Did I mention that it rains here?

It's a rainy, sleepy holiday weekend Sunday.

Pete and Ruthie ran out into the pouring rain first thing this morning and promptly got soaked to the point that we didn't want to let them back into the house.

Our house has no gutters and there is a valley in the roofline near the back door that channels rainwater into a veritable cascade. It apparently strikes Pete as a bad thing, because he attacks the stream of water and bites it. (See photo above.)

We went to 10:30 a.m. Mass and then to Lowe's where Maria bought a small can of paint to try out a new color for the guest bathroom.

Then there were naps and the last half of the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race and now we're getting cabin fever and preparing to sally forth again in the deluge to rent a DVD and maybe buy more paint.

Do we know how to have fun, or what?

Setting the record straight on Iwo Jima

This being Memorial Day Weekend (I cringe when I hear some moron call it “Memorial Weekend”), Maria has s fitting column in the paper today.
She recounted the story of how we helped one of the forgotten Iwo Jima first flag-raisers get the recognition he had been denied more than 60 years. Unfortunately, the recognition came a few months after his death, but his family and fellow Marines appreciated the effort.
Phil Ward was a Marine from Crawfordsville, Ind. who was a member of the patrol sent up Mount Suribachi fairly early in the battle for Iwo Jima and at a point where there were still plenty of Japanese holed up in the mountain that had been transformed into a veritable fortress. Ward and his buddies were tasked with raising the Stars and Stripes on the summit of Suribachi, the highest point on the island.
They found a piece of water pipe, tied the flag to it and jammed it into the ground. Ray Jacobs, the last surviving member of that patrol, told me in a phone interview that they immediately heard shouts and cheers from the Marines below and in seconds the Navy ships anchored just offshore took up the din with sirens and horns.
Jacobs didn’t say so, but I suspect it was the high point of his entire life.
A Marine combat photographer by the name of Lou Lowrey was there and shot several photos of the event.
The moment was short-lived however, because they immediately came under fire from Japanese hidden in caves in the cone of the volcanic crater of Suribachi.
Lowrey scrambled for cover and fell a short distance down the slope, damaging his camera.
Later that day, a larger, more conspicuous flag was sent up the mountain. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who died a few months ago, won a Pulitzer Prize for his iconic photo of that second flag-raising.
By chance, Rosenthal’s images were transmitted to San Francisco first and Lowrey’s pictures, however historic, never got the attention they deserved. Likewise, the men in that first flag-raising patrol faded into the mists of history. One man, John Bradley, participated in both flag-raisings. His son James wrote about the second flag-raising in “Flags of Our Fathers,” a best-selling book that Clint Eastwood turned into a major motion picture.
Rosenthal’s flag-raising picture was published on the front page of nearly every newspaper in the United States and was the inspiration for the U.S. Marine War Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery. The Marine Corps became so heavily invested in the image that very little effort was made to set the record straight on the men and the circumstances of the first flag-raising.
In fact, official Marine Corps histories denied that Phil Ward and Ray Jacobs were among the men in the Lowrey photos, even though they and their families knew better.
Phil Ward returned home to Crawfordsville where he lived out the rest of his life until he died of cancer just after Christmas, 2005. It was generally known that he had fought on Iwo Jima, but just about nobody in town knew he was among the first flag-raisers.
Maria was managing editor of the Crawfordsville Journal Review at the time. The day his obit ran in the paper, Maria got a call from Chuck Tatum, another Marine Iwo vet living in California, telling her about Phil’s contribution to history on Suribachi.
Knowing I’m a World War II history buff, Maria called me at home and gave me Chuck’s phone number.
Together, and with the help of young historian Dustin Spence, a California theatre student who hoped to play the role of Phil Ward in the Eastwood movie, we unraveled the story. It wasn't easy because Leatherneck, the official Marine Corps magazine, resisted the idea that Ward and Jacobs were in the Lowery photos. The editor of the magazine told me flat-out that they might have been on the mountain, but they’re not in the pictures.
Over the next few months, Spence put together a comprehensive presentation that, fueled by the publicity created by the Journal Review and carried worldwide by the AP, persuaded the Marines to amend the record and officially recognize Phil and Ray as being in the Lowery pictures. Incidentally, it was only through Spence’s research that James Bradley learned his dad had also been among the first flag-raisers – the only Marine to participate in both events. Apparently the elder Bradley never thought it was important enough to mention. Bradley subsequently updated later editions of his book to include Ward and Jacobs.
Jacobs, who went on to become a newscaster in the San Francisco area, was the last surviving participant of either flag-raising. He died Jan. 29, 2008 at the age of 82 of natural causes in a Redding, Calif., hospital.

Saturday morning

I’m enjoying a Saturday morning to myself. Maria and Austin went to the ASU Farmers Market and then off to Walmart in search of a set of car ramps so Austin can crawl under his “new” car and change the oil, spark plugs and spark plug wires. He already replaced the air filter that was so clogged with cotton that it looked like the car had been driven through a cotton field just before harvest.

