divorced from a Scorpio, who will mark his 67th birthday within days of my 60th this July.
Skip died about a year ago. Really.
He had a bizarre heart episode in which his heart suddenly jumped from 72 beats/minute to 270 bpm. Minutes after his wife got him to the ER, his heart spazzed out, went into flutter mode and then flatlined.
The ER doc hit him with 100 volts across the chest to no effect. Then she recalled reading about the effectiveness of putting one paddle on the right side of the chest and the other on the left hip.
She cranked the machine up to 200 volts, yelled, "Clear!" and let him have it. His wife said he leapt about six inches straight up and, when he came down, his heart started beating again.
His next recollection was waking up much later with tubes down his throat.
But, as you might expect, he had an interesting experience during that period he was without a heartbeat - a point where a lesser doc would have called it and declared him dead.
His recollection is of a white featureless background out of which his long-dead father emerged.
Skip's dad died an old, enfeebled man, ravaged by diabetes that cost him a leg. But the father Skip saw was as he looked in his 40s - muscular and fit and in the prime of life. He stood there at a distance of what seemed like 20 yards, staring at Skip with his arms crossed over his chest. Neither spoke a word.
Then Skip's dad turned to his left and stepped into the white nothingness.
Presently, he reappeared with Skip's maternal grandparents, looking as they did late in life. The three of them stared across the void at Skip and he stared back, no one speaking. Then they turned and walked into the whiteness.
"Those were the three closest people to me when I was growing up," Skip said, adding he spent every summer on his grandparents' farm in southern Illinois.
The next impression he can retrieve was of a gray iron bar about 2 inches thick and 18 inches shooting through his chest and another piercing his left hip.
The point of our lunch meeting - I hadn't seen him since our paper was chloroformed by the parent corporation in the late 1990s - was to talk about motorcycles. Skip had bikes when he was in his 30s and is getting back into motorcycling. He wanted my thoughts on what bikes might be right for him.
He's signed up to take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's novice rider course next month and I'll bet he's the oldest student they'll have this year.
But my friend Ted Simon rode a BMW R80 G/S around the world - yes, around the entire planet - in the two years following his 70th birthday.
I think Skip will be just fine on a bike and I hope to ride with him this summer when he decides on a machine.

Apropos of nothing

I've got a Gibson without a case,
but I can't get that even tanned look on my face...