The car runs kinda doggy and Austin is hopeful these tweaks will correct the problem and make it a bit more fuel efficient.

In the meantime, I hit the post office and then drove to Hastings where they steadfastly refused to send any one over to the cafe to sell me a cup of coffee. OK, fuck ‘em.

Now I’m back at my usual spot at Books-A-Million where I get 10% off my coffee and don’t have to listen to crappy music.

This should irk all of the right people...

Strange days

Former Indianapolis News compadre Art Harris emailed me a few minutes ago to alert me to a story being carried by the Indianapolis FOX affiliate about a deceased 750-pound woman, whose body was removed from her home on a flatbed truck.

There is apparently great outrage that the Marion County Coroner’s office would be so callous as to haul her down the street on the flatbed.

You can see the video here.

In other odd news, the ladies at the Brookland post office were all a-twitter this morning because someone told them the barbecue restaurant going into the vacant restaurant building across U.S. 49 from the new Citgo will be named Brokeback Barbecue and will hire only male waiters.

I think someone is yanking their chain. It’s working. They were really scandalized and outraged.

Giving the Subaru a taste of something new

The Subaru needed 2.5 quarts of oil to bring the level back up on the dipstick.

Austin reminded me yesterday that there are special blends for high-mileage cars that accommodate looser engine tolerances, so I drove to Auto Zone and bought three quarts of Castrol GTX High Mileage motor oil.

I’ll check the oil level daily and will be interested to see if we use less of this stuff than Pennzoil I’d been adding.

Easy Reader

I think I may have found the ultimate memory card reader, especially for laptops and netbooks.

Office Depot had the Ativa 52-in-1 Memory Card Reader on sale for $10 off the regular $29.99 price. And what’s even better, it’s also a 3-port USB 2.0 hub.

I’d been thinking my Mini 9 could use a USB hub to augment its three ports. The hub also comes with a power cord that the manual suggests will assure “stable power” while in use. I’m working without the power cord at the moment and suspect I’ll never need it.

As the name suggests, it has four slots that accommodate 52 types of digital memory cards, most of which I’ve never heard of. All I have at the moment is CompactFlash, SD and xD, but who knows what our next gizmo will use?

Anyhow, it’s a lot of extra functionality for only $19.99, even if the 8% sale tax bumps it up to $21.59.

One problem solved, another persists

Here's one of the first photos shot with my new Olympus Stylus 850SW. It's Maria, of course, as she was leaving for work this morning.

I've been hankering for a small, rugged digital camera to complete my travel electronics/blogging package and I found it last night for $158 at Sam's Club.

This is a slightly less robust and lower-res version of the camera I recommended for my BMW friend Charlie for his motorcycle trip to Alaska last year. I shoots 8 megapixel images and is shock (can be dropped from as high as 5 feet) and water (down to 10 feet) resistant, hence the S (shock) and W (water) in the name.

Like all point-and-shoot digital cameras, it's menu-driven, which means I'm studying the manual to figure out how to make it do all of its tricks.

I'd hoped to get a camera that used a conventional SD memory card. This uses a smaller, Olympus xD card, so I'll have to buy a card reader to download photos to my Mini 9 rather than use the built-in SD card reader. In the end, the advertised ability of the camera to take abuse on the road trumped the inconvenience of an oddball memory card.

I got interested in the SW line of Olympus Stylus digitals through the blog of Jill Homer, an Alaskan newspaperwoman who posts spectacular photos of the places she rides her mountain/trail bike. Check out her blog: Up In Alaska

Maria drove the del Sol to work this morning because the oil warning light is flickering again on the Subaru.

I was under the impression that this problem was solved with the installation of a new PCV valve at the Memphis Subaru dealership just before Maria and Austin make their Indiana trip last week.

I asked Austin to check the oil regularly and, if necessary, add one of the two quarts of Pennzoil 10W40 I sent along with them. Driving home from Walmart last night, I noticed the oil light flickering and discovered that, through some miscommunication, nobody had checked the oil during or after the trip - a situation that led me to believe the problem was solved. Maria thought Austin said he had checked it and vice versa. And just to make sure I couldn't top it off with those two quarts of Pennziol, Maria gave them to her father in Indiana because it looked like they needed the room for Austin's stuff.

So it's off to Auto Zone again this morning for more oil. And the mystery of the disappearing oil continues. No leaks on the ground and no blue smoke from the tailpipe.

Flashback

This fisheye photo dates from around 1972. It’s my dad and his secretary in his insurance agency on the north side of the courthouse square in Delphi, Ind.

The multi-drawer cabinet behind the secretary’s desk now stands beside my desk at home.

"What are you people doing up here?"

ENTEBBE, Uganda (AFP) – Africans must travel to the moon to investigate what developed nations have been doing in outer space, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said Saturday.

"The Americans have gone to the moon. And the Russians. The Chinese and Indians will go there soon. Africans are the only ones who are stuck here," Museveni said, addressing a meeting of the Uganda Law Society in Entebbe.

"We must also go there and say: 'What are you people doing up here?'"

Museveni urged the assembly of Uganda's top lawyers to support East African integration, arguing that one of the region's goals should be to develop a space program.

"Uganda alone cannot go to the moon. We are too small. But East Africa united can. That is what East African integration is all about," he said. "Then we can say to the Americans: 'What are you doing here all alone?'."

Museveni has vocally campaigned for a common East African economic and political zone.

Negotiations to establish a tariff free trade zone including Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda have been ongoing for months.

Museveni on Saturday also called for enhanced political integration among the East African nations, suggesting the region would be strengthened by becoming one country.

Breathing easier

I'm breathing easier today for a number of reasons.

First, Austin found his tax check, which we deposited immediately into his local checking account.

Second, he bought a car. (See photo above, shot with my cell phone's crappy camera) It's a very clean looking 1995 Chevy Beretta with 160,000 miles on the odometer and a decent set of tires. A friend hooked him up with a used car dealer, who knocked $700 off of his $1,850 asking price.

So now the lad is mobile and I can retire again from my chauffeur job while he continues his quest for a job.

And third, the new convenience store/gas station just down the road opened this morning. This is a big deal for me because they have a Subway and I'm giving serious thought to going on the "Jared" Subway diet. At the very least, it's an agreeable, handy place for lunch.

Thanks for visiting

My Feedjit gizmo logs visitors to this blog by city, state, country, and time of day. It also indicates the visitor's browser type and OS.

But the most interesting data to me is how many get here on purpose, rather than stumble across my blog in a Google search or some other referring mechanism.

I can guess who some of you are, but others remain unknown to me.

Here's the roll call of visitors who came in through the front door in the last 24 hours or so:

• Las Vegas - my son Steve or daughter-in-law Nicky
• Lafayette, Ind. - Probably Karen T.
• Fairplay, Colo - Tim B.
• Carmel, Ind. - Probably Alan P.
• Bloomington - Either Shaylan O. or Morgan D.
• Indianapolis - Probably Lauri S.
• Flora, Ind. - Eric F.
• Memphis - Probably Tim H.
• Plymouth, Ind. ?
• Jonesboro, Ark. - ?
• Jessup, Md. - ?
• Walnut Ridge, Ark. - ?
• United States - ? (Using Windows 98!)
• Carterville, Ill. - ?

There may be others who are in stealth mode because they clicked the "Ignore my browser" option in Feedjit. I hope not, because I like knowing I'm not just mumbling to myself here.

Thanks for checking in. I hope you find my blog interesting.

Two heartbeats from the Presidency

Enigmatic photo of the day

I have no idea.

Happy 64th Birthday, Pete

Today is the 64th birthday of Pete Townshend of the Who and arguably the best guitarist in the history of rock.

Happy Birthday, Pete!

What next?

David Coursey, writing in PC World, warns that the GPS satellite system has been so badly neglected by the U.S. Air Force – the agency charged with its maintenance – that it could begin to fail as early as next year.

That’s disastrous news for the U.S. Military, myriad government and private agencies, trucking, surveying, God knows who else, and of course me.

Wrapped too tight

I think I may be wrapped a little too tight. Or have too much caffeine in my system.

Austin, who is still with us after the initial deadline of two weeks, announced this morning that he has misplaced his federal tax refund check for $900+.

I watched him retrieve it from the Subaru when he and Maria returned from Indiana Sunday night, so it has to be somewhere in the house. That check, plus his final paycheck from his last employer, represents his financial resources for the move to
Arkansas.

I’m trying hard not to let my head explode or to lapse into lethal sarcasm, but carelessness on this scale makes me freaking crazy. I asked why he didn’t just put it into his wallet. He said, “I thought you weren’t supposed to fold a check.”

Oh.

On the positive side of the ledger, he swapped the title for his junked car for $25 cash from the salvage yard.

So I guess the news isn’t all bad.

Using my cell phone for an Internet modem

OK, so I don’t need the Sprint 3G wireless dongle and the added $60/month after all.

I went to the Sprint site and downloaded the software that lets me use my 3G-enabled cell phone as a wireless Internet modem. I’m already paying for unlimited Internet connectivity on my phone, so there’s no added charge when I use is as a modem for my netbook.

After a little fumbling around, I got hooked up and am now blogging via a cell phone connection on my Mini 9.

It’s not as sexy as the Compass 597, but it works and it charges my phone at the same time.

How cool is that?

They're baaaaaack

Maria and Austin rolled in about 10:30 last night, the Subaru Forester jammed with Austin's stuff.

They also brought back seven bottles of Indiana-made Red Gold ketchup, a hard-to-find item here in northeast Arkansas. It's our fave. Beats the hell out of Heinz and other lesser brands.

We just finished unloading the car this morning after rearranging the furniture in the guest room to accommodate the big flat-screen TV Steve and Nicky gave him a few Christmases ago, and his X-Box 360.

Having an X-Box in the house could be a serious time-waster for me. I might just go nuts and buy a copy of Call of Duty and re-fight WWII if my resistance fails.

Maria had a great time with her friend Lauri and her family during her return to Indiana. Austin had the predictable unpleasant encounter with his dad and his feral step-siblings. I think he finally decided to say, "Fuck 'em." Maria's ex is bound and determined to remain estranged from his own kids, partially because of the toxic influence of his nasty wife and partially because he's just an emotionally dysfunctional moron.

Whatever. Now Austin gets to have a new life and new opportunities in Arkansas.

The REALLY inconvenient truth for global warming alarmists

Freebies!!!

Who knew all of those reviews I wrote on Amazon.com would add up to something?

I logged into my Amazon.com account yesterday and found an invitation to their Vine reviewer program.

It's an offer to those of us who write coherent, useful reviews of stuff sold on Amazon.com, to receive free stuff to review. I'm all in favor of free stuff, so I signed on immediately.

The last time they posted a list of available stuff was April 23, so it was pretty well picked over and down to a handful of books - mostly fiction and heavy on stuff for teens. I did, however, find an interesting book by a guy who got seduced into mountaineering in Colorado and went from an ordinary Joe to a dedicated peak-bagger.

I clicked on it and Amazon.com says today that it shipped to me via FedEd yesterday.

Needless to say, I'm checking regularly for the next listing of free stuff.

According to their data, I've written 71 reviews over the years. A total of 885 of the 1,023 people who offered an opinion about my reviews said they found them helpful, for a score of 87 percent. I am number 7,752 in the "Classic Reviewer" rankings, whatever the hell that means.

Jonesing for the Compass 597

This makes the Mini 9 netbook package complete.

I went to the Sprint website to pay my cell phone bill this afternoon and found an offer of a free Compass 597 EVDO dongle. Well, kinda free. They claim it's worth about a $250 retail. To get one free, I need to sign a new two-year contract for Sprint service and pay an additional $60 a month.

This thing plugs into a USB slot on a laptop computer and voila, I have the same 3G wireless Internet service that I get on my Treo 700p smartphone. This, plus the built-in Wifi would make my travels with my Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook considerably easier. It would also make it possible to be online while traveling in a car.

Oooooooo.

This is tempting. Very tempting. But $60 a month is a little too painful at the moment, so it will probably have to wait.

Time flies

How did it get to be afternoon so quickly?

I got up about 7:30 a.m., put the dogs out and the coffee on and pulled on some clothes.

I did a couple of loads of dark clothes and still have some whites and sheets to launder.

I also rebooted my desktop computer in hopes of resetting my DVD software. A reboot take about an hour because of my confused hard drive, so I used the Mini 9 for awhile, checking email and recharging the battery from yesterday morning's session at Books-A-Million.

Maria called to say she and Austin were wrapping up their time in Indiana and plan to come home to Arkansas today.

And I wrote Amazon.com reviews of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook computer and the nifty little neoprene carrying case I use for it.

Now it's about 12:20 p.m. and Pete is nuzzling my left wrist to tell me he wants me to open the back door for him.

So I will.

My exciting weekend takes off

It’s Saturday morning at Books-A-Million and I have my 20 ounce coffee at hand.

I had my Mini 9 set up at another table, but had to move when I noticed the guy at a table directly behind me had a persistent productive cough and bad sinus drainage. I don’t like to think of  myself as paranoid about disease, but I’m smart enough to minimize my exposure when I notice it. So I gathered up my stuff and moved to another table on the other side of the cafe.

It rained overnight and there is more rain in the forecast all day, so whatever thoughts I might have had about motorcycling will have to wait until tomorrow. Likewise, no lawn mowing today.

Maria called about 9 a.m. (10 her time) to say she was on her way to Bainbridge to collect Austin and his stuff. Their to-do list includes closing out his checking account at the State Bank of Lizton – something like a $50 transaction, but still worth the time as long as they’re in Indiana.

I served up the last of the IAMS dog food this morning when I filled food bowls, so my to-do list includes picking up another 40 pound bag, probably at Sam’s Club.

I also did some Internet exploring this morning for ways to tweak the performance of the Dell Inspiron Mini 9. I have no complaints, but more memory is always better. I discovered I can double the RAM from 1GB to 2GB for about $28, so I whipped out the credit card and ordered a 2GB chip from Crucial Technology. Happily, the intelligent design of the Mini 9 makes a RAM swap an easy 5-minute job.

The SSD (solid state drive) that came with the Mini is 8GB and I have an 8GB SanDisk thumb drive plugged into one of the USB ports, so I don’t have a burning desire for more hard drive capacity. The last time I checked, SSDs were available in sizes up to 32GB. They can only get bigger and cheaper, so there’s no rush.

Running wild

I’m living the wild life of a bachelor with Maria out of town for the weekend.

After considerable thought and weighing all of my options, I chose the Subway just off of the ASU campus as my stylish dinner venue. I treated myself to a window seat and watched what looked for all the world like a drug deal taking place in the parking lot.

Now, I’m hanging out with a large coffee at Hastings while I plan my next adventure.

That will probably involve going home, flipping channels, drinking a little wine, and going to bed early.

Life off the leash is pretty intense, you know.

I had to go to the post office this afternoon to return some rental DVDs and mail a book I sold on Amazon.com. And I went a little crazy and blew $8.80 on a block of the new Simpsons postage stamp. God knows what crazy thing I’ll do next.

My Man Mitch

My Man Mitch - Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels - has an excellent op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal discussing the ruinous effects of the Democrat-proposed "cap and trade" legislation.

I suggest you click here and read it.

Here's a photo taken two years ago this month when I (far left) went for a motorcycle ride with Mitch (far right) and the Indiana Commissioner of Correction. The guy in the middle was publisher of the Crawfordsville newspaper at the time.

Mitch rides a Harley-Davidson, but he seemed OK with me being on a BMW. He's an excellent rider, BTW definitely not a biker wannabe or a poser.

Friday update

I’m on my own today.

Maria and Austin drove to Indiana last night to spend the weekend gathering up all of Austin’s stuff and bring it back to Arkansas.

She should be leaving her parents’ house about now to drive to Crawfordsville and have lunch with our friend Lauri.

I spent a few minutes this morning catching up on the insurance claim at our rental property in Thorntown (see yesterday’s post).

I spent much of yesterday driving all over Jonesboro with Austin dropping off resumes at construction companies and got the voicemail from the insurance adjuster when I got home. Because of the time difference, it was too late to call him yesterday, so I made the call first thing this morning.

He recommended a glass repair company in Lebanon and it turns out the owner of the company lives in Thorntown and is familiar with our house. He said he’d get things moving today, but cautioned that it will be next week before he can have a replacement window ready to install.

Maria drove by the place about 4 a.m. and noticed the renters have plastic over the window, as per the instructions of the insurance adjuster, since there is more rain in the forecast over the weekend.

She also noted that the house looks good and that the renters seem to be taking good care of the lawn.

Having set the repair process in motion, I drove into town and set up shop at a Wifi-equipped bookstore where I get to listen to the barista discussing religion and philosophy with a customer who is the wife of an evangelical protestant minister.

Oh, and today is our 8th wedding anniversary. Bronze, they call it.

Jeez, what next?

I always fear the worst when our phone rings before 8 a.m.

The 7:20 a.m. call today was from our renter in Thorntown, calling to say a storm overnight blew a big limb into the large window in the front of the house.

My guess is that the limb came from the aging maple tree near the point where the driveway meets the street in front of the house. He said the limb broke both panes of glass, then fell down outside the house, leaving a hole in the window with the wind whistling through it.

The storm hit about 3 a.m., he said, with lots of lightning and wind, scaring their golden retriever so much he climbed in bed with the guy and his wife.

I called our insurance agent in Lebanon and was assured they would get on it immediately.

Junking and job-hunting

Today’s goals were taking Austin’s beater 1991 Dodge Dynasty to a salvage yard and putting his resume into the hands of as many construction companies as possible.

Now, six hours and 74 miles later, we’re chilling at Books-A-Million where the Joe Muggs Cafe is closed because of a disastrous coffee machine meltdown. But they are selling coffee at the public service desk.

We got about 4 miles from home this morning then Austin’s left front tire exploded with such violence that it blew out two big chunks of the material lining the wheel well. He rolled to a stop on the berm of U.S. 49 across from a big Anheuser Busch rice processing plant and I pulled in behind him in my del Sol. Naturally, he had no spare tire.

We had been heading to a Jonesboro salvage firm where Austin had planned to sell his car for $4.50 a pound. I called the auto club and arranged for a tow to the salvage yard, then called the yard to find out what we should do when we arrived. It was at this point that it occurred to them to tell us that the tires had to be removed and the gas tank emptied and punctured.

WTF?

He had neither the tools nor the wherewithal to do those things before the tow truck delivered the car to the yard. So we resolved to have the car dragged back to our house and try to unload it in a classified ad.

When the tow truck driver arrived and found out we were ready to junk the car, he smiled and said his boss has a salvage yard and he’d be happy to buy it if the price was right.

Austin asked for $50, the boss countered with $25 and Austin agreed to let his wrung out Dodge go for $25. He removed the Indiana license plate and bade farewell to the car, pending retrieval of the title from Indiana.

Austin had only put maybe 30 miles on his car since he arrived in Arkansas a week ago Sunday evening from Indiana. That’s how close he came to being stranded en route from Indiana. Now he’s stranded here.

Happy to be rid of the car he bought for $200 more than a year ago, we drove on in to town and had lunch with Maria at the Whole Hog Cafe.

Then I programmed my GPS with the addresses of a list of construction companies and spent the next three hours driving all over town dropping off resumes. A couple of places seemed somewhat receptive, so maybe things will pick up in a week or so.

In the meantime, I’m sipping strong coffee, Austin is paging through a book on Sharks and I’ll go next door to Kroger in a few minutes to buy dog treats and other odds and ends.

Never a dull moment, eh?

One of these is not like the others...

Looks like I blew a seal

I think I blew a seal - on Maria's '94 K75S.

The I noticed the gearshift was getting stiff and notchy about a year ago and, on the advice of local BMW friend Charlie Parsons, I added some 85W-140 hypoid gear oil to the gearbox. That seemed to smooth it out, but the implication was that the bike had somehow leaked a bunch of gear oil over the years.

I had added the oil sparingly, not wanting to overfill it. The tool that serves as a transmission oil dipstick was strangely absent from the K75S toolkit, but I knew I had one in the toolkit left over from my '91 K100RS after I parted out the bike a few years ago.

Wayne Garrison introduces Maria to her K75S at the late, lamented Revard BMW Motorcycles in Indianapolis in 2000

 

The problem was, I couldn't find the K100RS toolkit. It finally turned up last week, under a painting dropcloth on a shelf in the garage tool closet.

So I added more oil on Sunday - emptied the rest of the quart bottle from last year - and still needed more to register on the dipstick. So I got another quart from Advance Auto Parts and brought it up to the proper level.

I had to meet Maria near downtown Jonesboro last evening, so I decided to ride the K75S to see how much happier the oil made the gearbox. It shifted smoothly and seemed just fine.

Until I stopped at the light at Hilltop and started smelling burning oil.

By the time I reached my destination, it was clear the bike was bleeding gear oil badly and it was dripping onto the hot exhaust pipe.

After we finished our business in town, I phoned Charlie, who lives on the north side of the city, and arranged to drop the bike at his place rather than leave an oil trail all the way up to our house. Besides, Charlie has a well-equipped workshop and if I'm going to attempt repairs, that's the logical place.

So my K1200GT is now the only bike in our garage and I have a new project.

Subaru Day

I'm off to the Subaru dealer in Memphis to find out why our car burned 3 quarts of oil in 2,500 miles.

Chances are, I'll be stuck in the waiting room without Wifi all freaking day. So it goes.

I must be off.

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

6 hours later

I'm back from Memphis where the folks at Jim Keras Subaru charged me nothing to put in a new PCV valve in hopes that would cure the oil consumption problem.

They said it wasn't related to the head gasket replacement and concluded the oil isn't leaking out of the engine or going out the tailpipe.

Then I went to Gateway Tire in Jonesboro and bought a new tire to replace the left rear tire that went flat for a second time last Friday evening. So the Subaru is fully roadworthy again, all for about $125.

What a relief.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to my mom, who died Oct. 5, 2000 at the age of 85. This is her high school senior picture.

Riding

Just got home from the May meeting of the BMW Riders Association of the Mid-South at Grass Roots BMW Motorcycles in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Grass Roots has become my dealer of choice, even though it's more than two hours away because there is no local dealer and the dealer in Memphis is mostly Yamaha.

There were only a dozen of us there, including Herb and Reno from the dealership, but the barbecue lunch was excellent.

I had about 60 miles of rain in the Missouri bootheel en route, but had a completely dry ride home. Total mileage: something like 250. Not a bad ride for a Saturday in early May.

Just walkin' the dog

Vroom, vroom... BFD

After all these years, you'd think I would know better than to go to any motorcycle event with "biker" in the name.

But boredom can lead to errors in judgment, so we went downtown this evening for the NEA Baptist (Hospital) Biker Classic.

I realized immediately I should have brought my earplugs. These guys may think loud pipes save lives, but they just trigger my fight or flight mechanism.

I'll let it go at that.

Capt. Kroon's V-E Day letter

Sixty-four years ago today, 26-year-old 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, invasion. 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.

The cease fire order for the XV Corps.

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.

The Wifi Chronicles (continued)

Well, well.

Books-a-Million’s Joe Muggs Cafe, which has a superior ambiance to Hastings Hardback Cafe, has Wifi. They’re a little short on electrical outlets convenient to tables, but running on battery power isn’t a big deal for my Dell Inspiron Mini 9.

It’s not free, but $20 bought me a 10% store discount card and a year of Wifi. That beats the hell out of the Starbucks deal with AT&T for Sprint users like me. I’m sure the card will pay for itself over the next 12 months.

I’m waiting for a call from Maria, who had an 11:30 a.m. dental appointment. If she gets out in time for some lunch, she’ll call me and we’ll rendezvous somewhere.

I’ve changed over to the Google Chrome browser for the Mini 9 because the Internet Explorer toolbars take up too much screen real estate. And I think it runs a little faster than IE.

The Austin report

Austin set out about an hour ago with an updated resume and references, a list of prospective employers and high TomTom GPS to guide him.

We put the final tweaks on the resume and references last night. He found what appears to be a very nice apartment complex well within his price range yesterday and we expect to take a look at a one-bedroom apartment there tomorrow.

In the meantime, he and Maria are trying to schedule a trip to Indiana this weekend or sometime next week to retrieve Austin's stuff.

Defector Specter dejected

Sen. Arlen Specter (?-PA), has been stripped of his seniority in his various committees after defecting from the Republican Party to the Democrats.

Specter says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) promised him he could keep his seniority, which would mean he would elbow aside several senior Democrats on Senate committees.

Specter changed parties when it became apparent that he will lose in the Pennsylvania Republican Primary this year.

Now, without the prestige of Senate committee seniority, he is vulnerable in the Democrat Primary and, if he survives that long, in the fall election.

He claims Reid went sideways on him after Reid and President Obama welcomed him into the Democrat fold with open arms at a White House press conference.

Read all about it in The Washington Post.

The horror, the horror...

OK, so it really belongs on my other blog. I decided it was too clever not to post here.

Fire in the hole

I’m sitting on the back porch, sipping coffee, surfing the Web and listening to the Hindu Love Gods album on my iPod (that’s Warren Zevon and everybody in REM except Michael Stipe).

The birds are swarming our bird feeder, including a blue jay and a bunch of red-headed woodpeckers, apparently secure in the knowledge that our dogs are no threat to them.

Austin made some serious progress yesterday digging our 6’ diameter fire pit.

The plan is to excavate a foot down overall and then another foot in the center. The center circle – about 2 feet in diameter – will be lined with gravel and sand to give rainwater a place to drain. This all adds up to a little under 30 cubic feet of dirt, or a bit more than a cubic yard, which is a fair amount of digging in this rooty clay-sand mix they call soil here on Crowley’s Ridge.

We’re using the dirt to fill holes in the yard caused by falling limbs and the large one next to the driveway where the tree service guys yanked out a big stump.

Whatever is left, we’ll dump into a trench the neighbors want filled in their yard.

It rained last night, so the pit is too sloppy for digging this morning. Maybe we can finish this afternoon.

We have several tree trunk segments about 18” to 2’ tall we can array around the circle for seating. Then we can incinerate marshmallows while the mosquitoes drain our blood on hot summer evenings.

I just noticed last night’s storm dislodged an oak tree branch that had been left dangling by January ice storm. Fortunately, it fell cleanly into the back yard and missed the chain link fence. More wood for the fire pit.

Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener...

I just discovered the Hotdogger Blog, a blog by the folks who drive the fabulous Oscar Meyer Wienermobile around the country.

Here's the Wienermobile in front of the house from the movie "Home Alone" in Chicago.

Check it out to find out when the Wienermobile will be in your area.

Bob's got it right

A new take on swine flu

Arkansas Austin

We may have recruited a new Arkansas resident.

Discussions this morning have resulted in a loosely structured plan for Austin to find a job, rent an apartment and officially move from Indiana to Arkansas.

His ultimate goal is to become a firefighter, but he has solid training and a fondness for construction and carpentry, so we're going to try to hook him up with a decent job. While the construction industry is pretty much flat-lined in Indiana, it's quite healthy here in northeast Arkansas.

The plan is for him to live with us for a couple of weeks, during which time he'll find work and a place of his own. Sounds somewhat daunting, but we think it's doable.

And Maria won't have to worry about what's become of her son.

Austin's here

Maria's son Austin got laid off from his tractor parts distribution center job on Friday, so he decided it was an opportunity to come visit us.

He arrived early last evening and dazzled us with his new haircut.

We determined he can file for Indiana unemployment benefits online, so that's on the agenda for the next day or two.

He and Maria had breakfast in the kitchen as they tried to identify a new woodpecker, also having breakfast, at our bird feeder.

That brown lump between them is Ruthie. She and Pete were very happy to see me when I picked them up at the kennel yesterday afternoon. Bathing is part of the deal at our vet's kennel operation and, in the course of giving Ruthie her shampoo, they noticed a large cyst on her right shoulder. The vet lanced it free of charge and gave us some antibiotics (not free of charge) to administer to her for the next few days. She doesn't seem to mind the minor surgery.

Backing up a few hours, we left the Lodge at Mount Magazine State Park in dense fog about 8 a.m. and crept through the switchbacks down the mountain to the valley floor 2,200 feet below. We gassed at a station at the foot of the mountain and drove about 50-60 miles to a diner in Russellville where we had an unremarkable but inexpensive breakfast. The high point of the dining experience was watching the cashier shuffling back and forth behind the counter, talking on her cell phone and telling someone, "I need a drink real bad."

We picked up I-40 and ignored the Garmin GPS suggestions to exit onto 2-lane highways to U.S. 67, favoring an Interstate route all the way to Little Rock, where we picked up U.S. 67. It was more miles and a few more minutes of driving time, but a much more pleasant drive, considering we were in rain and drizzle much of the way.

We got home about 1:30 and flopped down for a nap until it was time to pick up the dogs.

Sunday morning - still raining

It rained all night and I dreamed about the Lodge where we're staying being washed over the cliff.

Yesterday held a couple of surprises here at the APME convention.

Maria was elected to the Arkansas APME Board of Directors, a quite unexpected honor.

And the Sun won the APME Mark Twain Award, given each year to the newspaper that fosters the best working relationship with the Associated Press.

Now Maria is checking the Lodge restaurant menu to see if they have eggs Benedict. If so, we stay for breakfast. If not, we're outta here.

High in Arkansas

We decided to get high this weekend – as high as you can get in Arkansas.

We’re attending the Associated Press Managing Editors meeting at Mount Magazine State Park, the highest point in the state. According to the park logo, that means 2,753 feet above sea level. I’m sure this impresses Tim and Linda Balough who live at 10,600 feet in Alma, Colo.

We drove over this morning from Brookland – about 240 miles, only 13 of which were Interstate highway. The whole trip was accomplished in constant, sometimes torrential, rain and arrived in time for lunch.

The Lodge is perched on a cliff overlooking a valley far below. They do hang gliding launches just down the road. Thanks to the weather, we’re in or above the clouds, depending on how the wind blows. Every now and then we can see the valley through a hole in the clouds. The pictures on the park web site look pretty spectacular and I’ll bet this place is very impressive when the skies are clear and sunny.

Lunch ended at 2 p.m. and now we’re waiting until we can check in to our room at 4. We have no cell phone coverage here, but they do have high-speed internet – Ethernet and Wifi. That’s why we brought both laptops.

In the meantime, we can hear the thunder rumbling. There is a nasty band of rain extending as far west as Tulsa, so we may get to drive home in the rain too.

3 quarts of oil in 2,500 miles? WTF?

Maria mentioned the oil pressure warning light was flickering on and off during her drive home last night.

So after we had lunch today, I took it to the Advance Auto Parts place, popped the hood and pulled the dipstick. No oil showing. At all.

I went inside and bought three quarts of Pennzoil 10W-40 and a small yellow plastic funnel. I poured a quart into the oil filler and checked the dipstick. No oil showing.

I put in a second quart and checked. Still no oil showing.

Well, I thought, maybe it just needs to circulate. I drove home and checked again. Still no oil showing.

I put the third quart in and this time the oil level was up between minimum and maximum marks on the dipstick.

I pulled the service records from the mid-March head gasket replacement job we had done at the dealership in Memphis. That was exactly 2,500 miles ago and they should have filled it with the recommended 4.2 quarts at that time.

How could we burn through three quarts of motor oil in just 2,500 miles and with a new head gasket to boot? I'm baffled.

And so was the service manager at the dealership when I phoned.

No, there are no signs of an oil leak on the concrete driveway where we park the car every night, so it must be going out of the tailpipe. But we haven't noticed the engine smoking.

"Can you bring it in on Monday?" he asked.

No, we're got a busy schedule, but I'll see about getting it in sometime next week.

Disappointing Arkansas dining experiences (continued)

We had lunch at a local Pizza Hut today. I will not go back.

When we lived in Indiana, we occasionally went to lunch with my wife's coworkers at the Pizza Hut in Crawfordsville. It is a spacious restaurant with a good buffet and salad bar.

The Pizza Hut here has the crappiest salad bar I've seen in years. The lettuce was limp and brown in places, there were only a couple of spoonfuls of shredded cheese and there were no garbanzos, no peas, no beets, no potato salad, no cottage cheese and worst of all, no bleu cheese dressing!

I assembled a salad of sorts with some ranch dressing, but couldn't work up enough interest to taste it.

The pizza buffet was indifferently stocked and was mostly empty when I made my first attempt to score a couple of pieces of pepperoni pizza.

I've never been a fan of Pizza Hut pizza anyway, but this stuff was supremely bland, even for Pizza Hut.

The most interesting thing about our lunch was the t-shirt on the woman sitting next to us, advertising a psychic reader. It must not have been her because she didn't notice me taking this photo with my cell phone.

Happy Birthday, Ted Simon!

Today is my friend Ted Simon’s 78th birthday.

Ted has ridden motorcycles around the world twice – the first time, a four-year trip begun in 1973 on a Triumph Tiger. The second time was a three-year journey on a BMW R80G/S begun in 2001 a few months before his 70th birthday.

Ted’s first journey was chronicled in “Jupiter’s Travels,” considered by many to be the best motorcycle travel book ever written and the inspiration for Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s globe-circling ride that resulted in a book and a TV series named “Long Way Round.”

I last chatted with Ted at the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America national rally last July in Gillette, Wyo. where he looked as youthful and vital as ever.

I’m pleased that I could persuade Webb Bernhardt, the president of the Indianapolis BMW Club, to contribute $500 in club funds to Ted’s 2001 effort. Ted reciprocated by putting an Indianapolis BMW Club sticker on the starboard side of his top box. It can be faintly see in the photo above.

You can read more about this amazing expatriate Brit who now lives in Northern California at his web site: www.jupitalia.com